@nephero The wind was changing. Colder. Autumn would be setting in soon, and with it the migration of most of her prey. Vara's mouth twisted down at the corners as she crept along the game trail, hunting knife clutched in her hand. Great, that was all she needed- this hunt had not been going as planned.
The mountain goat she'd been tracking was long gone, and she thought she knew why. There were a multitude of unfamiliar tracks in and around the foothills she'd followed her prey down into, tracks from large, hoofed creatures that were unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Maybe she'd ask Da about it when she got home...
With a sigh, she slid the knife back into her belt- a slapdash affair made mostly of castoff scales- and arched her back in a long stretch, frown still in place. Whatever tracks she'd come across had scared the goats off...well, whatever the tracks
belonged to had.
Damn humans. She couldn't smell them on the air, but she was sure they were involved. No herd moved in the formation these tracks did naturally, they were being herded by something.
Another sigh and she scratched at the back of her neck, her other hand tugging at the collar of her too big, scavenged tunic. Right. Damn humans. Or...elves, maybe. Some variety of two-legger. She didn't need to know anymore, she'd just head back home, tell her da what she'd seen...
Somehow she found herself following the new tracks. It was a little reckless, she knew, but she was smart. Smarter than Ka'toh gave her credit for, usually. And fast. Surely she could just take a peek, right? See what all the fuss was about.
That was all. Just a quick look, then she'd go home.
It didn't take her long to find the herd, and once she had her eyes went wide and she ducked behind a small outcropping just off the trail she'd been following.
They were
huge. Nowhere near the size of a dragon, of course, but still larger than most other four-legged creatures she'd seen. Vara's eyes sparkled with curiosity as she slowly peered back over the edge of her little hiding place, one hand doing to the hilt of her knife while the other braced against the earth in front of her, ready to fight or flee at any moment.
But she didn't move, just stared, utterly fascinated by this new discovery.
Kojo always loved smelling frost in the air. It was a sign of the changing seasons, a sign that soon the mountains would be wracked with bitter cold, a sign that winter was well on its way.
The other clan members were already working to prepare for the long trip ahead; leathers were being rolled up, homespun cloth blankets, delicately carved bone trinkets for trade when they got down into the plains. It wasn't as if the trade was altogether necessary, the clan did well enough on its own, but there were certain things that you just couldn't get up in the crags of the Thunderblacks.
Apples. Kojo sighed happily. He was going to trade for a whole bushel of apples. Humming to himself, he slid off his horse (if such a behemoth could really simply be labeled 'horse'), and brought him over to where the beast could drink his fill of water. The cattle were already penned in, temporary gates gone up as the herders stopped for the evening.
Even without snow, it was a foolish enough errand trying to navigate the mountain passes at night. Even more so with two dozen infinitely valuable animals in tow who, despite their shagginess and their gargantuan size, spooked terribly easily.
It was disappointing, in its own way. Kojo never slept well during the drive down the mountains; he was far too excited, ready to get down into the loping grassy plains at the foot of the mountain range, ready for the vastness of it, where he could ride at full gallop and not run into a boulder for miles.
Oh well. At least there would be plenty to do in the meantime: securing the clearing, securing the trade goods, helping the older, less able orcs with their tents, getting firewood--
Shit, he'd forgotten the firewood. Sighing internally, he barked out to one of the other herders, gesturing back out onto the trail as he did. The herder just grunted back, busy with a length of worn rope. Satisfied that if he were to go missing at least one person would know about it, Kojo walked away from the camp and into the dim light of the evening, stooping low to scoop up viable branches where they lay.
It took perhaps ten minutes before he realized he was being watched, and it was with some small amount of annoyance that he rose up to his full height to scan the nearby rocks.
"If that's you playing games, Lika, I'll crack your head." He paused, waited for a reply, or for the sensation to go away. When neither did, he grumbled to himself, set down the firewood, and promptly stomped his way over the outcrop, fully intending to scruff whichever pup it was who thought they were being funny playing out in the dark.
She'd thought the animals were huge.
What was that?!
Vara's hand tightened around the hilt of her blade and she stared in wide-eyed amazement and curiosity as the massive two-legger puttered about collecting wood. Her curiosity was strong enough that she rocked up onto her toes a bit in her crouched position to see a little clearer.
But then he looked in her direction and she had to suppress a small gasp, ducking back down behind the outcropping. Please go away, please go away, please please please-
No such luck. She heard the heavy tread coming closer, heard him speaking- some of the words were foreign to her, she couldn't quite pick out the meaning of what he said.
She had seconds to make a decision. Heart hammering, she hesitated, trying furiously to think of a way out of the situation.
But then it was too late, and he was close enough to the outcropping to reach down and grab her, if he'd noticed her huddled form. With a sharp cry she exploded upward, swinging her hunting knife in a wild arc that was more meant to ward off any incoming attack that actually deliver one of her own. Lips curled in a feral snarl, she skittered sideways and sank into a crouch, waiting for the giant to make a move.
