PM to join Welcome to the Jungle [Merevaika]

[Anibesa]

11th Winter,
517
"Common" | "Fratava" | "Tukant"

It was late evening and Anibesa had spent a lot of time in the jungle of Syka. She hadn’t travelled far into the jungle and could still faintly hear the gentle ebbing of the sea, and she could still see through the underbrush to the light of the suns last few rays, gently shining into the jungle in patches.
She’d been careful with what she’d chosen to wear, her black pants tucked into her boots in the hopes of stopping anything from crawling up her pants. Her dark cloak weighing itself down around her and blocking all the spaces that something might be able to crawl up.
Unfortunately she hadn’t any gloves and now walked through the jungle with bare hands, overly cautious of touching anything just in case it would make her hands itch or cause any other reactions.
Her eyes darted around the jungle, from looking up to the canopy to looking down at the ground, paying attention to where she was placing her feet, making sure she wasn’t going to stand on anything moving in fear of killing a harmless animal, or of aggravating something more vicious and likely to defend itself.
In her right hand was a long branch that she had managed to pull from a tree, and she used this to steady her walking, and to lean onto and rest on when she came to a stop.

Now she was stopped, her eyes scanning the jungle. She was here looking for fruits, and for strong woods. Things that were good to eat and woods that were good to build from, but her little knowledge of both of those areas had lead her to worry. What if she found something and ate it, but it turned out to be poisonous, or if she found a source of wood that she thought would be appropriate and then whatever she built from it would collapse in the next few days.

Frowning at those thoughts, Anibesa started walking again. Slowly and as quietly as she could, her steps moving her in a way that was parallel the the edge of the jungle so she wouldn’t get lost. She used the branch she’d broken from a tree to feel ahead of her, scaring a few small animals, the occasional colourful frog or lizard, occasionally some sort of rodent-like creature that moved too quickly for her to get a good view of it.

She continued for a few steps, before noticing what looked like eaten and destroyed fruits laying on the ground, and carefully she looked up into the jungle canopy to see what looked like yellowish green fruits, like a full and intact version of what she’d found on the ground.
”Something has been eating it…” she mumbled to herself, taking a few moments to decide that if something had been eating those fruits, they must have been edible.
Now was the hard part, she realised. The fruit was growing too out of reach, possibly four or five times higher than she stood, so if she wanted the fruit, she’d have to try to climb the tree. Fortunately it wasn’t too high, and she could see that the tree stretched higher than the branch on which the fruit hung from.

Cautiously Anibesa stepped closer to the trunk of the tree, noting a few rough patches of the tree where it knotted into a circular hole. She adjusted herself and raised her foot to one of those knots, her large boot just fitting, though as she tried to put force onto that foot and push herself up, her boot slipped from the knot and she fell forwards, her face turning away just as the side of her face and her shoulder thrust into the tree harshly and she winced, knowing that she’d likely have a bruise in a few bells.
~

[Merevaika]

Merevaika

Merevaika wished she knew how to make traps.

The woman flailed with the rope she had, forming about half a knot, then giving up. It was pointless to try, wasn't it? If she didn't know what she was doing, it would be a waste of rope. And in this case, the trap she was trying to make wouldn't work how she wanted it to, even if she managed to set it up right. Capturing animals alive was so much harder than possibly dead.

Night had almost come to them, and the woman rose from where she was knelt between the foliage. Brushing dirt from the long trousers she wore against the thorns, she took care not to brush against the leaves and flowers of the plants around her with any of the exposed skin of her hands. She didn't know any of it was poisonous - but she didn't want to risk anything.

Gathering her machete back into her arms, she moved slowly through the jungle, trying to keep an eye where she stepped to avoid aggravating any creature she may have missed. The woman wasn't far from the settlement of Syka and the safety of others, but she had moved far enough away to avoid her trap being in the range of other settlers getting caught in it. With the fading light and her struggle to see as clearly as she had managed before, the journey back was slower and more forced, careful not to act too quickly.

There was a noise near her. Although Merevaika's footsteps weren't the quietest, this noise could be heard over that - at first, completely unrecognisable, and it could have easily been mistake for creature of the forest.

