It was a cold day, one that found Jayari bundled up in a fur-lined coat and hat. Her mare, Zala, was a little annoyed by the cold white stuff on the ground, but Banyur horses were strong and stocky and built for the climate so she tolerated it, even if she let out the occasional snort, breath frosting in the air, that let Jayari know of her displeasure.
"We're almost done," Jayari said, patting the mare's neck as though Zala could understand half a word she said. "Just a few more lines to check, then we'll go home."
Five fat hares were already tied to the saddlebags; it had been a fruitful day! And as she rode Zala through the snow and over a stream, she dismounted and headed to check one of the last snares--and cursed.
That one had had a rabbit, but from the looks of it, the snare had been tampered with. And by the footprints she saw in the snow around it...it hadn't been an animal.
"Again?" It also hadn't been the first time. Two of her other traps had shown the same signs, over the course of the last few days. Whoever was doing it was bright enough not to take too much; they were trying to be smart about it, but not quite smart enough.
With a sigh, she mounted Zala and turned her to head upstream, where the final snare remained. "Clever bastard. I swear, Zala, I'm gonna find this thief, and when I do..."
She trailed off, because that was when a dark shape in the distance caught her eye. She squinted, trying to make out the shape. She couldn't see any distinct features from this distance, but she saw just enough to know it was...unfamiliar.
Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps that was her thief.
Either way, it was a trespasser.
"C'mon!" she said, spurring Zala into motion, and they tore off over the grasslands, leaving a cloud of snow in their wake. Reaching behind her as she rode, she drew her bow and had an arrow nocked before they even reached the stranger, drawing to a stop several yards away.
Far enough to be safe, close enough the wind would carry her voice--and her arrow.
"You there! Halt!" she shouted in Duhjari, for she had never learned Common, having kept to her group all her life.
Cha'Druku did not halt. He looked back at the horsewoman, his deer skin hood obscuring his features, the woolen scarf on his face covering them more, and saw her arrow ready to fly. He did what he had learned to do best these past few years. He ran.
Dammit! Jayari had not left home that morning looking for a fight but the thief had asked for it. With a growl of frustration, she took off after the stranger, Zala's sturdy legs gaining ground fast.
"I will shoot!" she called after the stranger, giving him one last chance. "Last chance! Stop now!"
Cha didn't doubt that the woman would shoot, but he did not look back and he did not stop. He did call out to her though. It was the first time he'd spoken in months, his voice came out a croak. Plus it had been years since he spoke Dhujari. Not since his mother had died. "Fuck off!" That was all.
He made sure the one stolen hare and the two he had snared himself were secured well as he continued to run. He was using his telekinesis to push the snow aside, clearing his path.
...he spoke Duhjari?
Jayari was more shocked by that than offended as being told to fuck off. At least at first. That wore off quickly because how dare him! How dare him tell her to fuck off when he stole her kills!
"YOU fuck off!" she shouted back, and aimed her arrow at him—and let it fly.
She'd warned him.
Cha heard the twang of a snapping bowstring. It arrived on the winds in seconds and with a swat of his hand his telekinesis brushed it aside. "Nice try bitch." He was not giving up his dinner to some tribal. He may honor and respect their ways, but his own survival was more important to him. So he picked up the pace using his power to not only push the snow aside but break up the ground behind him, making rough terrain. If she cherished her horse in the way he knew them too, she'd be forced to be cautious and not follow him directly.
It was a clean shot, an easy shot. Literally impossible to miss. And yet the arrow snapped on nothing and flew from the man, spinning in the air in two different directions.
What in the...?
And now she was a bitch for defending her kills?!
She barely had time to register that when the ground before her started to break, smooth, snowy terrain suddenly turning to jutting, ragged earth. Jayari had just enough time to avoid it, jerking in Zala's reins to turn her, and Zala leaped over a patch of broken earth and into the fresh snow to the side.
It didn't take a genius to figure out this guy had some sort of magic.
"You'll eat those words when I catch you, asshole!" she called to him as she flanked him now instead, nocking another arrow and letting it fly. "Surrender and I'll go easy on you. Probably. You can't run forever!"
A horse had more stamina than a man, after all. He could run, but eventually he would tire, and his tricks could only stall for so long.
Cha knew this area well. He knew how it gently sloped up toward the foothills. And he knew his destination, his safe haven. At the top of this easy slope was a wooded area. Just beyond the first trees was a ditch, and in it an old den. He'd found it burrowed in and dug it out. Deep into the earth he'd dug, using tricks he'd learned from the mercenaries that raised him, to make a proper home in the ground. That was where he was headed, and it was about time to fly.
With a stomp of his foot Cha broke the ground around himself. With another he launched rocks and dirt into the air, and sent a few choice fragments at the horsewoman. Behind his smokescreen of debris, he twisted off his cloak and pack quickly wrapping them into a bundle and then he jumped.
Cha pushed off the ground with such force that he left a small crater. As he approached the trees, and the ground he angled himself and push at the ground to slow his descent. He dove down the ditch, into the hole that was just barely wide enough for him to crawl through and made his way through the five meter long sloped tunnel to his caves.
Well. Shit.
Dirt and rocks and snow flew at her then, and Jayari had to throw up her hands to keep from getting pelted in the face. Her thick gloves and sleeves protected her from the brunt of it, but a sharp chunk of rock still nicked her cheek—though it was cold enough that she hardly noticed the sting even as a little blood trickled down.
When the air cleared, the man was gone.
Or...not quite.
He was airborne.
A wiser person might have decided at this point that he wasn't worth the trouble, especially someone leading her further and further from home with so many strange tricks up his sleeve. Her father would absolutely kill her if he knew she was doing something so stupid. But Jayari was not about to back down. He'd not only trespassed and stolen, but he'd insulted her in her own tongue! Embarrassed her, even, by outmaneuvering her on foot! She couldn't let that slide. Her pride wouldn't allow it. Who even was he, this thief who knew her language? Someone banished from his own tribe?
He would just keep stealing if someone didn't teach him a lesson.
She quickened her pace, heading to the area where she had seen him fall. Though he had left no tracks, it wasn't difficult to find his hiding spot, judging by the small crater where he'd landed and the little trench his body had left in the snow as he'd crawled down his hole like the rat he was.
Jayari dismounted and examined the hole for a moment, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out on a puff of frosty air. It was foolish cornering an animal—but foxes dragged hares out of their dens all the time, too, and this man seemed a coward to not want to face her. So be it.
She shrugged her quiver off and loaded it onto Zala, along with her bow, and checked that her hunting knife was secure at her hip. Then with another deep breath, she knelt and started to squeeze down through the hole, crawling on hands and knees.
"Found ya, you smelly rat," she called as she made her way down. "You wanna give me back my shit?"
Cha had a good head start and a lot of practice crawling down his tunnel. He'd first crawled in tunnels like this as a boy when hunting giant horned rabbits in the Draconi Forest. Then as a teen he'd experienced tunneling to get under camp walls to fight bandits and other people his band had been hired to kill. Not everyone could handle the tight space, especially not when it went on for so long into the dark. He had taken to it easily. He quickly came to end of the tunnel, and as he pushed through the elk hide curtain, stood in the space. He had cultivated bioluminescent mushroom spores from the Bothraron and so the room was lit with a gentle pink glow.
The small rounded area he crawled out into opened up into a larger space. A rectangular room, more than six meters deep and across, with enough space for Cha to stand and even jump in. The floor was covered in animal furs and woolen blankets, the walls of adobe bricks. The ceiling even had support beams and a large beam wrapped in furs stood in the middle of the space. This was his main living space, where he slept, and worked, and trained. It was where he kept his armor, and his weapons.
He reached up to the lantern hanging from the ceiling and lifted the small latch that let the light out in a small spotlight. With the beam set on the tunnel Cha then moved quickly to pull hoods down over the mushrooms. Next he grabbed his mothers horse bow, tossed his quiver over his shoulder and waited for his pursuer to enter.