Kojo had been expecting one of two things: either he was going to find a giggling orc kid with a slingshot and a couple knucklebones, or there was going to be some desperate squirrel looking for a last minute haul for the winter.
Neither of these things involved a small woman with a knife.
His eyes went wide as that same knife slashed upwards at his face; it had been a wild blow, wide and aggressive with no real aim, but Kojo herded cattle for a living and so any kind of slashing with a knife seemed equally dangerous to him. Cows didn't use knives, not outside of that one really weird dream he had after too much valley beer.
And then the woman was on the move, snarling and feral, crouched like a mountain cat ready to bring down the whole side of the mountain if given the excuse. An excuse, Kojo finally realized, such as himself. He flung his hands up, fingers wide apart, giving enough space between them but otherwise ready to catch the human if she came at him again.
"Whoa, whoa, little sister--" he stepped to the side, kicking over rocks as he went, trying to get back to the main trail without spooking her too bad. How long had she been there? And upon getting a better look at the state of her, even in the dying light-- did she live here? For how long? They were still so far from the Serha plains that it didn't make sense for her to be a flatlander; and certainly no hunters would still be up in the mountains this time of year.
"Hey, hey, hey now, let's just... put the pointy bit down, alright?"
Vara stared up at him, panting. Her knife trembled slightly in her hand and she tightened her grip in an effort to hide the shaking.
Panting, it took her a few moments to decipher the words the massive two-legger spoke. When she did...
"Little...sister?" she repeated slowly. Her brows drew together in a confused frown. She didn't lower the knife, but she did straighten up out of her crouch a bit. "I'm no sister of yours, two-legger," she spat. Her voice was rough with disuse- she hadn't spoken aloud in almost two days, she realized- and it held a thick accent that was something between Adelan and...something else entirely.
Two-legger? That was... admittedly a new one. Also one that entirely did not make sense, because typically when people threw descriptors at Kojo they were meant as an insult, and, well.
Kojo only counted two legs. He shifted, turned his head, double checked his math. Yup. One, two. Two legs. He was about to raise some objection to his newfound moniker before realizing there was a time and a place for such things, and trying to talk down an apparently very confused, knife-wielding human girl was not one of those times or places.
The way her voice gravelled raised entirely different concerns, a bit outside of anything to do with her choice of words. Scruffy, raw voice, a tunic that looked badly in need of repair (and several washes)-- how long had it been since she'd last seen another person, human or no?
"No, that wasn't, I didn't mean really--" he started, before shaking his head and getting back to the subject at hand. Which was the whole knifepoint thing.
"Let's just... lower that, yeah? Have you been out here all alone? Grandfather, you look like you've been on the bad end of a bull, and you're tiny." Some instinct kicked in here, and he reached for an ornately beaded pouch at his hip, digging around for a handful of dried berries and nuts. "Here, you hungry?"
Vara's eyes immediately flickered to the pouch, drawn to the beading rather than the idea of food. Though she couldn't deny that she was hungry- the last thing she'd had to eat was a few handfuls of course mountain berries that morning. Or was it the night before? Damn, Da would chew her out for forgetting to take care of herself in a hunt...
She shook her head quickly to refocus in the situation and sidled a little closer, eyes jumping between the two-legger's face and the pouch. Very, very slowly, she lowered her blade. She didn't put it back in her belt, but it now hung at her side. Still prepared to fight if she had to, but looking much less threatening.
Or rather, less like a cornered wild creature.
She tilted her head from side to side, animalistic, predatory. Her eyes flicked back up to his face again, then she suddenly darted forward and snatched the handful of offered food, taking a brief moment to sniff curiously at the pouch.
Quickly enough she skittered back, staring at him warily as she wolfed down the nuts and berries. Her hair fell in her face in a tangle of auburn and she growled quietly, the sound distinctly not human, and tossed her head to clear her eyes.
"I am not tiny," she grumbled at him, rather belatedly. "You're just big."
Well, she had him there. Kojo snickered a bit at the accusation, which was not at all untrue.
"Yeah, I suppose that is a fair assessment, isn't it?" He watched, with no small measure of bemusement, as the girl wolfed down the offered food. This was... certainly different from any human he had experience with; they all seemed to like their plates and utensils down in the plains, or at least not looking like a stray dog when they ate. Everything in this particular human's movements was wild, outside of the typical notes of civility, and it was with more and more certainty that Kojo believed she had been out here a very long time.
Much more cautiously, he reached for the pouch again, this time untying it from his belt to better offer the whole thing to the human girl, shaking it a bit to show there was more food inside if she so desired.
