Flashback Nothing is Sacred (Delani)

[Irriari]

1st Day of Summer, 510 AV
The Sea of Grass was far too hot to travel in by the daylight hours, so Irriari did her best to find a comfortable place to sleep while the sun was out. The zith awoke around dusk, in the branches of a tree that grew in a particularly lush area of Cyphrus. The grasses beneath the tree were thick, and the area was teeming with crickets and other creatures that had begun to make noise now that the sun was receding beneath the horizon. The zith stretched her arms and legs slowly, wincing at the kinks that had developed in her muscles from sleeping with her back against the tree trunk. No matter how painful it would be to wake up against the tree, it was always better than waking up to a glassbeak at your throat. She repeated the mantra over and over until she felt comfortable enough to leave the tree. As she began to descend, the zith noticed a small amount of sticky sap that clung to her hands and calves. Peering at it, she noticed that it was slightly red in color, and tainted with small bits of bark that had mixed into the sap as she slept. The smell was unlike anything she had experienced, nutty with hints of spiciness. Beneath that scent was the earthy smell of the wind battered bark.

The zith continued making her way down the tree, careful to always have one hand on a branch above her. It took a few chimes to fully descend, but she managed to do so while only scraping a portion of her ankle. Intrigued by the tree, Irriari grabbed her poisoncrafting kit from a low hanging branch and retrieved a medium sized vial with a cork top. She pressed the glass against some of the sap and allowed it to collect on the outside of the vial. From there, it was easy to stick the vial to the tree to funnel more of the sap into the mouth of the container. After ten chimes of coaxing the sap out of the tree with her claws, Irriari corked the bottle and returned it to her pack. Next, she retrieved her parchment and small bottle of ink. The zith rarely kept up with her coded listing of plants, but she had vowed to continue doing so once she left the colony.

It took fifteen chimes to sketch a rough shape of the tree with her clawed index finger. Looking down at the drawing, she frowned. The base of the tree was saturated with ink that had soaked through to the next page of parchment. Even worse, the entire middle of the tree was far too large, and it barely resembled the tree at all. Irriari spent another five minutes trying to clean up the center of the tree, but her curved lines only made it worse. To any outsider, it would look like the tree was covered in snakes and vines. Good thing no one in the colony was here to mock her. Lastly, the zith finished outlining the long branches and took a piece of bark from the tree and attached it to the parchment with a bit of the sap on her fingertips. Satisfied, she returned all of her supplies to her bag and shouldered her quiver and backpack before taking to the sky.

OOCI’m imaging her flying over the herd once she sees you and well…. Bye bye cow. Pm me if you had something else in mind.

[Delani Denusk]

It wasn't often Delani participated in the herding of the Zibri, but when she did, it was one of the various tasks the woman put all of her attention on. The difference this time, however, was the fascination she had for the calving process of one of the few sustainable supplies the Drykas at their dispense.

Her own mare, Dela or ol' girl as she was too often nicknamed, was with the main horse and strider herds for the time being. She had been caught with foal two years previously and the handsome one year old filly that had been birthed was still with her mother. It meant, Dela would have to stay on a common mount until her mare was no longer nursing. It was a Kavinka Painted with ebony overcoat. Her withers and most of front legs and mid back had been stained white as well as both cannon. The mane and tail were a similar black to the majority of the body.

The 2 year old was a sure-footed thing for his age, and floated between riders on herding duty, getting the full experience of all as they worked the Zibri en masse. Confident, he needed little direction from his rider, and for the time being, that was fine with Delani.

Being on the night rotation, however, was different; the added element of night lion and Zith attacks was a primary concern for guarding the herds on top of the ever looming threat of glassbeaks. The woman on the Kavinka remained on high alert as she stood at the edge of a fire glowing bright into the night, her eyes on the grass mostly and not the herd in order to keep aware of any threats that could come a-lurking. The gelding beneath her seemed more on edge than usual, too, so one hand was kept on the yvas, and the other on her falx, ready to draw the one-handed, sickle-like weapon.

But the firelight always made it harder on the eyes when it came to studying the grasses beyond; she too often had to shield that side of her face to allow better night-vision.

Besides the ever-present threats so thought of above, there was the final complication of late-season calfs. Most of the cows had calved already mid-spring with a few stragglers being born a few weeks out from season-change. But now, summer was upon them, and there were still at least five cows that had yet to birth. One of them had already gone into the grasses before Syna receded, her labor at last begun. But that was three hours ago; a successful birth could take all night...

"I should hate to find a dead cow in the morning...What do you think, boy? Should we go find her?" It would be reckless of her; but at the least, she could encourage the cow back to the safety of the herd. Maybe.

Or so that was the thought before the smell of blood came to her nose. It was fresh enough to be caught on the wind, near enough to make the Painted beneath her twitch uncomfortably. Well, then! Time to see if the cow was finished. She gave the Painted a firm squeeze with her knees to get him moving away from the fire and into the enclosing grasses, Delani leaning down over his back, just in case, with jade eyes looking on ahead. It couldn't be far.

She couldn't know the blood wasn't from the birth; nor that it was a sky-demon come down to take what it wanted...

NPC

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