Light pierced through the pitch darkness, making Jayari wince. What the fuck? She had to squeeze her eyes shut for the rest of the crawl; she was deep enough that there was nowhere to go but forward now, and thank the gods she wasn't claustrophobic, for she still had a ways to go.
Finally, finally she neared the end, squinting blindly in the light and barely able to see with sunspots dominating her vision. She did have the sense to pull her knife from its sheath, though, and she held it out as she started to climb out into the space.
"Say something, rat," she demanded. "We can make this easy or difficult, your choice!"
Cha let his arrow fly, crossing the horsewoman's path and burying itself in the wall beside her face. "Toss away your knife and come out slowly; hands raised. I was unarmed out there, but now I can easily take your life if you act foolishly."
Thwack! Jayari knew that sound, and it happened way too close to her face, striking the wall right beside her. She flinched, her breath catching, and when he spoke she realized...yeah, she'd maybe fucked up.
She had assumed he was an inexperienced coward. Unable to hunt his own food, running instead of fighting...
So the rat could bite.
Jayari froze and let the knife drop onto the ground. "You're an idiot," she growled as, just as slowly, she crawled the rest of the way out. "Talking about acting foolish when you stole from me. And now this. You have no idea who you've crossed."
Cha barked out a laugh. She was a foolish girl. "Does it matter who you are? You're out here, a nomad, where I've lived for more than a year, now alone in the home of a mercenary that has killed more people than you have ever seen in your life. Now toss the knife away, and stand. Or I will kill you and eat your horse."
A chill of fear slid down her spine at that not so subtle threat, but the next one made her stiffen.
"W-whoa, hold on now!" Jayari said, quickly climbing to her feet. She held her hands up, blinking as her eyes adjusted, and kicked her knife away from her without hesitation. He had not just threatened Zala. Whatever happened to her, that was one thing, but her horse was innocent in all this.
"You leave Zala out of this, alright? Just...calm down. I just wanted to talk." With him at knifepoint. But that was beside the point.
Cha knew threatening the horse would elicit a response, and it worked even better than he had hoped. As the knife moved into his range he pushed it further away. Then he stepped forward and pushed the horsewoman against the wall. Held there with a thought he pulled a rope from his bundle he'd left on the floor. "I'm going to bind you now, and then we can have a chat."
Jayari let out a surprised yelp when she was shoved against the wall—but by nothing but air. She was still reeling in alarm, pulling uselessly against the invisible force that held her there, when his next words made her blood run cold.
"Uhhh, no you're not," she said with a nervous laugh, the color draining from her face as her eyes landed on the rope. Her heart hammered loudly in her ears. Shit.
"Listen, we can talk! Just like this! I'm unarmed now, it's totally fine! Look, I think we really got off to an awkward start so why don't we just start over because you are not touching me with that thing."
"Holding you like that will tire me out eventually and I'm not in the mood for the splitting headache I'll have tomorrow." He began unwinding the cord, creating looping cuffs to put around the duhjari woman's wrists. "My hope is to have an agreeable conversation where you prove amenable, and I can send you on your way never to bother me again." Cha parroted her words back at her, "we can make this easy or difficult, your choice."
Oh, he did not—!
Jayari opened her mouth, then shut it with a glower, her shoulders hunching.
"Ha ha, noted," she said under her breath, looking away. "Okay, but listen, there's a third option, y'know. Like you don't have to hold me or tie me. You have my knife, what am I gonna do? How're you doing this, anyway?" she said, giving another useless tug at the invisible force holding her. When she once again didn't budge, she let herself slouch.
It was an effort to stay outwardly calm when inside she was close to losing it. The guy had threatened to kill her—and her horse!
"Look, I just want my shit back, and for you to stop stealing my shit. Alright? That's it, that's the conversation!"
Cha could see her logic, but he also didn't want to have to fight her if she decided to be an idiot. Which was likely with how she followed a stranger down a long tunnel in the dark. She obviously had poor impulse control. He tossed the rope onto the bundle and moved toward the rack that held his sword. The ornate hilt consisted of a black crossguard reminiscent of spread dragon wings, the pommel the head of a black dragon with emeralds set in the eyes, while the grip was wrapped in a black leather. When Cha pulled the blade from its sheath, the silver metal emitted a gentle glow. A trophy from some Adelan fool that insulted his band and then challenged Cha to a duel, the sword was made of real argentite. He could likely retire off the sale of the sword, but what use was money to a man living like a hermit. An unbreakable blade that never lost its edge was much more valuable.
Moving to where his captive would be at the edge of his powers range, about two meters, Cha knelt in a combat ready pose, his sword held at his side. Then he released his hold on the woman and gave her a single word command.
"Sit."
The silence dragged on for far too long. Jayari had just begun to think maybe she'd said too much or said the wrong thing or pissed him off when the man suddenly moved and tossed the rope away. The brief relief she felt was promptly dashed when he pulled a sword from its sheath.
An Adelan sword.
Jayari felt her heart drop at the sight of that dragon. Adelan. Was he Adelan? Oh, shit. Her friend, Khaelin, had always warned her that she would bite off more than she could chew one day but she had always ignored the warning because what was the worst that could happen? She felt competent enough in her skills and knew the land like her own hand—
Problem was, she had never seen real danger.
But she knew of the Adelans and their deep rivalry and hatred. Her breath caught in her throat and a cool trickle of sweat ran down her temple as she followed the movement of his sword—was he planning on using that on her??—but she bit her tongue stubbornly to keep quiet and swallowed down her nerves.
He knelt, and suddenly the invisible force holding her released. With a startled yelp, she crumpled to her knees, unprepared to have to support herself—and a little jelly-legged, though she would never admit it.
Never looking away from him, she sat, pulling her legs into a cross-legged position. She moved slowly so he didn't get any ideas and sat straight-backed and glaring, attempting to look regal even as his nervous prisoner. "We already had the conversation," she said slowly. "I'm not sure what more there is to discuss. You're not going to want to keep me long, anyway. My people will look for me and that'll be bad for you."
"I want to be clear," Cha said. "I don't want to see you around here. I don't need you drawing attention to me. I'm out here to avoid people, not deal with nomads picking fights with me over a single rabbit." He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. He should have known better than to take the hare, but it had been dead for a while and he didn't know how soon the trapper would be back. "I liked this hill better when there was nobody else placing traps near it."
He scrutinized his... not-prisoner? She had similar chin lines to his mother. His own chin tattoos that his mother had given him, weren't too dissimilar either. He didn't know much about the individual Duhjari tribes, but he knew about them in general. His mother was half Duhjari after all. She was also half Esserni, and left her parents behind at young age to chase after his mercenary father. Theirs was a strange love story. This was not the time to let his thoughts wander to fonder times. He looked at his guests clothes and her brightly decorated braids. He reached up then, pulling away the scarf that covered his face. His own facial tattoos were now on display. A large Y like shape in dark red on his chin, given when he made his first kill, and a white diamond between his eyes, like you might see on a horse.
"My mother had tattoos similar to yours," Cha said to the woman. He let out a sigh. "I'll trade you for the hare. Stay." He moved to a chest near a curtained passage. He opened it and fished inside pulling out the dried hides of three hares, and a small antler knife, finely crafted by his own hand. He then walked to the woman and offered her the goods. "I'm Cha'Druku. What should I call you?"
Ohhhh man. Where did she even begin with this man? Jayari opened her mouth when he had the gall to get pissy over her being on land her people traveled yearly—then shut it, taking a deep breath in through her nose. She had to remember herself here; she was weaponless in his underground home, on his turf, with all his advantages. It wouldn't be wise to poke the bear in his own den.
One rabbit, he said! As if this was only about just this rabbit!