"There's a fire back at camp," he said, with all the gentleness of someone who is trying to maintain that she absolutely had a choice in this whole affair, and he wouldn't stop her either way, "if you don't want to hang around rocks all night. It's travel time, so Tala'll be telling stories to the pups, as well."
The wildling flinched back when he extended the pouch, eyes flicking up to his face, then realized he was merely offering more food. She tilted her head, considering it, then darted forward to snatch the pouch and scoop out another handful of nuts and berries.
Her attention was really on the pouch itself though, fingers passing surprisingly gently over the beading as she turned it over in her hands. Her expression softened slightly, eyes glinting with what he Da called a dragon's gold-lust, and what she simply referred to as liking her pretties.
"Fire?" She glanced up at the two-legger again, frowning curiously. "Who's Tala? What kinds of stories?"
Now that she seemed to have some sense of safety- or at least a belief that she wasn't about to be attacked- Vara was suddenly rather talkative and curious. She looked at the pouch again, emptied out the last of the food, then tucked it securely into the front of her tunic.
"What are you, anyway? I've never tracked a two-legger like you before."
Kojo's mouth opened and shut a few times as the human looked over the pouch; he tried to answer each question as they came, only to have another question be asked right behind it, and after a few bouts of this Kojo finally realized that even if he were to properly answer her, this woman was not paying him any the slightest attention.
No, her attention was entirely on, strangely enough, the beaded pouch he had made when he was ten. He supposed he should have taken that as a compliment; he remembered being ridiculously proud of that when he was a pup (he still was), and seeing the human be so fascinated with it just--
And there it went down her tunic.
Okay.
He was just never going to see that pouch again. This was fine.
Finally, the human's question chain seemed to slow, and the scruffy looking woman was eyeing him with a bit more curiousity versus hostility. Just a bit. Kojo opened and shut his mouth again, though this time it was for sheer incredulity of being asked what he was. Which wasn't altogether bizarre, it had happened before, but the fact that this seemed to be the last question to pop into the human's mind was...
Kojo didn't even know what this was.
He rolled his shoulders a bit in a partial shrug, his hands now lowered to his sides seen as how the threat of imminent stabbing seemed to have passed.
"In order? Yes, fire, a big one. Tala's the," he drew little lines in the air in front of his face, as if to help himself organize what he was trying to say, "the mother of my father's mother. Cranky as hell, but good at remembering things. She really likes talking about the greater ancestors, you know, heroes and dragons, so those kinds of stories."
And then the final bit of it, wherein Kojo could only shrug and gesture at all of himself.
"And I'm a cowboy."
Vara nodded along as he spoke, carefully filing away his answers. At the word "dragons" she seemed to perk up a bit, the curiosity flaring brighter in her eyes, but she hid the reaction quickly.
"Cow...boy?" she repeated slowly, tilting her head the other way. "You are...part cow? Is that why you're so big?"
It would make sense, she supposed- though it didn't really explain the whole coloring thing... With a mental shrug she dismissed that thought and took a shuffling step closer.
"Your camp is close?" She could spare an hour or two, and now that she felt fairly confident in her safety she couldn't deny the curious impulse she had to just stay and ask more questions.
She'd never been so close to another two-legger before, not for so long a time. Da would be fine, she decided; she'd been out on hunts longer than this.
"I-- no, I'm not--" Kojo sputtered, because this was absolutely the first time in his life that someone accused him of being part cow and meant it literally. Where did he even begin to address that? And then there had been the whole two-legger thing. Honestly, the more this woman spoke the curiouser she became, and to Kojo it was like looking at a puzzlebox that had been reduced down to its most base components. He didn't even know where to begin fitting it all back together.
What even was this girl?
"I'm not 'part cow'. I just herd them." he said, after a few moments of stumbling. "And yes, it's pretty close. For the night, anyway, we'll be moving on come sunup."
Shit, right, he had been meant to gather firewood for the camp. He looked around for where he had dropped the branches during their whole initial confrontation, and scooped the bundle up under one arm. It wouldn't build a pyre, but it would be enough for the single night they had here.
"We'd better get back, if you want to come." He jerked his head back towards the trail, before turning to walk in that same direction. Better to let the human make her own choice, he supposed, though he certainly wasn't sure how well he'd sleep if she didn't. She was so small, and the mountains were unforgiving at this time of year.
"Hm." Not part cow then. Less interesting than she'd initially thought, but still pretty interesting all the same.
Vara tilted her head and chewed at her lip, considering the offer. "...Alright then." She folded her arms and fell into step just a little behind him, keeping enough distance that should could bolt if she needed to.
"If you're not part cow, why are you so big?" she prodded, eyes wide and curious.
Kojo's head was still reeling from the initial accusation of having a bovine portion of his family tree, such that he almost didn't hear what the girl had been asking him.
