Are We Trespassing? (Rhi)

[Katie]

Tirzah always forgot why she didn't come to the Kishahn jungle often, and then she came back, and she remembered the exact reason: it was hot. She hated being hot. Her dad had always told her to suck it up because he burned and she didn't. (Her dad had always been kinda full of shit.) She didn't even know why she bothered with this place--it wasn't like her dad had liked the jungle or anything.

But she'd be out soon. Just a couple more days and she could head to Essyrn to hitch a ride with a caravan and cross the desert. Then strike out on her own, take a route between the mountains and the coast. Longer to loop around that way, but Tirzah wasn't made of money and she hadn't the time to go be a slave. Bandits were less of a risk. And after that she'd be in Adela, which was good fun and good business.

She shoved aside a branch and kept walking. Next to her, Motley whined. He usually liked the jungle (no accounting for taste and all that) so that was...not good. At best. "Whatcha got there?" Tirzah asked. She made sure to keep her voice light. No tipping off the opposition. Motley put his ears back and hissed.

Definitely bad.

"Yeah, that's some real offensive green stuff ya found, buddy," Tirzah said, making a show of eying slightly to the left of his actual line of sight. Though he didn't appear to be looking at anything but plants.  Just what was pooking him? She didn't hear anything but the normal noises of the jungle, there'd been no signs that they were being followed...were they heading someplace they shouldn't go? Or already in some place they shouldn't go? Tirzah crouched next to the beast, and slowly moved a hand down to the knife in her boot. She got her fingers around the hilt and drew it (no sleeve to hide it in; that was the problem with warm weather, she had to make do with her own body to hide weapons). Now all she had to do was wait for the whatever-the-hell-it-was to show up so she knew which way to run.

[Rhindeer]

It wasn't everyday someone wandered into her territory. Not long ago she had met a human male and she had tolerated his presence, for he seemed harmless enough with no weapons and no real means of survival. But this female, with her strange little animal that smelled all wrong, like death, had Raxta on edge.

She was perched in a tree, a half-consumed deer wedged between the branches, but she had paused her meal and gone very still when the creature started to act strange--especially when it looked in her direction. She didn't know if she'd been sighted, but it still made a lump form in her throat when the human took out a knife.

Her particular kind of not-quite-jaguar, not-quite-human weren't very common, but it was common enough for them to be killed in jaguar-form. Raxta's initial instinct was to abandon her kill and try to slink away and disappear, as she was very good at doing, but she'd chosen the wrong tree for that--the closest branches of the trees neighboring hers were too thin, not capable of supporting her weight. Option two was climbing higher where the leaves were thickest and waiting for the female to pass--most humans were terrible climbers, she'd found, though the problem was it was easier going up than down, even for her.

Cursing silently, she settled a third option--rather than wait there until she was spotted, make first contact herself, as a human. That had worked well enough with the male. Though she was a powerful hunter, the thought of leaping down and scaring the human away didn't really enter her mind; she was a hunter that relied on stealth and surprise, on landing on her prey and killing them in one quick, skull-piercing bite. Confrontation was another matter altogether; she didn't want to fight. Fights meant injury, and injury meant infection and death.

Very well, then.

She shifted, no longer a jaguar lounging on a branch, but now a strange naked woman that looked mostly human with blood smears on her face and hands. She peered down at them, ears pinned back and tail tip twitching.

"What are you doing here?" she called out.

Not the most friendly welcome, but she was nothing if not blunt.

[Katie]

Tirzah near jumped out of her skin at the voice. Where was it coming from? She tightened her grip on her knife and looked around. There, where Motley was staring--okay. That was one of the...weirder people she'd ever seen. A woman, spotted like a leopard and smeared with blood. That at least explained why the damn beast was getting the wiggins--he got antsy around fellow predators. Only sometimes, but when he did it was obvious. For example: right now he was pressed tight against her shins and had started full-out growling. "Shut yer face," Tirzah said softly. He stopped.