Ughhh...
She was still silently fuming and deciding how she wanted to approach this when he removed his scarf—and her eyes widened as she took him in.
He was Duhjari?
It made sense why he would speak the language, but she would have never expected one of their own to be such a brazen thief. And why was he alone? He wasn't Banyur; was he an exile from his own tribe, living out here as a hermit? Made sense, if he was stealing like a weasel.
Before she could call him out on that, he was up and moving, offering a "trade".
The knife was nice, but those skins...
"You're literally trading me back the hares you stole," she blurted, deadpan, her expression blank as she flicked her eyes from the skins back to him. She pointed at the skins. "One, two, three—yep, the exact number of tampered, hare-less snares I've found."
She rubbed her face, taking in another breath. "Spirits, this is so dumb. Jayari. I'm Jayari. And you're..." She lifted an eyebrow. "'Wild Horse', huh? So where's your herd? You're Duhjari?"
Cha made a face of bored irritation, turning away he tapped the flat of his sword against his thigh. "No herd. My mother was half Duhjari, half Esserni." He went back into the chest and pulled out a buck skin and a wolf pelt. He returned to Jayari and put them in front of her. "I was born and raised in a mercenary band."
Jayari watched him lay out the skins, blinking slowly. That was more like it. She reached out to examine them, listening as he spoke (mixed and estranged from the tribes, hm? Interesting...) until he casually sprinkled in a new, unfamiliar word as though she should know it. She raised her head, brow creased in puzzlement.
"What's 'mercenary'?" she asked, her tongue fumbling a little over the foreign word.
Cha had spoken the word in Serenian. He thought on languages Jayari may have encountered. To convey understanding he could have used one of the Adelan tribal tongues of those that traded with the Duhjari, but he could not think of one. There was no 'Adelan' word for the term, and the Adelans had adopted the Serenian word also. So he was instead forced to explain like to a child.
"At its simplest," Cha explained, "a mercenary is a warrior that fights other people's battles for payment." He moved away from Jayari and kneeled in his action ready pose again. "But mercenary can be much more complicated. There are as many varying kinds as there are different plants, animals, and tribes on the plain. My parents and I myself were part of a band that was loyal to each other with a bond stronger than tribe or family. We fought for coin or supplies, but we upheld our honor and morals. We did not fight for cruel or evil men." He paused, his thoughts growing somber. "They are all dead now, I am the last." Another moment of hesitation and Cha stood, returning his sword to its sheath, and dismissing Jayari with a wave of his hand and a single word.
"Go."
So...mercenaries basically did all the fighting for people too cowardly to do it themselves...?
That was what Jayari got from that, at least. They did the dirty work--
And died for battles that weren't even their own.
That was what happened when Duhjari strayed, or so she had always been told. It wasn't his fault, it probably began with his grandparents if his mother was half. She had heard of Duhjari leaving before, but had always been told it never ended well. He was proof of it, the last survivor of a sad circumstance.
Jayari didn't understand it, but it wasn't really her business. Her business was resolving their issue and then getting out of here as soon as possible in one piece to trundle back to her home and lick her wounded pride in peace. She honestly wasn't so certain the issue had been resolved, since he never said anything about his thievery and just plied her with skins, but...maybe that was his way of saying sorry and get out of my hair?
Either way, some valuable lessons had been learned: don't follow crazy seemingly cowardly strangers down dark holes, for one.
At least not without a really good weapon.
He dismissed her, and Jayari quickly sheathed the antler knife in her boot and scooped the skins up into her arms. "I'll assume this is the apology," she said as she backed up toward the tunnel, keeping her eyes on him even though his blade was sheathed. "Just don't do it again, alright? I'll stay away from you, you stay away from my traps. Deal? Deal."
And then she turned and slipped into the tunnel, and only then could she truly breathe.
Cha let out a deep sigh after Jayari left, relaxing the tension in his body. That could have been worse. He noticed the cut on her face and had thought to offer salve, but he just wanted her gone as soon as possible. He was exhausted, not from using his telekinesis, from having to maintain his humanity. It had been so long since he interacted with another living soul. All he had these days were the ghosts of his friends and family to keep him company. Not in the literal sense, thankfully, but it might as well have been, for the insanity his loneliness was driving him toward was just as bleak. He had already forgotten her face, but not the tattoos, not the stern look in her eyes. Those were too much like his mother for him to forget. He sat in his cave, he refused to think of this as his home. His home had died with his band.
He couldn't regain his calm. Cha was agitated for no reason other than Jayari had made him think of those he lost, especially his mother. He came to the Plains to be near his mothers origin. She had never really known the plains herself, but she told stories from her mother fondly. She got this wistful look in her eye, like remembering a pleasant dream. She ran away from Essyrn and her planned out life there to chase love and adventure. Cha had had enough of adventuring, and love only brought pain. He let out primal shout of pure anger. Channeling his sadness into anger kept it at bay. Releasing the anger explosively helped him get control again.
The mercenary turned hermit threw off the thoughts, pushed down the emotions, and returned to his cold emotionless self. His motions were automatic as he moved to the back room where he processed the three hares he'd wrapped up in his bundle. He was relieved to be back where he kept all the animals he processed. Back where he could be numb. Back where he could deny his loneliness. Back where he was slowly driving himself insane.
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?"
Cha had taken a few hours to get back to normal. Then he remembered the knife that he'd made Jayari drop and he'd then pushed away. He went to fetch it and set it on the low table he used to eat at. There it sat for the next days, until he heard the woman call down to him from above. He'd had a feeling she might return for the blade. An obsidian knife of such fine craftsmanship would be valuable to anyone, let alone a nomadic people like the Duhjari. It was set into a nice wooden grip and wrapped with leather. Luckily it had not chipped when he'd pushed it aside.
He paused in his workout to call back up to her. "I'm here." He said simply. Then, "I have your knife. Come down." He was not inclined to dress so he could crawl up the tunnel just to return the blade.
That was...promising, maybe? He didn't sound like he wanted to gut her, at least, but she had been hoping he would come up rather than make her go down. Still, it had to be a good sign that he'd kept her knife and intended to return it. No hard feelings, maybe? Letting out a breath that took some of her tension with it, Jayari shrugged off her quiver and set her bow aside once more.
"You're not gonna be all weird and almost tie me up again, are you?" she called down to him as she crawled down.
"No," was all he said in response. Cha was not going to shout whole sentences when he was in the middle of calisthenics. He continued his sit ups. Breathing heavy with the continued exertion. He had the mushrooms uncovered to light the front room and a gentle glow from a small fire could be seen through the open curtain to the back room. Even though the earth was cold and outside was cold, within his cave, it was decently warm. For this reason Cha wore only his linen braies as he exercised. Most of his tattoos were on full display, as were many of the scars across his body. In his short twenty-six years, Cha had seen much.
Jayari snorted at his curt response, but it was reassuring, at least, that they might be past all that. She crawled the rest of the way down and soon came out into that familiar chamber, this time without light blaring in her face and an arrow aimed at her.
Rising to her feet and dusting off her knees, she gave a quick glance around the room before she saw movement to the right. There he was, half dressed and doing sit-ups.
For a moment, she said nothing. Instead, she just watched. He was positively covered in ink, but they were no designs she was familiar with; they didn't look like any Duhjari tattoos she had ever seen. And then there were the scars...
Realizing she was staring, she jolted and cleared her throat. "Thanks for watching over my knife," she said to break the ice. "That's...nice of you." She toyed with the end of a braid. How to broach this...?
Stepping further into the room, she turned in a slow circle to take it in properly. The last time she'd been here, she hadn't exactly been paying much attention to anything but him. "Nice place you've got here. Was it an old den or did you do it all yourself?"
