He'd left the girl a good ways back from the town, amongst a stand of rocks and shrub. It took him a good fifteen minutes to walk back, during which time he found the weight of K'ile Tia's words pulling heavier with each step. He wondered if it was strange that the rejection from someone he didn't even know hurt more than the accusations leveled towards the girl, and frowned at the thought.
"Kid, you still there?" He called out as he approached the cluster of tan stone and tan plants. Everything was brown here, and it was starting to frustrate him.
The green-haired girl looked up at Thal's approach, blue eyes blinking at him. The red tatters of cloth shifted on her charred body as she stepped away from the stones, turning towards him and trotting directly towards him. She still had concern on her face.
Her face looked so innocent, he thought. If one ignored the gore exposed along her throat. He put on a smile as she approached. "Good, you seen anyone pass by here while I was gone?"
Before she answered, she trotted right up to him and tossed herself against him. She pulled curiously at his bandages.
"Eh? Oh, they insisted. Told them it didn't hurt, but... guess you don't say no to healers." He shrugged, and then dropped the smile. "So, K'aijeen, is it?"
She nodded, and stepped back, looking up at him. Blinking.
"Right... I'll remember that." One hand ran through the hair at the back of his head as his ears shifted. Then he heaved in a breath and out a heavy sigh. "Y'know, that guy didn't exactly... no, that's not the right way. Hrm." He took a step to one side, scratched at his ears, and then turned back to K'aijeen. "Are you the one who brought me back?"
She took a step back, eyes snapping wide at the question. She pursed her lips, looked to the left, and muttered, "Don't know," in a voice that, while still very scratchy, seemed to come easier.
"Yeah... I'm not so sure about that," Thal muttered and then shook his head, tail swinging. "Are you the one who buried me in the Shroud?"
She spread her arms and turned her eyes off to the right. "Complicated."
Craning his neck back so he could look skyward, he pulled at the back of his hair. "That's not an answer, K'aijeen." He glanced over his shoulder, back towards Drybone. "I'm not going to be taking you 'home' - at least, not the place you wanted me to go."
Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head, looking like she didn't understand. "But. Our home."
"No," he sighed. "That's the thing, kid. You can't just die, come back, and... go back to how things were before. Why do you think I stayed in the Shroud? Er, aside from the whole not knowing any better thing."
"But I never-!" She choked, groaned, and put pressure on her neck. Her shoulders shook. Her wide eyes pointed at the ground in front of her, shaking. "No!"
"I'm sorry, kid, it's just... how it has to be." Thal frowned, rolling his shoulders in frustration. "If even half of what he said was true, they're not going to want you back. And they won't want me."
She shook her head harder, and made a hard sound deep in her chest. "It wasn't me! He's... It's complicated!" She couldn't manage to say more than a few syllables in a row without pausing to recover, and her voice was deteriorating. She gestured wildly as she continued trying, her tail whipping behind her and shivering.
"Look, it's not... well, it's not the end of the world. How about we just go... elsewhere, huh?" He shrugged, but it was half-hearted. "It's a big world. I think."
"But home." She put her hands on either side of her head, staring forward without seeing as though she'd just been told that... Well, she wasn't allowed to go home. She was on the verge of tears, and her fingertips dug into her hair.
Muttering a curse he didn't really mean under his breath, Thal stepped forward to pull the girl into a hug. This was why the robed man had wanted to burn her, he thought to himself. "I'm sorry, kid. It'd be easier if... well. I guess it's not easy."
She lay herself against him and shook. "Where?"
"I don't know." Her small weight against him pressed an object against his hip, and Thal suddenly recalled the mask. It was a wonder it hadn't fallen out during his scuffle with K'ile Tia. "Back to the Shroud, maybe. Or... I don't really know what else is out there."
The girl called K'aijeen released a grating groan. A moment later, she hit Thalen's chest weakly. "She ruined it."
He caught her arm gently, moving it down and then just setting his hand against the back of her head. He blinked at her words though. "She?" More people he should know, probably. Or used to know.
"Me." She said, bitterly. "Me, but she."
"Huh?" Bringing his hands down to hold her shoulders, he held her back enough that he could look the girl in the eyes. "You're going to have to run that one by me a second time. Or a third."
She averted her eyes and muttered. "It is... too complicated." And then gestured vaguely at her neck.
His brow lowered. "Okay, no. That's not gonna fly as an explanation from now on, kid. You owe me that much."
Her hand falling, she appeared conflicted. She gave Thal a pathetic look and ran her fingers over her neck. "Hurts."