"Just passin' through." She raised her free hand in a gesture of peace--the knife in her other hand kinda made peace hard to perform, but she could work around that by holding herself the right way (weight all on one foot, weapon held loosely) and she wasn't putting the knife away, just in case this woman turned out to eat people or something. "All goes accordin' to plan, I'll be outta here in a few days. Name's Tirzah. What's yours?"

[Rhindeer]

There was a pause, her sharp eyes following the movements of the human's hands and the strange little wrong-smelling creature with her. She seemed to consider her for moment, and consider her knife and her words, and then some of the tension melted. Her posture relaxed, the twitching of her tail growing less erratic and more smooth, her ears raising. That was an acceptable answer. She liked that answer.

Finally, she answered the human's question. "Raxta," she said. "You may call me Raxta."

Then, tilting her head, a thought came to her and she added, "Are you lost, too?"

[Katie]

That was a good sign. That was a wonderful sign. Tirzah didn't do even a little bit well when she had to fight her way out of things.

"Nice to meetcha, Raxta," she said. "Nope, I know where I am." Mostly. It was easy to get lost in the jungle (another reason she should really quit coming here).

...wait a second. "Too?" Tirzah said. It was probably nothing, but if you traveled with only a catbeast for company, you soon learned to ask all of the questions. Even if the answer was going to be something normal like that this part of the jungle was even worse than the rest of it.

[Rhindeer]

Raxta nodded, posture relaxing even more with her friendly greeting, and soon the girl was filed into the "not a threat" category of her mind. "Ah, yes. There was a male here some time ago," she said, and smiled wryly. "He was lost."

Leaning over her branch, she peered down curiously at the strange creature with her. While she'd determined the girl was no risk, that thing made her uneasy, even if it was small. However, it also felt strange talking above someone as she was; branches were for hiding, eating, and hunting, and she certainly wasn't stalking this woman.

"Do you mind if I come down?"

[Katie]

Ah. Okay. So that was all. Made her feel a little paranoid, but better that than eaten by quicksand or something.

"Feel free," Tirzah said. "It's yer forest." She sheathed the knife--the leopard-woman wasn't a danger for now, and she didn't want her to feel threatened again. That way led only to getting sliced up. For good measure, she crouched and scooped up Motley. Holding him made him look less of a threat.

[Rhindeer]

Abandoning the deer corpse for now, Raxta climbed down until it was safe enough to drop, and then she simply let herself fall. She landed lightly on her feet, knees bending with the impact, and she rose gracefully with a swish of her tail.

"It's not really mine," she said, turning to retrieve her clothing from the bushes where she'd stored it. "Though this is my territory. Where are you trying to go? And..." She gave the creature in the woman's arms a sidelong glance, nose wrinkling. "What's...that?"

[Katie]

"Just through." Tirzah shrugged. "I go pretty much everywhere 'cept Hyoite." (Winter gear was way too expensive.) She scratched behind Motley's ears. He was still sulking because she'd told him to shut up and didn't respond.

"Oh, him?" Tirzah bounced him a little. "Magic whosit. Found him in Adela, runnin' wild. Rude lil beastie, but he does what I say, so ya don't need to worry 'bout him jumpin' on ya."

[Rhindeer]

Raxta had only a vague notion of what those places were; her sister had grown up to be the adventurous sort (whereas she preferred the safety of familiarity) and she'd left the jungle ages ago to explore the bright world beyond it. Every now and then she returned with tales of her travels; Adela sounded familiar, though she couldn't remember if that was one of the places Nikaj had gone. It was hard to keep track of all those names.

Hyoite was new to her.

"Adela, hm?" Raxta said thoughtfully, head tilted. Then her eyes lit up with a memory and she grinned. "Is that the place where people ride flying lizards?" Nikaj had described that to her, and the idea just sounded too ridiculous to be true--but of course, she had no way to prove it wasn't.