Cha stopped his sit-ups and did a backward somersault to stand. He moved to the low table where he grabbed a linen rag and began patting himself dry. He tucked it into his wasteland and reached for the knife. He didn't intentionally delay answering Jayari, he simply didn't realize he wasn't answering. His thoughts were not present in the moment, instead checking boxes on tasks complete for the day, rearranging others due to this somewhat expected intrusion. He flipped the blade over in his hand as he walked to his guest, handing her the handle first. At this time her words finally made it into his brain and he answered her.
"It was dire badger sett."
It was rather awkward standing there while the silence stretched and Cha'Druku did his thing, mopping up sweat at his leisure. Worse, it drew her eye to look him over again, only this time to notice how young he was.
He didn't look much older than her. A few years, maybe, but...for some reason he had seemed so much older during that first meeting...
He handed her the knife, and she snapped back to awareness and carefully took it, sheathing it at her belt. "Ah, yeah. Dire badgers. Fierce things, those." Shit. She went back to fussing with her braid, twisting one of the beads between her fingers.
"Sooo...thanks for my knife back. Hey, speaking of which, while we're exchanging goods, do you have anymore skins you'd be willing to trade? I've got more rabbits. You can have them."
Cha narrowed his eyes at Jayari. "You didn't come back for your knife. You want to trade. I don't need your meat, I have more meat than I need." He turned to walk back to the spot he was exercising at. "You can leave now. And you have no reason to return again."
"Wait!" Jayari said, and started to reach for him before she thought better of it. She snatched her hand back and followed after him instead.
"Hold on, okay, you don't need meat, alright, noted! But maybe there's something else you'd want? We have other stuff!"
"I don't need anything but what I gather myself. I hunt and trap and I have a well." Cha pointed to the lid covering his well in the corner. "I provide for myself."
Jayari couldn't help it; she let out a frustrated groan toward the ceiling.
"Alright, you're self-sufficient, fantastic. Can you just maybe..." She heaved a sigh, shoulders slouching.
"Look, I need to go back home with something. I...kind of talked you up to my tribe. It'd be...pretty awkward going back with nothing, see."
"So, what? You're going to give me three hares that I don't need for what exactly?" He crossed to his dry chest opening it and pointing in. "Perfectly good skins that I can make into clothes and blankets? Bones and antlers that I can make weapons or other things out of?" He next opened the barrel next to the chest. "Dried meats that I can keep over months to eat when hunting is scarce?" He then opened a much smaller chest that let out a cold fog. "Fresh meat and fish that I can cook and enjoy with fresh roots and other plants?" He hesitated there for a moment. "The only thing I'm ever really short on is edible plants." He thought for a moment, "I could also use new braise. Do you have linen or plants like bear grass that I can make cloth from?" Now that he was thinking about wants and not needs, "what about cheese? If not cheese, milk to make it from?"
Jayari felt her cheeks color as he showed off exactly how little use he had for anything she had to offer because yes, she was quite aware of how foolish she sounded now. There was nothing he wanted, so...guess that was that. She'd wasted everyone's time and would now have to go home and make up some dumb story about how he'd moved on or something and hope no one stumbled upon him the same way she had.
Because while she was afforded a great deal of freedom, it was only because her father trusted her not to do stupid things. This was not the first stupid thing she had done, and she did not want him to have second thoughts because his heir was unnecessarily putting herself at risk.
She was about to concede and slink away when he said something that made her perk up.
"Bear grass? Milk and cheese?" She stared at him. "Uh, yeah, duh, we have milk and cheese for days..."
She trailed off. It hadn't even occurred to her to offer those things because it was so obvious to her that they had them and surely if it was something he wanted, it would have been the first thing he asked for since it was guaranteed they'd have it. If he was Duhjari, he would know that many of them kept goats and that were renowned for their kefir and kumis—except he wasn't Duhjari. Not really. Only in blood. She wasn't sure how much culture his mother would teach him.
"Would those be something you'd want? Because I could trade you that!"
"Milk and cheese are things I want. I do not need them. What I need are vegetables, roots, herbs, fruit if you have it." Now that he was interested in trade Cha was less cold, but he still didn't seem enthusiastic. He was more business like, less grumpy hermit. "My food gets me by and I've staved off scurvy, but I could use more variety and nutrition."
"Oh, yeah, we have that, too," Jayari said slowly, and folded her arms over her chest.
"Sooo...does this mean we can maybe come to some sort of a deal? Since, as it turns out, we do have things you want—er, need," she said, unable to hide a small spark of amusement.
"I'll take the hares and give you three buck skins if you give your word you'll bring back plants that can be kept for long periods of time," Cha told Jayari. "Anything extra you bring I will trade you for then."
"Deal," Jayari said, hand over her heart. "We have dried berries and beans and vegetables—those will keep for a while! We can surely spare some cheese and milk, too. We're in need of leather and weapons; we dealt with a dragon a bit ago that depleted a lot of our resources. So if that all sounds agreeable to you...well, I guess I'll grab you the hares and be outta your hair for a day."
"You dealt with a dragon," Cha asked perking up. "What color? Did it have a rider? Do you have the dragon? I can make good things from dragon parts."
That was definitely the most animated she'd seen him yet, aside from the part where he was running from her and telling her to fuck off. For a second she perked with interest as well—and then deflated again at his questions.
"No, unfortunately. It got away—after killing a bunch of our goats for sport. We injured it, but only got a couple scales for all the hassle." She scowled at that, tapping her foot, still frustrated over the entire situation. "It was black and young and riderless and thoroughly awful."
"That's unfortunate," Cha replied. "I killed a red dragon welp and its mother. Not an Adelan dragon mind you, but it was still quite fierce." He turned to show her his left shoulder blade. There was a burn scar that had been healed partially by magic with a tattoo of a slain red dragon and its baby. "She terrorized a town and my band was hired to kill her." He pointed to a red club in his rack of weapons lined with bright white dragons teeth. "I used the welp's teeth and horn to make a dragon garland baton."
"That's an impressive scar," Jayari admitted, studying the tattoo. "More impressive still is that it's not bigger. How'd you all pull that off?"
Was he actually...talking to her? Like a normal person and shit? It was kind of weird.
She motioned to the baton. "What would you want for something like that?"
"The scar was much worse and larger before our cleric healed it," Cha told Jayari. "We had thirty mercenaries to fight the dragon and her welp. We also poisoned a goat and set it out as bait. Once she ate it she was weakened." Cha walked over and picked up the baton as he continued to speak, "we followed her back to her nest and fought her there. We only lost one man." Cha swung the baton experimentally twirled it in his hand and then spoke a peculiar word. "Dumahi!" A dark red fire wreathed the bat and Cha spun it as he moved in a martial dance. After a few quick movements he spoke again, extinguishing the flame. "Nelona!" He placed it back in its spot and turned to Jayari. "I don't think there is a price you could pay for such a thing."
Poison...bait...that was something she had never considered. Granted, they didn't encounter many dragons; they tried their best to give the beasts a wide berth.
But that wasn't a bad idea, if the fledgling decided to stay arou—
"Whoa!" Jayari yelped when the baton burst into flame, hopping back reflexively and throwing her hands up. Her heart jumped in alarm, because how?! He had not ignited it upon anything, it just lit itself! And then, just like that, with another word the flame was gone and Cha'Druku had finished showing off.
"What...how...how'd you do that?" Alright, so she was officially done being annoyed by him and the situation she was in and had officially shifted over to Fully Invested in her Curiosity. Relaxing after the initial shock, she stepped closer. "That was amazing! Was that you? Or it? Was that the dragon's flame? Is that magic? Can you do it again?"
Cha felt instant regret at showing off the batons magic. He should have known better. The Duhjari didn't have access to the amount of magic or magic items that most large countries did. Their simple way of life, even among those with more magic, paled in comparison to the Serenian and Adelan mages.
