33rd Winter 517AV
2 bells' ride from Endrykas
At Noon
2 bells' ride from Endrykas
At Noon
The earth was dry and dusty, the grasses yellowed and bowed, brittle, rattling in the scarce breeze that meandered lethargically across the steppe. Syna was a warm, unbearable glow in the cloud-riddled Blue Above, and Semele's skin was cracked and splitting where the grasses had been so parched of thirst that they had withered away altogether, revealing bare dirt. Hooves clomped dully, grinding grit under, as strider and drykas made their way into the plains.
Rufio's green linen clad legs hung loosely against her red dun stallion's sides, letting herself sway with his gait as he ambled with long strides up a light incline. Sweat licked down her back, dusky skin bare under the crochetted vest she wore and Rufio was beginning to regret the decision to wrap her thick, dark dreadlocks up in a scarf, hoping to catch whatever cooling relief Zulrav might have brough to the back of her neck. Now, her bare shoulders, slender arms and neck were searing pink in Syna's overgenerous rays.
As the stallion crested the small hill the half-drykas lifted her heels and rocked herself backward lightly to signal a stop, which he did promptly, scuffing rocks under-hoof and flicking his ears back to hear her. She held her strider's charcoal mane gently before lifting her forearm to cast dappled shade over her eyes and freckle-scattered features for a tick. It was an ochre gaze that squinted against the brightness of the noon. Rufio frowned at the sight that greeted her.
A waste of blackened and scorched land laid stripped bare before her. Grey smoke still curled up in hazy columns where embers hissed as they clung vehemently to the charred fauna. The remnants of a wildfire struck to life with the absence of the Goddess of Winter to temper the heat of Spring and Summer, and the dry Fall, which lingered now deep into the Winters. Loha snorted and Rufio stirred herself and dismounted. Well, better get to work. She thought, and murmured aloud. "So here we are."
"How long will it take?" Asked a male voice behind her, a drykas man sitting atop a vibrant yellow-dun strider mare. Rufio smiled lightly at the hint of impatience in his baritone and looked back up at him. Wearing leather pants and boots, he was sweltering in the heat. At least he had left his chest bare, his broad shoulders painted in a layer of thick black to ward off the worst of sun-burn. Takes as long as it takes Rufio waved vaguely in sign.
A frown made his heavy brow shadow his eyes further and his long face longer, cheekbones protruding, as the corner of his black painted lips turned downward. His grip readjusted on the long spear in his hands as he made to sheath it.
Keep sharp. Rufio warned gently. "If I were a coyote, or a wolf, here would be easy pickings."
The warrior grunted and waved dismissively. "My bruhs and I have chased out the worst. Now all that's haunting this place are the scavengers." danger past. He slung his spear into a holder on his yvas but caught the wary look Rufio gave him, so, with a sigh, he unhooked a composite bow from around his shoulder, hefting it into his big hands comfortably, and returned her with his own pointed look that said 'there, happy?'.
A deep, reverberating male laughter broke in between the bickering duo as a midnight strider stallion clomped up the incline and Lodai appeared beside his scowling Ra'athi brother in arms. Rufio looked up at the bear of a man with his half-shaved head and a faux-hawk of braids woven down his back. He looked back, brows in a permanent scowl and eyes as dark as hers were bright, but a smile played within his scruffily clipped beard. He nudged his brother in arms with his massive shoulder. "Don't worry about Little Freckles here, bruh." More bark than bite—
—his hands scarcely shaped the taunting grass-sign as the Ra'athi's lips puffed out in breath-held surprise. A sharp rock whizzed past him at eye-height, and the warrior wove and bobbed to dodge. Thanks to his instincts, the rock missed his cheek.
