Get off my lawn! [Aeyt!]

[Rhindeer]

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."

[Aeytrious]

        "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?"

[Rhindeer]

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?"

[Aeytrious]

        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."

[Rhindeer]

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.

[Aeytrious]

        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."

[Rhindeer]

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.

[Aeytrious]

        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.

[Rhindeer]

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?"

[Aeytrious]

        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.

[Rhindeer]

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.

[Aeytrious]

        "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.

[Rhindeer]

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?"

[Aeytrious]

        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."

[Rhindeer]

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."

[Aeytrious]

        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."

[Rhindeer]

"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!"

[Aeytrious]

        "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."

[Rhindeer]

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."

[Aeytrious]

        "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?"