"What? Oh, uh. Eating all my breakfast, I guess." He was fairly sure that wasn't exactly what she meant by the question, but it was entirely too good an opportunity to pass up. He shot her a crooked sort of grin, though the effect was a bit lost as he realized that this woman would probably believe him.
Okay, so maybe sarcasm wasn't the best tact here. He cleared his throat, and gestured ahead, where even in the dying light they could spot the beginnings of smoke. The sign of a fire being persuaded into life.
"There, right off the main path," he said, before letting out what almost sounded like a bellow, if such a noise were to somehow have more consonants involved. Another voice responded in kind. Kojo laughed at what had apparently been an inside joke, gesturing the human woman along.
If she had thought Kojo large, it was nothing compared to what appeared to be another of his kind, though from carriage and subtle softness it was reasonable to assume this one was female. The pair grumbled back and forth in their noisy language for a moment, before Kojo turned to the human again, a little embarrassed.
"I uh, I'm sorry, but I just realized I didn't get your name," he said in common, which earned a snort of amusement from the orcess.
"Well done, Kojo, you're destined for great mercantile success," snarked the orcess, who turned her pale gaze onto the human with a soft sort of smile. "Hi, I hear you threatened Kojo with a knife and you are tiny. My name's Paja."
She frowned. She ate all her breakfast, and she wasn't anywhere near as large as Kojo. Maybe she'd have to ask her da about it.
When her guide gave a shuddering roar of a sound, she balked and skittered back a few steps, eyes wide as her hand flew to the weapon at her belt. When an answering call sounded though, she realized he must be communicating with someone and relaxed slightly.
Her eyes widened further when the female two-legged approached, flicking over the creature curiously.
Then she scowled. "I am not tiny," she defended rather halfheartedly. She knew she was, at least compared to these people. And their cows. And her da. And his friends. And the mountains in general-
Huh. Maybe she was a little tiny...
Shaking her head, she folded her arms and glowered at the two near-strangers. "Vara," she said shortly. "Da calls me Vara."
Both the orcs raised their eyebrows at Vara's protests of being called tiny, but otherwise did not press the matter. It was, after all, no question that she was tiny in comparison to them, but maybe in comparison to other humans, she was of a decent size.
Which was not how Kojo remembered the last summer, but again, Vara was their guest and having a guest did not involve overly ridiculing said guest. And so he gestured to the branches under his arm, and to Paja.
"Would you mind taking these? I'm going to show Vara the camp."
Making a face at what was essentially a get-out-of-work-free card, Paja took the bundle of branches and shot Vara one last tusky smile before heading off in the direction of the rising pillar of smoke.
Kojo turned, and instead headed along the edge of the camp. He supposed with someone as skittish as her, it might be kinder to show any and all possible escape routes; not that he figured she would ever need to make use of them, but someone whose first instinct was "knife" might think otherwise.
"This is the outer ring, just the personal tents for families. Mine's over near the pens, all the herders' are. Those two big ones are for meeting with the shaman and the chief, respectively, and right there in the middle is where the fire is going to be. You know, ah. When they get the wood."
Coughing a bit to ease his own mild embarrassment, he was quick to change subjects, gesturing to one of the two larger tents.
"You wanted stories, right? Tala's probably got all the pups in there for a few before dinner, if you want to listen."
Vara watched the exchange between the two curiously, particularly the face Paja made when she was handed the firewood. Her smile caught the girl off-guard and she blinked at her retreating back.
Following after Kojo, she looked around at the camp curiously. Had she come from somewhere like this, once? She'd never really seen a two-legger settlement before, were they all so...portable? Her eyes still flickered about warily, but at least her hand wasn't constantly twitching toward her knife.
At the offer of stories, she perked up a bit. Da had never been one for spinning tales, and she was quite curious. But she still had questions. "What's shaman? And chief?" She tilted her head at Kojo, pausing her stride.
It was definitely a mark of progress, or so Kojo would have thought, that Vara wasn't constantly reaching for a weapon with which to exact tiny violence upon him. Wait, not tiny violence, he reminded himself. Regular-sized violence.
Either way, it was an improvement.
And then Vara started asking things that Kojo had no idea where to begin. Both the shaman and the chief had been so integral to daily life that he had never quite bothered to think of how he might explain them to an outsider-- most humans seemed to understand the basic gist, in their own ways, and while it was never fully accurate, it was close enough.
And so he found himself searching for the words, his massive hands moving in little circles as he tried to translate everything in his head into the common tongue.
"The shaman is... they manage... well, they translate from bu dunjo to boshka dunjo, uh, this world and the other world. They see where in the valley we should stay the summers and where in the plains we should stay the winters. They tell our stories, and keep the spirits happy by doing so, so rocks don't fall and no one dies. Supposedly. It doesn't always work."
Again, it wasn't a perfect translation, but it got the point across. Or at least he hoped it did.
