The girl turned them south well before they reached the town that had chased them away. As much as she wanted food and clothes, she didn't seem to want either of them going there. They hadn't gone far east before she had them walking southward, just east of a cliff face, heading for a narrow pass that would lead into the larger expanse of the Sagolii sands.
The climate didn't quite reflect that yet, however. As she walked, she broke a small limb from a scrub brush. It still had some greenery on it, though it was dry and mostly dead. She turned it one way and the other in her hands, then wagged it around in seemingly random gestures. Her expression was very concentrated as she did this, though didn't pause in her walking. Her tail twitched in agitation when nothing happened.
The pass they were heading towards loomed perhaps a half kilometer ahead. She tried harder with the twig, but the nothing continued.
Thal had grown increasingly uncomfortable as they walked, though not through any fault of the girl's. He paused when he good, moved his hands through patches of tall shrub and brambles, lay it against the dry trunk of a thin, twisted tree, and even managed to find a few stunted cacti. He stopped at them, under the pretenses of of trying to tear off some of the chunky leaves for them to eat. The spines were annoying - and occasionally painful - but it was the only truly green thing he'd seen in this desert.
He left the remains of the cactus brown and shriveled when he pulled away. The girl had been distracted with some twig she'd found, and he watched her a moment, picking back up his walk to catch up, before speaking, "Hey, look what I found!" Smiling, he idly pulled spines from the cactus bits he'd left undrained. "They look nice and juicy."
Looking back curiously, the girl made a dusty sound in response and then fidget around looking for somewhere to put her twig. She tried to stick it in the dangling threads of the dress, seemed to consider slipped its end into the band of her underclothes, and then finally wedged it into her tangled hair like a decoration. Finally, she reached for the cactus.
Double checking one of the cactus chunks for any more spines, he handed one over to the girl. "Eat up." He glanced past her, towards the pass they steadily approached, and let out a low whistle. "Well that looks impressive. Hey, how far is your home? And what's it like there?" Casting a smile her way, he worked on getting the last of the spines from his own cactus chunk.
She bit into the cactus chunk well before she was able to answer. Her shifted strangely as she chewed, her throat and muscles make strange sounds beneath the tied cloth that concealed them. There was no war she still had the prerequisite muscles to chew, and her mouth and jaw moved as though she did.
Her attempt at swallowing, however, was a miserable failure. She choked violently, staggering, and tried to squelch instinctive coughs and heaves that made her entire body convulse. She fell to the ground and pulled the cloth away from her wound with one hand, reaching inside of it to try and fix whatever had gone wrong.
"Ah, hey, are you--" Thal hurried to her, dropping down to rest a hand on her back. "Hey, just try to breathe." He grimaced, rubbing her back.
Amal'jaa moved in the crags of the pass, dark shadows falling over their black-scaled forms. This was not a normal place to find them, and they were an unusual sort for this part of Thanalan. They carried the weapons of Zan'rak. The air around them shimmered with the heat of the tempered. Ifrit's blessings warmed their breaths. They moved in silent stillness, as though waiting, wrapped in eddies of concealment. Their scents did not blow away from their bodies, nor did the heat reach through the earth and air away from them.
Perhaps this is why the other figure on the crags, standing well above the Amal'jaa and in the light, appeared not to notice them. He stood with his small body glistening with sweat, shoulders and arms reddened from sunlight and harsh, biting sand. He looked down, taking in the length of the pass, and shifted his spear in his hand. His tail flicked. His ears stood high and listened. The gaze he wore was suspicious, aware, and yet he did not turn on the Amal'jaa. They eyed him like meat they did not dare hunt yet, and he eyed the pass below him.
The hair on his head shifted like heavy fire as he lifted his gaze suddenly. The concealed Amal'jaa shifted deeper into the shadows at this. He did not turn it on them, however. He looked northward and narrowed his blue eyes.
The girl in Thal's arms pushed hard against something inside her throat, and there was a crackling, sucking sound. She moved her neck and jaw as though to swallow again, and stopped coughing. Her eyes closed, and she shuddered again, but was still. After a few long moments, she did as Thal instructed her and breathed. She had not been doing so before. On her exhale, she muttered, "South. Very far. Days."
