She didn’t know him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. But it was that he was an utter stranger. In times past, Tazrae would have made it a point to seek the new person out, get to know them and extend a true Sykan welcome to the person making them feel at home. She wasn’t sure why this season was different. Last season had been different too. Had it really been almost a quarter of a year since the curse? Time had changed for Tazrae. She used to mark the days with sunrises and sunsets, but now she hardly noticed the passage of the seasons. Syka made it easy, having no turning of the leaves or falling of snow. Maybe it was simply that she was more a part of the jungle than she’d ever been and the jungle measured no time at all.
The stranger was handsome. His features were uniform, his eyes bright, and his expression though frequently puzzled, was completely open and unguarded. Why chance things like that? Why trust a stranger… Tazrae wondered. Taz recognized the extension of friendship and the openness of an honest man’s nature. He was grieving too, and that sometimes made a person vulnerable. Truly, no one would hurt him here. But in other places? He would be treading dangerous ground approaching strangers in unfamiliar territory.
Inwardly, Tazrae took a wide step back from herself and judged her own reactions. She didn’t even recognize herself, not really, not in her interaction with this new person. It was like someone else controlled her body, and her reactions, and had turned off her emotions completely. Once, there would have been pure joy at meeting someone else. Now, she just wondered in a detached way what that new person would come to mean to her and if she’d be stupid enough to let them hurt her. No… no she wouldn’t. Not this time… not with this man. He looked too nice. He looked wholesome, unsoiled by life’s shitstorms, and without true overwhelming familial burdens of power and legacy and the destruction each could wreak. He’d find someone here though, for sure. A lovely settled woman, young, as wholesome as he was … maybe even one of the new people in the Settlement that was quickly becoming a city.
She’d just wanted to gather her clams in peace, spend time with her lounge, and forget niceties like having to make conversation or entertain or even protect. Taz watched herself juggle the mental baggage with detachment, curious about this new sensation of instability in herself. Was it the magic? Was it something else weighing on her? If she cared more she might worry, but that required too much mental effort and part of her driving problem was overthinking, overplanning, over worrying… to the point things had shut down. She really ought to hang a sign around her neck that read “Back In A Few Bells” to forewarn people that not all of her was dwelling securely in her brain with all torches lit. But then again, if she knew she was crazy, didn’t that make her sane? Tazrae tilted her head to one side, thoughtful on the aspect of consciousness for a moment before refocusing on the man before her.
He was parroting something back at her that she’d just said to him. She ignored it. The question seemed rhetorical anyhow, didn’t it? Of course, the Scarlet sired most of the eggs around here. One only had to get a good look at him to realize it. “They are Ixam. There are many kinds of them found throughout the world. Ours are Jungle Ixam. They act as our mounts. There is tack for them at the Commons, and when they aren’t being ridden or harnessed for pulling, they roam freely. There are quite a few of them here now, but that just means there are multiple lounges. A group of them together are called a lounge… like a herd of cows or a pack of wolves. They are carnivorous, so they hunt as well and enjoy fishing. They are good swimmers so don’t think the water will deter them if one runs you into the sea.” She added, thinking perhaps she was talking too much.
When he turned and spoke to Bree like she was a person, Taz shifted her stance to get a better view of how Bree would handle the interaction.
“She told you my name, but you didn’t offer your own. Taz would have introduced you if she knew who you were. I heard someone say Mittle at the Tenday. Is that you? The one with the dead father? I’m sorry for your loss. We Ixam don’t know our parents so we have no basis for such things. But I would miss my companions if they were taken all the same.” The green Ixam said, her sapphire patterning flashing in the darkness. It almost looked like her forked tongue was purple. “And Taz oversimplifies things with this one.” Bree said, turning to nibble on the Scarlet Ixam that was sprawled beside her. “He chases, we fight, and only if he wins does he get to mount me. He doesn’t always win. I already have the eggs, as she well knows, but its his seed that makes them harden and grow ripe. It is pure joy to be defeated, pleasured, and equally satisfying to hide my eggs out and about and to see what hatches when that time comes. Tazrae gathers them and watches over them, which is why there are so many of us in Syka now – especially the young. Out in the jungle, most of my offspring would be food for bigger and meaner things, even other Ixam.” Bree said with a reptilian smirk, making a show of yawning to reveal the razor-sharp teeth in her snout and even highlighting them by running her tongue along the gleaming pearly white daggers in the moonlight.
