Solo It Will Thunder

[Rufio]

92nd Winter 515AV
Midday, In a rainstorm
Stardown Crater

　　　　　　　　　　　　 rain 'hushed' as it plummetted to Semele, from a grey brooding above. Generous raindrops that plinked noisily against metal. It soaked sodden thickest of wool and slickest of leathers in an unending torrent. A rain that poured into the soul and made weary the bones.

The Wildmanes had lagged behind the nomadic horse-clans, the hoard a day's ride ahead. They had been made late by their Ankal's heart heavy, his leadership made slow and reluctant by weight of grief.

Their losses from the pirate raid keenly felt as they stood at the edges of Stardown Crater. Ankal Tal'ck, his brother Alar'ck, their sister Laiha, grandmother Raen, and cousin Rufio. This was all that was left now.

"Shyke!" Growled Tal'ck, angrily, and his flock's gaze turned to his back. The Ankal sat astride his strider, his thick braids heavy with rain, his fur jacket dark and sodden against the curve of his broad shoulders.

Silence chased his growl, while the rain hushed on. A horse hoof clomped in the thick mud. Rainwater pooled, where hundreds of animals had churned the dirt as Endrykas had migrated on from this traditional Winter resting ground. The puddles growing and rising steadily, trickling threateningly.

　　　　　　　　Rufio's ochre gaze the only which watched the tiny rivulets that snaked in the mud. They're growing thicker, fatter, fed by Makutsi's tears. She noticed vaguely amid the weary fog that had settled within her thoughts.

The half-Drykas sat astride her red-dun strider, Loha. Her fur-lined deer-hide jacket was soaked through. Her skin so wet her fingertips wrinkled. Her thick, charcoal mane plastered to her head, a tiny braid twisted into the cropped locks, wound with green thread.

When she looked up to the brooding storm, Syna's dim light touched her nose-ring lightly, as if to kiss her with encouragement, with peace. Rufio closed her eyes and felt the rain against her, a drop splashing against the dark circles that had seeped into the soft cheeks there over sleepless nights this season.

Stolen then by a quiet and deeply appreciating touch of the rain on her skin. The smell of it, mingling thickly with the scent of flora. The feel of Zulrav's still breath brushing lightly, cold and invigorating at her hair. Her strider's breathing huffing beneath her, the warmth in his thick Winter hide against her thighs. The melodic chime of the rain. Taking in all that she could sense.

Ghost of a smile on her lips, as the half-Drykas indulged in these few fleeting chimes of mediation.
　　

[Rufio]

　　
　　　　" do we try it?"

Alar'ck's upbeat baritone asked of their Ankal, and Rufio opened her eyes just in time to see him gesture to the slick walls of the crater. Uncertainty his sign.

The tall, lean, copper-haired cousin's brow was furrowed in a deep worry not used to sitting in a face so characteristically cheerful.

The darker-of-hair Ankal grunted and sat still, shoulders slumped, on his horse, staring at the concave climb, ruminating on dark thoughts. The pavilion couldn't see the shadows that danced in his haggard face. Once handsome made haggard by sleeplessness, a scruffy, unkempt beard and gaunt hollows in his cheeks from lack of apetite.

Alar'ck exhanged a glance with Laiha, their young cousin, her copper-blonde hair braided and wrapped pragmatically atop her head. Her jaw was clenched in frustration, though her eyes still shone wide with the uncertainty of youth.

　　　　　　　　Rufio took in her cousins, observations dancing introspectively. Their worry, their fear, emanated, ebbing in the lines of their expressions, in the tautness of their shoulders, in the flickering of their eyes. Rufio absorbed these signs, and could almost feel their pain in her own. With the ache of a sob in her gut.

They had all lost their family, they all grieved. Pragmatic, toughened Masuuli, and bright, enduring Yama, and her baby Mar'ck, and, little bubbly Farha. And Louka. Lanky, awkward, hopeful Louka. Rufio felt her ache deepen as she thought of him.

　　　　Her ochre orbs danced to their Ankal, whose grief seemed to be the only allowed into the pavilion. During the day, he was cold, and bade his family quit wasting Syna's light on things that could not be changed.

