Of all the bloody things...
The last place Jayari ever wanted to be again was back here, at this stupid hole in the ground, where a strange not-Duhjari had disarmed her and very nearly taken her prisoner (at least, in her eyes). She had made an epic blunder, overreached in some strange effort to prove herself and defend her people...from what? A lone straggler in a hole? She was very aware of how badly that could have gone if the man was anyone else but a grumpy loner, and he hadn't seemed to care a lick about her insinuations that she was important.
It had been a frustrating, scary, and annoying situation all at once, and she had been more than happy to listen to him and leave. Fine by her. She didn't want to see him again, either, the leech.
The problem was when she came home, loaded up with a beautiful dagger and five nicely treated skins (including one from a wolf, an animal they rarely went out of their way to hunt), it had drawn curiosity from her sisters. Try as she might, it had been impossible to smuggle the items in unnoticed, and of course her sisters had to run off and tell her father, who then had to press her for information as to where, exactly, she had attained such items on a trip along her snare lines. Because she certainly hadn't just found them out there in the snow, pristine as they were, and finding them would beg other questions as well.
The story Jayari gave was a sanitized, watered down, VERY father-safe version of the truth: she had run across a hungry foreign trader just passing through who had offered her the items in exchange for her fresh kills. That satisfied him (some foreigner who couldn't even hunt his own meals was hardly a threat in her father's eyes), but then created a new problem:
He suggested she go back to procure more items, since she had already developed a business rapport with him. They certainly needed the skins and could use some weapons. The year had been tough; their goat herd had practically been destroyed by one fledgling dragon who didn't even eat all its kills because it was practicing its hunting. They were relying more on hunting this year than they usually did while the herd repopulated, so anything she could get from him, they could use it.
And so it was that two days later, when the weather improved, Jayari returned.
This was a bad idea, she thought as she dismounted Zala. This was such a bad idea. Cha had been rather clear that he didn't want to see her again but here she was, like a fool, several fat rabbits loaded onto Zala to trade. Jayari took a deep breath and rubbed her nose.
She'd look extra foolish if she came home empty handed on top of it all, but she had a feeling this wouldn't go well.
Kneeling at the entrance, she leaned down and called into it. "Hey! Cha'Druku! You down there?"