"The chief, my father, is the leader. When there's arguments, problems with the merchants, things in bu dunjo, this world, he gets to fix it." He wrinkled his nose at the notion, making it clear that he did not at all envy anyone this particular task.
"Don't you have one of those? You said you have your da, so you're not all alone up here?"
Vara listened intently as he spoke, but honestly about half of it went over her head. This world? Other world? What the hell did that mean?
She was going to question it when he moved on to his description of the chief, his da apparently, and then asked her a question, and by that point she'd forgotten. She tilted her head from side to side as though considering how to answer.
"No," she said eventually. "Not really. Just me and Da. The other dragons sometimes fight with him, but...it's usually over territory, or hunting rights. Passes quickly." She shrugged. "Do we go...in there now?" She pointed to the tent he'd indicated earlier and looked up at him curiously.
At that, Kojo stopped mid-stride, and turned to stare at Vara with nothing short of confused awe. Had he just... heard her correctly? He reached up to rub at his ear, only to be assured that those particular senses were working perfectly well, and so unless he was presently in the process of being utterly insane, he had in fact heard correctly.
Da and the other dragons. Heavily implying that "da" was, himself, a dragon.
He had heard of those who rode dragons, down and in the flatlands, and that had always been utterly distasteful, but a human being raised by one?
Almost as if for the first time, he noted the belt of discarded scales. The wild demeanor. The lack of practice in speech. "Two legger."
By all the ones who came before, it suddenly made an astounding amount of sense.
She was pointing, then, and Kojo had to fight to recall what they had just been talking about, his jaw still dropped open a bit. He sputtered, before nodding a bit numbly.
"Dragons? I... yes. Absolutely. Tala's going to want to talk to you." He led her further into the camp, and to the tent that was covered top to bottom in elaborate charcoal drawings and symbols. As he lifted the tent flap, a cluster of hanging animal bones rattled to announce their presence.
"Tala-meema?" Kojo called out, gesturing Vara into the dim, smokey interior. From over a small bowl of smoldering herbs, the hunched figure of a wizened orcess looked up, blinking blearily at the pair before her milky white eyes widened.
"What have you brought home this time? Come here, girl, I'm too old to go shambling after everyone."
Was it something she said? Vara blinked at the orc's evident surprise, frowning a bit. "Yes. Dragons," she said simply.
Why did that mean this Tala person would want to talk to her?
Shaking her head, Vara gave the thought a mental shrug and followed after Kojo as he lead her into the tent. She wanted to pause to examine the drawings on the outside more carefully, but there didn't seem to be time for that.
Entering, her eyes flicked around with a curious sort of wariness and she wrinkled her nose. Smoke. Not the brimstone and magic smoke of dragonfire, but earthy, herbal smoke. It was a new scent, and she wasn't sure if she liked it.
She froze when the older creature called her forward, looking from Kojo to the female warily. Cautiously, she crept forward after a moment, body tense and ready to flee at the first sign of trouble.
"It's okay," Kojo reassured, seeing how Vara tensed up. He let the tent flap close behind them, and moved over closer to where Tala herself sat, coils of lavender smoke coiling between them. He sat down on one of the provided mats, and gestured to the one beside him for Vara herself.
Tala hummed, cracking open a few nuts as she waited. Through the haze of smoke, her eyes found Vara, though it was clear that Tala couldn't even see the smoke in front of her nose.
"Vara, this is Tala, our shaman. Tala-meema, this is Vara, the--"
"The foundling. Yes, I know. Did you really try to stab him? Did you manage it?" Tala asked of Vara, her mouth pulled into a grin that only grew as Kojo grumbled.
Despite herself, Vara almost laughed. She shook her head slowly, creeping a little closer. "Didn't stab him," she mumbled. "He scared me. I just wanted to scare him back."
Mostly true- that had been one of her sloppier attacks, more a reaction of surprise than anything else.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, glancing around the tent and wrinkling her nose again. "This smoke smells...different," she commented after a moment, eyes flicking back to the shaman.
Tala all but cackled at Vara's response, to which Kojo could only continue to grumble something about him being stabbed not being all that terribly funny. The old orcess hummed in delight, and passed a bowl over the smoke towards the pair, shaking it a little insistently before Kojo took it, popping a few of the berries into his mouth before letting Vara have the lion's share.
"That's good, that's good. We all need a scare, especially the big younglings who think they've seen it all." Tala mused, scratching at her chin.
"I am sitting right here, you know," Kojo griped, only to be waved at in response.
"It smells different because it is different," Tala explained, reaching into the smoking bowl and stirring the contents with one finger. The ashes crumbled beneath her touch, but otherwise didn't seem to be burning too hot, instead releasing a thicker plume than the gentle wafting it had been before. "It helps me remember stories, being able to listen to them again."
"Ah, hearing the other world," Kojo tried to explain, gesturing vaguely to the air around them, as if pointing at nothing would help anything.