　　　　　　　　　　　　Lo, as night came, Rufio knew he wept. She heard him, saw him vibrate as he quelled his sobs. When Tal'ck lost Yama, his wife and Mar'ck, his son, Rufio wondered if they had lost him, too. Their Ankal was a ghost. Leading aimlessly, listlessly, as if bound by his grief to an achor.

He was a man drowning, and in his selfish despair, he clung to his family, dragging them down with him. None had the freedom to smile with joy, or laugh, or speak of their loved ones and process the grief, as it needed to be.

Alar'ck's shoulders shifted lightly, leaning forward, his strider took a thudding step forward and he began to echo his question. "Tal'ck, do we tr-"

His echoing query cut off sharply, as Tal'ck thrust out an arm in a gesture of halt. Alar'ck stiffened, his strider stilled, flicking its ears in the rain. A look of hurt passed through the tall Drykas' expression, chased by the slump of his shoulders.

Rufio's heart ached to see his posture sag with the tinge of obedience, with giving up.

He had questioned the Ankal before, days past, and been met with a reprimand of authority resembling a snarling wolf. The Drykas had not spoken the truth of his feelings or thoughts since. Not even to Rufio, or Laiha. None of them dare.

Tal'ck's bristling kept them nervous. As zibri pacing warily past a predator's shadow, hoping not to be singled out, praying not to be bitten.

A heat roiled in the pit of Rufio's gut, though the half-Drykas was not aware of it, too taken by the predicament, the wall of Stardown Crater. So wet and sodden, like slush.

The Wildmanes shared the same worry between them silently. If the wagon or striders would make it up the incline without getting stuck or slipping down the slope and risking a break of bone or a twist of hoof.

Rufio's gaze flickered to grand-mama Raen's gentle giant Seme. The mare was old, but tough. Her Zavian stood behind, happily in the rain she liked, carrying packs. The Zavian will fare fine, she thought, the mare strong in her hind and shoulders.

With a huff of her breath, she cast her gaze out into the rain. It fell in torrents so thick that it was hard to see far, but she wondered if there was a way they could get out of the crater that wasn't as slick.

　　　　　　　　"Alar'ck, we should go round and see if there's a way up." Her right fingers gestured out into the rain as she gave voice to her thoughts. "I'll go east, you go west?"

Laiha looked at Rufio with wide eyes and quiet lips. Rufio looked back, seeing a glimmer of hope flicker there in the press of her lips. They all just wanted to be moving, not lingering in the mud, in the cold, where dark thoughts seep in with the rain.

　　　　　　　　　　　　Grief was like a river, if it stopped, it swirled, might pull under those that were swept up in its currents. They needed to ride, Rufio thought, they needed to let the river flow. They needed to keep moving forward, heal on the way.

　　　　　　　　　　　　This was the Drykas Way.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　"No." Barked a low growl, Tal'ck's. All eyes flicked to his hunched back as silence past tensely in a tick. The rain thrummed, Rufio's heart thrumming with it.

　　　　　　Why is he so angry with [i]us?[/i] She wondered, not heeding that roiling heat, throbbing in her gut, brushing at the ache in her chest. Rufio was too focused on Tal'ck, and the situation, to notice her breath hitch, her chest rising and falling with her temper. Lo, the heat in her gut leaped up her throat, onto the tip of her tongue, unbidden.

　　　　　　　　"Why?" She asked, demand the unintentional hue in her tone, taking everyone, and herself, by surprise. Despite it, she argued. "It will only take, mm, half a bell? If we go now, before the rains get worse-"

　　　　　　　　"I said 'no'!" Alar'ck growled, and rolled back his shoulders, cracking stiffness out of them, as if readying for a fight. "We try here."

He urged his strider towards the wall while his family exchanged concerned side-glances. Rufio sat atop Loha, feeling a strange, thick feeling gathering in her, like molten lead congealing in her chest. Meanwhile, Tal'ck's strider reached up with his fore-hooves, pulling with powerful shoulders, pushed with powerful hindquarters, climbing the slick slope.
　　

[Rufio]

　　
　　　　 the strider worked halfway up the muddy incline and Grandmother Raen, who sat bundled up in furs in the wagon behind, called out with a croaking voice. "Be careful, Tal'ck!"