Still rubbing her back gently, the man nodded, his red hair shifting across his face. He swiped at his bangs with the arm holding his cactus and watched the back of her head a moment before looking forward, towards the pass. "Mm, that's not so bad. I've been walking for a lot longer." He chuckled at that, then let the sound fade into a calm silence. "... Feeling any better? Maybe you should hold off on eating until we get that throat of yours fixed up."
The girl huffed a rough sound. "I'd get sick." She rose then, and plucked the sprig of wood from her hair. She concentrated very hard and waved it in front of her. A few particles of sand shifted. She huffed and put the stick back against her ear, taking another bite of the cactus.
The fiery-hair man on the crags turned his gaze north and squintted. He sniffed at the air and his ears lay down.
Thal straightened as well. "Alright... Just take it slow and easy, okay? No need to stress yourself." Then he smiled and started walking again, taking a hearty bite out of the cactus. The moisture held in its green flesh was a welcome feeling on his tongue, even though the sensation of his jawbone moving against skin and muscle was not. His tail swung lazily as he walked. "What're you trying to do with that stick, hm?"
"Magic," she grated out, simply, two fingers of one hand still in her throat to help her speak, breath, and eat. She turned away to continue walking.
The man on the crags groaned at any inward thought, and his features twisted into something unpleasant that was just past the wrong side of annoyance. "Every time it's something, isn't it?" He muttered to the rocks around him, and then turned and began to walk. This small movement made the Amal'jaa beneath him all but vanish into shadow. He began to clamber down, and still did not seem to notice them. He moved as one accustomed to climbing desert stones, and did not slip on the drifts of sand. His spear and tail swung about to help him balance has he moved.
"Fancy," he grinned, clasping his hands behind his head and tilting it towards the girl as he walked. "Kind of reminds me of the conjurers in Gridania. Not that I talked with them much... they were pretty uptight." He laughed, ears shifting.
She just nodded at this and continued to eat.
The fiery-haired man landed in the silt at the base of the crags, then walked into the path in front of the pass. There were only about a hundred meters between him and the pair at this point. "Hey!" He did not sound friendly.
"... Huh, really now? Didn't know they had conjurers outside of the--hrm?" Turning his head, hands still clasped in his hair, he squinted ahead of them. "Is that... oh, must be another wanderer! Heh. Maybe he has something to help your throat? Or knows where we could find some clothes for you... Hey there!" Thal lifted on arm over his head and waved it in a broad gesture.
The girl jumped up and grabbed Thal's arm, pulling it down with both hands. The cactus fell into the sand forgotten. Her fingers were still sticky with cactus juice and whatever was inside of her throat. She coughed forcefully, the sound somewhat coming from her neck instead of her mouth, but she forced some intonation into it. "No!"
The small man with the spear continued towards them.
"Huh?" Thal glanced down and let his arm get pulled down, though if he'd wanted he could have resisted the girl's meager strength. "Hey now, I don't think he's from that crazy town, so it's all good." He flashed her a grin and made to keep walking forward, towards the stranger.
She pulled on him desperately, however, with every ounce that her tiny, thin, sickly body could muster. It wasn't much; like a piece of thread pulling against a rolling boulder.
"K'aijeen!" The man shouted, now only fifty meters away. His voice carried a growl. The spear in his hand turned. "What have you done?"
Red ears twitched at the anger in the voice, and Thal turned a frown towards the small man approaching them. Setting a hand on the girl's shoulder, he moved to stand slightly in front of her. "Hey there, friend, why so angry?" He flashed a grin in an effort to ease whatever tension the stranger was bringing to them. "We're just passing through."
"Oh no you're not!" The man did not pause in his approach. His features knit into an ugly expression. "Is this some plan to get yourself back into the tribe, Aijeen?"
The girl concealed herself behind Thal, trying not to let herself be seen. She put her fingertips to her throat and pressed hard, whispering to Thal. "Killer."
"What?" When his attempt at easing things didn't seem to have even an ilm of effect, Thal's expression sombered slightly. Glancing down and behind him, he gave the girl's arm a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and then squared himself against the approaching man and let his arms hang loose at his sides. "Hey stranger, I don't really know what you're going on about, so you might want to consider you're directing these hostilities at the wrong people."
The girl stood on her tip toes to whisper to Thal. "He killed us."
The fiery-haired man didn't slow. If anything, he walked faster. "I should've known this would happen. As soon as I heard you were in Ul'dah! You might have found mercy from Airos and Piru! But you won't from me!"
