Flashback Index of Refraction

[Khida]

Summer 67, 510 AV Dawn broke over Ahnatep in soft blues, dusky rose, and the harsh gold of Syna's unrelenting light. Heat did not yet shimmer from the city masonry, but it would soon enough. For now, the air was pleasantly warm, the sun's intensity cut by morning breezes off the sea. Insects hummed above the estuary surface, feeding and being fed upon in turn; every now and again, a soft plop declared the presence of a fish. The piers already bustled with activity, despite it not yet being the seventh bell; ships glided in and out, boxes and barrels of cargo laden or removed as befit the needs of trade. Had any of the diligent workers moving those ships and cargo looked up -- and not only looked up, but cast their gaze in towards the city -- they might have seen something odd: a human girl seated cross-legged on the edge of the tallest nearby rooftop, attention turned down upon the piers below. Even from a distance, she exhibited the gangly limbs and awkward angles of an adolescent, wearing black hair loose around her face and nothing else save olive skin. Whether anyone saw her, and what they thought of the sight, concerned Khida not at all. Neither was she interested in the activity of traders, travelers, cargomasters, fishermen, and any others going about their daily business below; in truth, it wasn't the piers which held her attention. It was the water. Sunlight sparked from the rippling surface, forcing her to squint against glints of gold and white. Heedless of the long drop, Khida braced her palms on the masonry and leaned forward, as if the few inches more of proximity might allow her vision to pierce the darker depths. Needless to say, it didn't; however shiny the fish beneath, she wouldn't find them from here. The Kelvic girl shook her head and huffed a frustrated breath. She wasn't even sure what she had hoped to gain from this perspective. The human shape was good for hands, and speech, and sometimes carrying things the falcon couldn't; but in most else, she thought, the falcon was better. Humans caught fish with string and sticks, or so she had seen, but she had no idea how to go about that. Whereas the falcon -- -- well, her dam caught fish almost every day. And if Khida could hunt mice and hares like her sire, who wasn't even a bird, surely she could fish like her dam, too.

[Khida]

A soft slate-gray light wrapped itself around the girl; it extinguished itself as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the far smaller form of a peregrine in her place. She launched herself from the rooftop and swooped down over the piers, passing only a few feet above the heads of several workmen. The ever-present gulls picking through detritus on the shoreline cackled and yelped alarms at one another, many choosing to put more distance between themselves and the aerial predator. The men below seemed just as alarmed, if more gruff in their exclamations, but were quicker to realize she had no intention of harassing them. Rather, the young falcon swept on past them all, serpentining between the masts of ships until she found one in a position she liked. She backwinged to land on the very top of the mast, talons digging into its tar-sealed timber. Tethered to the pier in its master's absence, the boat swayed gently with the waves, a constancy of motion Khida found reminiscent of trees in the wind. The water reminded her of nothing so much except itself, dark and deep, but as the bird contemplated its murky green depths, she thought very hard about how her dam fished. Khida had asked, once, to be taught to fish, as her sire had taught her to hunt. She had been answered, peregrines are not for catching fish; peregrines are for hunting birds. Unable to mount an argument successful against her dam's certainty, Khida had settled for rodents, and avian prey when she could get it. Birds were difficult, and they didn't taste nearly the same. Fledged in plumage and fledged as a hunter, the adolescent didn't miss the nest, literal or proverbial... but she did miss the fish. She may not have been taught, but Khida had watched; in the last days, as she decided she really would try, she had watched closely indeed. Many ospreys could be found about the estuary, and she had observed most of them, not only her dam; the peregrine thought, now, that she had gleaned the essence of their methods.

[Khida]

It was simple, really, not too different from when she hunted mice, especially in the sands beyond the city. First, one had to find one's quarry. The muted plops of fish leaping after insects provided some cue, not unlike the presence of a rodent's burrow. Except... there were no ringlet ripples appearing near her chosen perch. She would have to go to them instead. The falcon dropped from her perch, brown-feathered wings stretching out to catch the air, propelling her upwards. She sought a height where she could cruise above any inconveniently placed masts, tacking back and forth over the estuary while she evaluated the evidence of fish positions below. The ripples left by their leaping were more subtle by far than those created in the passage of a boat, but she didn't find them too hard to pick out -- not when she wanted to find them. Based on the abundance of those ripples, Khida thought there might be a greater concentration of fish somewhat out from one less-occupied pier. Destination selected, the falcon banked aside and glided towards it, then over it, straining to see anything between the shimmers of green and gold dancing in the depths. There might have been a glimmer of silver, but she wasn't sure, and it was quickly past. Not one to be so quickly discouraged -- prey never wanted to be found easily by its hunter -- she continued past, then came around to overfly the area again. Another quicksilver glint dove into the darkness, wary of winged shadows beyond the surface; the falcon had no chance at catching that one. But another fish, perhaps less cautious or more focused on its own foraging, faded into view even as she neared. Just beneath the surface, it presented a perfect target, one she wasn't by any means inclined to pass up. Khida could almost taste impending success as she tucked her wings in and plummeted down, talons outstretched towards the sleek shape of her quarry.