"It's fine, hurry, follow!" The Ankal commanded impatiently. So Laiha urged her strider towards the slick mud, while Alar'ck huffed and dismounted his strider. He took the Seme's long mane in his fist gently and urged the giant towards the crater's edge. The horse acquiesced reluctantly, the wagon trundling behind.

Rufio, unmoved, watched Tal'ck. His strider's hooves were buried in the mud, sinking as it put weight into the footholds. Her heart thrummed, if they got stuck! Flashes of memory lickered at her—of Loha, stuck in mud—of wolves howling and snapping—of a chigrin.

Their Bonding, Loha and she, fresh in the memory of her bones, from the first of that season. It bade a warning. Rufio got a bad feeling, a sense that lingered, uncomfortably, instincts chaffing at her thoughts.

Her dread must have trickled through the bond, for Loha stomped a hoof and shook out his thick, convex head impatiently. We will not get stuck, as if it said, he took a wilful pace towards challenge.

Rufio tensed in her thighs, and rocked her hips forward, shunting her weight back where her butt was seated against the nook of his bare back. No, no, wait. It signaled, and they stilled.

Tal'ck was growling, foul language profusely punctuating it, as his strider labored to get any higher in the incline. The horse's hooves slipping, hind forelegs dangerously, deeply entrenched in the mud. Grandmother Raen noticed at the same time Rufio did.

"Tal'ck, the horses cannot make the climb." Her croaking voice broke on Rufio's thoughts, the elder's eyes squinted against the rain as the wagon lilted up the incline and the cover of the canvas served its sheltering purpose no longer. Rufio looked at her, and felt the grandmother aged as ever.

"Alright, woah, woah." Alar'ck eased the Seme to a halt, and the horse blew a raspberry of relief for the wheels of the wagon were dragging mud as they struggled to spin. Laiha's strider was nearly half-way up the crater's rim, where she, too, let her horse rest.

Tal'ck, though, thrust his heels into his strider's flanks and urged his horse on-and-up.

Rufio's gaze widened as it neighed, panic edging in. They grappled for footholds, hind hooves sinking deeper, deeper. "Tal'ck you're stuck!" Alar'ck yelled, and began to climb up the muddy rim himself to offer his help.

The Ankal's temper roared to life then, roiling with embarrassment, pride, frustration. "Stay put, we can do it!" His heels pressed fervently into the horse's sides, his tone gripped by a fever of recklessness.

Alar'ck ignored the fool, was almost there. He crawled the slope with hands and feet now, struggling on the slip and slide. Rufio felt a spark crackle into her limbs with adrenaline, and, dismounting, rushed to help. "Here, I come!"

Her hands took to the mud seeking a solid surface to grasp, lo, clawed at the mud. It felt cold and wet and slimy as her fingers sunk in deeply. With a scrunch of her face at the sensation, and the rain, she realized this was folly.

When then a thunderous boom reverberated in the air, cracking harshly, the horses brayed in alarm and, Tal'ck's strider, already stressed, shrieked with ears pinned back, nostrils flaring, eyes rolling wide and frightened.

Rufio hauled herself up onto the incline. Hand slapped upward, then a foot, yanked from the slurping, sucking hold of the mud, pressed toe-first into the mound, then her other hand, up, then her other foot. Within chimes her thighs burned, her shoulders ached, her arms shook. She climbed, mud sucking, clinging.

A sudden fear, irrational, gripped her, she felt if she lingered too long on the mud, Semele might swallow her, suck her in.

Lo, she was smaller and lighter than her copper-haired cousin, and, even painstaking the climb, she past him quickly. "Rufio, wait for me-" He groaned as he struggled to pull his foot free from the clinging mud, lost a boot to Semele's clinging grasp, cussed.

Rufio heeded him not, her ochre gaze sought the strider and rider struggling north-north-west of her chosen climbing path. That temper, molten thickness in her chest, she felt it ooze into her arms, into her thighs, pool in her heart, burning. It roiled in her freckles as if a mirror of the stormy sky.

Zulrav rumbled, flicking lights across the brooding grey. The strider shrieked and tossed its head, wet, tangled mane lashed at Tal'ck face. "Arrrghhh!" He cried out, and lost his hold, his centre of gravity. He fell. Grandmother Raen cried out, her sharp cry harmonized by Laiha's shrill shriek.

