Open Introduction to all things Drykas

[Taylani]

Timestamp: 8 Fall 513 It was so strange here. Even the words in her head seemed to echo, though Taylani had known that was impossible, it just seemed so...so vast compared to living within walls. She was no longer certain how many days it had been since she had last seen Syliras, but the ache in her heart did not go away. She tried, she honestly did. She was not bound by rope or chain, seemingly free to run off..but the endless plains of grass kept her bound here to this camp as sure as any bondage would. The strange customs, the strange language, everything was strange. But they have so far treated her well, except they were not her people. She kind of longed for the numbness that had stolen over her heart when she was first ..approached..by the raiders. Now was just the ache. Sitting outside of the tent that was now hers, sitting on her knees in the grass, her skirts that seemed a little out of place in the camp spread around her. Her red hair was pulled back, but she knew by the redness of her skin that she was going to have to let it down to try and protect her fair skin from the sun. Eventually, she supposed her skin would toughen up, but for now the paleness was showing an angry redness, that when finally peeled would reveal the more durable skin beneath. Just another sign that she was in an alien land, one she was not born to. There had been kind strangers, she could not fault them for that. Taylani tried her best to be polite, to do what was expected of her, but the rub of it she did not know exactly what they expected of her. She was shown chores, she was shown how to roll up her sleeping rolls, she was shown how to help around the camp for the most part. She was a dismal failure at most things it seemed, but nothing left to do but press forward. A figure moving toward her caught her attention, and instinctively watched wearily until the figure came into focus. It was a girl that Taylani had briefly met in passing, another face in the sea of faces...Dani? Lani? Manny? Maybe it was Tani. When it became obvious that she was walking toward Taylani, the dancer stood up. Even now, weeks since her last dance lesson, she still stood with a dancers poise, back straight and shoulders squared. It would probably be years before that was lost to her, if ever.

[Tani]

"This is still a bad idea." Tani insisted, stepping aside to allow a Strider past. She didn't know why she bothered speaking. Nareth had made his argument twice before breakfast, the weathered carpenter as unyielding as the pine he shaped. Kyron had known how to twist the old patriarch, but with her bondmate gone, Tani was wood beneath the knife. "She's Syliran. You know they don't understand us." In more ways than one. The argument lacked the fire it had the first time she'd made it. Nareth had ground her down then, and Tani had no doubt he would do so again. Now, she was just going through the motions. "I'd be better off talking with the horses."

"Then teach her Tani..." Nareth's hands flashed across the space between them, Nareth rapidly tracing the signs for duty and family. Tani itched to slap the signs away, to dart for the safety and comfort of the Grasslands. Nareth was no family of hers, not by blood. Instead, the carpenter had been Kyron's father, and it was only out of respect for the lingering affection she had felt in her bondmate that she had consented to his request. In truth, she had done all she could to avoid him, but everyone had to come home eventually, and Nareth had been waiting, carving knife and block in hand. Nareth continued. "You saw the pox. We need every able hand we can get." He nodded toward a cluster of tents lurking on the far side of the market like scavengers waiting to move on a kill.

Taylani's tent would be over there, within easy reach of the city centre. Nareth turned to Tani, staring her down. He was one of a handful who could. Most of the Drykas still found the narrow slits that were her pupils discomforting, a gift of her Kelvic heritage. "And that includes our guest, Syliran or no. Whatever she was, she's a Drykas now, Tani. Remind her of that." And then the carpenter was gone, swallowed by the crowd. Over a year of tracking game through some of the most inhospitable terrain in Mizahar, and she still had no idea how he did that.

Weeks had passed since Tani had last visited the markets and, though Endrykas had changed location at least half a dozen times since then, the same nose-curling smell of the tanner's workshops was waiting for her. Her breath caught as she inhaled, and she quickly abandoned the idea, darting past the tannery at a low run, clinging to the clean air in her lungs like a drowning man. She 'd heard that larger cities kept tannerys to the outskirts to avoid the smell. The Drykas could rarely afford that luxury in the Grasslands. As with so many other things in Endrykas, safety had taken priority over comfort.

Tani caught a flash of red through the crowds. She knew that face, recognized it from a long, dark, trek across the Grasslands. No. She dragged her mind back to the present, forcing a smile. She wasn't ready to revisit those memories yet. The flesh was still raw. Taylani sat outside her tent, the lithe Syliran standing out amid the tanned Drykas like a white rabbit in the Grass. Tani had met a few white rabbits. Pretty enough, she supposed, in a twisted sort of way, but they didn't tend to live too long. She wondered if the Syliran would be any different. With a final glance to ensure that none of the accumulated grime of the last few days had escaped her attentions, she made her way to Taylani, who glided to her feet as Tani approached.