"The magic came from the baton," Cha explained. "It was enchanted by a wizard in Serendipity. As long as you know the key words anyone can use the power. I can show you more things another time. I doubt you would have anything worth trading for my magic items. Maybe a metal weapon though."
Figured something like that would be priceless to him. Knowing she couldn't possess it didn't dampen her fascination, though.
"Serendipity...that's a 'city', right?" Jayari mused, thinking over what she knew of the world beyond the plains. It wasn't much. She shrugged the thought away.
"Do you have magic? Of your own? You flew through the air and broke the ground and moved the snow. Was that an item too? Or was that you?"
Serendipity. A city? Cha had figured the nomads would at least know about countries. "Serendipity is larger than the Plains, and is the Kingdom that once conquered Adela." He was growing impatient. Mention of the dragon had perked him up, but he was not interested in talking about himself or his telekinesis. "The power is my own. It's one of the many abilities that Adelans can have. And I did not fly, I simply jumped and used my power to push away from the ground. When I broke the ground I pushed down on it with my power as I ran, crushing the frozen earth." Cha moved to pick up a mug from his low table and took a drink. "How long will it take for you to return? Tomorrow? Or perhaps the day after?"
ERK.
All the excitement and intrigue she felt came to a screeching halt, and suddenly she remembered how much she disliked him.
The power is my own. It's one of the many abilities that Adelans can have.
"You're Adelan?" she blurted, eyes narrowing. She thought he was Duhjari—but then again, he was only a quarter and had never mentioned his father. She might not be well versed in all the nations and tribes and cities of the world, but Adela was the one that everyone knew about—the ones that drove the Duhjari further into the plains and let their dragons feed on their horses.
Her interest evaporated. She remembered how he'd thieved and insulted her and held her at the point of his arrow. How had she forgotten all that just because he'd swung around a fiery bat? Jayari turned toward the tunnel.
"I can be back in a day or two. Depends on the weather. I'll get you your rabbits." And then she turned to crawl back up and fetch them, quickly so as not to spend another second in the enemy's den.
Cha caught that. So she didn't like that he had Adelan blood. He always thought that was interesting. The Duhjari were technically Adelans but territorial disputes pushed the horse nomads out of the country. Well he didn't care about their disputes. He didn't even know how much Adelan blood he had. His father didn't know his own origins. Such mixed and diluted blood with an untraceable background was common among mercenaries born in the life. As long as she brought him what he needed, Jayari's xenophobia was of no consequence to him. She was just a nomad after all.
Two days passed before Jayari returned, Zala weighed down by saddlebags filled with goods.
It was snowing lightly, the flakes blowing around her face, and through the haze of snow she could see dark clouds in the distance that spoke of later trouble. But that wouldn't be an issue for hours. There was plenty of time left in the day to get the trade over with and get back home before the weather turned—and while she would have preferred not to cut it so close, she also didn't want to leave him waiting too long.
She had intended to come the next day, but someone sighted a dragon. It wasn't close enough to identity—was it the same one or a new one?—but it was enough to warrant caution and delay the trip, just in case.
And so she stopped at the edge of Cha'Druku's den, approaching it again as she had the other day.
"Cha'Druku! It's me again, Jayari. If you're in there, come on up. I'm not carrying everything down there on my own."
Besides, there was a chance he might not even want it all.
Cha was not in his front room today. In fact he was not in his cave at all when Jayari arrived. He was out collecting edible plants, and had been since that morning. He did not travel far though, as it was not advantageous to stray too far from home when the weather could turn nasty at any moment. Digging up potatoes and wild onions had proved a challenge. Luckily the stream that ran near his cave wasn't too far. Some cattails were growing along the shore up stream from the beavers he'd been trapping earlier that year. He already taken a few, but he had decided to dig up a few more. He was returning when he saw Jayari on her horse in the distance. He was not the type to call out, and she obviously had not seen him. She would arrive several minutes before him, but she could wait.
No answer. She tried again a few times but louder, in case he was sleeping or something, but when there was still no response her annoyance (and concern) grew. He was either out doing something (likely), really deeply asleep (maybe possible? She somehow doubted it), or dead (least plausible but not impossible!).
With the snow falling and covering up tracks, there was no way to verify option number one, which left the last two—both things she could confirm.
Sighing, Jayari waited a little longer, stroking Zala's velvety nose and pulling her hood down tighter around her face to ward off the stinging flakes that were starting to come down a little harder now. Alright, so how long did she give him before she left? She couldn't wait here all day with no clue as to what was happening.
...Or what if he'd just flat out moved on? He didn't like people and he didn't like the fact that she'd found him. What if since she hadn't come yesterday, he'd just packed up and left? It sounded ridiculous even as she thought it; he had so much stuff, how would he transport it all so quickly and to where? And in this weather?
It wasn't realistic. There was no way.
But it's not impossible, whisperedher anxiety.
Shit. Couldn't argue with that.
Jayari glanced around one last time for any signs of him, then cursed under her breath, bouncing on her toes with nervous energy—and to just keep warm. Fine. Whatever. She'd just take a quick peek, just to see what was going on. If he'd packed up, she'd get her ass back home and get on with her life. If he was just out...guess she was waiting a bit longer.
And so she crawled down the tunnel again and into his living space, dusted herself off, and looked around. Everything looked to be where it should be and there was no smell of death. "You better not have croaked or something," she grumbled, intensely uncomfortable now that she was there, since she absolutely knew she shouldn't be. She stood there for a moment, then spun around to leave.
"Oookay. Uh. Right. Everything looks good. Good to know." He was just out. Of course he was. It was always the most obvious answer and she shouldn't have come down here at all.
She started to head back up.
Cha arrived to find a lone horse, laden with saddle bags and no rider. He knew it was Jayari's horse, but he wasn't sure he'd heard the horses name. That was fine though. He didn't need to know the horses name to pay its neck and feed it some dried berries from his pocket. She was a good horse. She only nickered a little as he approached. She sniffed his outstretched hand, and then took the berries he offered as he patted her neck. Cha could hear Jayari crawling out of the tunnel. She'd be out soon. In the meantime, he inspected her bow and arrows. The craftsmanship was good, but lacked refinement. Perhaps knowledge was another thing he could trade to her tribe.
When Jayari climbed up out of the tunnel—yeah. Of course the first thing she saw was Cha'Druku, right there, petting her horse.
She froze there half out of the tunnel, still on hands and knees, and her face heated spectacularly. "I can explain."
"What is there to explain," Cha asked. "You went into my home looking for me. It is good I did not set traps. I only do that if I plan on being away for a while."
"Oh." Jayari blinked at him, then rose to her feet and shook some snow off her shoulders.
"You're not...? Never mind." It was a fat more chill reaction than she had expected, but no complaints there! "Yeah. You didn't answer so...anyway."
Moving on!
Stepping closer to Zala, she motioned at her saddlebags. "Feel free to check out the goods, decide what you wanna trade for. Probably easier doing it out here than hauling it all down first."
"I'm sure it's fine," Cha said. "Bring it all and we'll decide what you'll take as payment." He lifted one of the saddlebags off the horse and started walking up the gentle slope past his tunnel entrance.
Jayari lifted the two remaining, smaller saddlebags and followed after Cha'Druku, quickly catching up.
"There's another way in?" she asked.
Leading the way up the hill to a small hatch hidden in a tree stump, Cha pulled it open and grabbed a rope that was concealed within. "Not for us," he said, attaching the saddlebag to the end of the rope. "We'll lower them through this chute. And then sort it after we get inside."
Once Cha'Druku's bag was handled, Jayari passed the other two over to him so he could send them down as well.
"Interesting..." she murmured, peeking down the hole best as she could. She looked back up at him, arching an eyebrow.
"How long have you been here?"
Cha attached the other two bags and began lowering them down. "I've been here about a year."
"I see," she murmured, then, "Why not in the cities like the other Adelans?"