Rufio's breath hitched into her throat. Tal'ck slid from his strider's back and landed heavily in the quagmire below, thunder drowned out his cry of pain. Rain was cascading down the slope in rivulets now, the mud slipping under the frantic tug and pull of the strider's hooves.

Realization struck Rufio will an icy chill. They risked a slide. Alar'ck saw it too, and threw out his hand for Rufio to grasp. "Rufio, grab'a'hold!" He called her to him, but the half-Drykas was looking up at the strider.

Her thighs ached to quit, to rest, to be on steady ground. Her clothes clung to her wet body, stuck to her sodden skin. She shook her head, climbed past Alar'ck's outstretched hand, and yelled into the tempered rumbling of the thunder.

　　　　"Al, I'm lighter, I'll make it. Get Tal'ck!"
　　

[Rufio]

　　
　　　　" ata, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

Bade Rufio’s gentle Shiber hush as she took a handful of the stallion’s thick, sodden mane and drew herself up to his quivering shoulders.

Ata peered at her with his deep eye, and Rufio stroked his neck and hummed deep in her throat a rumbling melody from somewhere buried in memory. The stallion grunted and nickered. Loha nickered down below, and tossed his head encouragingly.

Laiha and her mare watched off to the side. “I think I can make it.” Lightest, agile. She signed. Rufio nodded—go, speed, luck. With a worried frown, she watched as Laiha clicked her tongue against her teeth and her pinto mare dragged herself free of the mud. Within a tick or two they began to make headway. Hope fluttered and Rufio encouraged. “Keep going!”

Letting her left foot rest against the muddy slope, Rufio genglt laid herself along Ata’s back, keeping a sure and steady hand along his shoulders. “Ata, up, up.” Zulrav rumbled softly above and the stallion grunted.

His ears laid back and he stretched his neck, leaning forward, his fore-hooves sunk into the slope. Rufio reassured him with a pat to his shoulder. With a squeeze of her thighs and a tap of her heel to his right hind-quarter, she told him to lift his rump.

The stallion glanced back and walked his hind hooves up the slope. With shoulders thrown forward, it eased his weight in his hind, and his hooves found purchase on the gritty mud. “Keep going, Ata, we'll make it...”

When she looked up into the rain her breath leapt to see Laiha’s mare clamor over the ledge. “I’m up!” Came Laiha’s cry of triumph, and there was a whip of white horse-tail as they turned about to peer down the slope.

Rufio’s lips split in a wide-toothed grin. Laiha looked first to Tal’ck, the family left below, and her triumph waned with anxiety. There’s no time to pay them heed now. Rufio and Ata were nearly there now.

Hauling themselves up the slope by the sheer muscle in his hind and shoulders, Ata was hauling himself out of the rut they had found themselves stuck in, and with Rufio leaning in to steer the stallion up diagonally, towards a gentler incline.

When—at last—Rufio felt a shift.

They broke free of the slope and the mud and felt Makutsi’s rain embrace their legs and sides where there had only been the cold, slickness of Semele. Victory and relief danced in her freckles.

Horse and rider slumped and panted, rested. Rufio laid against Ata’s wet hide, feeling his dampness against her cheeks, heard the rain hush all around. They breathed, together.

When Loha’s neigh behind struck into the din, Rufio stirred. She dismounted and slopped through the mud with thickly-coated boots to look down at her family standing in pooling water.

Alar’ck was standing with his fists on his hips, beaming up at her. “When did Caihya make you two feline-born, eh, you climb like hunting cats!” He laughed, shaking water from his clinging red curls, and Rufio laughed. It felt like it had been a long time since she had heard that sound.
“Where is Tal’ck?” Rufio called into a distant rumble of the storm, brows furrowing, that thick heat rising in her stomach, tempered lightly now.
“He’s in the wagon. He’s twisted his ankle.”
Rufio’s gaze flitted to find Grandma Raen, missing.
“She’s in the back with him, he's a bit pale.” Faint, exhaustion, not well Alar’ck answered her silent query, an odd sort of avoidance in his hands, as if he did not want to speak of Tal'ck knowing the Ankal might hear. Rufio huffed a breath at the way things had become, at the way cheerful, witty Al shied.
“I’ve sent Laiha to find another way.” concern etched itself into her hands then. "...I should have gone with her."
"Ah, Laiha will be fine." strong, brave, Watch-to-be Al reassured in his wave.

