Twinflame

"I know you did." His fingers felt like iron weights fused to his hand, holding him stoically in place. K'ile's tone and features were unwavering. "Nobody's going to allow you to linger alone in the sand, and for how long? She would not reveal herself. Perhaps if it were Thalen, and if she was present. But she isn't. She's gone."

"K'piru." The Tia dropped his hand from his face, letting it smack against his thigh. The action was simple, harmless, but it felt violent. It twisted something inside his chest. He could feel emotion, something other than callousness or guilt, slithering up his throat. It tasted like burnt meat covered in too much Ul'dahn spice. His mouth felt like he'd been licking stones. "There's no food or water missing," K'ile felt his ears lay down on his head like bodies falling, exhausted, among the dunes. "If she's in the tribe she hasn't eaten or had anything to drink in days. There are no signs of traps in the desert, and there's nothing filling to scavenge this time of year. She's not in the camp, and she's not near the camp. Unless Azeyma has given her shelter out where we know there is no shelter to be had..."

The Tia's head felt hot, as though the sun were bearing down on him. He looked up at the roof of the tent, and his face burned. There was no light. The fire seemed to be inside of him. He flicked his wrist and the stone tied there flickered, full of sparks eager for release. If he were wise he'd wait until the morning, when he, K'ada, and the other firedancers would bless the migration, and there release the fire pent up inside him. The ambivalence of his guilt and callousness was like a kiln behind his eyes, shaken when he shifted on his injured leg, spilling fire down his neck. He rubbed his face with on hand, dirty from a day spent in the desert. "And what about you, K'piru? You're not our only shaman, but you're the shaman to many of us. I won't be looking for K'eyrah when my leg starts acting up. I'll be looking for you."

Stepping into the tent and letting the flap shut behind him, he glanced at the last sliver of light as the skin pushed it away. I would have been better if it were a tone falling into place. The walls felt thin to the point of being nonexistent. He felt exposed in the sun and wind, with Azeyma watching him. The sun glared through the tent, waiting for him to show some sign of remorse. He turned his gaze to the shaman's back. She seemed almost thinner than the cloth walls. "You know if I had good news someone would've told you by now. There isn't so much as a footprint. We aren't going out again tonight. We are resting so that we're all ready to leave in the morning."

The disordered scene that greeted K'ile Tia was... unexpected. There was still enough callousness in him to be surprised by the chaos that had fallen upon the Shaman's tent. He should have expected it. That the death of a daughter would so disturb the shaman, that K'piru's normally orderly tent had been thrown into a tumult; one's home is a reflection of one's mind, after all. He brushed open the tent and leaned in. The scent of those who spent time within, of K'piru and of his brother, K'thalen Nunh, of K'piru's children and even the linger scent of K'aijeen, had a twisted and sweet smell to it that turned his stomach. It was like rot. It was like the fluid squeezed out of succulents after it had been left in the sun for days on end. It was an old smell. These emotions, this turn of events, had been waiting to show itself like a voidsent might await the new moon to arise and haunt. "K'thalen isn't here," K'ile Tia's first observation slipped from his lips predictably. It had been a selfish wish. His nose could almost smell out the silhouette of where his brother had lain prior, comforting the shaman as was his talent. It was not a talent that K'ile Tia shared. Handing the news off to K'thalen would have been so much simpler. "I'd thought -- hoped -- I'd find him here." The Tia stepped into the tent, saw the actions of the Shaman trying to function through the disorder. Her movements reminded her of travelers, heads ducked against the wind, lurching stubbornly through a sandstorm that others had sought shelter from. "What are you preparing?"

((Retro RP based on retro RP. There's this thread over here for context.)) It was hard not to feel responsible. But it was so strange to admit guilt without the sensation of mourning to go along with it. He admitted his fault to himself as though he'd stepped off the wrong path, or misplaced an item which had very little actual value. He was sorry, but he was offhandedly sorry, and he didn't know if he was capable of feeling any other way. K'aijeen Thalen was gone, probably dead, and K'ile Tia was the last person who had seen her alive. He'd released her from the rack at the center of town just before dawn, and her dehydrated, exhausted body had slipped from the ropes with a stubborn silence that belied the obvious pain which was pulling her body down. The way her limbs and tail had dropped under their own meager weight, seemingly thinner than they had been the day before, had made the child appear on the verge of collapsing. Her voice and eyes had been dark, small, when she'd muttered, "I need to be left alone. I will return to mother after I've had time to think." "That's fine," K'ile had said to her, his tone empty of pity. It was the voice of the man chosen to enforce the rules, to punish the wrongdoers of the tribe, and not the voice of an uncle to his chided niece. She stood humiliated, and he was the one who had perpetrated it, if only by impersonal necessity. His voice had been so much softer when he'd released K'airos from her rack moments later. There was familial care there, which K'aijeen had apparently not warranted. K'ile Tia's only explanation was that he was wicked in a place deep in his heart, so perfectly concealed that even he could only discern it after the passage of unkind actions and words. It had been three days now since there had been any sign of K'aijeen Thalen. The tribe had begun to search when she did not turn up for any meals the day she had been released from the rack. It felt like they had searched ceaselessly since then, in the tribe, outside the tribe, at the girl's known haunt in the stony mountains where she had engaged in dark magic with childish ignorance. And yet they had not found so much as a single hair from her red tail, a single footprint from her thin feet. K'ile had led several of the search parties himself. When word had come from the elders that they would be moving the tribe in search of water soon, and that the search parties would need to cease, K'ile had stopped sleeping and begun seeking in all his time. But now he walked home, as sunset reddened the sands on the third and final day. Azeyma's light burnt his skin, turned it red and dry and ugly as a beast's, and he accepted that. He envied his brother, the Nunh, for his children and the love of his women, but K'ile Tia had lost one of those children and did not mourn. He felt only wickedness and trepidation. Coming home empty-handed, his spear feeling like a heated iron rod upon his back, K'ile watched the sand disturbed by his footsteps. His hair hung over his features like blades of dried, red grass. His eyes recessed like stagnant pools. His arms and fingers hung as though distended. K'ile Tia had led the very last of the search parties. There would be no more searching, or hope, or deluding oneself into thinking she might be found. His feet would not take him back to his own tent yet. He would go first to the tent of the shaman, K'piru Jhanhi, to tell her that her daughter had not been found and there would be no more searching. K'ile did not feel sadness for having lost K'aijeen, nor would he miss her, but he did not want to tell K'piru that her daughter was dead.