"Oversimple," Tala critiqued, "but close enough. What I'm more interested in, though, little foundling, is your story."
Vara eyed the bowl, and cautiously took a handful of berries, but honestly she wasn't that hungry after the food Kono had offered her earlier.
Very slowly, she sat, still obviously tense and wary but at least now willing to take a breath and actually listen. "My story?" she repeated, cocking her head.
And why did everyone seem so infatuated with referring to her as "little"? She got enough of that from Da, thank you very much! Sure, she was small compared to these two-leggers, but Da had said she's was pretty average-sized, all things considered.
Of course, he could have been lying. He did that. She frowned, chewing at her lip as her thoughts started to spiral a bit.
"Yes, yours." Tala said, her tone a bit gentler now. Her gaze, blind as it was, lingered on Vara's face, and she hummed as the human girl seemed to retreat into her own thoughts. Kojo, for his own part, simply pulled the bowl of berries closer to himself and popped a handful into his mouth.
"You smell different, because you are different. This is true?" Tala continued after a moment, stirring the ashes again to bring forth another plume of smoke. "You're of the mountains, like us. Your family's of the mountains, like us. This is also true? Do you wear your family's armor to be more like them?"
"Meema." Kojo interceded here, sensing that this perhaps was not the best topic for conversation, grimacing a bit at Vara by way of an apology. "That's... not a fair question."
"It is a perfectly fair question," the old orcess huffed, "for a girl who comes to us in dragonscales. Or were you too distracted by a pretty little thing to notice?"
"I'd noticed," Kojo grumbled, looking a little less than thrilled with where this meeting was going. "They're gathered, not hunted, if you're worried."
"I'm not worried. But tell me, Vara the 'average-sized', am I wrong?" Tala's eyes fell on Vara's face once more, bringing with them the ultimately unnerving sensation that she saw more than one might think.
Vara looked back and forth between the two of them, frowning. She wasn't entirely sure she understood everything they were saying. What was "armor"? And why did her scales matter?
She folded her arms and hunched her shoulders a bit, glowering at the blind two-legger. "I don't know if you're wrong," she grumbled. "I don't know what you're asking." One hand slid down to her belt, ghosting absently over the discarded scales used to fashion it.
Even her knife was made of discarded dragon-pieces, if they wanted to look. An old tooth that had been carved into a blade.
But she didn't know why it mattered.
"See, meema, you're not even making sense." Kojo said, reaching out to pull the bowl of ashes away from the elder orcess and get the smoke out of their faces, as if that would somehow assist in making the woman less cryptic. "And moreover, she's just a human."
"'Just a human,' he says, of a girl who reeks of dragonfire. But no, of course, youngling, you would know better than I." the shaman griped right back at him. She took a deep breath, then, and let it out in a way that all but exhuded her annoyance with the younger orc. But, it seemed that she was willing to drop her previous line of questioning.
"Well, then, Vara the 'just a human', what brings you to this side of the mountains, aside from scaring and being scared of Mr. All Knowing and Wise Cowherder?" Tala finally continued, in what seemed to be a far less invasive form of small talk.
Once again Vara found herself looking back and forth between the two of them as they talked. Was this...what two-legged families were like?
It was...nice.
She blinked when another question was asked and responded almost automatically, "Hunting. I was hunting." The words "reeks of dragonfire" stuck in her head and she tried to sniff herself surreptitiously.
She didn't think she smelled unusual.
"Hunting! This time of year?" Kojo asked. That certainly explained her hunger; if she still had to hunt this far into the colder portion of the year, that didn't say much about food reserves. The dragons in the high peaks were grand, lordly creatures, of course, but he sincerely doubted they kept much of a larder.
"And here we're causing a ruckus, bringing the tribe down to the plains," he continued, feeling a small twinge of guilt. It was easy to forget that not everyone followed their patterns, that these humans needed to survive in their own unique ways, that not all of them could rely on the sheer size that the orcs themselves boasted so readily.
Tala hummed in sympathy, most likely echoing Kojo's own thoughts, though she didn't exactly make a sign of it. There was the smallest crook to her mouth, however, a sly sort of smile as if she had caught Vara sniffing at herself. Which, of course, was utterly impossible. Either way, Tala didn't make mention of it, instead gesturing vaguely around the tent in a wide sort of circle.
"You can stay with us as long as you'd like. There's plenty to go around, this close to the trading months. Perhaps you might even show the pups a thing or two about scratching meat off the mountains in leaner times."
Vara frowned at Kojo reaction, confused. What was so strange about hunting, at any time of year?
She waved him off though when he spoke of causing a ruckus. True, their presence was well...present enough that it had drawn her attention away from game, but there were always other hunts, other food to find.
She blinked at Tala at the sudden offer, eyebrow raised. "...Stay?" Could she do that? She'd been gone for a week or a little more sometimes on hunts, Da wouldn't be too worried about that...but did she want to?
One hand started playing absently with the ends of her hair and she tilted her head. "Maybe...a night?"
"A night it is," Tala said, brushing her ash-coated hands off on her breeches in a kind of finalizing manner, before reaching behind herself and lifting up a large walking stick. Using this, she lifted herself onto her feet, grumbling a bit about her bones in the process. "You can share a tent with one of the girls, or share here, if you like. Kojo can get you your bedding."
"Just be warned, you share with Paja, she kicks," Kojo said, low and teasing, "so try and sleep closer to her head if that's where you go."
"That is a remarkably private bit of knowledge you're spouting off about about someone's sleeping habits," Tala said, which shut Kojo up so quickly you could hear his teeth snapping together. The larger orc cleared his throat, and very rapidly changed the subject.
"Anyway, the fire should be going, let's go get a good spot," he said, a little rushedly and a little darker in the face he had been a few moments before. He gestured for Vara to follow him out of the tent, shortly followed by Tala herself, though the old orcess seemed content enough to take her time.
There was definitely a difference, as it seemed with most things, in what the orcs considered a fire and what a regular-sized person might consider a fire. For the tall behemoths that they were, the size of the fire was decent; enough to provide a fair gathering of the tribesmen with equal shares of light and warmth. To a human, however, the billowing flames were huge, likely able to burn for hours and hours and hours before it finally died out on its own.
A few families lingered a bit further away, with plenty of blankets to both sit upon as well as keep wrapped around their shoulders. The littlest orcs, anywhere from Vara's hip to just over her own height, seemed to vy for whatever space they could find closest to the fire and thus to where the action was, running back and forth around the circle until they were chided for playing so close to the flames.
Upon spotting them, Paja waved both her arms excitedly, gesturing at the open space on her own blanket for them to take a seat upon.
"Vara! Sit with me! And bring that stinking oaf with you, if you must." She grinned, baring teeth and tusk as she did, though it seemed it was all in gentle teasing for how Kojo snorted.
"As if you have any place calling someone stinking," he retorted, nudging hard at her shoulder before taking his own seat on the blanket.
Vara once again found herself glancing between the two-leggers curiously, but she didn't ask the some dozen questions that were pressing at her lips. She got to her feet to follow Kojo out of the tent.
The fire felt familiar. It wasn't dragonfire, but it was something. Vara crept as close to the heat as was comfortable, getting some distance from Paja and Kojo as she did.
"Why?" she asked, tilting her head at them and gesturing over her shoulder toward the flames. Her eyes flicked between the two of them, turning over Tala's words in her mind.
"Are you mates?" Her head cocked the other direction. It seemed to have been what the blind woman was implying, but she couldn't be sure. She'd never been good with "hinting" at things, she'd prefer it just be said straight out.
Are you mates?
The question seemed, for an instant, to hang in the air between Vara and the orcs, before Paja doubled forward in earth-shattering laughter.
Kojo, at the least, had the decency to look embarrassed.
"Oh, oh, he wishes," Paja wheezed, wiping at her eye with one hand. She took a deeper breath, giggled a bit, and then shot Vara herself a decidedly unsubtle wink, "though if you're interested, the position could available."
"Paja, no." Kojo muttered into his own hands, which just earned another amused snort from the orcess at his side.
"Oh, so prudish. But honestly, no, we ah..." the orcess hummed and hesitated, trying to find the polite way to phrase it, "neither of us are... interested in anything the other might provide."
Kojo, for his part, gazed up into the night sky, as if willing some great beast to descend from the heavens and straight-up kill him.
Her eyes widened slightly and she tilted her head from side to side. Oh? Ohhh.
She thought she understood, but... "You don't like males?" she queried of Paja, completely oblivious to any impropriety that might exist in the question. It was followed by a shrug. "And sorry, but no. Won't be around long enough to...take the position. And I don't think I like females."
She was pretty sure.
Her eyes flickered back to Kojo, noting the hue of his cheeks, then back to Paja. "Is he okay?"
She was so absorbed in her own curiosity, she didn't even notice the sudden shift in the wind that sent the bonfire flickering, accompanied by distant thudding sound.
Paja, for her part, only grinned more widely as Vara continued her little line of questioning. Unlike most of her tribesmen, Kojo included, she was far less... shy about certain matters, a nasty little habit that her elders said she picked up from those flatlander traders. It was funny, however, to not be the only one tormenting her friend for once, and so she stifled a little giggle even as Vara summarily rejected the offer.
"Oh, he'll be fine, he's just in utter agony for his delicate sensibilities, is all," she commented, giving Kojo a nudge with her foot. That seemed enough to rouse him from whatever horror he had been mired in, and he shot the orcess a glare.
Whatever he had been meaning to say, however, immediately flew out of his head as he picked up on that gentle, distant thud. That was odd. As far as he knew, the cattle were all contained, and more to the point, the sound seemed to be coming away from where they were penned.
Had one of them gotten lost? He was sure that hadn't been the case, but with the moving time on them and an entire clan to get down the mountains before full winter, well. Sometimes things slipped.
The thudding sounded again, and Kojo frowned. Sometimes very big things slipped.
Paja seemed to be about to say more, at least until she herself picked up on it, and in a moment both were on their feet, Vara between them and the fire. The other gathered orcs seemed to also sense something was amiss, and pulled the children closer inward, nearer the fire, much like Vara herself.
There wasn't much that could threaten the orc tribe, of course; their size alone negated most natural predators, and a general inclination to leave the dragons to their higher peaks meant they rarely butted heads over territory or hunting. Every moving time meant a culling of the herd at any rate, great cows brought up the mountains and sent off as offerings to the great beasts without so much as a passing glance between them.
This low off the mountain, there was very little reason for the pulse on the earth, and it was with that in mind that the adults of the gathered tribe pulled together, passing along hatchets and ropes and bows and arrows in preparation.
Vara frowned again as she tilted her head at the two of them. "Sens-i-bil-ities?" she repeated slowly, trying to piece the word together and figure out what it meant. Her Da may have had the gift of tongues, but he'd mostly spoken Drakyn with her when she was growing up, her education in Common was...lacking in some areas.
She looked at Kojo, then Paja, then back. "Does it matter? If he likes males and you like females?" She'd met a rather stuffy old dragon who seemed to look down on such relationships, but Da had always grumbled insults behind the drake's back, so she'd figured it was a rarity.
Of course, she couldn't really pursue her line of questioning before the two-leggers were on their feet. In fact, everyone seemed suddenly wary. She frowned as the distant thudding noise finally solidified itself in her ears.
Ah.
Wait- why were they grabbing weapons?
She scrambled to her feet with a frown. "What are you-?"
The thudding was suddenly deafening, and a massive shape blotted out the stars above their heads, soaring in a wide arc over the bonfire with a gust of wind that nearly snuffed the flames. With a sharp, almost falcon-like cry, the dragon came to land scant yards from the campsite, head lowered and teeth bared, tail twitching back and forth and the horns of his crest raised in a threatening display.
"Where is the girl?"
Vara sighed. Ever dramatic, no one could say her Da wasn't protective.
The collective gasp that shot through the gathering of orcs was almost a wind unto itself for how forceful it was. Those that had grabbed weapons dropped them immediately, as if somehow the tools had grown venomous teeth and had started biting. Those closest to the front and thusly the dragon dropped their heads and raised their arms in a placating bow-- as if this would somehow be enough to keep one of the great beasts from smiting the whole lot of them.
Kojo and Paja were no different, their eyes fixed firmly to the ground, getting an excellent show as to how the pebbles rattled and rolled beneath every step the dragon took. Kojo stole a glance beneath one raised arm to look at Vara who-- who looked just absolutely and utterly unimpressed, bordering on annoyed. Not exactly the kind of reaction that was in any way normal, but then again, this was the girl who lived with dragons--
Wait. The girl.
Still keeping his head low, Kojo gently pushed his way towards the front, keeping his palms out to show he had nothing with which to do any sort of harm.
"Ekram vobisi, we mean no insult," Kojo began, pushing his words so they might carry over the wind and sounds of the very young orcs crying, "just to rest the night in peace."
He chanced another look over at Vara amongst the far taller orcs gathered, all of whom but Vara seemed downright shaken. Ironic that the tiniest among them was the one least afraid of what might happen. Then again, if Kojo was guessing right, this was--
"...Are you, uh, Vara's... da, then...?"
Ka'toh growled as the orc approached, the air around him heating in a subtle enough threat display. Another dragon would have recognized that he was gathering fire in his belly. "Vara." He lowered his head slightly, crest still flared and lips pulled back in a snarl. His eyes flickered over Kojo's head to the gathered two-leggers.
Vara rolled her eyes and slipped between the orcs to move forward. "Da, I'm fine. I found tracks, and-"
"Foolish girl!" The dragon snapped at her in the native tongue of his kind, making her wince at the volume of his growling voice. "You could have been killed! Have I taught you nothing?"
"They aren't dangerous," Vara replied in kind, though her human mouth and throat couldn't quite capture the exact sound of the dragon's language, the feel of crashing stones and snapping fire made words.
With a snarl, Ka'toh darted his head forward and snapped his jaws closed on the back of her tunic. She yelped as she was pulled into the air, dangling like a kitten from her mother's mouth. She squirmed and her father growled at her.
"Da! Put me down!" Still wriggling, she tried to reach back and bat at his nose. Her eyes flicked down to the orcs and she hissed, "Sorry about him..."