Lodai stared, half-stunned, at his pavilion-sister, who was dusting her hands of charcoal and ash, grinning like a bob-cat. Lodai's partner, meanwhile, applauded, deliberately and loud. Happy to see the big warrior taken off-guard by the tiny freckled woman. "You were saying?" He chortled, earning a dark look from Lodai. Who was about to say something in retaliation when—
"Quit antagonizing the Watch." A voice chastised, croaking out from behind Lodai's broad shoulders. Lodai swung his leg over the head of his ink-hued stallion, sliding to the dust with a considerable thump, revealing the elder sitting wrapped in black linens astride his horse. She peered at the trio with a contrasting gaze of white blindness and dark seeing from within a face so weathered by life her skin looked as creased and tough as leather. It was Ferem.
"So here we are,"
The elder echoed Rufio, adding sternly.
"The bones won't read themselves."
While Lodai lifted the elder down off his tall black stallion, Rufio began trudging down the hill into the ash desert to investigate.
An unsettling prickle rose gooseflesh down the drykas' freckled arms as the blackened, bare twigs of grassland scrub scratched over her open palms and her sandals were a dull grind over the blanket of ash laid over the scorched earth. It was quiet.
There were little noises of life, but only in the trio of drykas behind her when she listened. The creak of leather yvas, and the huff of the horses' breaths, the dull clomp of a hoof, and gentle grunting as Lodai lifted down the elder from the black strider. They were comforting. Rufio halted and cocked her ear toward them, ochre gaze cast down at her toes, whitened by the ash. Syna was gazing intently on the wildfire trail, warming the fortune-teller's shoulders.
Rufio closed her eyes, senses ebbing with the disconcerting peace that lay within the quiet here. A haze that seeped into her, making heavy her limbs. Her breaths came shallow, as if the air had grown thick and congealed. It made her tired, a kind of weariness that clung to the bones. All she wanted to do was lay down. Just sleep, take a little nap. Her vision blurred and when she looked at the ashes, the white-grey powder looked light, like feathers, a tempting cushion for her head. If she just lay down, it would envelope her in its lightness, take away the heavy ache throbbing in her body. Rufio felt herself swaying, leering toward the ground, saw her hands reaching for Semele.
"Rufio!" Ferem's voice was sharp.
With a start, the half-drykas shook her head and blinked as her ochre gaze readjusted focus.
"Ferem...I feel strange..." Rufio murmured.
The sleepy haze lingering on her, its tendrils retreating like fog from her thoughts.
"It is the smoke." Ferem gestured to the greyish black swirling eddies that were rising steadily from the charred scrub. "Voodoo moss." The elder muttered. "It's a potent herb. When the smoke or the steam is inhaled it lessens pain, and it heightens other senses, but too much and it causes one to see things."
"Waking dreams." Rufio whispered, prickling with wariness now. Her sleepy mind was jarred by memories of a stranger she had met once, wandering in a stupor across the grasslands. A man she had not seen since, nor been able to find when she had gone looking for him in the tent city.
A ghost.
She half-believed.
"Yes." Ferem peered at her apprentice a tick, something mystery playing behind that dark, penetrating eye, a faint smile flickering along her cracked and thin lips. Before the elder pointed at the scarf wrapped around the drykas' dreads. "Cover your nose and mouth." She instructed, and turned to call out to the Watchmen to do the same, and to be wary of the smoke.
Rufio unwrapped her dreadlocks and knotted her scarf around her neck, pulling the wool up over her nose and mouth the way Ferem had done with the linen of her cowl. Rufio looked up to the Watchmen, sitting astride their horses. The sight of her pavilion brother watching over them was a comfort.
"We must go deeper into the scar." Ferem muttered. She waded farther from the safety of the Watchmen, tiny dust clouds scattered by the elder's feet as she went ahead. Rufio noticed just now with a mild alarm mixed with intrigue that they were bare, the ash clung to her tough, wrinkled soles. Before she followed the old woman into the quiet.
"What are you looking for?" Rufio asked after some chimes had passed, noticing the way Ferem's white and black eyes were cast to the ground, this way and that, her shoulder bent as she picked her way around rocks and potholes. "The right place." Ferem muttered, as if it was obvious.
Rufio frowned quizically and looked up—