"If that's what you choose to do, then that's what you choose to do. I'm not going to defend the kid." K'ile Tia stood behind Elder K'deiki, his brow low over vexxed features, empty hands beside him, red-stoned bracelet still on his wrist. He hadn't expected them to make such a fuss over an outsider wandering into camp, especially one that arrived with family and just might be family. K'yohko looked like he hadn't been meditating enough or a vilekin had crawled into his pants. His red tail flicking behind him, K'ile said, "If he is "K'zhuzu's kid, then he isn't that different from K'tahja: child of an outcast. You can treat him like an outsider if you want, but remember one of the main reasons we decided to relocate the tribe was to be closer to outsiders. So we could trade with them. If we don't want them in the camp anymore, we'll have a hard time trading."

((This post is a birthday present for Naunet. It happens after this thread.)) Fury burned through her limbs like coals smoldering in the night. She could sway her anger was shedding light on the walls around her, the street before her. Her vision shook. Even if she could restrain the tenseness in her jaw, the shaking of her limbs -- even if she could keep her fingers from bundling into fists and her feet from stomping -- the world around her was still cast in a red hue of fury. It shook her as though something outside her body laying over her, hot with power uncontrolled. She'd felt this way once before. Only once. At Cartenau. The familiar sensations of dark things stirring in her body, ready to burst from her throat and hands and chest if they were called, was at once terrifying and empowering. These feelings, this power, had not helped when she had felt it at Cartenau. Perhaps it would be different here in Ul'dah. The blood of D'aijeen Thalen flowed thick, even if her mother did despise her. Even if her father was dead, and her sister was deceiving her. Perhaps her blood was thicker than it should be, but no person was permitted to hurt her family. None. Not even D'ahl. As D'aijeen Thalen stalked down the backstreets of Ul'dah, well outside of the lauded Hustings Strip and Ruby Road with which she was accustomed, shadows moved with her. They were not her shadow, and yet they were shadows she possessed. Long and thin, pressed into the corners of walls against the ground and roofs, they flickered with light that did not illuminate. The shadows folded and flowed, watched her from ephemeral eye sockets from expressionless white faces like masks. Baalzephon. It was strange to know the name of a thing she could barely see, had never observed before. It was stranger still to not feel threatened by them. They followed her just like her tail did, green fur shivering behind her legs. They were as natural as the cold of the light. Voidsent. Their presence was comforting, but not calming. Her fury boiled in arms and face like poison in the thickness of her blood. * D'ahl was cold. It was not a cold not, but she shivered desperately. Her hands were close to her body, fingers knitted against her chest. Her blonde ears were flat against her head. Her tail wove between ehr thighs and made her stumble. She lurched through the knight, away from the Dodo Tribe's extravagant commune, like an old beggar fleeing charity. The fountain before the Ossuary shimmered beautifully in the moonlight. She couldn't bear to look at it. The water whispered calm trickling to her but she didn't listen. Her eyes shook about the shadows in the instinct of a person terrified. Her ears thrummed with the sound of her own heartbeat. She didn't know what she was afraid of. She didn't know who would chase her down or what they would do. But she was convinced recompense was coming. Why had she had the knives on her? Had she been planning that? She had not carried knives on her person in years, and the one day she chose to, she had given in to her frustration and anger and tried to kill someone. Failed. She'd failed like she'd grown into a hag. D'ahl had never felt so ancient in her life. The rickety woman collapsed in a corner near the Ossuary. It was a nonsensical thing to do. It didn't matter. Shamefully, she tried to hide herself in the shadow. She would've hidden in between the bricks if she could have. And if she could've done that, she would've stayed there until she were dead. "What a fine sight I must be," she muttered into the darkness, leaned forward until she felt her head hit the wall. In the shadows D'ahl felt her hair hang in front of her face, but did not see it. She felt her hands in her lap, but she couldn't see them. She imagined that she was a very old woman, with arms as thin as her bones, hands gnarled with black veins. "A fine sight. A hag in gemstones and silk. A perverse old maid so desperate for a child she'll use sex and murder... I'd kill..." It had not felt premeditated. She had not thought about it. When she'd tried to kill that witch she hadn't even felt her hands. Dahl remembered the terror she had felt when she'd first realized what she'd done, when she'd been sagging in pain from the Lalafel's retaliation and realized what had warranted it. She hadn't known the Sagolii witch was coming, though, so why had she felt she needed the knives? D'ahl shivered, felt hot tears on her face. When she spoke to the shadows again, her voice was so raw she could barely understand herself, "Would I have hurt Aijeen? I just... wanted to feel... I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Who was she apologizing to? Nobody was there except a shadow. "I'm sorry. I know I couldn't replace her mother. No one can replace anyone. I could never replace..." She reached out to the wall and found only brick. How thin she must be. Barren. Perverse. Senile. There was nothing left of the woman who had proudly served her tribe, who the Tias had courted, who had once had... For such brief, beautiful years... "You. I could never replace you." D'ahl ran her hand over the wall. She felt over the brick as if searching for soft ears, too big for a boy his age. She felt for the unruly fluff of his hair. She pulled her fingers down the brick like she was trying to smooth out his hair, as she'd always done. She tried to touch him, but all that was there was dark stone. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for trying. I knew I'd never replace you, but I never stopped trying. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The prematurely old woman shivered. The hag of Ul'dah leaned heavily against the wall, trying to reach through it to a time that she had lost hold of, to the only thing she'd ever wanted. It was gone far from there, in the shadows. Only Thal knew now. She would never reach there. D'ahl opened her eyes to watch the darkness beneath her, to watch her teardrops fall from her face. A white mask, strangely luminescent, stared up at her. Teardrops lay on its forehead, slid into its empty eye sockets, as it just stared. The shadows, unseeable, moved behind it. They moved somehow. A sharp sensation shocked her hand. D'ahl squeeked lowly, voice still choked with tears, and pulled her hand back from the wall. Out of the shadows had grown thin, sharp, white protrusions. Like spikes or teeth. They grew outward to her as though floating to the surface of a dark pool turned on its side, thickening. They were as bone, and their sharpness threatened her features. D'ahl jump up and back away from the wall, but with her very first step, something stabbed into her foot from below. She screamed at the sensation, buckling beneath it, looking down to see one of those bony spikes sticking all the way through her foot from below. Blood gushed. She felt it pulling, too dark to see. There was something under the shadows, several spikes were rising just as they had extended from the wall. As the spike in her foot extended, D'ahl cried out in pain and crumbled to one knee. The bony spikes were positioned in elongated semicircles, one on the ground and another on the wall. They seemed to enclose her. They were like the teeth of a great jaw. Like they were... They were going to... Terror shot through D'ahl's body, and she ripped her foot free from the spike. Ignoring the pain, not even screaming, she threw herself backwards. But not before the jaw closed. The spikes in the ground flew upward, those on the wall came falling down, and D'ahl was stabbed through the back, stabbed deep in her belly, but ten bony knives on either side. She did not fall to the ground. She hung in the air from the teeth of the impossible beast, felt a tongue made of shadow beneath her legs. Strangely numb, D'ahl pulled herself to look up into the face of the predator. The teeth were made of what seemed to be dismembered bird's talons. Where the face should have been, a multiplicity of skulls floated in the shadows. Bird's skulls. The death-masks of vultures and buzzards. The skulls of scavengers. D'ahl collapsed backwards under her own weight, suddenly weak. She felt the teeth tear her body as she moved, but did not feel pain. More vivid was the sensation of blood loss, like tears pointing from her entire body. As though, after all these years, she'd found a way to cry in the way that her young, departed son deserved. The fountain still whispered nearby. It flickered beautifully in the moonlight. Someone screamed. D'ahl's eyes shook and squinted, blood running down her throat, down her upside-down face to pool against her eyes. She saw a figure near the fountain clad in white, green-haired. She exhaled, and mouthed without sound, "Aijeen?" D'aijeen Thalen ripped her wand and bladed scepter from her robe, unsure which to use. "Stop! Stop!" She screamed, running forward. Spells shot through her body, found the foci. She swung her arms and the ground broke beneath her. Fire lit along her robe. The uncontrolled, thoughtless spells burst forward with all the power of her anger. Every single drop of anger, all the vengeance and retribution she had been carrying her, poured into a single moment that lit up the night before the Ossuary. And the demon made a chittering sound as it jumped to one side, stone slamming useless against its hindquarters, fire lighting up shadow and burning nothing. As the beast moved, D'ahl's body shook and bounced in its death, flesh tearing audibly. The predator of shadow ducked its head down and slammed D'ahl against the stone, ran towards D'aijeen dragging her, and her body bent gruesomely. "Stop!" D'aijeen didn't hear herself, but she emptied her breath into the cry. "I command you to release her! I command you!" All that was left where the anger had once been was fear, was an overpowering desperation. She didn't want D'ahl to die. She didn't want that! The monster slammed into D'aijeen headfirst, and the girl clung to it. D'ahl's limp body swung from its teeth, and the green-hair girl wrapped one arm around it. Her opposite hand pride at the black, shadowed lips of the ephemeral beast. Incredibly feeble, her thin fingers wrapped around the teeth and pulled on them. It was useless, but as the beast ran, she used all of the strength in her body to hold on. "I command you to put her down! Please!" The monster ducked its head with every step, slamming D'ahl's body to the ground. Her arms skittered limp beneath her like macabre pennants. Her face bent backwards and scrapped on the ground, reddened and ripped apart until it was almost unrecognizable. D'aijeen begged, "I don't want this to happen! I don't want any of this! Stop!" D'ahl's belly ripped open, spilling thick red threads of gore, exposing pink-white bones. The monster didn't stop running until there were away from the Ossuary, in a secluded place. D'aijeen felt only that they were in a dark place. She sensed Baalzephon in the corners and winged beasts watching from above. Getting her feet beneath her, she continues to pry at the beast teeth. Her own hands were bleeding. The tendons in her fingers were torn. She didn't stop. With a sick, wet sound, the mouth opened. It part slowly. D'aijeen watched they teeth being exhumed from the meat, her mind noting each organ visibly impaled. When the beast's tongue ejected D'ahl, the woman did not fall in the shape of a person. She was a bundle of human pieces tethered together by threads of flayed meat. In some places only sparse threads. Blood, dark and pungent in the night, filled D'aijeen's senses. She stood and stared. When she put her hands to her face, she painted her own features in blood. She could taste it running over her lips. She felt the vibrations of her screams in her skull. They hurt her ears. They drew the sparse breath from her sickly lungs. She screamed so greatly that she collapsed from the strain of it, her body shivering and cold. Her legs felt dead. Her tail was soaked through with blood and numb to all else. Though she lay her hands over D'ahl in an attempt to cradle the woman, in instinctive need to take stock of the damage, there was no longer a person in the body she touched. The damage was too great. Even if she had the means to bring the dead back to life, the body was too damaged. It was just meat now. D'aijeen swayed, her vision darkening. She found it difficult to breathe. Her chest swelled, her shoulders shook, her lungs hurt. The harder she tired to breathe, the more difficult it became. Everything was darkening. She tried to breathe. She tried to see. The predator dropped its head into her view. The vulture skulls, the bones like teeth, the basilisk spine that she had assembled into a monster in her youth, presented themselves before her. It moved itself forward and pressed its hideous, shadowed head against her face, like an animal showing affection. It bore her backwards and pressed her against a wall, but not painfully. The beast was gentle with her, now. "I commanded you..." D'aijeen managed, her shoulders still shaking, her breath thin and words just whispers. "You're supposed to do what I say. You're supposed to do what I say. I told you no. I told you." She shivered, curled her tatter fingers into fists and pushed them against the monster's face to try and drive it away. "Why are you here? Go away. I command you to die." The monster shifted its face against her hands, and remained where it was. The many skulls of the scavengers stared at her. "I command you to die," she whispered. She shook. She wanted to cry. She wanted to breathe. She wanted to go home, but there was so much blood. Everywhere. Everywhere she had ever called home, there was just so much blood.