[Khida]

The falcon hit the water with a resounding thwap, a less distinct sshsph following on the sound's heels as displaced water fell back to rejoin its source. Her questing talons found no fish. It simply wasn't where she reached, either in the plunge or in the brief, baffled grasping which followed. Khida gave the fish up as a lost cause, bobbing back up to the surface and sucking in a deep breath of fresh air. She had lined up right on her target, just as if it were a mouse or rabbit -- so why hadn't she hit it? Clearly, this whole fishing thing would take more work -- something she would have expected, should have expected, if only she had chosen to recall her early days of hunting. Faced with failure, she accepted now that fishing also would require that annoying thing called practice. But the unhappy realizations didn't end there, not at all. Khida was practiced at getting into the air, whether by dropping down from high perches or in the more taxing endeavor of climbing from the dead start of flat earth. But both contexts shared an underlying foundation: the aid of a firm surface to launch from. Water, on the other hand, was anything but firm. Ospreys lifted themselves up with fish in their claws. Even ducks managed to take off from the middle of the water, running across the surface first. But the adolescent falcon floundered. She flailed. She splashed and bobbed. Her well-honed muscle memory insisted she push off -- and with nothing to push against, she only succeeded in dousing herself. Repeatedly. After a little while, Khida stopped her futile striving for flight and simply floated on the surface, wings spread for added buoyancy. She squinted against the glare of sunlight off water, looking at the yards of open space around her. She kicked her feet, which she knew propelled waterfowl around the estuary... but nothing particularly changed. Probably because her falcon-feet weren't like theirs. Couldn't fly, couldn't swim... but there was one other thing she could try.

[Khida]

She shifted. Truth be told, the girl wasn't much better in the water than the falcon -- but even a little bit better helped. She didn't have the falcon's wings to keep her afloat, but it didn't take Khida long to figure out that the entire length of her human body could be used the same way. If she didn't mind her position on the surface being wobbly and precarious, always on the edge of dunking herself under again, she could even keep her nose above the surface. Barely. But barely made all the difference between breathing air and... not. She still couldn't seem to help either swallowing or inhaling measures of the brackish liquid, no matter how hard she tried not to. In fact, she took in more when she made efforts to avoid it. Despite all this, it didn't occur to Khida to be afraid. Irritated, disgusted, dismayed, and desperately wanting out of the water: she was all of these. And she knew that being stuck out in deep water was dangerous, potentially fatal. But the girl had an adolescent's sense of her own mortality, compounded by her own innate self-confidence; the thought that she might die here, only a few feet from the solid support of a pier, never became real in Khida's mind. After all, she only had to reach the nearest pier to be safe, and she did not yet doubt that she could. More or less stable in the water, Khida looked for the pier, and reoriented her human self towards it. She kicked her human feet, because feet moved humans and waterfowl alike. This time, her efforts were rewarded with forward motion. Slow, graceless, splashy motion -- but Khida did not scorn it for that: it got her to the pier.

[Khida]

She had an audience all the while, of course. A small audience, but some among the workers, traders, and travelers had watched the Kelvic's trials and tribulations. The folly of youth was practically an eternal constant, regardless of race; and the gap of race did not stop them from being entertained at her expense. Far from it. As the girl set hands to wood and hauled herself up onto the pier, some among them applauded. She started at the unexpected noise, crouched dripping on the very edge of the boards; amber eyes wide between ratty strings of wet hair, she stared across the water at them, frozen for a long moment. There were words, a few at least, mixed into the carrying noise, but Khida let them wash over her, not caring what any of the people said. When none of them moved towards her -- in fact, the watchers one by one turned their attention away from her and back to their respective work -- the Kelvic dismissed them all as irrelevant. She reached up to her hair and gathered the dark locks in her hands, wringing out as much water as she could. Khida then set to wiping away the droplets which clung to her skin, intermittently shaking her hands to send the liquid flying back in the direction of its source. Or the pier boards -- she didn't really care where the water went, so long as it was not on her. The sun's lambent warmth helped finish the drying process, at least to the point where she felt decent again. Decent, but hungry. She had no fish to show for her exertions, and her hunger was only heightened by the shifting Khida had done. What the girl did have... was a backup plan. Her sire would laugh at her when she told him about the morning's adventures, in the way that canines did -- but it would be worth it, she thought, if the story also convinced the jackal to share his breakfast. Without giving the water a single backwards glance, the girl rose and padded down towards the shore, contemplating her sire's usual morning haunts. The water and its fish would still be there later, whenever she chose to try again.

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! Hi, Khida! Welcome to Ahnatep. That was a lovely thread. I enjoyed reading your writing. You have good pacing and a talent for description without overwhelming. It evoked days at the beach for me. Also, mad props for using one of my favorite words "bracken" and sliding "detritus" in there. Don't laugh, I was excited. Khida's Loot 3 XP Hunting (or Fishing, your choice) 3 XP Swimming 2 XP Observation Lore of how to use ripples in fishing Lore of good fishing spots in Ahnatep Colombina is pleased.