Open Look

[Dravite]

54 Spring, 515 AV
Evening

The breeze was too still, sunlight too hot, and his stance too unbalanced to make the kill, Dravite told himself. He had been hunting all day, chased two deer down until his strider was exhausted and his own legs had lost their strength for riding, muscles tight and aching at the knees; the Drykas Man had gone on by foot, leaving his animal to rest for the journey home.

Grey, lean and low to the ground the rabbit sat sniffing at the new spring grass. He had taken his fill for the afternoon and was just enjoying a warm spot in the sun when a faint sound caused his ears to prick and his pulse to quicken. Now he stood on hind legs smelling the air, taking the high ground quickly to see what or who was stalking him. Satisfied that he was alone, the rabbit lay low again and stretch his hind legs out in the sand.

Positioned between two tussocks lurked the bone spear wielded by the hunter, forced to creep forward silently to get within striking range. Dravite didn't want a repeat of his last hunting trip, where he had gone out late and returned early, empty handed. A rabbit had escaped him on that occasion and he wouldn't be able live it down if it happened again so soon.

Slowly and taking great care to watch where he set his bare foot, the man leaned forward, drew back his spear and eyed up his shot. He envisioned the sharp head of the spear impaling his prey, right through the heart to invoke a quick death, however, when he shot the weapon forward and felt the shank run past his fingers, his foresight and follow through didn't quite line up.

There was a heart stopping cry ripped from the rabbit’s throat as it struggled on the end of the man's weapon, claws raking the once warm spot of earth that would now be its death bed. Dravite rose quickly, pressing the spearhead into the earth so that his dinner could not escape off the end of it. Swiftly he drew his steel dagger from his belt and took the small animal by the neck to still the creature in order to bury the tip of the blade behind the animal’s eyes.

He felt the skull crack and give way to the steel of his blade which swiftly stole the creature’s life, leaving it limp and bloody on the ground. Dravite withdrew the dagger and cleaned it on the end of his simple, black trousers before pricking the top of his left forearm. Blood pooled in a small, perfect red bubble on his arm which he wiped away with his finger to draw a line over the wind-marked skin of his chest, "Blood for blood, life for death," he mouthed quietly, speaking his thanks to the goddess, Caiyha.

The rabbit was worked off the head of the spear and Dravite stood for a time just staring at it. The weapon had entered on the left side of the animal's belly and come out the right, making a real mess of any possibility that pelt might be salvageable and worth turning in for sale, even so, Dravite was fond of finding a use for everything as the goddess he followed would see him do. The man sighed and tied the rabbit to his leather belt to start heading back to camp..
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[Dravite]

The stallion had other plans and jumped away from Dravite when he tried to get near. The sun was threatening to set, drifting down towards the horizon as birds flew overhead; racing one another back to their nests for the evening. "This isn't a game, Cree!" The man hissed, growing impatient with his strider who often liked to prance about when it came time to head home, especially when he had found a nice patch of grass to graze.

"Come here!" Dravite called to the wayward buckskin, shaking his head.

Still, Cree was defiant. He stirred up dust with a heavy hoof, tucked his head against his neck and made a low, grunting sound that vibrated through his black, velvety nostrils.

"I'll buy you an apple," Dravite promised and used his grassland sign to represent what he was saying, so sure the horse could understand him.

Cree threw his head up and nodded wildly, raking the earth again underfoot. He jumped back and rose, balanced perfectly on his strong hind legs while the front were kicked forward wildly, cutting the air like knives.

"Is that a yes?" The Drykas man laughed and chanced a few steps forward.

Cree snorted when he came to stand on all four feet again and lowered his head to fill his mouth with more of the lush, green grass. Dravite got close enough to place a hand on the strider's wither and grasped a fistful of black mane to help pull himself up onto the sixteen hand horse.

The strider was afforded the option of finishing off his mouthful of grass before the two set off for home. Dravite kept hold of his spear and used it for balance while his left hand gripped the yvas firmly; the last thing he needed was to grow cocky and take a fall from the animal’s back in the middle of nowhere with the sun setting.

Cree galloped across the plain towards camp, he seemed excited to be returning for the night but Dravite had other plans. "Oh no you don't," he chuckled as Cree tried to ignore the little dig of the man's bare foot to his side, "We need to go check the snares first, then we go to camp."

Together they veered away from the direction of home which took them slightly off course, though the traps circled back to where they needed to go. The first one was empty but as Dravite had gone to the trouble of setting it that morning and putting down some animal scents from his trapping kit, he decided to leave it for now and planned to come back the following day.

The second snare proved more fruitful and Dravite dismounted to collect the rabbit that had become entangled and strangled itself. He struggled to remove the noose from around the rabbit’s throat and even contemplated removing the head to retrieve the snare on one piece when he managed, finally, to pull it loose. It took him a lot longer than it should to set the trap up again in the long grass. He was all thumbs, fighting with length of string twisted in knots about his burly fingers.

When his work was done, the pair were free to race back to camp in the dying light, though Dravite had a strange feeling his night wasn't quite over yet.
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[Dravite]

"I have to get some gear for that animal," he told his wife Belkaia as she met him outside the tent with their son Kyanite.

"You need to stop spending money and start earning," she told him; it seemed she was always worried about their finances and Dravite longed for the day they would be comfortable enough not to fret.

"Well if The Watch pays me for this season’s work the first thing I'm getting is a brush and a sack of apples for that poor horse, just look at his mane and tail."

Cree didn't look like a bonded strider, he was shaggy to say the least, his long ebony mane riddled with knots and dreads Dravite often tried to comb out with his fingers to little avail. The horse needed a good brushing and a haircut to tame the mess of windswept hair tangled with bits of dry grass and muck.

Belkaia smiled and set her free hand between the man's shoulder blades gently. "Come sit, we can't wait to hear about your day. It looks like you had more luck out hunting than we did foraging."

She was clever, opting to boost her husband’s ego so that he might forget his woes. Dravite couldn't help but smile, it wasn't often he returned with a kill, so to have returned with two rabbits made him feel like the type of provider he longed to be.

The fire pit emitted a comfortable amount of heat for the warmer spring nights now that summer was just around the corner. The pit was dug slightly deeper into the ground by the Windborne pavilion who added a few big logs to encourage a slow burn through the night in place of one of the racing, hungry bonfire the winters called for.

Dravite was greeted by a few of the pavilion members with warm smiles and caresses to his high shoulders. He sat down near the fire pit on a worn log that has been dragged around from place to place and stripped of its bark long ago. He untied the rabbits from his belt and set them down in front of him for Kyanite to see. "Look," the three year old pointed, his eyes lighting up, "look, look!"

"Look at the rabbits," Belkaia encouraged while Dravite merely smiled at the pair; their son said few words, but he knew the important ones.

The hunter picked up his kill and examined it slowly, not really sure where to start with such a marred pelt. He cut off the arms and hind legs and opened the limbless creature up by running his hunting knife right down the centre of the belly from throat to tail. The pink innards spilled out onto the grass at his feet. "Do you want any of that for cooking?" He asked Belkaia and she quickly picked up the liver.

"Save me the heart?" She requested before leaving Kyanite to stand on his own two feet so she could free up her hands and scoop away the rest of the rabbit’s guts.

"Of course," Dravite nodded.

"I'll take these to my cousin, you know how much her partner’s dogs like rabbit," Belkaia chimed and kissed Dravite on the shoulder before departing.

"Better than letting them go to waste," he called after his wife as Kyanite stood with his small hands clutching Dravite's knee for balance, his gaze glued to the rabbit in his father’s hand.

"Look," he said again and pointed to the other rabbit that still lay on the floor where it had been left.

"Don't worry," Dravite smiled, "he will get his turn soon, but first we have to skin this little guy.".
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[Dravite]

The hunting knife from his kit was perfect for skinning; it was just Dravite’s inability to skin anything that let him down. It didn’t help that the death wound he had inflicted on the poor rabbit had already made a right mess of the pelt before he could add to the ruin rather than attempt to selvage what was left.

Dravite used the hunting knife carefully, mindful that his son stood close by, watching every move he made with the tool. The animal’s small ribcage worked as a good guide, the tip of the blade moving smoothly from belly to back on both sides. The carcass had grown cold in the time it had taken to get home and begin work, causing the knife to slip a few times on the odd stiff spot as Dravite gently worked it into the flesh. The pelt peeled away from the lean muscle without too much resistance after the blade had been used to carve out narrow rivulets between skin and meat. He held up the coat and peered through the holes in it to peek at his son, “And that, my little lion, is one way to render a perfectly good pelt, utterly useless.”

Kyanite smiled though Dravite wasn’t certain the boy knew exactly why or what he was smiling at; no more than a natural reaction invoked whenever father and son spoke. “Rabbit,” Kyanite beamed and touched the edge of the fur with a pointed finer.

“Rabbit,” Dravite echoed him softly, “That’s right, it’s a rabbit.”

Dravite cut the heart out of the rabbit for Belkaia before hanging the bare, stumpy carcass above the fire to let it sit and slowly cook in the heat of the rising smoke. Every now and then he gave it a poke or turned the meat in an attempt to cook it evenly on each side. The flesh slowly started to change colour, morphing from a deep red to a light pink and finally, a dull grey.