[Katie]

"Yep, that's it." Flying lizards--she bet the dragons'd love that description. "Don't let them hear ya say that, though. If ya ever go." Were leopard-girls the type to travel? "I hear they get touchy. Never saw one up close, though, just flyin'."

[Rhindeer]

Raxta laughed. "So that's a real thing?" she asked, still trying to picture it without much success. "I always thought it was a joke."

Reaching up, she scrubbed drying blood from her face with the back of her hand, realizing abruptly that she was still...messy...from her kill. It was easy to forget little details like that, when she was used to living along and not having to worry much about appearances. It was also then that she remembered another little detail--like the fact that she was still naked.

"...Oh."

There was no real embarrassment in that fact; when you spent a large portion of your life as a jaguar, which were naturally naked, you became pretty comfortable in your own skin. Others, however, had been offended, or given her uncomfortable stares and so, blinking with realization, she turned and fetched her clothing from the bush she'd stored it behind.

"Sorry," she said as she tied the skirt around her waist, and the cloth over her chest.

[Katie]

"Yeah, 's some kinda weird politics thing," Tirzah said. That was as much as she knew about it--she didn't know much about dragons, and as far as she was concerned the biggest variations were in color and size. She didn't spend any time up in the Thunderblacks. That was just asking to get kebabed. "Dunno why they came up with that, but nobody's bein' slow-roasted anymore, so I guess it works."

"Hm? Oh." She'd near forgotten Raxta wasn't wearing anything. It was a combination of the jaguar woman thing and the fact her dad hadn't been too fussed about modesty. "Don't mind it. Only bits I haven't seen before are the leopard spots."

[Rhindeer]

"Leopard?" Raxta repeated blankly, and then laughed when realization dawned. "Oh, no, I'm not a leopard. I'm a jaguar."

Though few people seemed to know the difference, and the only reason she knew about leopards was because of Nikaj, who had apparently had a curious run in with one before.

"Apparently the two are easy to confuse," she said, brushing off her skirt.

[Katie]

Tirzah shrugged. She was a traveler, not a scholar. She couldn't even read her own name.

"Hey, big yellow cats with spots all look the same t'me," she said. "Gettin' close enough t'see the difference ain't exactly my favorite thing."

[Rhindeer]

"That's smart," Raxta said, and her grin widened. "If you're close enough to see them, you're either a friend or a meal."

She paused and added, "You're the former, not to worry."

[Katie]

That was about it, yep. Mauling was not something you could get up from easily. Or at all, if you were unlucky. So she made every effort to avoid even the chance of ending up that badly hurt.

"Oh, good," Tirzah said, relaxing slightly. It was okay "I was worried I'd have to tap into my warrior skills. They look a whole lot like screamin' at the top of my lungs and runnin' away, but I tell ya, they're deadly. Hate to hurt ya when you've been so nice."

[Rhindeer]

Raxta's brow furrowed. "Well, that sounds fairly deadly," she said, not quite understanding the joke. As someone who had lived a solitary life for so long, she had an unfortunate habit of being a bit too literal.

"For you. You should never run from a predator, you know. That only inspires them to chase. You have the right idea by yelling, though. They don't like noise or confrontation."

[Katie]

"Good t'know," Tirzah said. Her real strategy was to chuck Motley at whatever it was and flee--wasn't like it could actually die. Finding it after and putting it back together was the easy part.

"But, ah, that was a joke. 's not what I actually do. That is a trade secret. A lady never tells."

[Rhindeer]

Raxta swished her tail. "It doesn't do much good if it's a secret," she said, head tilted. "Most things don't want to fight. That's why venomous frogs are colorful--they lay their secrets out in the open so others are warned and will not mess with them."

She smiled, flashing her large fangs. "Jaguars roar and flash their fangs. They don't hide their weapons. They want others to know what they have, and know exactly why they should stay away."