It was followed by a thudding noise, and the trees around her started vibrating slightly, moving from the impact of the Ethaefal against her own tree.

Merevaika bared her machete out, keeping the point trained away from her and towards whatever that could be, as she began to circle around the source of the noise. Searching for a better spot to see in through, she found it after not too long. The vines between them where thick, but there was little else hiding the first touches of Leth's light against the woman.

The Drykas hadn't ever seen her before, so she froze up, not sure whether to approach. The people of Syka, no matter how little Merevaika had conversed with them, could be counted on one hand. She had thought she had known them all.

This woman was horned and beautiful. Her hair was a snowy white with horns against it black as the night. The cobalt shade of her eyes didn't seem real. Even as she winced with her impact from the tree, Merevaika wasn't certain that she was mortal or beyond that.

The horns made her Ethaefal, but Merevaika's weary mind forgot to draw the link between the way that race changed in Leth's light and Syna's.

"Who are you?" Her voice broke the silence and announced her presence - if the woman hadn't heard or seen her approach - to the world. Slowly stepping forward, Merevaika kept a wary hand on her weapon, while both eyes trained on the unfamiliar face. "When you come to Syka?"

"Pavi"
Grassland sign
"Common"

[Anibesa]

"Common" | "Fratava" | "Tukant"

As the rays of moonlight shone into the forest, Anibesa felt a slight grin spread across her face despite the slight feeling of pain from her body hitting the tree.
In an instance a ripple of light spread out across her body, leaving her skin slightly iridescent and paler than it was, her hair now white under the winter moon, and her horns appearing amidst her transformation, a mix of black and violet as she expected from the winter season.
At that point in time she was aware that she wasn’t completely alone, though her mind thought that it may have monkeys, the same ones that had eaten the fruits and left the flesh lined peels of the fruit on the ground beneath the branches of the trees.

”Shyke.” she found herself mumbling to herself as she straightened up, her hand rubbing her should where she had hit it against the tree, before a voice caused her to jump slightly. She hadn’t expected to find anyone else in the rainforest, especially not now that it was night time. She even knew that she herself shouldn’t have really been in the jungle this late!

She turned to see who had spoke and had to narrow her eyes, squinting to try and see in the little light that the moon gave to the jungle, though after a few moments she felt as though she had met the woman before, gradually recognising her from the summer when they had found a variety of gemstones washed up on the beaches all around Syka, though the woman didn’t recognise her, and Anibesa knew why.

Several times she’d met people during the day, only to have to meet them at night and not have them recognise her due to her change in appearance. She hoped that this woman had met an Ethaefal before so it would be easier to explain, otherwise it could take her a long time to explain what had happened to the woman.

She placed a hand onto the tree to steady herself in the darkness and to give herself a reference of where the nearest tree to her was, before she cocked her head slightly, fairly certain she could see the woman step forwards before she asked another question and Anibesa shook her head to remind herself to speak.

”Oh, I’m Ani?” she said calmly, introducing herself again and wondering how to tackle telling the woman that they had met before. ”I’ve been here since summer. I think we may have met already?” she started, still trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness before glancing towards the sound of the seas hitting the shore, glad that she hadn’t gone further into the jungle and risked getting lost.

”I came out her to try to find fruit, but it got dark before I could get any. I didn’t expect it to get dark as quick as it has... What about you?” she explained her reasoning for being out at night before asking the woman herself, trying to see why somebody else would be out in the rainforest at night, and to see if the woman was wanting to head back to the safety of the beach and shore yet, or she could find a use in helping the woman at all.
~

[Merevaika]

Merevaika

"Ani?" The woman had spoken it as if Merevaika was expected to recognise it. Ani, Ani, Ani... Merevaika searched with the word in her mind, trying to figure out what possibly could be the source. It was familiar name, but this person wasn't familiar, and that was what was throwing her off the scent.

Finally, the name clicked. "Anibesa?" The one who had tried to prevent her from taking all the gemstones, who hadn't believed in Semele and her claim to her.

All the frustration from that event came back to her, but Merevaika tried to let it settle. She would get nowhere if she let old events bother her forever. Clearly, the woman didn't deem it great enough to be mentioned. Besides, she had more important things to question - why her appearance had so drastically changed seemingly overnight.

"But Anibesa had red hair...." Merevaika started, as things began to fall into place. This was an Ethaefal. She knew another one, back in Endrykas. And she had had this exact problem. "But you look different at night." Finally settling on her solution, Merevaika looked pleased with herself at remembering that fact. She should have done so sooner, the woman realised, but at least she was able to state it with confidence eventually.

Merevaika stepped forward out of the bushes, lowering her blade as she approached. The caution from earlier was no longer necessary, now she knew the identity of the horned woman, but she didn't put the weapon away fully, not yet. Not because she thought Ani could form any sort of threat towards her, but it was the other denizens of the forest, the ones who might not be friendly.

"I come to... to... trap animals," Merevaika replied, uncertain about the words she spoke, "But without... without - I do not want to hurt the animals. I want the animals alive." The Drykas wasn't certain whether Anibesa knew her profession properly - she didn't keep it a secret by any means, but it would be easier to simply miss her operations. There were cages by her tent and a few days before the Veronica would leave, she could found with her few successes. Still, her tent was fairly isolated, and Ani could simply be busy when she spoke with the owner of the ship.

Perhaps she could show Anibesa the trap, and see if the horned woman had any ideas on how to make it better and not kill the captured animal immediately. Without waiting to see if Anibesa was interested, Merevaika came even closer, demonstrating the rope and starting to for a slip knot.

She formed an S-shape, or similar, with two loops, one on either side. The next bit she wasn't sure about - the woman twisted the rope around the middle, where the two loops started, a few times. As she worked, she kept it up for Ani to see. Finally, she pulled the end of the rope through the loop. It caught and slipped and came completely out of proportion, but the required noose was there.

"I can make trap like this," she started, before pulling the loop tighter with her finger, demonstrating how it caught, "But then it pulls around.." She demonstrated her neck, and made the grassland sign for dead. "Do you-""

Her words were broken by a distinctive rumbling. At once, Merevaika panicked, and swung around wildly, blade outstretched. The noise had a source she couldn't recognise, but it was clearly there. She could feel it shake through her as it filled the air around them. Her mouth opened and closed in a hope to form sentences, but she couldn't think of the words to form them with.

Was it dangerous, or simple there?

"Pavi"
Grassland sign
"Common"

[Anibesa]

"Common" | "Fratava" | "Tukant"

As the woman said her name, Anibesa found herself smiling slightly, just watching as the other woman thought and racked her brains, waiting to see if the woman would put two and two together, or whether she would think that Ani was someone she’d never encountered before.
Anibesa kept quiet, her eyes watching the woman carefully, though occasionally allowed them to glance over the rest of the rainforest to make sure that nothing had changed in the dim light.

Then she heard the woman say her full name and Anibesa grinned, glad that the woman recognised her name at least, even if she was confused about how Anibesa now looked completely different. Then came the words she was expecting but hadn’t really wanted to here as the woman pointed out that when they had last met, she’d had red hair rather than the white she had now, and Anibesa was about to roll her eyes and attempt to explain before Merevaika stated that she looked different at night, her words causing a grin to form on Anibesa’s face.

”Yes!” she exclaimed, unable to hide her happiness at the dark haired woman’s statements. ”I’m guessing you’ve met one of us before?” she said, her tone becoming calmer again, she was still glad, though now she realised how dark it was, and how dangerous she’d heard that the jungle could get.

She watched the woman step closer, seeing that she hadn’t put her weapon away, though Anibesa was glad that she still had it to hand. Just the knowledge of somebody being armed was reassuring to the Ethaefal.

Then she listened to Merevaika, hearing her explain that she came to the rainforest to trap animals, but that she wanted those animals alive and Anibesa nodded, recalling the things that she’d seen around one of the tents that Anibesa had passed whilst attempting to explore the beach and underbrush around Syka, and now she realised that that particular tent must have been Merevaika’s.

”You catch them and sell them? Don’t you? A useful trade!” Anibesa asked the woman, more for clarification that she was right than anything. She wondered what sort of animals Merevaika had managed to catch in Syka, and whether any of them had been anything interesting, but it didn’t seem like the right time for Anibesa to ask the woman.

Instead, she watched closely, seeing how the woman manipulated the rope into some form of knot, that was then pulled and turned into a singular loop, one that Anibesa assumed would be used to catch animals, though she didn’t see how, unless an animal's foot got caught in the rope and it tightened around them.

Then she watched Merevaika as she spoke, showing more of how the trap should work, though at her motions and following words it became obvious that the trap was killing the animals, not just trapping them so Merevaika could capture them and sell them to others. If the animal’s were dead they might be useful to others, but with what Merevaika wanted them for, Anibesa saw how it could be a waste of time.

She was about to try and suggest something, just waiting for the dark hair woman to ask her question, when the fearsome rumbling started and Anibesa yelped slightly in response to it, having been startled by it.

Her head started glancing around the jungle rapidly, looking to the left, then to the right, to the ground, and then upwards.
Through a gap in the foliage she saw the sky, though now it didn’t look how the sky usually looked at night, and instantly looked the direction of the beach, the parts of the sky there looking as unusual as what was overhead.

”Merevaika, have you even seen those lights before?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly as she hoped that this was just some unusual occurrence she hadn’t encountered before, her hand pointing upwards to the gap in the foliage first, then to the patches of sky she could see that would lay over the beach.
~

[Merevaika]

Merevaika

Merevaika's realisation caused some sort of enthusiasm in Anibesa, a sudden happiness overcoming her. She managed to take control of it and calm down within moments, but Merevaika enjoyed the joy. At how easily she found joy in the little things, but also pleasure in herself for getting it right. Even if it had taken her a moment.

"Yes," she agreed with the question, not sure whether to elaborate further, "But then I did not know."

There was a nod with agreement too, following her next statement about her trade. The woman called it useful. Merevaika didn't really see it as such - it was a way for her to get money, that was all. Most the animals were never seen by her again. What use were people getting out of them, in Riverfall, anyway? The pretty birds would only be suitable as pets.

There had been some fun attempts though. But it probably wasn't the time and moment to share. They were sitting ducks in the middle of this jungle after all - not exactly in a place to chat about work.

And besides, the rumbling had interrupted her before she could say anything.

At the noise, Ani had started searching everywhere, and the final direction of her gaze alerted Merevaika to look up too, towards where the sky was visible in the trees. And she gasped at the sight, answering the question in the surprised noise and the shock in her eyes.

The sky was on fire. And it burned with a ferocity she had never seen before.

Grabbing out, trying to grip Anibesa's hand with a desperation in her, she began to run towards the beach, slashing wildly at the trees and dragging Anibesa behind. She had to see that properly, see it without the trees masking view.

It was crazy. It was ridiculous. But it was something she never seen before, and it filled her with cautious curiosity. Was it something simply beautiful, or the sign of something much worse?

The rumbling faded away after a few breaths. Even as Merevaika burst through the trees, almost at the beach, the lights faded too. Almost as suddenly as they had come, they had disappeared, and her breath was shaking as fast as her hands.

"Eryunt, explain," she muttered to herself, not certain where the words had come from but certain of them anyway. She didn't need to know Syka to know it didn't feel natural.

Turning her attention back to Anibesa, she spoke in a raspy breath, confusion evident in her breath, and forgetting that the Ethaefal had matched her initial confusion at the lights. "What was the lights? The noise? It is not natural, no?""

"Pavi"
Grassland sign
"Common"

[Anibesa]

"Common" | "Fratava" | "Tukant"

The lights were unnerving and sent a shiver down Anibesa’s spine. They weren’t something she had seen in her more than fifty years of travelling the Suvan, and they seemed so unnatural to her.
She heard Merevaika gasp and Anibesa instantly looked towards the other girl, seeing a look of shock on her face and Ani swallowed her words, her eyes glancing around the rainforest again, looking back up at the sky to see the look of fire that the lights gave off.

She felt Merevaika grab her hand and start running, forcing Anibesa to run with her, and though Ani tried her best to keep up with the dark haired woman, she was certain she must have been slowing her down slightly.
As they ran, Anibesa could feel her legs starting to tire quite early on, and her legs starting to feel as though they were on fire, just like the sky looked. She kept running though, keeping pace with the dark haired girl.

When they came out of the trees, the rumbling stopped, and Anibesa looked up in disappointment as the lights vanished, though she was glad that they had stopped running.

