RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Naunet · **12-13-2013, 06:09 PM**

The woman who had come seeking further aid for the wounded left shortly after, returning to the tent with its heavy scents of medicine and blood and fire. K'ile and K'piru remained frozen in the middle of the ragged camp for some time, bodies supporting one another as though they were the only things keeping them from sinking into the sands and becoming lost forever.

K'piru already felt lost.

At some point, K'ile stood, pulling her up with him when she made no move to get up on her own. She couldn't feel her legs moving as he guided them both out from under Azeyma's eye, and the eyes of the tribe. Her feet drug through the sand as foreign instruments. She strained briefly when they turned away from the horizon, but went quickly limp, once more numb.

They curled up under the shelter of the rocks, and there K'piru cried again for a short time. They were quiet tears, her body trembling but making no sound as they burned tracks down her face. They soaked her skin and cloth as her daughters' blood, as K'thalen's blood had soaked their own; they fled her body like the blood of her family.

***

When the shadows of the cliffs merged with the shadows of night beyond, K'piru finally stirred. She hadn't slept, but her mind had fled. It returned to her there in the cool crevice K'ile had brought them to, and she blinked slowly, feeling course sand along her side, a warm body at her back. She breathed in his smell, and her heart clenched.

Body unmoving, her eyes roamed towards the open sands, catching on a few, tattered remnants of tents set up to ward off the elements and then shifting to gaze past them, further into the dunes.

A faint shudder echoed in her skull and deep in her ribs and in slow, deliberate movements, K'piru pushed herself up. K'ile must have drifted to some shallow, troubled sleep briefly, for he didn't move when she stood, her legs unfolding shakily, feeling as weak as a newborn.

She kept her eyes on the dunes ahead and let her feet carry her forward.

Once moving, she didn't stop until she'd crested one of the dunes a short distance outside the camp and dropped down into its valley. It didn't take long, as though her movements were outwardly calm, they were also quick. There at the bottom of the dune, she fell to her knees in the sand and turned her face up. Her features shivered with a strange, hopeful desperation that she was only half aware of.

Any moment now, her children and nunh would come bumbling over those dunes. K'thalen would give some half-hearted excuse for their delay, some silly adventure he'd prodded her girls into playing along with. K'airos would be sheepish but happy, and K'airi would be vibrating with a sense of victory, the kind of rush she always seemed to have upon returning from a hunt.

They would return soon, and K'piru would be here to greet them.

Twinflame · **12-14-2013, 01:38 AM**

Night was merciful. Azeyma hid her face in shame, unable to face the failure of the Twelve. K'ile Tia did not hide. He had not been able to bring home K'thalen and his daughters, and that was something he had to bear. It needed to be acknowledged. He would wait however long it took for K'piru to acknowledge that.

He wilted in the sand and stared at her back. It was as though he was tethered to her, and she had dragged him out here without noticing. There was nothing like sleep to calm his mind, not now. He did not have to sleep to experience nightmares, though, and he had spent the day assailed by phantasmal echoes of the battlefield. K'piru was little comfort to him in her current state, though the presence of her breath helped him to continue breathing himself.

For a long time, he stared at her, and she stared away. Then he was beside her, and his legs were foled at his side, as though he'd fallen in the sand. He touched her numbly. K'ile said, "It was sudden. The fire that took them. It was so fast, and there was nothing I could do. I saw. And after, Yohko and I found them. I don't know about K'airi, but Thalen and K'airos, we found them, and lost them. We know. They aren't coming home."

He felt himself pull at her arm, "K'piru, come back to camp. Come back."

Naunet · **12-14-2013, 01:50 AM**

"Why would--" The words hurt, as though she had spent an entire age in silence and her throat had forgotten the sensation of sound. K'piru choked, coughed, could not pull her gaze away from the dunes ahead. Her ears shivered, straining along with her nose as she sought for signs of her approaching family. "Why would you say such things?"

She hadn't noticed K'ile's approach, was numb to his touch on her arm, and though she had heard his voice, she wondered if perhaps he was not really there at all. Perhaps none of them had come back, and she had called up the sound and scent of her mate's brother as a messenger of a nightmare.

"Why would you say such things," she repeated, voice low and tenuous. The blue-white light of the moon through lingering smoke cast odd shadows on her upturned face. "They'll come back. I am waiting for them. They'll come back."