"Most Adelan's do not live in cities," Cha corrected. "And I'm not Adelan. My father had some amount of Adelan blood, we know because he could move objects with his mind, though very weakly. Not like the strength my ability to push." Cha felt the load slacken, and he hooked up the rope and closed the hidden hatch. "I came out here to feel close to my mother, and to avoid other people." He then began to walk back down the hill to the entrance of his cave.
Jayari trailed after him, pulling her coat tighter around her as the snowfall grew thicker.
"Hmm. Well, hard to feel close to anyone when you're pushing everyone away, huh?"
Had they been facing each other Jayari would have seen Cha's eyes narrow in a glare. "My mother is dead. I'm here to be in the land she told me fond stories of, not to be around people."
"Can't exactly learn about her people without being around people, is all I'm saying," Jayari said. "I mean, I guess unless she was kicked out or something for getting with an Adelan."
The words left her mouth before she realized they were coming and her body went tense. "Uh, no offense to her, just saying. I have an uncle that got kicked out, too."
"My mother was not kicked out," Cha explained. "My grandmother left the Duhjari to marry an Essyrni merchant. As a result my mother was born in Essyrn to a Duhjari mother and Essyrni father." When they got to the bottom of the hill, Cha did not wait, and immediately moved to enter. "My mother told me stories of the flora and fauna of the Plains. The same stories were told to my mother by my grandmother."
"Wild," Jayari murmured as she entered after Cha'Druku, shaking her head. "I can't imagine leaving or even wanting to."
Not that it was her business or that she really cared, but talking was better than silence, at least.
"So you're just gonna live here alone forever or what?"
"That was the idea," Cha confirmed. "At least for now." He then got on the ground and began the crawl down into his cave.
Jayari waited a little to give him some space before following after him, not wanting to be up his butt. "Sounds pretty lame, if I'm being honest. Like...doesn't it get lonely? What do you even do for fun? And if you get badly hurt, well, shit, guess you're just screwed?"
"I don't do things for fun," Cha retorted. "The point of being alone is to avoid people. Loneliness doesn't factor in," he lied. "If I get badly injured then I made a mistake, and if I survive I will have learned a valuable lesson. Otherwise I'm dead. At that point why worry about it?"
"I mean, you'd have plenty of time to worry if you die a slow and miserable death trapped somewhere because your roof caved in and you don't have anyone who'd notice you're missing," Jayari retorted with a roll of her eyes.
"Just as an example of things that could happen to give you plenty of time to be worried about your end. I dunno, it's not my business, it just sounds super boring."
"Would you feel the same if you watched all your friends and loved ones die around you on a bloody battlefield while you could do nothing?" Cha was obviously growing agitated. This girl knew nothing of his life, of his pain. "I do not wish to form more bonds to lose. I'm perfectly. Fine. Alone."
Jayari clamped her mouth shut at that. No, she definitely could not say how she would feel, one way or the other, but she still couldn't fathom the idea of being alone—tragedy or not. Of course she had nothing to compare to such an unimaginable loss, but...damn.
Living like this seemed like living just for the sake of it. What kind of life was that?
"If you say so," she said with a shrug.
When Cha reached the end of his tunnel, he stood and turned on his lantern. He did not aim it like a spotlight this time, but opened the hood so that the light could spill out into the room. From there he moved to the curtain that led to his kitchen and work area. Toward the back of the room the rope came down from a hole in the ceiling and the bags were there on the floor. He pulled the knots loose and carried the bags back to the front room for Jayari to unpack and show him the contents.
Finally! Time to get this over with and hopefully be done with him for a while.
Jayari had a suspicion the feeling was mutual.
She stood and waited as he fetched the bags, not straying from her spot since she had never been invited further inside—which seemed especially important after she'd snuck inside earlier. It was nice indoors, warm enough that she flipped her hood down and enjoyed breathing something other than freezing air.
Cha'Druku didn't take long. When he set them down, she knelt and started to unpack them.
"Alright, so getting right to it..." She heaved out a large sack and untied it, opening it so he could see inside . "Beans." Another sack. "Corn." Dried, of course. "Then there's this..." Sweet potatoes.
"Brought some dried berries, too...but these aren't the most exciting ones."
Another bag revealed leather pouches which she opened to reveal cheese and butter, with some ceramic containers in the same saddlebag that were filled with goat milk and kefir. Another, smaller leather bag contained kumis. "Whatcha think?"
Cha stepped away from Jayari to open his dry chest. He opened it and began flipping through. He pulled out a few furs and pelts and folded them over his arm. He then pulled out a couple other items before returning to Jayari. He laid them out in front of her. Several animal hides; three deer, one wolf, two hare and five beaver. Then he set down a four large canines, and ten large claws all from what was likely a large dire badger. "As I said, I'll take it all. Now from what I'm willing to part with, you decide what you want."
Jayari examined the pelts, which were of the sort of quality she anticipated from him, if the previous pelts were anything to go by. But among the expected skins were new ones: beaver! Perfect for warm, waterproof garments and not an animal they trapped often.
And then there were the claws and teeth...
She was starved for choice.
"These, definitely," she said, motioning to the beaver pelts. "The deer and wolf as well. And as many of those as you think all that's worth." Because to be honest, she didn't recognize that animal at all, but felt the kumis alone was worth something! He certainly didn't have any horses and she wasn't certain how much alcohol a hermit like him had access to. With all his talk of trauma, seemed like that might be useful on rough nights—or just to unwind.
Cha raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You think what you brought is worth all this? Including dire badger teeth and claws? These claws are strong enough to dig through solid stone. The teeth can crush the shell of the iron beetle." He shook his head at the girl and gave her a bemused smirk. "I will give you all this, if you bring back a sack of manoomin. Today. Can you do that?"
Jayari felt her cheeks heat, her shoulders hitching up. She was doing her best here! She was only guessing at the value of things; her strength and interest was in fighting and all that so she had never had to negotiate a trade before—
—which, she realized suddenly, was maybe the real reason her father had put her up to this. Practice.
With a sigh, she deflated a little. Yeah, those definitely sounded worth more than a little alcohol and some beans and corn.
And while she was not looking forward to another round trip in the cold...
"...I think I can manage that."
"Good," Cha said, and began rolling the hides to pack in the bags as best as they would fit. "I'll tie the bags up to the rope. Be sure to close the hatch properly after you pull them up."
"Nah, I'll just leave it wide open to the elements," Jayari said as she turned to crawl back up, pausing an looking back at him before she did.
"Kidding, kidding. I'll close it properly, promise. And, uh, by the way...thanks for doing business?" Was that what people said? Ah, whatever. For all her annoyance with him, she was at least grateful he hadn't shot her and was willing to cooperate, so that was something. "Be back soon. Don't go anywhere."
And then she was heading back up through the tunnel.
Silence stretched for a while as she crawled. And then...
"Uhhh...Cha'Druku? There's a bit of a problem..."
Cha had gone to the back and tied the bags, and had come back into the front room planning to make himself some food when Jayari came back into his cave. A problem. "What kind of problem?"
"Uhh..." Jayari grimaced. He was going to love this about as much as she did.
"Like...blizzard problems. I-can't-go-out-there problems."
Cha was less than pleased, but a person had to have proper priorities in any situation. "How's the horse?"
"Zala? She'll be okay," Jayari said as she plopped onto the ground with a sigh. "She was born on the plains here and she knows the way home." She drew her knees to her chest and propped her chin atop them.
"Don't act worried about her. You wanted to eat her earlier."
Cha let out a bark of a laugh. "I did not want to eat your horse. I've eaten horse, it wasn't terrible but not what I would prefer." Cha chuckled a little. "I knew that threatening to eat a Duhjari's horse would get a reaction. It is always good to know your opponents weakness."