"No, it doesn't, if you're anything like me." He sighed.
She groaned again. "It does." She shifted, and pouted, and eyed the ground, and her tail swung behind her. And then she lifted her gaze and said, "I don't know." Her fingertips pressed against her throat, sliding underneath the strip of red cloth wrapped around her neck. "I watched. Couldn't choose."
He chose not to press the pain thing, especially when she started expanding on her earlier words. It didn't do a whole lot to lift the confusion, though. "You... watched? What, watched yourself?" He blinked, shivered one ear. "Like... possessed?"
Her ears lay down, and she looked Thal right in the eyes. Then she thrust her head forward and shrugged. "Or crazy."
His mouth twisted. "Yeah... alright. Well. We've all got our quirks." He muttered the last part, mostly to himself. "Look, let's just... get away from this place for now, okay? We can talk more as we go. And I guess figure things out from there."
Her tail shifted behind her, and she appeared sad again. "But not home?"
“If you think of it like that, you're never going to be happy." And he needed her to be happy. It hadn't taken long into this conversation for him to realize he didn't have the heart to end her, or take her to others who would. Even after what she may have done. He offered a lopsided smile down at the girl. "A friend of mine calls his home wherever Oschon wills it. How about we just take a page out of that book for a bit?"
She didn't appear convinced. At all. She looked at him both with incredible disappointment and disbelief in his unfathomable naivety. Then she just shook her head. "Don't understand."
He deflated a bit, swung his tail from side to side, and then just set a hand at the girl's back to turn her. "Eh, don't have to right away. Let's just walk, huh?"
"But...!" She started, but didn't object further. She glanced over her shoulder, southward, and groaned again.
***
The girl in the red, tattered cloth was at length just fine with following Thal around. She eventually calmed, her argumentative huffing and frustrated body language subsiding. She seemed even lose talkative, however, keeping the rag pulled tight around her neck. After several hours she began to busy herself as she walked, using the stick she had earlier obtained to conjure green light about her hands and arms, ccool air rushing about as she made small movements with the stick. The sand stirred about her, subtly. The magic she was using was very weak, however, and barely palpable except for those indications.
Thal seemed largely okay with keeping to himself for now. In the interest of keeping her walking, he didn't immediately bring up the conversation again, instead letting his attention wander to something more present - that was, how strange his bones seemed to feel in his body and he almost thought his senses seemed duller than usual. The rough fabric of his pants brushing against his legs was a quiet sensation, muffled, overpowered by an awareness of the fine hairs all over his skin. He swore he could even feel the separation of skin and muscle as he walked.
These things were all around just starting to disturb him. He kept his eyes peeled for any hint of green and made a beeline for the first shrub that seemed less tumbleweed and more growing plant that he saw. He didn't bother hiding it from the girl this time. She seemed lost in whatever magic she was playing with - reminded him of conjury, the way she pulled at the air - and she was aware enough of the situation that it didn't particularly matter. Bending down, he wove his fingers between dry leaves and branches. A few thorns pricked and scraped at his hands, but he didn't really notice.
Conjury still wrapping her arms, she paused in her walking when Thal paused, sensing his movement even if her attention wasn't otherwise called ot it. Her eyes panned over to the shrub, watching Thal grab at it. After a moment, she inhaled -- she had not been breathing as she had walked idly about -- and spoke with a voice that seemed to be coming more easily to her every time she tried. "Are you okay?"
"Hmm?" Red ears swiveled backwards as he pulled on the sluggish aether within the plant. It left the stems and leaves in invisible ripples that sunk into his own flesh, merging with the flow there and leaving the plant shriveling. "Oh, yeah, just a little pit stop! You're sounding better."
The girl huffed and drew one hand towards her neck. Then she hefted her stick and grated out, "Healing." Her voice was still weak and sandy, but the words came faster now and were easier to discern. "It doesn't work on you. Sorry."
"Heh, not your fault." Though it kind of was. In a roundabout way. That wasn't something he was going to say to the kid, though. The mask tucked into his waistband jabbed into his stomach as he bent over the plant, and it occurred to him to wonder what use it might have. There were no vengeful elementals to appease out here; at least, he didn't think they were. Megiddo would have told him to wear it if it were an urgent need.
The shrub had begun to look even more sickly than before, and the aether running through his fingers had dwindled to an almost nonexistent trickle. Frustrating. It had barely been enough to return some feeling. Thal straightened and pushed his hand up his face and over the top of his head to run calloused fingers through his hair. "I'm just glad you can fix that yourself."