“What are you doing?” Belkaia scolded when she returned to take the second rabbits innards for her friend’s hunting dogs, she must have been caught up chatting for it wasn’t like her to stay away long when her husband was in camp.

“We’re cooking rabbit, what does it looked like we’re doing?” Dravite laughed; trust her to find fault in everything he did.

The woman smiled and bit her tongue.

“Well?” Dravite asked, “Spit it out.”

“It’s too high; it will be all raw on the inside.”

Dravite looked from his wife to the rabbit before returning his gaze to Belkaia. He was no master chef, that mush was true, usually leaving these types of jobs to her. “Its fine, don’t fuss.”

Belkaia waited for Dravite to cut into the second rabbit before taking what she had come for. As she left Dravite quickly took the first off the fire to check how the meat looked inside. It seemed his wife wasn’t wrong. He turned his stare on his son and sighed, “Always listen to your mother,” he told the boy with wheat coloured hair, “She is the boss.”

Kyanite hung an arm over his father’s thigh and stared up at him, puzzled. The look caused Dravite to grin, ‘Never mind, blue eyes, never mind.”
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[Dravite]

The second rabbit was a fresh start after butchering the first one, filling the pelt with holes and failing to cook the meat right; Dravite was determined to do a better job of this one. Instead of removing the limbs like he had previously, Dravite thought he would try a new technique and took off the animal’s paws before making incisions to the open belly. He had already removed the insides for Belkaia and now examined the cuts he had drawn from the bloody stumps to the tender middle. The soft under side of the pelt came away without too much trouble while the sides and back proved just as difficult to remove as they had been the first time around.

Dravite used the hunting knife, holding the rabbit by the fur so that the dead weight of the carcass stretched the hide under its own weight and made it easier to pluck the lean meat away from the fatty tissue. The fur was as smooth as velvet to touch and wet with blood. As he examined his cutting work he noticed small bits of meat and holes he had managed to nick in parts of the skin; another poor cutting job, another pelt rendered unsaleable. The pair white, cotton ball tails we treated by use of the preserving kit and set aside to cure; they would come in handy for a small craft project he had in mind to tackle at a later date.

He strung the meat up over the fire, taking care not to place it too close or too far from the flames. The man picked up the first rabbit and set it aside to cool, figuring it might taste alright if he stripped the meat tomorrow to add to a stew. He worked on curing the soft hides, working the treating agent into the flesh and took care not to forget the corners. He got up from where he had been sitting on the old log and carried his work over to where the rest of the pavilion members hung their skins to dry, and added his to the collection. Kyanite watched the rabbit cooking, his head nodding forward every now and then as he fought sleep. “Time for bed, little lion?”

As if he had been given permission to finally close his eyes, Kyanite let his body go limp and curled up in the grass, using the log as a makeshift pillow. Dravite snatched his son up gently and carried him to their tent; watching rabbits cook wasn’t the most thrilling job in the world, but it did take some care, a thought the man had neglected. He set his son down on the bedroll and tucked him in. Kyanite blinked up at him as if trying hard to stay away. “We’ll do something fun tomorrow, I’ll take you riding, or we can go foraging in the grass. I know how much you like that,” Dravite smiled and touched the tip of the boy’s nose playfully with the pad of his thumb.

Dravite pressed the back of his hand to Kyanite’s temple gently before leaving the tent to check on his kill. When he returned to the fire pit, someone had taken the rabbit he had put aside to cool. Dravite looked around quickly and spotted a particularly guilty looking hunting dog that belonged to one of the other Windborne pavilion members, licking his lips and sniffing at the ground a few feet from the fire. The Drykas man swallowed his anger, not wanting to wake anyone for the sake of yelling at a dog that deserved not so much of a telling off as he did a good kick up the backside.

He sat down and turned the roasting rabbit to check that it wasn’t burning. When it looked done he took it down from the heat and tore a piece of flesh away to try it. The smoky taste made him cough; Belkaia was right, as usual, he really was a terrible cook. When she joined him to take a bite of the meat, Belkaia put her brave face on after swallowing and spoke softly, “I’m hungry, I just don’t think I’m that hungry.

Dravite laughed whole-heartedly and put an arm around his wife. “Well it’s nice to think at least someone enjoyed their meal tonight,” he looked over his shoulder as he spoke, eyeing the dog who was hanging around, hoping for seconds.

Belkaia opened her mouth when she saw the animal and suddenly realised how two rabbits had become one. “That little thief!” .
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[Dravite]

55 Spring, 515 AV
Morning

Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand. It is strange then to think that in taking up a handful of sand, one might be holding something that had travelled through space. Endrykas was experiencing a concentrated and unusual meteor outburst. The storm had hit overnight with most parts of the meteor breaking up into hand sized pieces or smaller. Come dawn, it was a surprise to hear that no one have been injured during the shower, and even more shocking to think that rocks falling from the sky had not roused anyone from the Windborne pavilion in the night.