"Taylani?" There was a note of a question in her voice, Tani staring at the woman as though the secrets of creation were buried somewhere in the creases of her face, if she could only look hard enough. After a moment, those eerie green eyes blinked, their owner taking a pace back, apparently satisfied. Tani raised an eyebrow at the newcomer, spoke a sentence in Pavi, hands dancing across her body, and turned back toward the beaten path of grass that passed for a road in Endrykas. When Taylani didn't move, she sighed, turning back to the Syliran with an overly-dramatic florish, hands dropping to her sides in defeat. Mizahar had many Gods and, at that moment, Tani wished that she knew one of them to swear by. The girl couldn't even speak Pavi! No wonder Nareth had been so insistent, the man barely spoke a word of common. Tani was hardly better, her limited vocabulary the product of occasional exchanges with passing traders. This would be a mess. She could feel it.

"Endrykas." Hands circled her in a vague wave as Tani dredged through her memory, searching for words. Unconsciously, the limb's movements slowed to match the awkwardness of her speech. "You have seen? Nareth ask me look-" No, that wasn't right. She trailed off, trying to pick up the shattered thread of language. "Show. Show you." Good. There it was. She hadn't completely forgotten.

Without so much as pausing for a response, Tani set off into the crowd.

[Taylani]

Those eyes, the distinctive slit of the pupil caused Taylani a moment of falter though she doubted that she would have been so astonished by them if her senses were not already in overload. Taylani had never considered herself sheltered before, but out here amid this new culture, new people she realized just how much she did not know about the world. It was only a momentary falter, sheltered or no Taylani knew about the kelvic people, even though she had not dealt with them before. The question remained what did this one want from her. "I don't understand." Her voice, once carefully softened and demure when she was still in Syliras, now was edgy and cautious, almost hard. Blue eyes watch the hand gestures the other woman was making, hoping to get some sense of the nature of the woman's visit.Her brow crinkling as she leans forward to the taller woman as if she couldn't hear rather then understand. "Yes. Endrykas..." the dancer repeats, she had already gleaned that much from them, precious little that she could. She knew they were Drykas, that much she did. Frustrated, Taylani growled slightly in her throat and wondered briefly how long it would take her to be killed or worse out in the plains should she just take off running. Probably not long. Instead she takes a deep breath, and realized that the woman was struggling as much as she was in understanding her. That tempered Taylani's frustration and anger, realizing that the other probably was not finding this any easier then she was. "Show me what?" Before that last sentence is out of her mouth the other is moving back into the crowd, and Taylani had a chance to heave a sigh before she too took after the other. Her lithe body moved through the people easily enough, keeping up with the other woman. "Where are we going?" She asked, knowing even as she did so that the other might not even understand the question, let alone be able to answer. She was evidently going to have to try and learn the language of these people. That should be fun. Moving through the camp, the smells that assaulted her nose, the bright clothing that the people wore caught her eye, though she has had a while to adjust to the visual of the camp, and even to most of the smells the surprise of just how efficient things run in the tent camp, almost more so then in the cities. Fatigued from all the upheaval of the past weeks, Taylani was sick of the loneliness that clung to her. Even though she bore these people little love, she did recognize that now they were the only things keeping her from dying out here. She could do one of two things, try and make the best of the situation, or continue to pout and do nothing about the situation. "Please!" Her voiced still was cagey but less hard, and one hand reaches out to try and land on the other woman's shoulder. She wasn't even sure what she was going to ask, only that she was sick and tired of being completely lost and utterly without sense of direction both figuratively and literally. "Tell me where we are going?" Taylani splays her hands in a gesture of unknowing, "Help me? I want to understand." This too was spoken in the hesitant cagey tones, but her hands gestured around her to the foreign people, and then to her lips, trying to convey the foreign tongue as well.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Fallan stood and allowed the bustle to flow past him whilst he absorbed the feel of the city, each sight, each scent, each sound, the feel of the wind on his face, the grass under his feet and that indefinable thing that told him of the passing of Summer. All were familiar and he was surprised by the realisation of just how much he had missed them. Once he had longed to be away from here, to leave the Grasslands and explore the parts of Syrila that he'd only glimpsed on raids. Now he knew that to have been an adolescent folly and one that he wished that he'd understood before, though he tried not to regret it, but instead to appreciate the advantages that the experience had given him. He smiled to himself, glancing around. Endrykas, never the same and yet always the same. The webbers in the Clan pavilions had updated him with the current general layout of the city and now, the day of his arrival, it was time just to look around and get his bearings once more. Voices caught his attention, a partly heard phrase in Common that just a short time before would have been ignored because everyone in Syrila spoke it now stood out. By reflex his eyes followed the sound and realised that two women approached him though he could see from their eyes that he was merely an obstacle to be avoided. One wore green that spoke of time in the Grasslands with seemingly a mildly irritated look on her brow, but his attention was drawn instead to the other, the one who had spoken, her dress and especially the hair marking her out. Summer Raid, he guessed, wishing that he had been the one to take her. Perhaps the other woman had, but there was little time to speculate for they were already about to pass. "Understanding is the foundation for survival," he commented in Common, his voice pitched loudly enough for them both to hear. The comment was meaningless, something that randomly popped into his head; an excuse to turn to watch them pass.