She doubled over and put her hands on her knees breathing deeply before a coughing fit took over, leaving her coughing and spluttering. She didn’t doubt that it was because of the running and her sudden attempt to draw air into to her lungs.
As she stopped coughing, she heard Merevaika say something in a language she didn’t understand, and Ani straightened herself up and allowed herself to breathe again, short and shallow breaths at first before she started to take deep breaths until she was able to breathe normally, in time to hear Merevaika’s questions to which she shook her heads.

”Never seen them before. Definitely not natural though!” she said, shrugging her shoulders as she did so, eyes focusing back on the girl as she racked her brains for what it could have been. ”Are there any magics that make light like that?” she asked, wondering if someone in the settlement could be doing such a thing, or if someone feral and living out in the rainforest could be causing something so unusual.

She had so many questions swirling through her mind but chose not to ask them for now, doubting that anybody would be able to answer them.
Questions to do with what could have caused the rumbling, and what could have caused the lights in the sky. Questions about whether those two things could be related and why both had stopped just before her and Merevaika had reached the beach.
~

[Merevaika]

Merevaika

Magic.

It was a good thought, and a scary one. Merevaika knew magic wasn't something to be taken lightly, at least not when it wasn't hers and was big and impossible to miss like that. But if it was magic, she couldn't name it. Pathfinding she knew, although not by any particular name, and she knew it didn't look like that. Ani wouldn't be able to see it anyway. Webbing couldn't happen outside the Sea of Grass - it just couldn't. Perhaps a great show from those who could sprout fire, but even then..

"Maybe," she answered simply, shrugging her shoulders in reply. If it was magic, she was no help with the matter. Was Anibesa? "You know a magic?" she then asked, deciding to find out if the woman was willing to share. If there was anything to share at all.

Not that Merevaika wanted to say anything on that subject matter in return.

She let herself drop to the sand and, with arms outstretched behind her, craned her neck towards the sky. With hopefully interest, she stared up and waited for something to happen.

But the rumbling didn't return and the sky remained beautiful in a boring way. After a few chimes, her patience ran out and she rose again, sand brushed from her clothing.

"Come to my tent," she stated simply, already beginning to march that way, "We talk. Think. Wait for lights, if they come back?" And while they were there, she could get Ani to help her with some of her tasks - cages needed cleaning, repairing, the chickens needed seeing to. It was dark, which made it hard to see, but there were torches outside her tent, and they could always light a fire.

As they arrived, Merevaika whistled for her dog. Beast arrived shortly after, fur coated in a thin layer of sand that Merevaika quickly brushed off. She greeted the dog with a few quick Pavi signs, careful not to be too friendly. The Drykas didn't want to show Ani that Beast was someone to be played with - if the red and green eyes and slight snarl hadn't already scared her off.

"There is feed there," she pointed towards a small bag just inside her tent, "Take hand, give to chickens." Her pointing changed towards the hutch at the edge of the jungle, where a slight cluttering could be heard. While Anibesa did what Merevaika had asked - or didn't - the Drykas woman moved to the back of her tent and pulled out some cages. There was an ugly looking lizard in one of them, that hissed at her.

She could leave Ani to deal with that too, she decided, as she picked at the twine that held the cages together. "Did noise - like you know it?" she called out, wondering if it was familiar. As far as she could place it, thought, it was just rumbling, and not something that she could place, either.


"Pavi"
Grassland sign
"Common"

[Anibesa]

"Common" | "Fratava" | "Tukant"

Her thoughts were swimming in her mind as she tried to reason with herself about what she, what both of them, had just seen. Then she heard Merevaika speaking, asking her if she knew magic.

”No, unfortunately. I know that it exists, and I think I’ve seen someone use some sort of magic once, but that’s all. I don’t know any myself, and I don’t know much about it.” she rambled, unable to put her thoughts into words in a more succinct manner. She had seen magic before, but nothing as powerful as to light up the whole sky, or anything that even looked like what she’d seen.

She turned her attention back to Merevaika, seeing the woman now on the sand, looking towards the sky, and Anibesa looked up again to, but there was nothing, and she didn’t know whether it would return at all.