Jayari held up a hand, palm out, making a face. "I don't wanna hear it! I don't want to know about your...horse eating. How could you even do that with your mother's stories in your ears? Did she teach you nothing about that part?"
"It was an enemy's horse," Cha told Jayari. "It had died in battle, and our supplies had been destroyed. You do what you can to survive."
Jayari wrinkled her nose at that, her expression screwed up with skepticism. "Sooo...that mean you'd eat a person if you had to?"
Because that was basically the same thing in her eyes.
Cha considered for a moment. "If it was the only way to survive and they were already dead, I'm gonna have to go with yes. Why would I choose death over a little cannibalism?"
Jayari eyed him, eyebrow raised. "...would it make a difference if it was a kid or an old person or...?"
Cha was a little perturbed by the question. "Why are you asking such weird questions?"
Jayari shrugged, letting out a sigh. "I'm stuck here for a bit, so...it's a bit more entertaining than just staring at the walls, yeah?"
"Well I don't think you're in for much fun. I'm not really interested in conversation." As he spoke, Cha moved away and began tidying up what little was out of place. Then he went back to his dry chest and pulled out a pice of antler and moved toward the curtain.
"I have work to do. Don't touch anything."
"Seriously?"
With an agitated huff, Jayari rose to her feet and trailed behind him. "So what am I supposed to do? I was just kidding about the staring at the walls thing! You don't actually expect me to—oh, hey."
She crossed the room suddenly and pulled a strange, circular blade from one of his weapons racks. "The shit is this? Do you like cut grass with this or...?"
"Don't TOUCH!" With his shout Cha pushed the chakram out of Jayari's hand. It crackled with electricity as it flew through the air and stuck into the far wall. "You could have been seriously hurt you fool!" He walked over and put his hand into the half-gauntlet that hung next to where the chakram had hung. "There are dangerous things in here. I did not tell you not to touch simply to be bossy." He reached his hand out toward the circular weapon and it returned to the guarded hand. It crackled with electricity again as it flew and stayed live with energy even in his hand. Only when he placed it down on the rack did the energy dissipate. Cha then returned the gauntlet to its place. "Without the paired gauntlet all that lightning would have been sent right into you." It was only once he returned his attention to the girl that he noticed her clutching her hand. She'd been cut in her palm. He visibly deflated, "I have salve and bandages," and went to a chest of drawers next to his supply crates. "My cave is not a safe place for strangers that do not know the dangers. I keep tools and weapons that are uncommon or rare." He pulled a clean bandage and a salve as well as a sewing kit from the drawers before beckoning her sit at his low table. "Have you ever had stitches?"
Cha'Druku's shout, sudden as a thunderclap, made Jayari's heart leap into her throat. "Hey—!" she started, but she cut off with a yelp and a flinch as he knocked the chakram from her hand. It flew from her, thunking against the wall.
And it was only when she noticed it sparking and crackling ominously that she realized the danger she'd been in.
She stared at it, wide-eyed, heart hammering away, everything she had been about to shout at him dead on her tongue as Cha'Druku scolded her. That was...lightning?
And he was saying she could have been—?
A white-hot flash of pain seared across her palm, cutting off her thoughts, and Cha'Druku's rant suddenly reduced to background noise. Grimacing, Jayari glanced down at her hand—and her breath hissed out through her teeth. Her hand was gashed open, a good, deep cut, and blood was dripping everywhere.
Which she was just certain Cha'Druku would love.
Clutching it with her other hand, she squeezed it tight in an effort to staunch the bleeding and shot the man an sheepish look when he noticed her predicament.
"...Sorry," she muttered, shoulders hunched as she ducked her face away from him to hide the color rising in her cheeks. "I seriously just thought you were being a dick." She winced at her own words. "Er, yeah. Guess I deserved that."
With a deflated sigh of her own, she sank down onto her knees at his table, still holding her hand cradled against her chest. "Anyway, uh, no. Never had stitches. Broke my wrist if that counts?"
Oh, she really didn't like where this was going, and she did not like the look of that sewing kit. She chewed her lip, nodding at it.
"Surely that's not necessary."
Cha poured some corn alcohol onto a small cloth and wiped down the table before pouring some into his hands and rubbing them together. Then he held out his hand to Jayari expectantly. "Depends on how deep it is. Lemme see."
Reluctantly, Jayari held her hand out to him—and blood quickly pooled in her hand as the cut reopened. She winced, biting the inside of her cheek as it throbbed and burned angrily.
"I'm...sure it looks worse than it is," she said weakly.
Cha took Jayari's hand in his and gently pulled her fingers completely straight. He used a white cloth from inside the sewing kit to dab her hand, soaking up the blood. It was fairly deep, and would likely leave a scar if treated poorly.
"I'm going to clean it and remove the pain," he told her. He pulled out a little green bead. He crushed it between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkled the resulting powder on the cut. "That is called a snake tear.," Cha explained. "It's made from a bunch of medicinal plants steeped in horse urine and boiled into a paste. The paste is mixed with dried ground up magical mushrooms from the Draconi Forest, and then shaped into the beads and then baked in the sun." The powder fizzed on the wound and within seconds any pain would be gone. He then set her hand on the table and pulled out a crescent shaped needle.
"It's definitely going to need stitches," he said, as he pulled a spool of thread out and began working the thread through the eye of the needle.
Remove the pain?
Jayari listened to Cha'Druku's explanation, but she had to look away as soon as the green powder started fizzing on the wound...and soon she looked a little green around the edges, as well. It was so stupid. She could handle blood and guts just fine; she hunted, cleaned, and dressed her kills and was quite used to having her hands covered in offal. Yet when it came to her own blood and injuries?
Yeah, she didn't wanna see it.
"Didja make it yourself?" she asked, and had to look at her hand when the pain vanished, as though to check that she was still injured. Yep. Still gross and bloody and fizzing. She looked away again, breathing slowly out her nose to keep from getting too queasy.
Then came the giant-ass needle. Jayari felt the blood drain from her face, but she swallowed hard and kept her eyes on the far wall.
"Uhh...thanks, by the way," she said, trying to mask her nerves. "For doing this. Especially after I've been such an asshole. I mean, granted, you were too but—still. Alright, I'll shut up. Don't poke the guy with the huge-ass needle, right?"
"You're still going to feel the pressure from the stitching but you won't feel pain." He got the catgut through the needle and tied off. He then began to use a ladder stitch, commonly used to mend garment seams, to sew Jayari's wounded palm. He did it in steady, precise motions. When he pulled it tight, the wound neatly closed, and he tied it off before cutting the excess away. He then spread a salve across the wound before wrapping it in a clean cloth.
"You're going to have to be careful with the wound, or it will open back up."
Jayari couldn't watch as he worked, but she could feel the pressure and his touch—and it a was weird and kind of gross sensation, mostly because she knew what he was doing even if she couldn't see it.
And gods, but he was so serious! Here she was trying to lighten the mood and he didn't crack a bit! No reaction, no nothing, not even an irritated roll of his eyes or "shut up."
Sighing, she shut up anyway as he worked, only looking over when she felt him wrapping her hand with cloth. When it was done, she gently touched her hand, lightly prodding the wound and still feeling nothing. "This is...so weird," she said. "How long does it stay numb? Do I have to do anything with the stitches as it heals?"
"Besides being careful not to break the suture until the wound heals," Cha said, "you don't need to do anything except keep it clean and mostly dry." He was neatly packing things away. He wiped some of the corn alcohol from the cloth on the needle to clean it before tucking them both away.
"The stitching is made of stretched sheep intestine. It'll dissolve on its own in two lunar cycles." He finished cleaning up, walking over to put things in his storage before turning back to Jayari.
"Well I suppose I should feed you."
Oh boy. The way he said it. it was like he was talking about an annoying yet pitiful dog that had somehow showed up at his door begging for scraps. Jayari hunched her shoulders sheepishly, fussing with a braid.