With that, Rufio stepped back from the slope and squinted into the rain. Trying to discern Laiha or her pinto mare. Seeing nothing but a grayish-greenish hue. As if the rain was melting the grass-lands into an ocean of soft, rolling waves.

A mirage, the blending of the sky and steppe. Rufio waited. As the chimes past, she was kept company by the quiet rumbling of thunder in the distance, the rain, and the occasional thuds of Ata’s hooves, his grunting sighs.

Rufio closed her eyes and felt again seduced by the mood of the rain. Feeling an icy droplet trickle down her neck she heard her breaths hitch faster. Felt a softness seep into her limbs. Felt then her heart thudding gently, slowly.

Lo, amid the softness of herself, was the ache. There, she felt it, harboured between her ribs. Like a firefly, glowing, pulsing. A sob thickened her throat as the faces of her lost ones were bid to her.

Masuuli’s weathered skin and piercing green eyes, Mar’ck’s little round, peach-fresh cheeks, Farha’s matronly pout as Rufio told her a tall-tale, Yama’s beaming wheaten locks and pride glowing in the tan of her skin, Louka’s sweet, big eyes and his lopsided grin.

Her mother. With her deep skin, like turmeric and cocoa, her long, ebony hair, and her deep, knowing brown eyes. A deeply feminine Shiber tone murmured like water over smooth stones to her. “When it must rain, it must pour.”

Rufio started, jarred from remembering. She whipped around in the rain, alert, ochre eyes wide and seeking. Lo, there was none there that spoke. No one there at all. Just Ata, and her. Thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum. Her heart raced. She must have spoken the words aloud herself.

I must have. “They are not here...they have moved on.” Rufio murmured, wrapping her arms around her waist as if to comfort herself. Resisting the urge to wrap her fingers into a ward.

Standing still, she waited. When at last Laiha’s voice rang into the din, proud and hopeful and with good tidings. “There’s a way up, this way!”
　　

[Rufio]

　　
　　　　" you have no right…”

Tal’ck’s murmur was low, too low to hear across the torrent that poured down relentlessly. The tiny, shattered pavilion stood on the plains, dripping and drenched and muddy, yet, there were smiles warmly seeping into those freckled faces. Triumphant hope glimmering between them. They were out of the treacherous racing grounds and on the plains where their striders could move freely, and they could catch up to the moving city.

They had made it out together. They, the last of the Wildmanes. There was still strength in their veins, enduring will to survive, together.

“Rufio, should we ride until we see the city?”
Laiha’s upbeat query.
Chased by Alar’ck’s musing, as he peered out into the rain.
“-They can’t be too far ahead. A day's ride, two if we stop.”
“Should I ride ahead? I can map out safe passage for the wagon.” Laiha urged her mare forward a few eager strides, easing in beside Rufio, who sat atop Loha, infected by these sparks of life amidst her family once again.
“I think-“

“You have no right!”
A violent below tore into the palaver, hissing as it ebbed. Tal’ck’s voice. He sat, hunched, beside grand-mamma Raen in the wagon, glaring across at Rufio. Silence ensued, but for the patter-patter of the rain. Striders grunted, huffed at the air. A hoof clomped dully. Tension crackled thickly, quelling the Wildmane’s fragile spirit.

“Who are you to lead this family? Who do you see yourself?” The Ankal’s hand thrust into the rain, gesturing from under a wolf-hide draped about his shoulders. He had dislocated his left, not long had it been fixed back into place, the discomfort of the pain still wreathing amid the Ankal’s grimace. Anger danced there, too.
Rufio did not answer. No one did.

“You think you can lead this family better than I can? You think you’re strong enough?” He gestured, punching each rheortical question into the air.
Rufio felt them reverberate in her chest, like a blow.

She did not answer him. Ticks slid by, in the rain, patter-patter-patter.
The Ankal’s strong features twisted with fury.

“You think I cannot lead this family!!”

He was on his feet, wolf-hide forgotten, his whole body, powerful muscle, leaning towards the source of his ire. His scape-goat. Grandmamma Raen stirred then, settled a gnarled hand over her grandson’s forearm and began hoarsely- “Tal’ck, this is not the chime, leave it be.”