Night fell and rose. It was dawn when they approached the camp. Even so, they could not have approached undetected. The huntresses had to have smelled the chocobo long ago, even if they hadn't seen them while preparing for their hunts. By dawn the tribe was already mostly awake, the fire that kept the camp warm at night having burned down to goals and need to be rebuilt to cook the morning's meal. K'ile soughed the blanket from his shoulder and accepted the cold morning air that wrapped his body, jumping into it to land on the sand as the huntresses approached. The spears that had lowered at the sight of the red-headed Keeper relaxed when K'ile came into view. He flicked his wrist and made the stones on his bracelet light up as a way to identify himself, and then he waved high over his head. Xha'li's greeting had preceded his own, but K'ile's was more purposeful, "Hey, someone make sure there's a shaman awake! Luha's hurt!" The Tia turned then, grabbing the cart and pulling himself up by it. He didn't wait to see if K'luha was awake or asleep, but said to her, "Make sure they take you straight to the shaman and don't give them a hard time. If you don't get better I'm not going to be challenging any Nunhs for you." Then he let himself drop back into the sand and turned. To the arriving huntresses, he said, "Find a place for the stranger and his brids, but don't get attached to any of them. I've got to go see the Elders right away."

That was understandable. There were a number of people K'ile would trade the new face for as well. The Tia responded, "There's no bartaring life and death, no matter what they say in the temples at Ul'dah. If there was, what we sacrificed at Cartenau would've at least spared us the Calamity." The first thing he'd do is take those sacrifices back, since they'd won seemingly nothing. He could still recall the faces of the friends he'd lost there, and at the thought he dropped his gaze to the bracelet on K'luha's wrist. The red stones still rest on her skin, as they'd once set on the arms of the other fire dancers. "I think I should be wearing that bracelet when I go to the Elders," he said. "They'll be angry if I'm not."

"He's family. He's coming home." K'ile said, watching the woman drink. He watched K'luha's throat and features, her ears, the way her longer hand lay over her shoulders. His fingers worked the fabric of his pants where they rested on his knees. Straight-faced, K'ile said, "He's not that different from Tahj." And he reached for the canteen.

His ears dipped for a moment, then popped back up. He'd been half-afraid she was going to kiss him or grab his tail or soemthing. The Tia responded, "Just some Keeper looking for the tribe. Said he's K'zhuzu's kid, and with our luck lately I don't doubt it. At this rate I'll be blood-brothers with an Amal'jaa before the week is out. Anyway, he likes Chocobo, so he's welcome to steer."

His ears and brow perking up in vexation, K'ile was at once confused as to what K'luha wanted from him, why, and how exactly he was to deliver it. "Uhm. What?" Where? He was here, in the cart, in the Sagolii, relatively close to her. What here did she mean? Shifting about briefly, K'ile eventually guessed by taking the short step over towards K'luha and dropping into a crouch next to her shoulder. "Here?"

Nudging the water towards K'luha, making sure to allow her to frame it as a victory so that she didn't decide to keep being stubborn, K'ile pulled his finger from his mouth and shifted his jaw around, tasting the dirt. He wiped his hand off on the leg of his pants, tail whipping around behind him. "I know how to control it. The Elders have never been too hard on me in the past, and besides, it's not like they're going to be exiling me right before the tribe migrates anyway." One ear twitching, he glanced over his shoulder at the young man, Xha'li, recalling something he'd said moments before. "We don't have use for conjury out here, so don't worry about it. You're more useful steering the Chocobo."

"I don't need to drink any more until we get home," K'ile responded, putting the canteen down on the bottom of the cart near K'luha and standing away from it. He then reached up and stuck a finger in his mouth, pulling one his cheek and saying in garbled words, "An my mouf dosin even gep vereh big, thee?"

"We have water," K'ile answered both of the Miqo'te on the cart with him. "I've been conserving it." Sort of a lie, but sort of not. Every time he'd poured water of K'luha to keep her from overheating, he'd made the choice to compensate by abstaining from a sip or two himself. The Tia briefly mumbled toward the red-headed Keeper, "Leave it K'zhuzu to fail to both shack up with a Keeper and fail to give her any useful offspring. Bunch of boys and off he goes." With only a very quick breath in pause, K'ile turned his eyes on K'luha and said more firmly, "I will go to Elders immediately after seeing you to the shaman. If I bring you to the Elders like this they'll just yell at me for not taking good care of you and then send you to the shaman themselves."

"Just take your time and drink some more," K'ile said. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, but didn't rest much weight there. Luha's skin felt dry and sticky under his hand, like she'd run out of sweat. "You were pretty out of it for awhile. First thing when we get back is you going to see the shaman. We'll be there tomorrow."

One of K'ile's ears twitched, and then he looked down at K'luha, suddenly right awake. He crouched down next to her, his tail flipping back and forth behind him, "Almost home. You're dehydrated and I'm worried." He tried offering her the canteen.

"Well, that sounds like him. First thing he did to the tribe as soon as he was able was to get kicked out for being a lazy good-for-nothing." K'ile moved back in the carriage, frowning at the baby chocobo for a moment. But he couldn't really blame it for being what it was until it got old enough to know better, so he let it remain unmolested. K'luha, on the other hand, was doused with water again. K'ile took a drink of water before stoppering the canteen again, looking back at X'hali and saying, "Hope it doesn't run in the blood. I'd be your uncle, but the way. K'ile Tia."

With the stink of the chocobo -- walls of avian stench eclipsing half the desert -- it was almost easy to miss the smell of the Keeper. The red-headed boy had an acrid, salty smell to him that K'ile couldn't quite place. His tired, sun-addled head shifted as he brushed the interloping chocobo aside to try and guide the two pulling his cart past them. He had to get K'luha home as soon as possible, rude travelers or no. The hands of western traders, K'ile remember. It was the smell on the hands of the western traders, their skin splotched and dried from salt long before they'd arrived in the desert. They hauled seafood and ale from the coast to sell in Gridania and Ul'dah, rarely passing along the roads that circumnavigated the Sagolii like the water-line of a dried-up basin. More recently, K'ile had noted that scent while scouting locations for the tribe to migrate to, on the western coasts of Thanalan where ships from Limsa docked carrying food mined from the sea floor. The scent returned imagined visions to K'ile's mind, of a city in the ocean where a thousand ships docked, floating like a great vessel himself. K'piru had said she lived in that city, and had said he might visit her there. But K'luha had said they could travel there, once, as well. She said she would take him across the ocean on a boat to see the city, her smile swelling her bronze cheeks. That offer had inspired dreams, images of a placid ocean like a mirror stretching from horizon to horizon, warm sun and humid air, a small vessel with K'luha sitting across from him. There would be amicable silence, like they kind they enjoyed after an argument but without any argument to get there: peace without conflict. Even if K'piru lived there, Limsa might as well not exist if K'luha did not go there with him. All the more reason to get her home. The Keeper was saying, "Who says I'm a full-blooded Keeper? K'zhuzu Tia is my father." "If you can honestly say without shame that a Hipparion Tia is your father, then you've no business looking for the tribe." K'ile's response was thoughtless. There was not a moment of doubt that what the man said was true, for it made too much sense for K'zhuzu to breed with an outsider while wearing the name 'Tia'. Zhuzu had never been the brightest or the best-behaved. K'airos' scent still lingered on the cart. But K'ile had ceased fearing that she no longer existed. His mind had grown tired of the fear and the worry, and it had simmered away until all that was left was a flat, sour aftertaste. K'airos might not exist. It didn't matter if he didn't get home. K'zhuzu might exist, and might have a son -- the Hipparion Tribe was isolated by blood flows beyond reason throughout the world -- but that didn't matter either. He just needed to get K'luha home. Still. "Listen," K'ile said, eyes, standing up, trying to look awake, "If you're better with the Chocobo than I am, jump up on there and steer us home. Tribe was here about a week ago but went east chasing water, or so the markers say. They won't be more than two days out be foot. We'll take the cart and be there by morning."

The Tia scoffed, "Of all the names to bring up. What's it to a Keeper anyway?" K'ile jumped from the carriage to collect the reins for his chocobo once move, moving out between them and the interfering bird to try and urge them past one another, but with no real idea how to do so. He said as he did, "The tribe's around. Just have to follow the markers and catch up to them."

"Don't boss me around, stranger." K'ile's ears lifted high as he turned his winking gaze back to the man in the sand. "Desert's actually better for traveling at night if you know what you're doing. Too many people die walking around in the heat all day like idiots." When the carriage jerked to a stop, K'ile looked forward to where the to chocobo pulling it appeared to be having a bit of a tiff with another chocobo that had gotten in their way. "And move your darn bird. Just being rude now."

"What!" K'ile flinched at the whistle, looking around, ears swiveling. His tired eyes didn't stay wide for long, though. The sun caught her face and he winked against it, one exhausted blue eye looking through his red bangs at the person who was shouting at him. K'ile half-suspected he was dreaming, for the apparent suddenness of the man's appearance and the way the chocobo were inexplicably multiplying. "There's no good way to drive these birds," K'ile threw down the rains when he said that, noting the way the Chocobo pulling the carriage continued on unperturbed. He stood in the carriage as it continued, turning to retrieve a water skin and eyeing K'luha as he did so. The woman remained unresponsive, seemingly dazed.

The further they got from Ul'dah, the less K'ile mourned the family that he'd departed from. He glanced in the general direction he though the city was, inhaled, sighed. He could still smell his niece's scent lingering about the cart where she'd ridden or placed her hands. It was like the echo of a scent, something he could make out this far from the city. It was weak, though. He mourned less, but as he looked back north, he frowned more deeply. The cessation of his mourning was not acceptance, but instead forgetting. In his mind, K'airos and K'piru were already becoming less real. As if Ul'dah existed in a dream, and he were awakening back into a world where they were still dead. K'ile found himself breathing heavy, ears dipping lower, tail lazier in its motions. As he learned better how to guide the Chocobo, he noticed her could leave them walk on their own for periods of time. During such times he would move back in the cart, closer to K'luha. He could breathe easier when he ws closer to her, even as sad as she was. And he was beginning to notice that she was very sad. "We're going to do alright, Luha," he said to her at once such point, as they moved slowly through the migrating dunes. He meant it more as self-assurance, hoping that maybe, if she concurred, he might actually be able to convince himself. Things were taking a great toll of K'luha. She was paying for her foolish behavior in a way more terrible than being strapped to a board. Most of the journey, she spent asleep. And when she was awake she still felt as if she were asleep. And it began to seem as if it was all just feverish dreaming. And when she began dreaming in her sickened sleep, she lost track of when things were a dream and when it was real. K'luha had lost her perception of time and space and people in the deafening pain and silence of her prison. Occasionally she felt as if something solid was nearby to grasp, but mostly she felt sick. And it was at some time or place during this strange void that Luha thought she heard someone say something to her. But her voide was stuck somewhere she didn't know anymore, and didn't seem to reply at all, but to let her head kind of fall forward with the movement of the carriage. Lingering on the top of the items they were shipping home, K'ile watched the Chocobo who were lazily walking along. The dunes were simple, and even though these particular birds hadn't yet figured out how to keep their footing on the sand, it was practically impossible for them to crash or overturn the carriage for at least a few miles. So he diverted his attention away from them, to K'luha, moving to where she was at the back of the carriage. He hated the way the job of driving separated him from her; he was not a person who was meant to be alone, either in illusion or in fact, and for some reason that extra yalm of distance had been weighing on him. He hadn't been able to get a clear look at her from where he'd been sitting, and she hadn't responded to him in some time. As K'ile made his way to her, he moved one of the crates so that it was between the sun and the woman, putting her face in merciful shadow. He took a water skin from where it sat atop one of the casks that K'airos had given them. "Luha, hey," he said. "Are you doing alright back here? You've been kind of quiet." To K'ile, there were in the open dunes, but from K'luha's point of view they were travelling through the valley she had seen once as a child. A valley she had knocked her brothers and sisters into with huge thick rib bones spearing through the endless sand. The dunes rose high above them on either side that suddenly cast a shadow on her face, easing the burning sun off of her face. And as they travelled K'luha could make out the moaning and suffering forms of her family left behind. Her brothers and her exiled sister, her aunts and uncles, and extended family. Their forms burned and screamed and moaned around as they carriage ever moved forward in an uneasing motion. As if it were a boat crossing an ocean of sand unto oblivion. And far off in the distance, she saw the form of her daughter. And it was all she could do to watch the mangled form of what she thought would be her son rise from the depths of the sand and drag her daughter down as well. But in reality, none of these were true. K'luha just remained glassy eyed and silent to K'ile's question. Figuring maybe she was overheated, K'ile opened the water skin and poured some water over her forehead and the bidge of her nose. K'luha didn't seem to react for a few moments. Until she lifted her head with a small start, jolted out of whatever she had been enduring. She blinked a few times as water dripped down her forehead and nose onto her chest. Luha didn't immediately recognize K'ile and half stared at him strangely for a moment. "Hey, I know your arms aren't broken." K'ile reached down and pulled one of K'luha's hands up, putting it to the water skin, "Drink some. You look dehydrated or something." Luha looked slowly towards the water skin. Her arms offered no resistance to K'ile's direction. But also didn't stay up, instead sort of limply dropping back down to her side and hanging there. Looking a bit annoyed, K'ile took up the water skin and put it to K'luha's lips to pour some into her mouth, pressing her head back as he did so. "Come on, don't get all dramatic on me." Luha didn't fight K'ile on this matter either. Out of sheer instinct, she swallowed the water. But she still didn't reply to K'ile. "There you go." He closed up the skin and and set it at Luha's side, against her leg. "Drink a bit more or you'll start feeling worse. Hear?" Luha did not hear. Or reply. Her head simply dropped down going limp, as if she had gone back to sleep. K'ile watched Luha in silence for a long moment, putting a hand against her cheek to support her head. He sighed, leaned forward and put his face beside hers, muttering into her ear, "Are you alright, Luha?" K'luha murmured faintly at the question, but her murmuring was unintelligible and muffled at best. Her ears flicked slowly in opposite directions, as if even her most natural of insticts were confused and drowsy. "I'll get you home soon," K'ile said, petting one side of K'luha's head and kissing the other, before pulling away from her. "We'll be fine." This earned another small unintelligible murmur before Luha's ears confused moved again. Unhappily, K'ile stood away from K'luha, saying, "Make sure you drink some water," before crawling back up to the front of the carriage just in time to keep the Chocobo from catching the yolk on one of the large rib-bones sticking up out of the sand. Luha weakly lifted her heavy head. Her eyes tried to focus on the land passing by them. The sand was slowly rising to high dunes besides them. And from the high dunes, surrounding them on either side were bones. Thick and enormous, stabbing through the sands. Taken aback, Luha's ears flattened against her head, and she looked clusmily to either side. "You guys be more careful," K'ile was saying to the chocobo, figuring he might as well make a habit of talking to things that didn't respond, since he was doing it so much lately. "I really shouldn't have to check in on you guys every two minutes. Your worse at this than I am." As they ventured further, the dunes rose so high it blocked the the sun until it was mottled and shining faintly on them through the thick bones poking through sand up ahead. The area was eerie, covered in bones and strangely enough quills. Luha felt a cold chill through her body as they moved forward. This wasn't a place they should be. It wasn't a place they should go. She opened her mouth to try and talk. To protest, but her lips refused to utter sound. But the fear creeping up her spine and into her head forced her to try again, sputtering and hissing until she could managed the word, "Back." Trying to figure out what to do with the reins on the Chocobo, one of K'ile's ears twitched and he looked around in mild confusion, as though he'd heard something strange on the wind. He looked up at the rising dunes, around at the bones, glanced back behind them but not at Luha specifically. Mumbled and stuttering through her voice, Luha pursed her lips and said it again, most insitantly. "Back." K'ile finally looked at Luhua, knitting his brow. "What?" "Back." She repeated hoarsely. "Back what?" K'luha's ears flattened again and her head sort of limply rolled over onto her shoulder. "Back..." She repeated more faintly, as if talking was incredibly taxing. Turning a bit more around, K'ile held his hands up in gesture for emphasis, "What are you talking about? Really?" As if to answer for Luha, there was a loud and dark snarl that echoed through the shadow tomb of the unknown. K'luha seemed to faintly cringe at the noise, but didn't speak further. K'ile turned back to the front of the carriage, gazing into the duned shadows. The desert was so bright around them that the bone-decorated value seemed especially dark, the Seeker's eyes not adapting very well to the dark. What he had heard he usually would've smelled first, but now that he had, he couldn't miss it. He pulled on the reins of the chocobo, "Stop for a second," the creatures protesting the gesture because apparently he hadn't done it right. He didn't really have time for that though. He hauled on the rains hard enough to pull the necks on the Chocobo back, making them stumble. "I said stop!" Putting botht he reins in one hand and taking his spear from the cart in the other, K'ile jumped down to pull the chocobo sideways and force them to turn around. There was another grumbling noise, almost like snoring, and a faint breeze through the valley. Luha shivered again. Getting the chocobo to urn the carriage around, he pulled the birds forward and had them start walking back out the way they came in. The valley wasn't a place that K'ile was familiar with, but not matter how tempting a walk in the shade was, it wasn't worth getting turned around and dealing with unknowns. They'd go around. The further they got out of the valley the less whatever it was in there growled. And finally Luha faintly perked her ears when she could feel a bit of sunlight on her again. Once K'ile felt the warmth of the sun agitating the sunbruns across his shoulders , neck and cheeks, he clambered back up onto his carraige and lay his spear across it. He stood, staring back into the valley as the chocobo walked away from it, and muttered, "Guess that place must have a den or two."

Luha spent the rest of the day saying nothing and trying to sleep, with mixed amounts of success. Although she hadn't actually heard any news from the tribe, she had already resigned herself to the inevitable outcome. Why had K'ile invited K'ailia back to the tribe? To face what it meant to leave? It didn't matter what he was thinking when he did that anymore. It didn't matter what was said when K'aila went back. She would be refused as family and she would go back to Ul'dah. To the family she had chosen for herself. It was late when K'luha looked up to the starry night sky above her. The darkness above was a good mirror for how she felt. A sort of dark chasm had swallowed her, and despite the bright stars of light that lingered there, it was still abyssmally dark. She was trying not to be that person. She was trying not to fall apart again, to be a stronger person and get over it all. K'ile seemed to think she should just get over it. So why was it that she couldn't? Maybe if she had been K'piru, K'ile might have been sensitive enough to help her, but she wasn't and he wasn't. All thinking of 'ifs' did was depress her more about the state of affairs. Luha vaguely wished in the back of her mind that her hip would just break the rest of her and end all of this nonsense. But it was a stupid thought and not something Luha could or would act on again. Unsure how to go about instructing the chocobo to stop (if Luha had told him, he had forgotten), K'ile simply allowed the Chocobo to walk until the felt like stopping, which was a good while after dark, but whatever. They'd gotten a late start and it wasn't him walking. Stupid chocobo could walk as late as they wanted. Likewise, K'ile did not think about his feelings. Things were precisely as he had communicated to K'luha. They were no more complicated or simple than that, and that wouldn't change until something happened to change it. He didn't have anything to say to Luha about it, or about anything else. That was a bit bothersome, because he felt like he usually did, but then he also felt like Luha was usually the one to initiate the talking, so he wasn't sure. Shortly after the chocobo stopped, their heads sagging in tiredness, K'ile stood and cast his gaze around their surroundings. There was no clear shelter, jsut rocks and rocks and some bigger rocks next to stones. Typical Thanalan. He stood at the front of the cart, looked back to Luha, and gestured to the land around them, "We've can have any campsite we want. No competition tonight." K'luha was quiet for a time even after K'ile spoke. Any campiste she wanted? There were none that she wanted anymore. Even home sounded hollow and uninviting. It was better than Ul'dah, but not good. Her children were dead, or as good as dead. And it was her fault both times. She'd hurt everyone around her without meaning to, and broken the strongest connection she'd felt before. Namely that of the one with K'ile. Maybe K'ile didn't think the same, but what he said to her in Ul'dah had been something like a final goodbye. But he was right at least. She wasn't K'piru. And she could expect no support from K'ile. At least, not the support she wanted or needed. "You're setting it up. Pick what you want." Luha answered finally in a quiet but bland voice. "Setting it up?" K'ile parroted. "Just parking the cart and pulling out the blankets. Maybe making dinner. Maybe. Anyway. That's a nice rock!" He pointed, then urged the chocobo in that direction, looking for a place to tie the birds off. He supposed he should feed them or something. If he didn't, they would be too think to eat well before getting home. K'luha shrugged vaugely at the retort and said no more. A nice rock? They were all the same. Luha mentally berated herself or being so stuck. She should be better than this. She shouldn't be so depressed, so resigned, so... hopeless. Even trying not to be, she was. Luha sighed heavily. If she was just with K'ile and as long as she didn't say anything, maybe it was fine to wallow in her misery for awhile. Tying the tired birds side-by-side to a hefty stone, K'ile walked around to the back of the cart, standing by K'luha and smiling at her to say, "Actually, the only blankets we have the ones strapped down with you. So in order to unpack them I have to unpack you first." K'luha opened her eyes when she felt K'ile hovering in front of her. It did not lighten her spirits to know they were poorly provisioned for this trip either. The only thing between her and extreme pain of jostling where the blankets, and thus they were going to be removed from her to keep them both from freezing in the night. Fabulous. "Got it." K'luha replied, trying very very hard not to sound as disheartened as she felt. "It's kinda silly to pretend like you can spend all your time on this board. It's good for traveling, but..." K'ile pulled some folds of blankets out of the way to begin taking off the straps that held K'luha and the blankets in place. "Well, I didn't strap myself to it...." K'luha replied somewhat bitterly before she could stop herself. Of course she bit her lip shut quite suddenly after she'd opened her mouth, and inwardly swore for talking again. Working the straps was quick and easy for K'ile, because they were his after all, usually slung around his shoulders. As he pulled them off, he said, "How're you feeling." K'luha just looked away. She felt compelled to answer, and at the same time she felt as if she shouldn't answer. After a few moments she stopped biting down on her bottom lip and muttered a quiet, "Awful." Setting the straps aside, leaning against the cart, almost putting a hand on one of K'luha's legs then awkwardly changing his mind and crossing his arms and then letting them drop and finally pulling on one ear K'ile said, "Anything I can do to make you feel better?" Wouldn't a normal person just get over these sorts of things? Couldn't a normal person just get over some hurtful words and two dead or as good as dead children? Probably. Luha finally looked up towards K'ile when he asked if there was anything he could do and found herself ina dilemma. Would she hurt his feelings if she said no? Last time she'd been upset and tried to talk to him about it he'd gone and run off. She didn't trust herself with words now. Everything she said just seemed to be wrong. Luha parted her lips to speak but no words came and she ended up looking helplessly at K'ile. Waiting patiently for awhile, K'ile just shrugged, "I'll start with a fire and dinner and go from there. You want to stay in the cart or move down to sit by where I'm going to put the fire?" "Ah... whatever's easier for you..." K'luha ended up saying, feeling disheartened again. Did K'ile even recognize her struggle? Or did he just not care? Was she so beyond help that even the person who claimed to love her like that not bother? The thought didn't do anything to aid her spirits. K'ile shook his head, "Doesn't matter to me either way. It's not about me." "Sure it is." Luha replied back without much thought, giving another shrug. "You're stuck taking me back after all. I can't do anything... nothing..." Luha trailed off after a moment, seeimingly stuck on the depressing idea of nothingness. But she cleared her throat after a second and tried not to act so pathetically. "So just whatever is easier." She finished. Crossing his arms, this time for more than half a second, K'ile said, "I thought you were the one sent to bring me back, not the other way around." "I... I was. But I wasn't so much send as I did beg for them to send me and not K'yohko..." Luha glanced away, rubbing her shoulder uncomfortably. "But I also ran into the desert and nearly killed myself. Multiple times. And my daughter would literally chose anyone over me and is the equivalent of dead to my family so... I don't think I've really 'brought' you back so much as I have caused trouble for everyone and acted like a complete child.... So please just... whatever's easier for you." K'luha sighed and kept her eyes on the sand, away from K'ile's. K'ile made a face and said a bit too easily, "I don't think you've done anything wrong." He blinked, shook his head, said, "Well, no, not taking care of your hip like you should've was pretty dumb. But that's not really, like, a big moral crime or anything." "I've done something wrong when everyone would chose another person over you..." Luha muttered and immediately regretted saying it. She had been thinking that for a long time. How could K'aila choose Ul'dahns over her? How could K'ile pick K'piru over her consistantly? Why was it that pretty much everyone had someone they preferred over her? Maybe it wasn't fair to say K'ile had chosen K'piru over her. After all, he hadn't stayed in Ul'dah with her. But reguardless of how fair it was to feel that way, she still felt that way. Luha crossed her arms over her chest as her ears flattened against her head. She pulled her shoulders up close to her had as well and turned her head away from K'ile again, ashamed. "I shouldn't have said that... forget about it." "Lots of people make bad decisions. Especially about other people." He lifted his arm up, brought his bracelet into view, touched the band with his fingers. The small red stones glowed very briefly in response. "All of these stones belonged to people I loved. Some of them I wasn't as nice to as I should've been. Maybe one I was a bit too close to. Now I miss them all the same." "K'ailia would rather be with anyone else. You would rather be with K'piru. Tahj would rather have her mother. Everyone I know would prefer me to be somebody else. I only wish I could give you all what you want. Because it's not me." Luha mumbled so quietly K'ile might not have even heard, but she pulled herself closer against the board she had been strapped to all the same. K'ile rolled his eyes, reached out and took K'luha's hand, the glowing light from his bracelet illuminating both of their fingers for a moment. Then, deftly, his opposite hand slid the bracelt from his wrist and onto hers. "I wouldn't let K'piru wear this. Not even for a second." K'luha hesitantly glanced back to K'ile when she felt his hand taken her own. She was confused for a few moments. Her fingers felt warm, warmer than they should have if K'ile was just holding her hand. She glanced to their hands and noticed the braclet as he spoke. It felt strange to have the beads around her wrist. They somehow felt warm, but not unpleasantly so. K'luha sniffled a bit, her eyes watering up but she tried hard to keep it back. She tugged lightly on his hand like she wanted him closer and sniffled again. Once more, K'ile shifted uncomfrotably. Offering the bracelet was the most extreme gesture he could think of, short of cutting off his tail and giving it to her. If that wasn't going to help, he wasn't sure what he would try next. When she pulled on his hand, he leaned closer to her, but felt a bit off-center doing so. K'luha tried not to knock K'ile over, but she wasn't really sure how good his foothold was. But he was close enough now that she could loosely wrap her aroms around him and hug him. She wanted to bury her head into his shoulder, but he simply wasn't close enough, so she settled for the somewhat awkward hug. K'ile turned the hug as best he could manage to while also trying not to hurt her hips. "I'd build the fire in the cart if I didn't know better. So you can stay up here and be cold all night or you can sleep with me down by the fire." "No... I'll sleep with you." Luha mumbled in return before biting her bottom lip. "Okay. Just need to figure out how to move you without hurting you. I can't really carry you on this board all on my own." "Just take me off the board then. It'll be okay. It honestly can't get any worse so. It'll be okay." "I'll just cradle you really careful," Kile said, moving his arms so that he could grip her around her back and under her knees. K'luha nodded and closed her eyes tightly, preparing for what was sure to be painful. She took the moment to hold her breath as well, hoping for some reason that would help stifle the pain. Hesitating in thought for a moment, K'ile swifty kissed K'luha's cheek and then moved her in the very next moment, keeping most of her weight against his body, so that it wasn't bearing down too much on her hips. Luha surprised by the kiss. So surprised she momentarily forgot about being moved. Or at least, didn't notice it until he had already moved her. Of course, it was still painful and she inhaled sharply as the pain hit her. But it wasn't so bad. K'ile was getting good at moving her around without a lot of pain now. He didn't move her far. Just to the side of the cart, to a flat space between it and a number of man-sized rocks, and there he set her down on the ground. Luha hissed faintly and gripped K'ile tightly, only letting go to be cooperative as he set her down. At least it wasn't far, although the ground wasn't particularly comfortable. "Thanks..." Luha managed a weak murmur as she tried to recover from the move. Releasing her, K'ile walked to the cart and took hold of the blankets and pillows that had been used to keep K'luha (somewhat) comfortable all day, and tossed them to her. "I'm going to go scrounge up some wood for a fire." K'luha let the blankets land on her and carefully drew them up around after a moment's hesitation. "Alright." She called in response. It wasn't like she could help, even though she wanted to. So instead she settled for examining the beads around her wrist and wondering how one got them to set things on fire. Thanalan was not yet a full desert, but it was very dry, and so finding a decent amount of dry wood was no problem. K'ile uprooted an entire dead shrub which smelled of sweet spices and collected a number of gnarled limbs for kindling, and bringing them back and setting them in front of K'luha. This only took a few minutes for him to do, and hten he was building a small pyre of kindling a few feet away from K'luha. "A warm fire will make anything feel better. Literally anything." K'luha had managed to not set herself, or anything else really, on fire while playing with the beads. She glanced over as best she could went K'ile returned and gave a short nod. Once he had the wood stacked so that plenty of air could get between the collected branches and the fire would burn upward and toward the center, K'ile took a dead limb he had set aside and, smiling, gave it a flick. When nothing happened, he looked vexed and flicked it again. Then his ears bounced, "Oh!" And he turned to K'luha. K'luha glanced back at K'ile, who was now looking at her with a dead branch. ".... Could I try?" She asked sheepishly. K'ile quirked his expression and said, "I don't know if I'm allowed to teach you. The stones are for... I'm kind of misusing them half the time in the first place..." "Please?" K'luha pleaded, giving him her best sad kitten face. It was a pretty good sad kitten face too. The kind that screamed 'love me and let me bend you to my will.' Waiting for several long seconds, K'ile eventually muttered, "I guess it couldn't hurt too much," he stepped over and extended the stick towards K'luha, "It only works with rigid, dead wood." Luha smiled and reached up to grab the stick. Rigid dead wood huh? So no wonder she wasn't setting on fire earlier. "And you just flick...?" She mumbled. She had watched K'ile do it plenty and tried emulating the motion. "It's a rhythm thing. It's part of the dance," K'ile spun and took up another stick he'd set aside. "It's in the wrist. It's in the whole arm actually. All the way to your shoulder. You chest a bit too. Maybe like the whole dance, sort of..." He made a face, sighed. "It's like this," K'ile said, rolling his shoulder, then rolling that gesture down his arm, into his wrist, and the stick laggered in his fingers a bit before twitching to one side. "Fwoosh." "Kind of hard to use my shoulder and chest like this but, I can try..." Luha huffed a bit and tried it again, with little success. She tried it a lot more times and grew frustrated. Still, she didn't want to just give up and kept attempting it. "It's a dance step," K'ile said. "It's the first dance step. Imagine there's a drum in your chest, and then tis struck and it chakes all the way down your arm. And you want to move the stick so that it kicks back as if to hit on the next beat." Luha grumped and made a face, trying it yet again. Multiple agains. And the stick did nothing. Eventually she huffed irritably and flicked it hard enough that perhaps out of sheer anger it faintly began burning. Less of a fire and more of the very beginnings of one, but it was something! K'ile chuckled at her, and said, "It's not about how hard you hit it. It's about rhythm. Music!" Luha pursed her lips, ears flattening. "Ah well. It's kind of hard to do like this but... maybe one of these days I'll get it right." She reached up a bit and moved to hand the smoldering branch to K'ile. "I would keep trying, but it's starting to hurt my hip." "Yeah, don't do that," K'ile stepped forward, crouched down, took the stick and cupped his hand around one of the smoldering ends of the stick. Blowing on it to keep it hot and cause it to smolder more, K'ile took it and went to the fire. Luha smiled faintly and reached down to rub at her hip. "Yeah, I know." Lighting the fire in a more traditional, less magical way, even if only slightly, felt strang to K'ile. His wrist felt bare, and he felt sort of vulnerable, as if he had been disrmed. Still, he was able to get a small fire to catch and put it into the kindling, where it began to grow. The warmth of the growing fire was nice against the encroaching freeze of the wasteland. Luha shivered a bit and pulled the covers more tightly around her. Maybe someday she could keep one of the beads from the bracelet, but for now... mayhems not.