Taz cut off Bree before she could say something utterly stupid. “I don’t breed the Ixam. They breed themselves. As she said, I just gather what stray eggs I can find, protect them, and keep them moist and warm, so they grow enough to hatch. I do breed snakes… the Mussurana. They are black creatures, big, with iridescent scales. They are rear-fanged pit vipers that eat the poisonous snakes around here. They are immune to most snake toxins. I breed as many as I can and release them in and around Syka. They can’t bite humans easily, and if they do, we are unaffected by their venom. The poisonous snakes around here aren’t so lucky and fall to it quickly. They’ve made a huge impact on how many deadly snakebites we have in the Settlement. Things like eyelash vipers are rare here now… and so too are rodents.” Tazrae said with a grin. “So, if you see a pure black snake with a rainbow sheen to its scales, don’t hurt them. Encourage them instead. Them being around might be the reason you live to an old age if you stick around.” Tazrae finished, leaning a hand on her hip, watching Mitt carefully for his reaction.
“You are welcome. Randal said your father was a man worth singing for.” She said simply, leaving it at that. She hadn’t known Mittle’s father but she would do Rhaus’ duty and honor the fallen with a song every time. Taz trailed off anything else she was going to say, instead watching Mitt’s reaction to the hatchling. She was surprised he gave up his driftwood treasure so readily.
At Mittle’s comment about the hatchling, Bree arched her neck and chuckled. “You should take that little one home. Someone will get hungry and eat him otherwise since he was born so late. If sheltered, he’ll grow up huge and make a stout man like you a fine mount. He’s one of the Scarlet’s sons, out of the golden Ixam that Tazrae calls Sunshine, I suspect. He has her coloring.” Bree added. “You’ll be hard-pressed to find one of the adults big enough to carry you right now anyhow. Most of them are wild and have struggled for food and the right to grow to adulthood. That makes them smaller. All the young here are so protected, all they do is eat, sleep, and get big. Taz tends to hunt for them, which makes them all a little lazy.” She said, flicking her tongue out. The big red male beside her seemed to consider the conversation, then reached out his neck to twine it around Bree’s neck and he nibbled her chin affectionately.
Tazrae broke the pause in the conversation then and rambled, uncomfortable by the Ixam’s easy affection, while at the same time fighting the detachment that had so recently bothered her. If she just talked… no one would understand things weren’t normal with her, would they? Taz worked on it in her mind, trying to muddle through the interaction. Mitt started answering her question and entertaining the hatchling all at the same time. That was a good sign, right?
“Artik came here broken. He just thought a woman would fix him, and she decidedly didn’t. I don’t think he lost his heart. A man like that has no heart. They just exist as an empty shell and try to fill the place in their chest their heart used to be. He uses booze mostly, but I’ve seen him do other things. And he was too lost to realize that burying himself in a woman that had no interest past her own nose would get him absolutely nowhere either.” She added, somewhat unkindly. Taz didn’t like Artik. He was filthy, rude, and on his best days somewhat crude. He’d made a pass at every woman in the settlement and she still had a hard time figuring out how in the world one of them had actually let the man touch her.
“It sounds like you were able to turn a bad situation into a satisfying one. I’m glad for you.” She added.
Then she grew quiet, listening to Mit talk about the other forge he’d worked at and how vastly different his life there had been. Syka was exactly the opposite of what Mit described to her. She understood, because like everyone else here, she was from somewhere else. In her case, Riverfall, and her experience had been not with thieves but with the Akalak and their unreasonable demands and traditions. She’d never fit in with Riverfall as she did with Syka. The best thing that ever happened to her was leaving and stepping off the Veronica onto Syka’s shores.
Taz didn’t notice Mittle’s discomfort or the fact that he deliberately started a tug-o-war with the hatchling. Instead, she turned and looked at the sea, then at the supplies she had stacked around the bucket. “I’m just gathering butter clams and going to rake some razor clams up to probably serve in chowder for lunch at the Inn tomorrow. I can show you how to gather your own if you’d like… so you can boil a pot anytime you want. You are camped, right? Are you liking that sort of living? Even though I run The Inn, I live somewhat like that myself. I camp on the beach in a Drykas Pavilion.” She added with a laugh. One of these days she might build a home… one of these days.
“You don’t mind that Syka doesn’t have a… I am not sure I know what the term is… a smelter? A place that has big blast furnaces that can extrude metal from rock and make pure ingots? I don’t think we’d enjoy the smoke anyhow, but it does mean we have to import metal.” She said thoughtfully, not knowing much about metalsmithing, blacksmiths, or their needs.
“I’m one of Syka’s Rangers… so it's part of my job to teach folk to survive. I’d be glad to show you a thing or two about foraging around here. Do you want to help me tonight? That’s a good place to start.” She added, actually not suddenly minding so much the intrusion or that he was the company she would definitely deem unwanted. Bree talked to him, and acknowledged him by knowing his name… so that was something. It was unusual that the Ixam took an interest at all.
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