[Taylani]

So bent on keeping up with the other woman, that Taylani was not prepared for anything else. Her mind so focused on trying to get the other to understand, or to understand where the other was leading her that she was not expecting another. So when the man's voice, in common reaches her ear her body almost literally jerked to a stop, her blue eyes widen as she turns toward the sound. She was sure there were those who spoke some common, and she got the feeling there were even more that like herself grew up elsewhere then in the Drykas way of life and probably spoke common. But if there were, then she had not yet met them which was not surprising. The ones that have spoken common, spoke with broken fluency, articulate but only for rough exchanges, and she herself did not speak the local tongue. "You speak Common?" She asks, hopeful yet wary. Her arms cross defensively over her chest, but her chin remains raised, the sunburned cheeks standing out amid the dark complexions of natives. Right now, his words did ring true, understanding was survival. Right now Taylani's only course of action was merely to survive. To forge ahead, and to do that she would need to learn her role in Endrykas, to learn of the Drykas themselves.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Pretty. That was the thought which had crossed his mind as she turned, her eyes widening and drawing attention to their blueness. Perhaps he'd spent too much time among them and his values had shifted, or perhaps he just liked what he saw. Who was she and what was she doing here? It was a puzzle that drew him and one that he picked at, his focus on her with just an eye on her currently silent companion. Her hair was too long for a slave but neither was it braided. Visitor? Much depended on the companion, for the tone of voice used by the red head on her companion did not speak of a slave to a Drykas. His nostrils flared as he drew in the air around him, wondering if the scent of the red head carried on the breeze; she seemed defensive and yet vulnerable. "Common is the language of slaves," he answered, his time away from the Grasslands had improved his accent somewhat yet sometimes the words still did not come freely. "The hunter must know the way of his prey even if he does not copy it." It did not occur to him to wonder if that made any sense to her. "Common is not fitting for the mouth of a free woman." He admired the tilt of her chin and wondered idly if he'd just insulted her companion.

[Taylani]

Taylani watches this strange man, taking in the wildness of him with the backdrop of the city around them. Her eyes stray to the woman, she is now sure her name was Tani, perhaps just to ensure that she was not left alone with this stranger, this barbarian man. As a performer, Taylani had been taught about hiding true feelings and conveying feelings -albeit through song and dance rather then acting- that she wanted to convey instead. The dancer draws on this training now, trying to disguise the fear and uncertainty, instead she draws herself up to her full height of five foot eight inches. Though the she could not help the sudden half step back as his words hit her like a cold toss of water, the term slave had not even entered her mind. Captive yes, but she had definitely had not thought of herself as a slave. "I am not a slave." She speaks slowly, in a low and controlled tone, trying not to let her voice quaver. "People are not property." Her Syliras home was free of the practice of slavery. The knights assured that the people of the city remained free to help further the economy and the general lifestyle of the city. She had never seen a slave, but had heard of all the horror stories that were whispered to her. "If common is only the tongue for slaves. Then ...Then how come you speak it, even now?" Her fist curl into the fabric of her skirts, her body tightening but she does not back down. "Common is simply a tool to use so that peoples of all different cities can communicate and trade. It is not a tongue only for slaves....or.or.." She seemed to run out of steam though her eyes still fairly crackled, holding on to her outrage more out of security then anything else.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Now she became all the more of an enigma, but it was also clear that she was not someone else's slave. It was a pity, but then it was also clear that she was a visitor, and that opened up possibilities. For now though, he could not resist the temptation to tease her. "This is the Sea," he answered, automatically falling back into the habit of adding on the Pavi signs for the open expanses of grass. "Here are only the People," his hands flickered back to his heart. "You are not People." His smile was feral. "I speak Common to slaves, how else I choose which slaves I want to take?" Since Fallan had no slaves and had not considered raiding, this was not exactly the truth, but the truth was far less convenient. The truth was also that he had not considered taking a slave before, but her shock at his suggestion made her far too easy a target. "I think you not leave the Sea except in chains." She would stay in his mind for a while he thought, but it seemed likely that she was a guest of the Emerald Clan and he had said enough within the hearing of one of their clanswomen. He grinned at Taylani once more, his eyes travelling slowly from head to toe and back again before giving her a nod and turning on his heel to leave.