Nauta Lyehga · **12-14-2013, 02:19 AM**

"He's dead." The voice was flat and deep, a familiar voice but not a comforting one. Messy and singed purple hair stepped into sight from behind the large sand dunes. His face was battered and bruised and burnt, but most of it now had been bandaged to heal. K'yohko had always been a quiet man, a man who stayed away from people's personal affairs, so his sudden intrusion to what was obviously a personal matter was very unusual for him. Furthermore, it was not the form of K'yohko that appeared behind the two. He was holding a body in his arms, a body with scorch wounds and the smell of medical salves and magical fire and death. The nunh knelt down and placed the body on the ground, a body that quickly became recognizable as his mother, K'leeka.

With a tenderness K'yohko had never openly displayed, her brushed his mother's clouded dead eyes closed and pushed a bit of her hair from her forehead. A gentle kiss to her forehead before he stood again. His hands that had moments ago show tenders, clenched into bloodied fists of rage.

"Just like Leeka. Take a good look at her K'piru. Take a good look at my dead mother." K'yohko's voice wavered from its usual deadpan, showing glimpses of his torrent of emotions. A torrent of emotions not even K'nihqa had managed to soothe. His only consolation was that she was minimally injured and a few of the less experienced healers could tend to her. "I want you to look at her K'piru, because I want you to look at the people you've killed today." K'yohko continued, his voice cracking under the strain of holding it all back. The horror of Carteneu, the bodies of his fellow tribe members, of Thalen and his daughter, and now of his mother and so many others in his family. "K'leeka, K'eyrah, K'hodia, K'nirha, K'ali, K'hangi, K'lian, and should I go on K'piru?" K'yohko's voice had raised to an all time high as he spout out the name of every family member's body he was getting ready to bury. And he was going to bury them all around K'piru. So that she might sit in the middle and look at the faces of everyone that died because of her. "You could have saved them! You could have saved them all K'piru! And you did nothing." He spat the word at her like it sickened him. Furious violent eyes gaze down upon the pathetic woman with all of the hatred within him. By now his broad form was shaking with anger, and his face which had failed to emote in even the slightest bit for anyone but K'nihqa twisted into an ugly look of rage. He waited for K'piru's response. The nunh could give a shit about K'ile's presence. He was just another grain of sand in the ocean.

Naunet · **12-14-2013, 02:34 AM**

She thought at first he was another imagined voice, born from whatever nightmare had seen fit to grip her family. K'yohko had left with the others for war. How could he have returned and Thalen not? How could he have returned while her daughters were still gone?

Then the sands shifted next to her as something settled on the ground. She recoiled at the smell, half curling towards K'ile, and the firm warmth of his body dragged her thoughts away from the dunes, away from the horizon and an endless wait.

K'ile was here. K'yohko was here. Her beautiful girls and the light of her soul were not.

She screamed, a short, choked sound that broke off into a sob, and scrabbled back in the sand. Wide eyes flicked to the body, then away, and she sought to hide. "They're not here," she wailed, pulling her arms to her face to ward away the sight. She didn't know what K'yohko wanted of her, why he would show her yet another corpse - there had been so many already! - and why he would speak those words. Her girls were not here. Thalen was not here. She could think of nothing else.

Twinflame · **12-14-2013, 02:43 AM**

For a grain of sand, K'ile was hard to ignore. In a flicker of movement almost quicker than the spark of a new flame, the Tia's fist crashed against K'yohko's skull with all the force of muscle and bone too numb to know pain or restraint. His jaw opened wide, like a barking maw, when he shouted, "Coward! Don't bring this here!" His teeth clicked with every word, breath shuttering. "You didn't save Thalen! You didn't save anyone! You protected no one! Useless!"

His movement had outpaced the sand he'd stirred up, his accusations faster than grains that were still clattering around him. The fire-red hair on his head shook, unsettled, his soft face creased deeply with fury that broke as suddenly as the surface of Dalamud. There was calamity in his blue eyes. Sweat and blood shone on his skin, marred by dirt that he'd carried with him all the way from that nightmare-scape called Cartenau. On both wrists, bracelets of shells and flickering red stones clattered.

"Do not dare speak against her again," K'ile spoke in an unmistakable, bestial growl. "Or I'll take your place as Nunh and leave you in the sand right beside your mother!"