Soon she heard the other woman speak, and doing as the woman said she started to follow her, not wanting to be alone until she was certain that the lights and the rumbling sound wouldn’t start again.
”Sounds good.” Anibesa said in response to the woman saying they would talk, think, and wait to see if the lights would come back, though she hoped that they didn’t. Something about them was unnerving and unnatural.

When they got to Merevaika’s tent she saw the woman whistle, and as the dog arrived Ani took a few steps back, away from the creature to allow it nearer to the dark haired woman, who seemed to be it’s owner. Their exchange didn’t seem overly friendly, and the dog itself was intimidating to Anibesa!

As the other woman pointed, Anibesa looked and saw the bag she was pointing at, then she listened and looked at her other instructions, before doing as she was told, taking the bag of feed and placing her hand into it.
”They don’t nip too much, do they?” she asked about the woman’s chickens, never having been too fond of animals, whether they are aggressive or not.
Before she got an answer though, she tentatively started feeding the chickens, wary of the bird creatures with their beaks and tough feet that looked like they could leave painful scratch marks if the chicken chose to.

Then she heard Merevaika’s question about the rumbling and she paused for a moment or two, trying to remember whether she’d heard anything similar in her fifty-six years.
”No, I didn’t recognise it at all. Just a rumbling really. Loud though!” she exclaimed, a slight smile slipping onto her face while she tried to remember anything that might help. ”I’m guessing you haven’t heard it either?”
~

[Merevaika]

Merevaika

No magic. Shame. Merevaika had been hoping that she would discover some dirt on this Ethaefal - dirt that would reveal something at the very least about the woman who was in front of her. Someone to learn from, someone to use, someone to blackmail. But Anibesa claimed she knew very little. Either that, or she was a very good liar.

Anibesa questioned the danger of the chickens. Merevaika coudln't help stifling a laugh at that one, that emerged as a choking snort. Her chickens were wild things. Literally - she had scooped almost all of them out of the jungle, wrangling in the mud to catch them, before throwing them in the cage. They were useless - they lay few eggs and simply pulled money out of her pocket when she had to pay for feed. She had a right mind to simply kill them all and have a feast of jungle fowl. Or then again, maybe she just had no idea how to actually rear chickens.

"They bad," she smiled to herself, speaking out to Anibesa, "But you not near the chickens, yes?" There was a clucking noise from them, the fluttering of feathers as they burst up and tried to grab the feed before it was even thrown at them. Their heads rolled as they moved, forward and back, and those thick beaks pecked wildly at where the feed fell. "Not much! Save the feed for later!" Merevaika called out quickly, hoping that Anibesa had been frugal. She didn't have enough to let the chickens feast every day.

She took the two cages that she had been hoping to work on in either hand, moving over to the fire pit. That needed work too. Suddenly, everything was piling up, and she wasn't quite enjoying all the tasks she needed to do, especially now that she had a guest.

Cages to the side, she instead took the wood she had gathered before, beginning to pile it up in the pit. A teepee shape, balancing the larger pieces against each other before stuffing the middle with lighter kindling - dried moss and bark, which had been too hard to find in this humid climate. It took a few tries for her to light it, but once it seemed to have started burning, she sat back in the sand, feet outstretched towards the fire, and beckoned for Anibesa to come closer. That lizards could wait - it was late to work.

Her suggestion of it being loud was true. And it gave Merevaika ideas. Things were loud if they were made by something big and powerful, or if they were close. While she knew it was most likely the former, if it was the latter, it would be much easier to find.

"The noise - was it from north, west... you know, where from?" She tried to imagine the noise again, from where she had been standing. But it was such a hard rumbling to place. It had the deepness of a rumbling stomach, from the way it moved through them, but was far greater than they sign of hunger. Perhaps it was the power of the rumbling of a herd galloping across the plains, or thunder following a lone rider, but there was no storm nor horse in sight. And when she couldn't imagine the noise, she couldn't remember hearing a direction to it either.

"I don't... I hate this!" she finally let out her irritation at not understanding, kicking petulantly in the sand. Why was it so hard to come up with a rational explanation for this thing? "I don't think we can know," she finally decided, "Not now. Not yet." Because they had nothing to work from. Not yet, anyway.