The Ankal’s dark eyes bore into Rufio’s, and the fortune-teller could not bear the stare anymore, so she looked away, out into the rain. Where came this anger? Where this accusation? The suspicion? Rufio thought about the days that had passed, the moons that had gone by and Tal’ck had slipped away from his family into the depths of his grief.

The way he had shut them out, and left them to the cold. Her thoughts churned to the way that she was there for her cousins. Her, and grand-mamma Raen. Even the elder had laid her cheek on Rufio’s shoulder and wailed for her loss. The way that Tal’ck’s shoulders had turned to ice.

The rain hushed on, and Rufio felt her grief, her anger, her resentment of all of this, thicken and congeal in the pit of her belly. Her jaw clenched and she bit her tongue. Alar’ck, watching, along with Laiha, stepped into the din, stepped into his role of comedian, and attempted to break the tension as he had always done. His lips barely parted, the Ankal’s sign thrust impatiently across his words. Silence.

The tall, copper-haired charmer turned away, embarrassed. Laiha looked at her strider’s neck, staring as if she might climb into the mare’s skin, and be away from here, free.
Rufio sensed the triumph,so hard won, ebb.

Like Syna’s light in the cold of Winter, slipping beneath the horizon. Her resentment scorned, struck hot, roiled through her veins. Run. Run. Her instincts bade her. Get away, the storm is about to beak. “Answer me!”

The fortune-teller shrugged off Tal’ck’s growl, leaned into Loha’s flank, and squeezed her thighs gently, turning him towards the plains and the tented city that roamed a day’s ride that way. Let’s go, let’s leave this, here. The thought sat in the lean of her shoulders.

“RUFIO!!” Tal’ck roared, a bull with flaring nostrils, kicking at the dirt. He climbed down from the wagon with a grunt, and limped towards her with all the imposing menace of a ravenous bear. The fortune-teller, felt the clench of her gut, the skitter of her heartbeat, a sharp gasp.

With stubborn will, she ignored him, and kept riding. Loha’s hooves clomped the wet dirt.
When then the Ankal swung in front of the red-dun stallion, grabbing a fistful of his thick charcoal mane in a hand, his other grasped the half-Drykas’ parka sleeve roughly. He growled, and split his ravenous maw to bellow his paranoia into the rain.

He did not get the chance to utter a word. Rufio’s ochre gaze flew wide and wild, seeing her Ankal grab at her spirit companion, feeling his hard fingers clasp her arm sharply like claws, turning to see a face darkened by bitterness, seething and snarling with the depths of grief-stricken rage.

Fight!—the tick for fleeing gone by.

Her reaction was reflex. The fortune-teller lashed out at him with heel and clenched fist. Feeling the tightness of her muscles, tendons and sinews taut, like stone, in her thigh, her bicep, as she flung her boot and fist at him. Rufio felt her resentment—that poison—rush into her, her temper seared into her limbs.

It was a wildfire.

Like a girl possessed, she heard herself screaming. “You have not been leading this family, Tal’ck, you are not here!—you are not here! They are not here! Yama, Mar’ck, Masuuli, Farha, Louka!—they are not here—But we—we—are here!”

As her boot met his abdomen, a hard yet yielding target, she felt the skin of her knuckles split across the bones as her clenched fist connected with his strong, broad jaw.
Shock and disbelief. They swept through after the fire of her passion as she watched the Wildmane Ankal go down. His back splashing into the muddy terrain with a thump. His breath was knocked from him on the impact.

Rufio could almost feel it, shoved rudely into the din—later, a quiet, deeply intuitive part of her will wonder if the breath knocked sense into him that rainy afternoon. Afterwards, the Wildmane Ankal spent a few days brooding over the hearth licking his wounds and re-gathering his pride, before he began, at last, to lead his pavilion again. Began to live, survive.