Dravite was woken by his wife who had gotten up to early feed Kyanite and cook breakfast when some of the other women had told her what had gone on in the night. She quickly gave Dravite the rundown and sure enough, it seemed they were right. Patches of earth were littered with small, pitted, dark rocks; some of which even had an unusual gleam to them, almost silver in tone.

The man rubbed the sleep from his eyes and moved to sit down for breakfast, listening to some of the pavilion members share their thoughts of what might have taken place while they had all been sleeping. “The gods are angry,” one of them said as he finished chewing a mouthful of smoked rabbit.
“These are Leth’s tears,” another interjected, “He misses his lover.”

The group looked skyward, not sure the tale had any truth to it, though it seemed somewhat plausible. “There is a lot out there that we know nothing about,” Dravite finally spoke up having finished his breakfast. “Hopefully whatever it was that happened last night is done now.”

Without sticking around to continue the debate, Dravite took his son and headed out of camp. He set his leather saddlebag on Cree’s back and led the Strider out into the open, beyond the area of fallen rocks that people from the pavilion had already started to gather; setting his eyes on unexplored terrain.

Camp was still within eyeshot when he decided on a patch of ground he liked and while he held his son Kyanite in his arms, he looked about before closing his eyes to concentrate on the Drykas webbing. He focused on following the web-like map across the plain in a large circle, checking that there were not predators within their perimeter before he felt safe to let his son tag along on foot. Satisfied that the two of them wouldn’t be interrupted, Dravite crouched down and let his son find his feet in the spring grass. Kyanite picked up a small meteor and looked up at his father, proudly presenting the metallic looking nugget to the man. “Look!”

Dravite laughed and pointed out another rock within range. “Look, sky rock,” He told his son, “Sky rock, go get it.”

Kyanite set the small stone in Dravite’s hand and swayed towards the second rock, fetching it like an eager young puppy might do with a stick. “Sky rock,” the small boy tried to say before snatching up another.

The two of them spent some time collecting the small meteors, filling one side of the saddle bag to about half way before Kyanite grew bored of the excursion. When they returned to camp Dravite was confronted by his wife who seemed less than amused at the sight of the loaded saddle bag. “What are you doing? Those won’t be worth anything if everyone is taking them.”
“Maybe not here,” Dravite admitted. “But we travel, who knows what they might be worth in the city?”
Belkaia folded her arms and smiled softly. “Oh you boys and your fascination with rubbish,” she sighed softly.

She took Kyanite from Dravite’s arm and disappeared behind the wall of their tent with the boy to wash his hands and clean his grubby little feet. Dravite scratched his head and looked at Cree, who didn’t seem phased by the load on his back. “One day I’ll do something that woman approves of,” he chuckled, instantly exchanging the amused sound for a grimace when Belkaia called out; “I heard that.” .
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[Naiya]

Here's what the Fox says

Name: Dravite

XP Award:

• Butchery +3
• Cooking +2
• Endurance +1
• Horsemanship: +1
• Hunting +1
• Negotiation +1
• Observation +5
• Riding +2
• Skinning +2
• Socialization +5
• Stealth +1
• Tanning +1
• Trapping +1
• Weapon: Dagger +1
• Weapon: Spear +1

Lore:

• A rabbit's death cry
• Bribery is a useful tool
• Butchery: Even small holes lower the value of a pelt
• Butchery: Removing the limbs and innards of a rabbit
• Butchery: Removing paws
• Butchery: Shattering the skull to dispatch an animal
• Butchery: The perfect knife for skinning
• Cooking: Leaving food unattended is a risky business
• Cooking: Smoking meat is a delicate process
• Cooking: Smoke is not a stand alone flavor
• Cooking: Too little heat will prevent proper cooking
• Holey pelts hold little use
• Mothers know best
• Riding: Mounting a horse
• Tanning: Don't miss the corners
• The proper look of a bonded Strider
• The world is large and unknown
• Trapping: Animal scents to attract prey
• Trapping: Removing prey from a trap
• Trapping: Resetting a snare

Award: A saddle bag of 'Sky Rocks', two rabbit tails in common condition, two rabbit pelts, one in poor condition, one in common condition.

Notes: These were very well set, successful traps considering that you did not have previous skills or lores for trapping. Please be careful in future threads when putting new skills to use! You had a lot going on here, so I tried to cover it all. Let me know if I missed anything you hoped to find and we will discuss it. As always, this was a wonderfully well written thread, I love the aspect of family life you manage to include.