Nauta Lyehga · **12-14-2013, 02:52 AM**

K'yohko had not been expecting K'ile to lash out like he did, but then again he was not sure what he was expecting. The fist collided with his head painfully and he staggered to the side, pressing a hand to his temple. He could feel other head wounds reopening, but his anger far surpassed any pain. He could not pay attention to the pain, only to his anger. His head snapped back up to look fiercely past K'ile at K'piru. K'ile could not protect her from his wrath. No matter what violence he resorted to, K'ile could not protect her.

"The only coward here is K'piru!" K'yohko shot back angrily, emotion for once fully possessing him. "I saved no one, but neither did you K'ile! You watched them die! Then you ran back to find comfort in your dead brother's mate! K'piru is just as much of a coward as both of us! She watched the rest of her family die, not caring for anyone but herself and her own pain!" K'yohko sharply moved to step past K'ile so he might speak directly to K'piru. He did not care for the flame-haired Tia. He did not care for K'piru's pain. He cared that she had let the rest of her own family die because she was selfish.

"Thalen and your daughters are not your only family Piru! What about my mother? What about your nephew? What about the others? Or don't they matter? It's only Thalen and your damned daughters that matter? Kin-killer! Murderer! You murdered them! You let them die! You let your own family die because all that's ever mattered to you were your stupid daughters and Thalen!" K'yohko yelled at K'piru, the anger and rage in his voice twisting it to something that did not sound like himself. "Murderer! You're a murderer and a coward! The tribe has no use for kin-killers! If Thalen and your daughters are the only thing that ever matter, go join them in death!" The words were spit with such ferocity and hatred that K'yohko almost seemed possessed with them.

Naunet · **12-14-2013, 03:07 AM**

She couldn't speak for lack of breath, and the desert spun around her. She brought her hands up to press desperately at her ears, but they could not block out the fury of those accusations, the hatred and horror fueling K'yohko's every gesture and eruption of word. K'piru curled in on herself in the sand, quaking beneath each blow that landed with greater weight and pain than if he'd struck her.

Kin-killer. Murderer. She could hardly comprehend the words, and so she didn't. Instead, she retreated fully, away from K'yohko's vengeful rants and K'ile's scent and the family that still had not found their way over the horizon. Face down in the sand, K'piru shuddered.

Twinflame · **12-14-2013, 03:24 AM**

K'ile Tia did not permit K'yohko to speak. Not on purpose. At the very first insult, K'ile committed to silencing the man. Never in his life had he sought to harm another member of the tribe; it was not something he would ever do. But, in his mind, K'yohko was no longer a member of the tribe. No member of Thalen's tribe thought or spoke this way. To him, K'yohko had exiled himself.

He did not feel his arms, and could not sense his breath. When he hit K'yohko, he could almost feel the blood-vessels burst in the man's eye. And with another hit, he could feel the man's teeth giving way under the pressure of his fist. He felt the man's nose crack, made his skull clatter about at the end of his spine, and yet the senseless Nunh spoke on.

"Kin-killer!" The man accused, and K'ile broke the man further. "Murderer!" The Nunh shouted, and K'ile lay cracks into his skull. "You murdered them! You let them die!" K'ile took hold of the man by the hair on the back of his head, and held him. And still the man frothed, as though all sense of sanity had fled him. If it had, K'ile might show pity, but no.

"If Thalen and your daughters are the only thing that ever matter, go join them in death!"

Finally, K'ile tore the man down by his head and lay a hard fist against he throat. There was an audible crack when his fist hit, and it was satisfying. If he died, so be it. In the least he would be silent. K'ile threw the man backwards, at the corpse of Yohko's own mother. The Tia shouted, "Every word you say is a lie! If the Nunh can only deal with death by abusing the women of the tribe, then he isn't worthy to stand as beast, much less a man! I would challenge you for the right of Nunh, but you... No, you don't deserve a challenge." He pointed at the man, "Stay there. Do not stand, or you will be dead before you have both feet beneath you!"