She whispered to Thal. "Murder."
"What?" Thal repeated down at the girl, features shifting in brief confusion. "He's not anywhere near the Shroud, kiddo, and I've never met either of you before." Shaking his head, he held his arms out to either side, both blocking the girl from the approaching miqo'te and demonstrating his willingness to be nonaggressive. "You mind explaining yourself, friend? Before someone here gets hurt."
The laugh the man let out was a bitter sound of disbelief. He paused long enough to incline his head. "K'ile Tia. I remember that twisted stink of yours. I ran into you in Gridania once. Of all the places for her to hide you. If you'd been anywhere else I'd have recognized you in an instant."
Thal leaned his head back slightly, and then squinted towards the man. A moment later he let out a laugh - not a bitter one. "Oh, I remember you now! By the falls. Didn't I tell you to relax?" He forced a chuckle. "I guess that advice didn't stick." He drew a deep breath, tail flicking behind him and to one side of the girl he half-hid. "But really, I don't know you beyond that, so whatever business you think you have here..." He shook his head, ears laying back slightly as his thoughts settled on something the girl behind him had said.
Small fists beat on Thal's back.
"Sure, sure." K'ile Tia's lips smirked, then twisted down into a scowl. He began forward again. "She should've left you in the dirt. She should've stayed in the sand herself." His hand moved on his spear again.
Blue eyes narrowed sharply, and Thal broadened his stance just a bit. "Alright, we're going to be that way, huh?" He muttered, half to himself. He was pretty tired of this kind of thing coming up, over and over and over again. But unlike Megiddo, or the Qion brothers, or the young girl, this man was overtly aggressive. He tried not to think about the familiarity with which the other miqo'te was addressing him; it was a disquieting thought. "Look, friend, no one pulled me from the ground but myself," not exactly true, but he didn't need to bring the old man into this. "I don't know what grudge you have against this kid, but it needs to end here."
"I need to fix this before the rest of the tribe sees you." K'ile muttered, his features twisting. "And besides. If I can beat you as a monster? Beating K'yohko will be like kicking an infant." He was close enough now that he lost his casual demeanor. He swung his spear in front of him so that he had it in both hands, pointed it at Thal's gestured, and ran forward with it.
The girl made a grating, panicked sound, and ran in the opposite direction, away from Thal.
The climate didn't quite reflect that yet, however. As she walked, she broke a small limb from a scrub brush. It still had some greenery on it, though it was dry and mostly dead. She turned it one way and the other in her hands, then wagged it around in seemingly random gestures. Her expression was very concentrated as she did this, though didn't pause in her walking. Her tail twitched in agitation when nothing happened.
The pass they were heading towards loomed perhaps a half kilometer ahead. She tried harder with the twig, but the nothing continued.
Thal had grown increasingly uncomfortable as they walked, though not through any fault of the girl's. He paused when he good, moved his hands through patches of tall shrub and brambles, lay it against the dry trunk of a thin, twisted tree, and even managed to find a few stunted cacti. He stopped at them, under the pretenses of of trying to tear off some of the chunky leaves for them to eat. The spines were annoying - and occasionally painful - but it was the only truly green thing he'd seen in this desert.
He left the remains of the cactus brown and shriveled when he pulled away. The girl had been distracted with some twig she'd found, and he watched her a moment, picking back up his walk to catch up, before speaking, "Hey, look what I found!" Smiling, he idly pulled spines from the cactus bits he'd left undrained. "They look nice and juicy."
Looking back curiously, the girl made a dusty sound in response and then fidget around looking for somewhere to put her twig. She tried to stick it in the dangling threads of the dress, seemed to consider slipped its end into the band of her underclothes, and then finally wedged it into her tangled hair like a decoration. Finally, she reached for the cactus.
Double checking one of the cactus chunks for any more spines, he handed one over to the girl. "Eat up." He glanced past her, towards the pass they steadily approached, and let out a low whistle. "Well that looks impressive. Hey, how far is your home? And what's it like there?" Casting a smile her way, he worked on getting the last of the spines from his own cactus chunk.
She bit into the cactus chunk well before she was able to answer. Her shifted strangely as she chewed, her throat and muscles make strange sounds beneath the tied cloth that concealed them. There was no war she still had the prerequisite muscles to chew, and her mouth and jaw moved as though she did.