"Still need to eat." She said, walking towards Thal, casually. She didn't appear disturbed at all by his behavior. "Everyone needs something."
"Yup." He turned towards her and swung his arms up to clasp his hands behind his head. Leaning his weight onto one heel, he kind of rocked in place. "So keep an eye out for any more cactus. Or anything else edible, really. You ever had to live off the land before, kid?"
She blinked at that, and thought. She narrowed her eyes, and then looked back up and said, "I can set traps. For predators. If I have meat." Then she cast her gaze to the side and rubbed at her neck, the gesture idle but eliciting a slight sound of crackling cartilage. "Never trapped anything small."
“Animals, huh... Heh, that's a funny thought. Meat was a no-go in the Shroud." Rolling his neck, cracking the joints there, he looked around them. "Wonder what kinds of little critters are about here.."
"Orobon near the water. Birds. Lizards." She looked skyward, then along the horizon. "Find carrion, find vulitures."
"Water? Okay, I like that one." He flashed the girl a grin. "How about a little swim, huh?"
She blinked, and her ears lifted up. "Where?"
"Well..." He scratched at one ear. "... There was water back a ways. Lots of toads there, but I bet if we followed it, we could find orobon."
She shook her head and pouted. "Always going back. Never to the right place."
Thal blinked at that, looked to one side, then another, then back to the girl. "Ah... erm. So you don't want to find some orobon? I guess we could try north instead."
"If we're not going home I don't-" She finally choked, and groaned in frustration, tossing her head back and glaring at the sky. She put her hands to her neck and moaned.
"Eeh... Ah, come on, kid..." Dropping his hands from behind his head, he stepped over to her and rubbed at her back. "I'm doing the best I can here."
"I don't want to go south!" She tossed her face forward. "This isn't fair! I didn't do anything!"
"Well..." Continuing to pat at her back, he urged her to turn and start walking again. "Things aren't always fair. Don't think that I particularly like how I ended up, either. Stewing in it doesn't really help, though."
"You don't want to go home." She snapped at him, turning in the direction she urged him. "You're just running away! From the killer."
"That's not home for me, kid." He sighed and kept her walking. "And... it's not home for you, either. Not like this."
"But I didn't do-!" She was silenced when an arrow slammed into her back, a direct hit between her shoulder blades with enough force to send her falling forward into the dirt. It was not the only arrow that had been fired, but merely the only one that had hit home. Another cut the sky over Thal's shoulder and hit the ground, fire already spreading from their points up the shafts.
"Kid, you still there?" He called out as he approached the cluster of tan stone and tan plants. Everything was brown here, and it was starting to frustrate him.
The green-haired girl looked up at Thal's approach, blue eyes blinking at him. The red tatters of cloth shifted on her charred body as she stepped away from the stones, turning towards him and trotting directly towards him. She still had concern on her face.
Her face looked so innocent, he thought. If one ignored the gore exposed along her throat. He put on a smile as she approached. "Good, you seen anyone pass by here while I was gone?"
Before she answered, she trotted right up to him and tossed herself against him. She pulled curiously at his bandages.
"Eh? Oh, they insisted. Told them it didn't hurt, but... guess you don't say no to healers." He shrugged, and then dropped the smile. "So, K'aijeen, is it?"
She nodded, and stepped back, looking up at him. Blinking.
"Right... I'll remember that." One hand ran through the hair at the back of his head as his ears shifted. Then he heaved in a breath and out a heavy sigh. "Y'know, that guy didn't exactly... no, that's not the right way. Hrm." He took a step to one side, scratched at his ears, and then turned back to K'aijeen. "Are you the one who brought me back?"
She took a step back, eyes snapping wide at the question. She pursed her lips, looked to the left, and muttered, "Don't know," in a voice that, while still very scratchy, seemed to come easier.
"Yeah... I'm not so sure about that," Thal muttered and then shook his head, tail swinging. "Are you the one who buried me in the Shroud?"
She spread her arms and turned her eyes off to the right. "Complicated."
Craning his neck back so he could look skyward, he pulled at the back of his hair. "That's not an answer, K'aijeen." He glanced over his shoulder, back towards Drybone. "I'm not going to be taking you 'home' - at least, not the place you wanted me to go."
Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head, looking like she didn't understand. "But. Our home."
"No," he sighed. "That's the thing, kid. You can't just die, come back, and... go back to how things were before. Why do you think I stayed in the Shroud? Er, aside from the whole not knowing any better thing."
"But I never-!" She choked, groaned, and put pressure on her neck. Her shoulders shook. Her wide eyes pointed at the ground in front of her, shaking. "No!"