Here, now... There was a muffled chime in which Rufio panted. Recovering herself as realization swept in, as if the rain seeped through her parka, her vest, her skin and sinew, all the way into her bones. It felt as if it pooled there, within her, welled up, until it began to trickle from her eyes.
Rufio wept.
Days, weeks, of unyielding resilience finally broke, and the grief that she had been pent up was bidden forth. Yama, Mar’ck, Masuuli, Farha—Louka. When it rains, it pours.
“Rufio…“
“Rufy-”
Laiha’s tenor, echoed by Alar’ck’s baritone.
Murmurs of compassion, empathy—goodbye.

“You said there was no curse.” Tal’ck growled as he climbed to his feet. He was rubbing his bearded jaw with his hand, wincing even as he spat his thoughts aloud. “You said!-you said it would all be alright. You were wrong!”

Rufio stared into Tal’ck’s eyes, confusion giving way to recognition. That night, he was speaking of the night after the Festival of the First Frost, the fortune-reading and the words of wisdom and reassurance she had given him then. That night she had denounced the Wildmane curse, her belief in all curses.

The Ankal let his hand rest beside his side as he watched these thoughts flicker beneath the freckles of his cousin. He let the meaning of his anger and resentment settle in her, a tense, silent chime passed, before he spoke again, quietly—deafeningly—“Leave.”
Rufio’s ochre orbs held his deep brown ones for a chime, before they danced to his hands, his chest, his shoulders, and his expression—seeking sign of reconciliation or doubt.
She found neither.
He said again, deadpan finality, hands laid in undeniable sign.
“You are not welcome…leave.”—banishment.

Rufio felt herself exhale a breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. It was a gasp of knowing-yet-surprise. Of heartbreak—the ache throbbed deeply within her, subtly at first, stronger as Tal’ck’s sign dawned on her. The Wildmane all but seemed to cave in on herself then.

When the Ankal drew his jaw up and his shoulder back, unmoving, unmovable, Rufio sensed the stone with which the decision was set for him. Her sense of acknowledgement shifted into the lay of her shoulders, numbly. Detached from herself, it felt as if she watched from the outside, as if this was happening to another freckled, short-haired Drykas, and not her, not in her pavilion.

Yet, she would not argue nor plead for herself, as she would for another. This, she sensed, had been a long time coming. This anger, this—blame—was a part of Tal'ck's grieving process, a fork in the pathway of his healing. So Rufio believed. Had to believe, for she could not stomach the thought that he might, truly, blame her for their loved ones' violent deaths.

The fortune-teller turned her gaze from Tal’ck’s at last and leaned forward subtly. Loha, sensing the cue, sensing his rider’s anguish, thudded his hooves as he took to a walk that would become a trot and then a keen canter, wishing as much as his rider to be away.
“Rufio, no!” Laiha’s shrill cry.
“Tal’ck- !” Alar’ck implored his brother incredulously.

Rufio didn’t see their pleas for her stay, their disbelieving glares at their Ankal's rash temper, or Raen, as their grandmother stood and reproached her grandson in hoarse, harsh, angry, matriarchal tones. She was already riding, too upset to stay and see.

The rain mingled with the tears that ran, unchecked, down her face, as if Makutsi wept with her. Her breaths came in shuddering waves, as she swayed and rocked against the warm, thick hide beneath her thighs as her strider carried them away, seeking a place where she might cry and let her grief flow.

Away, into banishment, for she did not come back.

A whisper breathed over her lips, a prayer to all the gods she knew. Her mother’s words echoed somewhere deep in an unconscious, hidden part of her, lodging itself in between her ribs,in the place where her Besnhira heritage lay buried.

　　　　"Here, it is not like home.
　　　　　　When it rains, it pours.
　　　　　　　　　When it pours
　　　　　　　　　　　　—it will thunder..."
　　

[J'Ak]

G R A D E

xp

Observation +2
Meditation +1
Rhetoric +2
Riding, Horse +2
Climbing +1
Endurance +1
Singing +1
Animal Husbandry +1
Brawling +1


lores

Cyphrus location: Stardown Crater
Makutsi: Goddess of Water
Reading emotions in body language
Moving on is the Drykas way
Riding: Signalling a halt
Tal’c: Made cold & reckless by his grief
Tal'c: Blames Rufio
Animal Husbandry: Soothing an animal by humming
Rhetoric: Cheering another on
Mudslides are a danger in torrential rain
Rufio: Banished from the Wildmanes


notes - A self-graded thread, as of
grading policy change Summer 517AV.