Her attempt at swallowing, however, was a miserable failure. She choked violently, staggering, and tried to squelch instinctive coughs and heaves that made her entire body convulse. She fell to the ground and pulled the cloth away from her wound with one hand, reaching inside of it to try and fix whatever had gone wrong.
"Ah, hey, are you--" Thal hurried to her, dropping down to rest a hand on her back. "Hey, just try to breathe." He grimaced, rubbing her back.
Amal'jaa moved in the crags of the pass, dark shadows falling over their black-scaled forms. This was not a normal place to find them, and they were an unusual sort for this part of Thanalan. They carried the weapons of Zan'rak. The air around them shimmered with the heat of the tempered. Ifrit's blessings warmed their breaths. They moved in silent stillness, as though waiting, wrapped in eddies of concealment. Their scents did not blow away from their bodies, nor did the heat reach through the earth and air away from them.
Perhaps this is why the other figure on the crags, standing well above the Amal'jaa and in the light, appeared not to notice them. He stood with his small body glistening with sweat, shoulders and arms reddened from sunlight and harsh, biting sand. He looked down, taking in the length of the pass, and shifted his spear in his hand. His tail flicked. His ears stood high and listened. The gaze he wore was suspicious, aware, and yet he did not turn on the Amal'jaa. They eyed him like meat they did not dare hunt yet, and he eyed the pass below him.
The hair on his head shifted like heavy fire as he lifted his gaze suddenly. The concealed Amal'jaa shifted deeper into the shadows at this. He did not turn it on them, however. He looked northward and narrowed his blue eyes.
The girl in Thal's arms pushed hard against something inside her throat, and there was a crackling, sucking sound. She moved her neck and jaw as though to swallow again, and stopped coughing. Her eyes closed, and she shuddered again, but was still. After a few long moments, she did as Thal instructed her and breathed. She had not been doing so before. On her exhale, she muttered, "South. Very far. Days."
Still rubbing her back gently, the man nodded, his red hair shifting across his face. He swiped at his bangs with the arm holding his cactus and watched the back of her head a moment before looking forward, towards the pass. "Mm, that's not so bad. I've been walking for a lot longer." He chuckled at that, then let the sound fade into a calm silence. "... Feeling any better? Maybe you should hold off on eating until we get that throat of yours fixed up."
The girl huffed a rough sound. "I'd get sick." She rose then, and plucked the sprig of wood from her hair. She concentrated very hard and waved it in front of her. A few particles of sand shifted. She huffed and put the stick back against her ear, taking another bite of the cactus.
The fiery-hair man on the crags turned his gaze north and squintted. He sniffed at the air and his ears lay down.
Thal straightened as well. "Alright... Just take it slow and easy, okay? No need to stress yourself." Then he smiled and started walking again, taking a hearty bite out of the cactus. The moisture held in its green flesh was a welcome feeling on his tongue, even though the sensation of his jawbone moving against skin and muscle was not. His tail swung lazily as he walked. "What're you trying to do with that stick, hm?"
"Magic," she grated out, simply, two fingers of one hand still in her throat to help her speak, breath, and eat. She turned away to continue walking.
The man on the crags groaned at any inward thought, and his features twisted into something unpleasant that was just past the wrong side of annoyance. "Every time it's something, isn't it?" He muttered to the rocks around him, and then turned and began to walk. This small movement made the Amal'jaa beneath him all but vanish into shadow. He began to clamber down, and still did not seem to notice them. He moved as one accustomed to climbing desert stones, and did not slip on the drifts of sand. His spear and tail swung about to help him balance has he moved.
"Fancy," he grinned, clasping his hands behind his head and tilting it towards the girl as he walked. "Kind of reminds me of the conjurers in Gridania. Not that I talked with them much... they were pretty uptight." He laughed, ears shifting.
She just nodded at this and continued to eat.
The fiery-haired man landed in the silt at the base of the crags, then walked into the path in front of the pass. There were only about a hundred meters between him and the pair at this point. "Hey!" He did not sound friendly.
"... Huh, really now? Didn't know they had conjurers outside of the--hrm?" Turning his head, hands still clasped in his hair, he squinted ahead of them. "Is that... oh, must be another wanderer! Heh. Maybe he has something to help your throat? Or knows where we could find some clothes for you... Hey there!" Thal lifted on arm over his head and waved it in a broad gesture.