"I'm sorry, kid, it's just... how it has to be." Thal frowned, rolling his shoulders in frustration. "If even half of what he said was true, they're not going to want you back. And they won't want me."
She shook her head harder, and made a hard sound deep in her chest. "It wasn't me! He's... It's complicated!" She couldn't manage to say more than a few syllables in a row without pausing to recover, and her voice was deteriorating. She gestured wildly as she continued trying, her tail whipping behind her and shivering.
"Look, it's not... well, it's not the end of the world. How about we just go... elsewhere, huh?" He shrugged, but it was half-hearted. "It's a big world. I think."
"But home." She put her hands on either side of her head, staring forward without seeing as though she'd just been told that... Well, she wasn't allowed to go home. She was on the verge of tears, and her fingertips dug into her hair.
Muttering a curse he didn't really mean under his breath, Thal stepped forward to pull the girl into a hug. This was why the robed man had wanted to burn her, he thought to himself. "I'm sorry, kid. It'd be easier if... well. I guess it's not easy."
She lay herself against him and shook. "Where?"
"I don't know." Her small weight against him pressed an object against his hip, and Thal suddenly recalled the mask. It was a wonder it hadn't fallen out during his scuffle with K'ile Tia. "Back to the Shroud, maybe. Or... I don't really know what else is out there."
The girl called K'aijeen released a grating groan. A moment later, she hit Thalen's chest weakly. "She ruined it."
He caught her arm gently, moving it down and then just setting his hand against the back of her head. He blinked at her words though. "She?" More people he should know, probably. Or used to know.
"Me." She said, bitterly. "Me, but she."
"Huh?" Bringing his hands down to hold her shoulders, he held her back enough that he could look the girl in the eyes. "You're going to have to run that one by me a second time. Or a third."
She averted her eyes and muttered. "It is... too complicated." And then gestured vaguely at her neck.
His brow lowered. "Okay, no. That's not gonna fly as an explanation from now on, kid. You owe me that much."
Her hand falling, she appeared conflicted. She gave Thal a pathetic look and ran her fingers over her neck. "Hurts."
"No, it doesn't, if you're anything like me." He sighed.
She groaned again. "It does." She shifted, and pouted, and eyed the ground, and her tail swung behind her. And then she lifted her gaze and said, "I don't know." Her fingertips pressed against her throat, sliding underneath the strip of red cloth wrapped around her neck. "I watched. Couldn't choose."
He chose not to press the pain thing, especially when she started expanding on her earlier words. It didn't do a whole lot to lift the confusion, though. "You... watched? What, watched yourself?" He blinked, shivered one ear. "Like... possessed?"
Her ears lay down, and she looked Thal right in the eyes. Then she thrust her head forward and shrugged. "Or crazy."
His mouth twisted. "Yeah... alright. Well. We've all got our quirks." He muttered the last part, mostly to himself. "Look, let's just... get away from this place for now, okay? We can talk more as we go. And I guess figure things out from there."
Her tail shifted behind her, and she appeared sad again. "But not home?"
“If you think of it like that, you're never going to be happy." And he needed her to be happy. It hadn't taken long into this conversation for him to realize he didn't have the heart to end her, or take her to others who would. Even after what she may have done. He offered a lopsided smile down at the girl. "A friend of mine calls his home wherever Oschon wills it. How about we just take a page out of that book for a bit?"
She didn't appear convinced. At all. She looked at him both with incredible disappointment and disbelief in his unfathomable naivety. Then she just shook her head. "Don't understand."
He deflated a bit, swung his tail from side to side, and then just set a hand at the girl's back to turn her. "Eh, don't have to right away. Let's just walk, huh?"
"But...!" She started, but didn't object further. She glanced over her shoulder, southward, and groaned again.
***
The girl in the red, tattered cloth was at length just fine with following Thal around. She eventually calmed, her argumentative huffing and frustrated body language subsiding. She seemed even lose talkative, however, keeping the rag pulled tight around her neck. After several hours she began to busy herself as she walked, using the stick she had earlier obtained to conjure green light about her hands and arms, ccool air rushing about as she made small movements with the stick. The sand stirred about her, subtly. The magic she was using was very weak, however, and barely palpable except for those indications.
Thal seemed largely okay with keeping to himself for now. In the interest of keeping her walking, he didn't immediately bring up the conversation again, instead letting his attention wander to something more present - that was, how strange his bones seemed to feel in his body and he almost thought his senses seemed duller than usual. The rough fabric of his pants brushing against his legs was a quiet sensation, muffled, overpowered by an awareness of the fine hairs all over his skin. He swore he could even feel the separation of skin and muscle as he walked.
