Completed Untold and Strange Distress

[Khida]

mod noteSalvage approved by Gossamer, equivalent to starting package materials. This is thread 1 of 2 towards that end. Summer 77, 513 AV afternoon The bat-creatures had left, and left behind... a shambles. The grasses were strewn with the detritus of disrupted human life: poles, awnings, ropes all fallen, the structures they once comprised rent asunder; clothing, tools, materials scattered haphazardly, lost and forgotten; bodies, lying where they had fallen, man and beast and hapless animal alike. Many of those would undoubtedly be left to feed the Sea; Khida was almost surprised there weren't already predators darting in to the feast. But then, there were still humans out in force, combing through the wreckage; any wise predator would wait until their numbers were fewer. Khida was one of those people, clothed in her human skin and nothing more. She picked her way through the debris, taking it in yet at the same time not entirely seeing it -- not in particulars, but in what it represented: the city of the Drykas, broken. And that... strangely, it... hurt... to see the city damaged so, its order disrupted, its people harmed. That... That surprised her. After all, what were the nameless, faceless masses of the Drykas to the falcon? Their horses, their hunting beasts? Their traveling city, impermanent and ever-changing? Just so much background, like the trees and the rivers, the broad sweep of grass. And yet... And yet... Khida picked her way carefully around a mess of torn canvas and tangled rope, stepping over the jutting length of a pole which had once provided a tent support. The grass here had been thoroughly cropped by grazers, before the bat-beasts came. A short distance on, she could see a dark bulk motionless on the ground, a slimmer figure kneeling beside it. On an impulse she could never have named, the Kelvic turned to make her way towards them, mindful of where she set her bare feet. And as she walked, Khida mused.

[Khida]

Predators killed. They hunted, other creatures died, and they fed; that was the way of things, at least if the hunt succeeded. The bat-beasts were predators, she knew, having herself been pursued by one in the past. But this... the attack... it was not hunting as Khida understood the act. Not with the wanton damage and slaughter, the carcasses left behind to rot, or to be eaten by others. But then what did they do here? The man proved, as she drew near, to be a familiar one, one who had spoken to Khida before about predator and prey and the cycle of the grasslands. He knelt beside the body of a horse, the bulky sort which pulled wagons for the Drykas -- a creature manifestly not predator, though not one the falcon Kelvic normally thought of as prey, either. But the bat-beasts would no doubt consider it meat for the taking; that one had called Khida herself meat, both of her forms alike. "Were they hunting?" she asked of the kneeling man, though he had not spoken, had not looked up -- had not in fact acknowledged her presence in any way. Her hands sketched through signs, though he did not see them: hunt, prey, take. "Hunt?" the man choked out, jerking his head up to stare at her in shocked incredulity. "That was... that was slaughter," he finished in hissed Pavi, resting one hand lightly on the horse's motionless flank -- so very lightly. "Those beasts are no part of Caiyha's cycle," he added, with the venomous certainty born of bitter anger. He said no more then, and Khida recognized that disturbing his grief further -- such as to clarify the words she didn't understand -- would be a risky act. But his anger, his sorrow, struck clear chords within the Kelvic, echoing the emotions which had earlier set her to wander. She walked on now, through the cropped and flattened grass, past death and wreckage, between the shattered and broken pieces... ...of home. Her home. Her people. Not in quite the way a Drykas would mean the phrase; Khida was not one of them, had no obligations to them, nor they unto her. The city was not her territory as such, and of all the people who called it home, only a single solitary one was her bondmate. But collectively, this people, this city, was nonetheless hers in a way she couldn't quite elucidate. Home. Belonging. Community. This city was more than merely the backdrop of her daily life. And she hurt, in that deep ache which had nothing to do with injury of the body, because that home had been damaged. The realization was rather... unnerving.

[Khida]

The sun shone down upon the grasslands in the way it always did, bequeathing warmth and light, raising the spiraling thermals any raptor could only love. Somewhere beyond her sight, prey and predator went about their everyday, eternal existence -- now at ease, now struggling to stay alive, aware only of the moment and their immediate needs. And she... she felt not the comfortable summer warmth, saw not the cycle of life that she was most accustomed to living within; Khida knew that she now stood amidst horizons gaping wider than any the Kelvic had previously begun to imagine. What was this, to see… to see more than self, than territory, than even bondmate? To see kinship in strangers, in their aggregation, in... in... in even the tent-city itself? She had long conceived of the city -- any city -- as a rabbit warren of people who lived in the same place because... they wanted to, because it was convenient, because... just because. That's what people did, was make cities. Yet as she stood here now, she thought there must be something more... something so strange and abstract and grand that she could only begin to grope at the shadow of its significance. It was a frightening inner precipice Khida found herself upon, and she withdrew from it almost as soon as she had come to it, retreating to the familiar simplicity of existence and experience. She lifted her gaze to those things outside herself -- to the sight of two children in the distance, clambering over wreckage and calling for a friend or a pet; to the slinking shape of a hunting cat, prowling around fallen and standing pavilions alike, pausing to sniff at an indistinct dark heap on the ground then sitting and grooming itself in uncertain discomfort; to the man behind her, grieving still over the loss of a horse, to him not prey nor even indifferent beast but counted part of his very family. She reflected, at the last, on that place within where a void was now filled. On her bondmate. Did he feel this same muted ache over the view before him, as the sun's unmerciful glow illuminated the wreckage? Maybe he did. Maybe... this feeling was his... but had somehow also become hers. With that idea in mind, it all became a little less unnerving. A very little. It was still strange, to see the city with new eyes and know she did so... but if they were in some sense his eyes, then the Kelvic would learn to bear it.

[Khida]

Around her, at varying degrees of distance, people combed through the wreckage, lifting and moving and examining. Motivated by something vague and indistinct, impossible for her to pin down for naming, Khida stepped over to a pile of canvas which the humans seemed to be neglecting. It had been a large tent before it was toppled, and now lay heaped across lumps both angular and rounded alike, all unidentifiable beneath the fabric. Leaning down, she closed both hands upon the waxed canvas and pulled. It didn't move much at all. Instead, it tugged back in several directions, the cloth caught on hidden obstructions. Her eyes sought the shapes of each; one made a long, straight line and was almost certainly one of the pavilion's supporting beams. She could lift that, probably; pitch it over the other way, and it should take a good part of the canvas with it, revealing... whatever lay beneath. Khida put thought to action, grabbing the end of the pole and lifting until she could get her shoulder under it; it was more difficult, heavier, more unwieldy than she'd expected. Slipping under the canvas herself, she was met with a miasma of hot, stale air... air that tasted of death. Holding her breath as much as she could, the Kelvic worked her way back along the beam's length, lifting the free end incrementally higher until she was finally able to shove it over. It toppled not backwards, but sideways, accompanied by the surprisingly loud sound of tearing canvas. Only a small wedge of the hidden earth was revealed to Khida, but even that was filled with the detritus of lost human lives -- a woven basket burst open, collected vegetables spilled to slowly rot on the ground; a clothing chest, what must have been rare and precious in this woodless place, toppled and its contents dispersed. She paused to examine the clothing, wondering for a moment who it had belonged to... whether that person was still somewhere out there in the city. A human might have looked at the clothes and derived a sense of the owner's personality, or at the least their clan allegiance; but as Khida picked through them, she arrived at nothing. The shirts in their warm colors, the trousers worn from riding, the sashes and scarves all in shades of red meant little to the Kelvic. But the sandals which peeked out from under red-brown fabric reminded her that her own feet were not so used to walking... She pulled them out to examine more closely, then slipped them onto her own feet; perhaps a little large, but they held on well enough. The cloth which had covered them proved to be a woolen robe. Khida let it drop again... then picked it back up, pensively rubbing the fabric between her fingers. If she was going to be doing human things... she should also go clothed, as humans did. The robe was something she could shed easily, unlike the shirt and trousers others seemed to favor, or the dress the quiet girl had had her wear. Shrugging into it, she found it reached to her ankles, and was perhaps a bit wide in the shoulder... but did what she needed all the same. A red sash served to constrain the robe at the waist, and then Khida was done. She turned then to the next fallen pole, and the section of pavilion it held down.

[Khida]

A different person might well have asked themselves what they were doing at this point. Khida didn't know this pavilion. Didn't know who had lived in it, what they had done for a living, whether any of the family still lived. Owed them nothing, in action or in regard. But it felt... wrong... to just leave the body she now knew lay beneath the canvas, even though it was just a body -- just so much meat. The Drykas would want it, anyway. So she would make it easier for them to find. The second beam was stouter, heavier, harder to get her fingers under the end; it seemed to have hit the ground with enough force to leave a dent. The Kelvic eventually hauled it up, pushing until she could rest it on her shoulder -- then paused to just rest. She was breathing harder from the effort, could feel slivers from the first pole which she hadn't noticed before; now that the second one added pressure to the mix, they became a distinct irritant. The robe protected her shoulder from this one, now, but not her hands; she persisted nonetheless. Rising from her crouch, Khida walked the second pole back as she had the first. Canvas caught rather than tore as she worked it up, caught and held; it let the pole rise only so far, and no more, no matter how she tried to encourage it otherwise. She didn't really have the leverage to try much; there was only so far she could move the beam in any direction without risking losing control of it. And that wasn't far at all. She would have to go back, break the canvas, and start all over again... Motion flickered the edge of Khida's vision, and she turned her head to see the man -- Jaron, she remembered abruptly, that had been his name -- walk past her to where the fabric strained against whatever snagged it. He held a knife in his hand, applied its edge to the canvas; under tension, its threads parted most readily, freeing Khida to continue in her progress. Without a word, he stepped up beside her, larger hands stabilizing the beam. Together, they walked it back until they could topple it over, ripping canvas punctuated by the crash of heavy wood onto whatever unfortunate things lay beneath.

[Khida]

"You know him?" the man asked, as they both looked upon the body now partially revealed. The now-empty husk had been a blond man with heavily tanned skin, older than Khida herself appeared to be. He lay with his visage hidden, face turned towards the earth, but she didn't need to see the body's features to know the answer; the Kelvic shook her head. No, she signed in silence, then added to that answer in words. "I... I didn't want to leave him there." It didn't make sense to her, not quite -- yet that was also the truth. Her gaze dropped to the body, the man she had never met and now never could. That shouldn't have mattered... yet somehow, it did. Jaron seemed to catch something of her confusion and unease; hesitantly, he touched fingers against her shoulder. He didn't, however, ask any of the questions she wouldn't begin to know how to answer. "It is good. I will do from now. You to go home," he directed. Khida turned to look at him... then nodded, her thoughts going to that inward place where lay the bond. Home. Her true home, where he was. Away from this process of cleaning up the city, and the strange feelings the damage and death seemed to inspire. Home with Shahar and Slither was nearly normal, and as she reflected on it, the Kelvic felt her heart distinctly lift. Yes, she signed, hands folding into the motion almost without thought. Home would be much better. He nodded, and she left, feeling as though his eyes lingered over her departure. He hadn't commented on her sudden acquisition of clothing; didn't comment, if he even saw, when she paused to pry a battered pack from where it peeked out beneath canvas. It would do to keep the robe in, when she wasn't wearing it. The contents, she left -- strange tools, a few like the hunter's carving tools, more like Aramenta's weaving tools, and others altogether unfamiliar. She didn't need tools. An inner pocket held the familiar glints of gold Mizas, though, which Khida retained; those would be useful. She didn't bother to count them, however. The Kelvic hefted the nearly-empty pack, contemplating its weight and bulk... then slid it over her shoulders and began the walk back to where the hunter waited. She would go the long way; though slower, human form would carry the pack easier... and it meant she would not see so much of the city laid out in shambles before her. At the moment, that seemed an entirely acceptable trade-off. net salvage1 brown wool robe, gently used 1 red wool sash, gently used 1 pair sandals, gently used 1 backpack in okay condition 100 gold mizas

[Praetorian]

Your Diligence Has Been Rewarded! Khida Observation +2 XP Philosophy +1 XP Body Building +1 XP Realization: Endrykas is Home Emotions that may not be mine... Respecting a Dead Drykas Items Gained 1 Basic Robe 1 Red sash 1 Basic Sandal Pair 1 Basic Backpack 100 Gold Mizas Notes : I feel so bad that there is so little for me to award here! This was a marvelous solo and a great exploration of Khida's turning point, mentally. Very well written. If you feel like I've missed anything, please let me know.