"Uhh...I mean, I'm sure the storm'll clear up soon. You don't have to," she said, even as her stomach reminded her with a grumble that she hadn't eaten since morning. But maybe she was feeling just a little embarrassed after wounding herself so stupidly.
"It's fine," Cha said, going to his cold storage. He pulled out some fresh meat, and a few fresh vegetables, which were becoming more scarce in this cold season, and fetched a few things from the nearby dry storage.
"If you want to watch and make sure I don't poison you, there is a stool you can sit on." He then walked through the curtained partition into the back room.
"Pffft," Jayari snorted, following after Cha'Druku—and taking a seat on the stool.
"I'm not worried. I'm too pretty to poison." She gave her braids a flip, feigning haughtiness.
Then, sobering, she added, "But really, if you wanted to end me I doubt you'd waste your resources healing me first."
Cha simply grunted out a short, "mmm," as he bent to stoke the embers of a fire that was only barely warm. As a little flicker began he grabbed a small log from a pile that sat on the other side of the room. He shoved it into the stove, and twisted a crank on the lower valve to allow air to enter the stove from beneath. He then turned a lever on the chimney pipe, allowing the smoke enough freedom to move up and out of his cave while holding the heat inside. While the new log broke down inside the oven, he stepped over to the hatch that went up into the hollow log above. He opened it just enough that air could flow in. The cool air from the snowing top of the hill was immediately felt coming in mixing with the warmer air in the room.
An iron pot filled with water was sitting on the lower cook top, and Cha dropped cubes of a dried stock inside before securing its lid. On the small table beside the stove he chopped the vegetables rough and quick, pushing the scraps into one of two buckets on the ground. The water came to a boil fairly quickly and Cha threw in the chopped vegetables. He then pulled a skillet down from a rack, dropped a bit of rendered animal fat into it and set it beside the pot. Quickly cubing the meat, he then sprinkled a mix of dried seasonings and salt on it and dropped it into the now hot skillet. He moved to the other side of the stove where he had a raised basin and he scrubbed his hands, with a bar of soap, before rinsing them and then sliding his hand into a mitt. Moving back to the skillet he tossed the meat with quick dexterous motions. Within just a few minutes he opened the pot releasing a billow of steam. He used a ladle to scoop water into the skillet, swirling it around before dumping the meat into the pot. Then he put his other hand into another mitt and lifted the pot onto the upper cooking surface of the stove. Lastly he opened the upper vent more and narrowed the lower vent reducing the air intake while releasing the heat.
"It should be ready in just a few more minutes. Just needs to stew for a bit." Cha then went about cleaning his prep table and scrubbing his skillet in the basin.
Jayari watched him work, and as she did she slouched on the stool, arms folded on her knees. No reaction. Nothing. Just straight to work while ignoring her. She heaved a sigh. At least his cooking provided some entertainment; she had never seen a set-up quite as elaborate as his, and he was quick and efficient as he worked, and...
And no, nope, it wasn't working. Jayari was bored.
She had gotten trapped in the snow with the grumpiest, least conversational person she had ever met.
"Nice," she said when he announced the meal was close to done. She sat up straighter and stretched her arms over her head, popping her back. "So...would you rather be stung by a hundred wasps or a thousand fire ants?"
"I wouldn't be foolish enough to let either of those things happen," was Cha's simple reply.
"Oh my GODS!" Jayari groaned, hopping to her feet. "It's hypothetical!"
"So you're asking if I was forced to choose between these two things in a hypothetical situation, which would I prefer?" Cha looked at Jayari with a puzzled expression.
"I assume you mean the types that are found here on the plain, so I'd choose the fire ants," he told her. "The fire ants here are small and though their stings are annoying, they do not hurt as bad or linger as long as wasp stings. Minutes versus days."
That was...better. It was a start, she guessed. Jayari stared at him as he somehow managed to make his answer boring in the most dry, clinical way possible.
"Oookay...makes sense, I guess," she said, and seriously began to worry about how long she would be stuck here. "Alright, then, how about...okay, okay, I got one. What's the most dangerous animal you could fight hand to hand and win?"
"I honestly don't know," Cha answered. "I once wrestled a basilisk lizard after coating my skin in an unguent that prevented petrification. I was sixteen and I thought it was the greatest idea ever. My mother was less than pleased with my method but the nearly unblemished basilisk corpse sold very well." He dried his hands and returned them to the mitts before checking the soup. The smell was pleasant as he opened the lid. After a quick stir he moved the pot onto a plate on the prep table. Then he grabbed down two lacquered bowls and ladled the soup into them, handing one to Jayari along with a spoon.
"Why don't you choose animals and I'll tell you if I think I could fight it unarmed. While we eat at the table." With that he moved out of his work space and into the front room to sit at the low table there.
...He what now?
Jayari followed him to the table and plopped down across from him, setting her bowl down on the table and stirring it to help it cool. Now that a meal was in front of her, the savory aroma filling the room, she realized just how hungry she actually was and was secretly glad he hadn't listened to her.
"So...you gonna elaborate on the basilisk thing?" she asked. "Like...how big was this thing? How did you not get your head chomped off? Why did you decide wrestling it was a good idea?" She spooned a bit of stew into her mouth, though it was almost too hot and she had to pause to breathe and fan her mouth.
"Also...bear. Could you take a bear? Hand to hand, no tricks?" she added, and she took another bite. "Damn, this isn't bad."
"Basilisks are valuable," Cha told Jayari. The one I wrestled was young. It used its eye magic on me but with the unguent on my skin I didn't turn to stone. I jumped on its back, wrapped my arms and legs around it and squeezed its neck with all my might. It rolled a few times, and I had a few bruised ribs, but I came out okay." He added red powder to his soup and stirred before taking a large bite. "In a one on one fight with no tricks or magic, I doubt there are many people that could beat a bear without some sort of supernatural or magical ability."
"...That's kinda nuts, not gonna lie," Jayari said, and took another bite. "Maybe you'd be able to strangle a bear too, then. Just jump on its back and choke it out? I mean that can't be that big a step up from a basilisk, right?"
Another bite, and she tilted her head thoughtfully. "Think I could take out a basilisk like that? I think I could take out a basilisk like that."
"If I climbed on a bears back it could reach me with its claws," Cha countered. "If I can use no tricks and no weapons then I don't think I'd fare well. Now if I could go in prepared like I was against the basilisk, I'd wear a full suit of metal armor and then I'd be able to wrestle the bear." Cha took a few bites of his food, before responding to Jayari's boast.
"I think with the same preparation, you probably could take the young basilisk, as I had," he conceded. "As long as you have the will and the nerve."
"Oh, I totally have the will and the nerve," Jayari said with a wave of her hand, secretly surprised to have gotten that much out of him. Like damn, he was actually talking and humoring her now? "So bear, no, unless with armor. Basilisk no, except with that stuff you mentioned. What about like...an elk?"
"Elk are usually skittish," Cha said. "They run away from you. They can probably run faster than me, but I've never tried it." He took a couple bites and mulled it over. "Now in a fight elk antlers could be very dangerous. Getting gored would be a painful way to die, but I'm fast so I think I'd be okay. Especially if I get my hands on those antlers. Then that elk will be easy prey."
"Yeah, but then they could just tear you up with their hooves. Unless you'd somehow jumped on their back?"
She scraped the bowl for the last of the broth, for she'd pretty much shoveled stew into her mouth as he spoke. "They're pretty big animals."
"I guess so," Cha said. "But I figured if I had a hold on those antlers I could twist them to make the elk fall or even break its neck if I had good footing."
"I guess the hardest part would be catching up to it in the first place, eh?" Jayari said as she pushed her bowl away and wiped the corners of her mouth with her fingers.
"Be pretty crazy to try it. Hey, speaking of, what's the craziest thing you've done? Or was it the basilisk?"