Nauta Lyehga · **12-14-2013, 03:41 AM**

The first hit did not phase K'yohko's tirade, but it did hurt him. And it made him aware that he could not simply ignore K'ile. Not if he wanted to live. He wanted K'ile to be punished for attaching another tribe member, but he did not want to die in the process. Or rather, he refused to die to that piece of walking refuse that called himself Thalen's brother. Thalen was a good man. K'ile was hardly a man to begin with. While K'yohko had never before had a problem with K'thalen or K'ile, he had always thought them a bit too full of themselves. He had always thought K'thalen doted on K'piru too much and the trouble their daughter K'aijeen had brought to the tribe boded ill to him. K'ile was worse than K'thalen, as he was not even fit to breed. A lazy arrogant Tia, but even still K'yohko had never made a comment. He had always treated them well, because they were family. But this was not what family did. They supported one another, not tried to kill them. They hung on to one another during difficult times, not sit down and let their kin die.

K'yohko brought his forearm up to meet with K'ile's second fist, preserving his teeth and spoke on. Another forehead blocked the blow towards his nose, and he spoke on. K'yohko was a fighter by nature. He was stronger than K'ile by nature, or so he thought. He had fought the other Tias and Nunhs and prevailed and he had fought many things and prevailed. His pride rested well on his ability to fight, and his ability to put Tias in their place. Yohko's forearms bruised and cracked with every block to K'ile's punches at his face, but K'yohko did not break under the assault.

The upper hand strike at his head caught Yohko off guard and it struck mightily at his already injured head. Pain crushed his body, but it did not quell his anger. His arms came up on impulse to protect his head and luckily, his hand got in the way of K'ile's attack to his throat. The deafening crack was not that of Yohko's throat, but of his right hand which broke messily and made bone stick out at awkward angles. In the disorienting pain, K'yohko was thrown backwards and tumbled down on the ground next to his dead mother.

A moment passed and his eyes flickered open to see her face. Beautiful even in death was his mother. Her face was serene, as if it might have found peace with Azyema. For a moment, K'yohko wished that K'ile had indeed struck a fatal blow. Then perhaps he might have found peace besides her.

But the moment passed and K'yohko rose to his feet again, bleeding from his head wounds and his hand, but alive.

"I do not abuse K'piru. I can only speak the truth of what I see. I can see our family dying, and more than needed because of K'piru! You Thalens think too much of yourselves. It is not the Thalen Tribe, it is the Hipparon tribe! K'ile, I am your brother and my mother was as much family to you as your brother and K'piru! If I am not right to hold the title of Nunh, as a brother I would ask you to strike me down so I might not do any further damage to our family!" The rage had lessened from K'yohko's voice, but not from his eyes. His eyes which were stained red with the blood running down his face burned with the same fury he had yelled upon K'piru with.

Twinflame · **12-14-2013, 04:09 AM**

K'yohko was lucky that K'ile had too much self-control. The man should have been broken by then, but K'ile was too wise to kill him, as much as he wanted to. He wasn't about to give the man the honor. "Arrogant and blind, K'yohko," K'ile said. "That's all you are. The word 'truth' has no meaning on your lips, and your mother would be ashamed. You desecrate her corpse by using it as a tool for this infantile fit." The Tia still shook, his hands in fists. The bracelets on his hands clattered rhythmically as he breathed in and out. He hissed, "I've given you more than you deserved. If you have even a modicum of respect for this tribe, for your mother, left, then you'll leave her, and I, alone."

He turned his back on K'yohko, knowing full well the man would continue to speak. The Nunh was rumored to know the value of silence, but even if he had once, he had now reverted into a child. K'yohko Nunh, crying in the sand, cursing and shouting and crying. He would not be able to resist, now that K'ile had turned his back, declaring anew his accusations.

K'ile ran to where he saw K'piru in the sand. K'yohko could not long steal his attention from the woman. She deserved his every breath, now. He dropped to his knees over her, and bent down, and said to her, "K'yohko is just sad. He is wrong. He's just being a child. Come with me. You don't need this." He didn't wait for her to stand. He put his arms on her to try and lift her up. She didn't need to take a single step if she didn't want to. He would carry her.

Naunet · **12-14-2013, 04:18 AM**

K'piru made no sign of noticing K'ile's arms. She was hardly aware of even his presence as her mind cowered behind desperate, crumbling walls. When he went to lift her, she just curled tighter, hands over her head, breath coming in short bursts with great gaps between.
Kin-killer. Her Thalen was gone. Murderer. Her beautiful girls had left her. The words wormed their way through her brain no matter how deep she tried to burrow away.

K'piru would not hinder K'ile's actions. She remained quiet and shaking as he took her from the sand.