These things were all around just starting to disturb him. He kept his eyes peeled for any hint of green and made a beeline for the first shrub that seemed less tumbleweed and more growing plant that he saw. He didn't bother hiding it from the girl this time. She seemed lost in whatever magic she was playing with - reminded him of conjury, the way she pulled at the air - and she was aware enough of the situation that it didn't particularly matter. Bending down, he wove his fingers between dry leaves and branches. A few thorns pricked and scraped at his hands, but he didn't really notice.
Conjury still wrapping her arms, she paused in her walking when Thal paused, sensing his movement even if her attention wasn't otherwise called ot it. Her eyes panned over to the shrub, watching Thal grab at it. After a moment, she inhaled -- she had not been breathing as she had walked idly about -- and spoke with a voice that seemed to be coming more easily to her every time she tried. "Are you okay?"
"Hmm?" Red ears swiveled backwards as he pulled on the sluggish aether within the plant. It left the stems and leaves in invisible ripples that sunk into his own flesh, merging with the flow there and leaving the plant shriveling. "Oh, yeah, just a little pit stop! You're sounding better."
The girl huffed and drew one hand towards her neck. Then she hefted her stick and grated out, "Healing." Her voice was still weak and sandy, but the words came faster now and were easier to discern. "It doesn't work on you. Sorry."
"Heh, not your fault." Though it kind of was. In a roundabout way. That wasn't something he was going to say to the kid, though. The mask tucked into his waistband jabbed into his stomach as he bent over the plant, and it occurred to him to wonder what use it might have. There were no vengeful elementals to appease out here; at least, he didn't think they were. Megiddo would have told him to wear it if it were an urgent need.
The shrub had begun to look even more sickly than before, and the aether running through his fingers had dwindled to an almost nonexistent trickle. Frustrating. It had barely been enough to return some feeling. Thal straightened and pushed his hand up his face and over the top of his head to run calloused fingers through his hair. "I'm just glad you can fix that yourself."
"Still need to eat." She said, walking towards Thal, casually. She didn't appear disturbed at all by his behavior. "Everyone needs something."
"Yup." He turned towards her and swung his arms up to clasp his hands behind his head. Leaning his weight onto one heel, he kind of rocked in place. "So keep an eye out for any more cactus. Or anything else edible, really. You ever had to live off the land before, kid?"
She blinked at that, and thought. She narrowed her eyes, and then looked back up and said, "I can set traps. For predators. If I have meat." Then she cast her gaze to the side and rubbed at her neck, the gesture idle but eliciting a slight sound of crackling cartilage. "Never trapped anything small."
“Animals, huh... Heh, that's a funny thought. Meat was a no-go in the Shroud." Rolling his neck, cracking the joints there, he looked around them. "Wonder what kinds of little critters are about here.."
"Orobon near the water. Birds. Lizards." She looked skyward, then along the horizon. "Find carrion, find vulitures."
"Water? Okay, I like that one." He flashed the girl a grin. "How about a little swim, huh?"
She blinked, and her ears lifted up. "Where?"
"Well..." He scratched at one ear. "... There was water back a ways. Lots of toads there, but I bet if we followed it, we could find orobon."
She shook her head and pouted. "Always going back. Never to the right place."
Thal blinked at that, looked to one side, then another, then back to the girl. "Ah... erm. So you don't want to find some orobon? I guess we could try north instead."
"If we're not going home I don't-" She finally choked, and groaned in frustration, tossing her head back and glaring at the sky. She put her hands to her neck and moaned.
"Eeh... Ah, come on, kid..." Dropping his hands from behind his head, he stepped over to her and rubbed at her back. "I'm doing the best I can here."
"I don't want to go south!" She tossed her face forward. "This isn't fair! I didn't do anything!"
"Well..." Continuing to pat at her back, he urged her to turn and start walking again. "Things aren't always fair. Don't think that I particularly like how I ended up, either. Stewing in it doesn't really help, though."
"You don't want to go home." She snapped at him, turning in the direction she urged him. "You're just running away! From the killer."
"That's not home for me, kid." He sighed and kept her walking. "And... it's not home for you, either. Not like this."
"But I didn't do-!" She was silenced when an arrow slammed into her back, a direct hit between her shoulder blades with enough force to send her falling forward into the dirt. It was not the only arrow that had been fired, but merely the only one that had hit home. Another cut the sky over Thal's shoulder and hit the ground, fire already spreading from their points up the shafts.
![[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