The girl jumped up and grabbed Thal's arm, pulling it down with both hands. The cactus fell into the sand forgotten. Her fingers were still sticky with cactus juice and whatever was inside of her throat. She coughed forcefully, the sound somewhat coming from her neck instead of her mouth, but she forced some intonation into it. "No!"
The small man with the spear continued towards them.
"Huh?" Thal glanced down and let his arm get pulled down, though if he'd wanted he could have resisted the girl's meager strength. "Hey now, I don't think he's from that crazy town, so it's all good." He flashed her a grin and made to keep walking forward, towards the stranger.
She pulled on him desperately, however, with every ounce that her tiny, thin, sickly body could muster. It wasn't much; like a piece of thread pulling against a rolling boulder.
"K'aijeen!" The man shouted, now only fifty meters away. His voice carried a growl. The spear in his hand turned. "What have you done?"
Red ears twitched at the anger in the voice, and Thal turned a frown towards the small man approaching them. Setting a hand on the girl's shoulder, he moved to stand slightly in front of her. "Hey there, friend, why so angry?" He flashed a grin in an effort to ease whatever tension the stranger was bringing to them. "We're just passing through."
"Oh no you're not!" The man did not pause in his approach. His features knit into an ugly expression. "Is this some plan to get yourself back into the tribe, Aijeen?"
The girl concealed herself behind Thal, trying not to let herself be seen. She put her fingertips to her throat and pressed hard, whispering to Thal. "Killer."
"What?" When his attempt at easing things didn't seem to have even an ilm of effect, Thal's expression sombered slightly. Glancing down and behind him, he gave the girl's arm a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and then squared himself against the approaching man and let his arms hang loose at his sides. "Hey stranger, I don't really know what you're going on about, so you might want to consider you're directing these hostilities at the wrong people."
The girl stood on her tip toes to whisper to Thal. "He killed us."
The fiery-haired man didn't slow. If anything, he walked faster. "I should've known this would happen. As soon as I heard you were in Ul'dah! You might have found mercy from Airos and Piru! But you won't from me!"
She whispered to Thal. "Murder."
"What?" Thal repeated down at the girl, features shifting in brief confusion. "He's not anywhere near the Shroud, kiddo, and I've never met either of you before." Shaking his head, he held his arms out to either side, both blocking the girl from the approaching miqo'te and demonstrating his willingness to be nonaggressive. "You mind explaining yourself, friend? Before someone here gets hurt."
The laugh the man let out was a bitter sound of disbelief. He paused long enough to incline his head. "K'ile Tia. I remember that twisted stink of yours. I ran into you in Gridania once. Of all the places for her to hide you. If you'd been anywhere else I'd have recognized you in an instant."
Thal leaned his head back slightly, and then squinted towards the man. A moment later he let out a laugh - not a bitter one. "Oh, I remember you now! By the falls. Didn't I tell you to relax?" He forced a chuckle. "I guess that advice didn't stick." He drew a deep breath, tail flicking behind him and to one side of the girl he half-hid. "But really, I don't know you beyond that, so whatever business you think you have here..." He shook his head, ears laying back slightly as his thoughts settled on something the girl behind him had said.
Small fists beat on Thal's back.
"Sure, sure." K'ile Tia's lips smirked, then twisted down into a scowl. He began forward again. "She should've left you in the dirt. She should've stayed in the sand herself." His hand moved on his spear again.
Blue eyes narrowed sharply, and Thal broadened his stance just a bit. "Alright, we're going to be that way, huh?" He muttered, half to himself. He was pretty tired of this kind of thing coming up, over and over and over again. But unlike Megiddo, or the Qion brothers, or the young girl, this man was overtly aggressive. He tried not to think about the familiarity with which the other miqo'te was addressing him; it was a disquieting thought. "Look, friend, no one pulled me from the ground but myself," not exactly true, but he didn't need to bring the old man into this. "I don't know what grudge you have against this kid, but it needs to end here."
"I need to fix this before the rest of the tribe sees you." K'ile muttered, his features twisting. "And besides. If I can beat you as a monster? Beating K'yohko will be like kicking an infant." He was close enough now that he lost his casual demeanor. He swung his spear in front of him so that he had it in both hands, pointed it at Thal's gestured, and ran forward with it.
The girl made a grating, panicked sound, and ran in the opposite direction, away from Thal.
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