Nauta Lyehga · **12-14-2013, 04:21 AM**

"I am not wrong K'ile." Yohko called back firmly. Even if K'ile didn't listen to him, it had to be said. "K'piru has killed many who might have otherwise lived and it is on your hands as well! You knew she would turn to this, and even so you told her! You should have waited! Then maybe they could have lived..." He turned his head to look towards his mother's body. He was not using her. He was bringing her out here for burial. Just like the other bodies. It was by chance he ran into K'ile and K'piru. And for once, he would speak his mind. But it was all for nothing, as his thoughts usually were. Unheeded, unlistened, dismissed; that's all his words had ever been. It was only ever through violence he achieved anything and that, that was why he never spoke.

"If you had actually thought about anyone other than yourself and your lust for your brother's mate, maybe all our children and family wouldn't have had to die today. If you were as great as you think you are K'ile, you could have saved your brother. But you're not. And neither am I. But here's your big chance. You can finally have what you've always want. You can have K'piru. Go and run away with her. Run far away and never return, because that's all you've ever cared about is her. And while you're running get away from this place. I have my sisters and brothers and children to bury. We don't all have time to wallow in our pain. " K'yohko clenched his fists and turned his back from the two. It was too painful to look at them now. All they had ever cared for was their own little family. Had K'ile bothered to tell any of Thalen's other daughters that their father died? No. He had not. K'yohko had broken the news to the others. And who had helped Thalen's other mates with injuries and gathering supplies and cloth? Certainly not K'ile.

There was nothing to be said. No words could accomplish anything. They were, in the end, useless. So K'yohko abandoned words once again and walked, leaving a trail of his own blood in the sand as he headed back to what was left of the camp. The bodies were beginning to attract Sandworms and Bloatflies, and K'yohko was not about to let the rest of his family be eaten by the because he was sad. If K'ile and K'piru wanted to rot in their sadness, then so be it.

Twinflame · **12-14-2013, 04:39 AM**

Rising with K'piru in his hands, K'ile turned to look at K'yohko. His expression had lost a great deal of the fury, though it still lay in his eyes. He wasn't sure he'd done the right thing in striking K'yohko, but what else could he have done? He couldn't just let the man speak to K'piru like that. K'yoohko could make all the accusations he wanted against K'ile himself, but K'piru? No. No. That kind of cowardice bred in insects, not in men.

But in of all the lies that K'yohko spoke, there were some lines of truth. Do you know that, K'yohko so-called Nunh? If only you had seen how K'thalen died, you would know just how right you could be, and how wrong. But you won't know, K'yohko. You will never know, for you have no wisdom, and your thoughts do not reach to such places. You do not understand what it is to feel, to love, to desire, to endure. You do not understand, K'yohko, because you do not truly love anyone enough.

K'ile didn't say these things to K'yohko. He just watched the man bleed. And then he watched the man turn away.

Squeezing K'piru tightly, he said, "Forget everything he said, K'piru. I'm going to take care of you. Just... Trust me. I'll do everything I can." he took the woman and carried her away. He might have gone back to camp, but what was there except for death and corpses, and K'yohko and his accusations? Like the tribe seemed to have done when the fire rained down, K'ile took shelter in the cliffs, only this time no fire would follow them there.

He found a secluded place, and he put K'piru down, held her up, tried to get her to look at him. He said, "K'piru, do you understand yet? It's alright that you want to fall apart, because I'm here. And you can take as long as you need. I promised Thalen I'd take care of you, and I will. I promise you that, too."

Naunet · **12-14-2013, 04:54 AM**

K'ile's voice, low and consistent, worked its way through the cracks of the walls K'piru hid behind, and with a glacial slowness, she dragged her awareness forward, to that voice, to those blue eyes watching her behind a mess of red hair.

He looked so much like...

A thin sound broke from her throat and she tried to turn away. "Gone, he's gone," she whimpered, feeling so very small. "They're not here. I need to-- need to go, to wait for... bring them back..." The words came unbidden, tumbling from her throat on faint breaths. In her grief, her thoughts melded those words with K'yohko's, and the woman coughed out a single sob before falling silent once more, eyes turned away and refusing to focus on the world around her, or the person near her. "I can't. I can't. I can't..."

« Next Oldest \| Next Newest »
Pages (5): « Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next »

The Dunes Would Bury Them [[pre-2.0, Hipparion Tribe, ooc welcome]]

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes