((Wooo took long enough to get back to this bit of retro-rp. xD))
***
The elder's tent moved around the desert like a wandering dune, but relative to the rest of the camp it never moved. It was right in the center, large and closed, smelling of alchemy and old people. The combination did not please D'aijeen, but she did not complain as she let her father pull her along. At some point, as much for her own comfort as anything, she'd begun to walk beside him under her own power. "K'airos shouldn't have left," she said, as the passed the central bonfire which was burning down to cinders from the previous night, though already women were arriving to build it back up. "She's going to be in trouble, too."
"Don't worry over K'airos," her father rumbled as he approached the tent's door. A fetish of bone and braided sinew hung from it, and he gave it a look and a hopeful thought before pushing the door-skin open. He called out as he did so, "Elders, I found our food thief. I think it would be best if you speak with her."
After finishing crying over the sand, K'airos stood up and followed her family, her sobbing diminishing with each step until it reached a point of balance. She had left her spear behind, somewhere. She didn't remember, but still felt as if she was dragging a few dozen on each hand. Seeing her father entering the tent only added another dozen. She stopped behind K'aijeen, her arms crossed and facing down.
"Thief! Why don't you just tie me to the racks yourself, dad!" D'aieen tried to yank herself away from her father, to present herself to the elders under her own power.
Thalen released K'aijeen easily, though he made sure to place his body close to his daughters, should she try to bolt. "It'll all go better if you keep your cool, K'aijeen."
K'airos had some angry words to add, but they chocked in her throat and only came out as another sob.
At the sound of K'airos' sob, K'aijeen ((NOT D'aijeen, by the way)) snapped her gaze around to her sister, having not heard her return. The next words were uttered from the smoldering shadows of the tent, however. A low, elderly voice...
"It is too early for this. Did you not give warning, K'jhanhi?"
The shadows fell back into silence only for a moment before another voice, similar to the first but with a weary quality spoke, "We all did. I had hoped she had heard us, in this matter at the very least."
K'airos kept quiet, raising her head to look at D'aijeen.
K'takka's tattooed face lifted from the shadows after a moment, her silver eyes glowing with concern as she set her gaze on K'airos. "Oh, Airos, why do you cry granddaughter?"
"I helped her." she barely managed to answer, the words blending together
"I've not known you to cry over causing trouble, Airos," that tired voice spoke. "There is more. But..." In the shadows, a thin hand gestured. "Step inside, all of you."
"What I did was the best possible use of resources," K'aijeen said boldly, stepping before, gesturing broad. "You won't believe me. I proved my trap works, but that won't matter, will it?"
"What you made was a monster!" K'airos snapped sadly, still outside. "You shouldn't be proud!"
Thalen turned so that the tent's door was kept open by his body, looked at K'airos, and let out a short breath through his nose. "It was something dangerous, that's for sure."
From further in the tent a low voice grated out, "From stealing food to monsters? Child, explain yourself."
"It wasn't supposed to be a monster!" K'aijeen shot back, "And it doesn't matter! It's gone! Why are you outside. What are you afraid of me now?"
Reluctantly, K'airos stepped into the tent, holding her arms tightly against herself. She took one long breath. "Aijeen used parts of the beasts to make another beast with...with...magic from a book!" she said, feeling that each word escaped at once from her mouth, each one trampling into the next and causing her sentence to be an high-pitched and fast mess.
There came the rattling of air through old lungs and then the low voice's owner stepped forward, K'jhanhi's yellow eyes narrowed. "That sounds dangerously like things no child of Azeyma should ever thing to touch."Â
Behind him, the tired voice now sounded worried, "How did you come by such dark magic, granddaughter?"
"It doesn't matter!" K'aijeen spun back, cutting the air with one hand, "It has nothing to do with the food! It has nothing to do with the tribe! Are you all senile?"
"It matters when you're putting family at risk, K'aijeen - including yourself," K'thalen barked. "This goes well beyond stealing - or borrowing - some food."
K'airos followed her father's bark with her own: "You keep saying how stupid we are and then never explain anything!"
"Because you don't get it! You're superstitious and afraid!" K'aijeen's back was to the elder's, shouting angrily at her family. "It wasn't a monster; it was a thrall. It would have helped, but K'airos destroyed the book! For no reason!"
K'jhanhi's thin lips set into a line, and arms that still bore much of the muscle that had kept him nunh for a generation folded across his chest. "K'aijeen Thalen, were you a few dozen moons older, the risks you've taken would be enough to send you into the sands."
K'airos choked on some more words that never came out. She held both hands together, rubbing them right under her chin, her eyes wide open. She didn't know where to look, and so she looked at the ground.
K'aijeen snapped around at K'jhanhi, leveling the massive man with a glare one would expect from a much older -- and much larger -- being. "Were I a dozen moons older I'd have already replaced you. All of you."
"Do not speak such things! If your mother could hear you," K'deiki breathed a sigh, bowing her withered face briefly.
"She doesn't care." K'airos mumbled between sobs. "She doesn't care about the tribe, her family or...or her sister!"
"Betrayers and ruiners!" K'aijeen shouted at the floor, "I could summon an ocean of fresh water for you and you'd condemn me for it! You don't know what love is or you'd recognize it!"
"Instead you summoned a monster," K'jhanhi intoned, old voice grating like coarse sand on dry stone. He turned to look to the painted face of K'takka.
It was K'deiki who spoke next, however, "What if she is not fully in control of herself? Perhaps something has driven her to... this."
K'takka did not meet K'jhanhi's gaze. She had pulled herself back into the shadows, only her sad eyes gleaming from the darkness.
K'aijeen stomped, "Do not do that! Coward! I am in control of myself! If you're to demonize me then do it directly!"
"I burned the book." K'airos said, as if it explained something. "I...I think this is her."
Seeing no help in K'takka and little more than attempts at conciliation from K'deiki, the former nunh turned back to his granddaughter. He did not enjoy these things. "In control of yourself or not, these things cannot go unpunished. We might have been lenient had it been nothing more than some stolen meat, even after the warning, but there is only one punishment short of giving you over to the sands that can make up for the dangers you've danced with, child." He let out a rough breath. "For one sun, the tribe will see you for what you've done."
As K'jhanhi spoke, K'thalen shut his eyes, one hand reaching out to rest comfortingly on K'airos's shoulder.
K'airos was hardly comforted. She barely reacted to the action. She held her breath.
"Too wise to exile a child, or too scared of the guild for doing what you really want to do?" K'aijeen gathered up her meager fram and said, "I exile myself. What do you say to that?"
K'thalen's eyes snapped open and he felt as though his head might snap right off his neck when he turned to look at his daughter. "K'aijeen, you're overreacting."
"I would say that you do not understand the weight of your words, child. We won't entertain such a thought." The old man looked passed K'aijeen to the tribe's nunh. "Where is our firedancer? This is his responsibility."
At that, K'thalen grimaced. "Getting... tended to by K'piru."
K'airos tapped her fingers against each other continuously as the elders spoke around her. Finally, she stopped and exclaimed: "I helped her! She couldn't have done anything without me! Let me take part of the punishment!"
K'aijeen's lips slipped down into a frown and she turned to K'airos, saying with a no-nonsense tone, "Stop being an idiot, Airos. You don't need to be punished."
K'airos answered that by choking once more and throwing herself to hug her father, muffling the cry by burying her face against him.
K'thalen's arms wrapped about his daughter easily, tanned fingers rubbing circles against her back.
K'deiki's pale eyes, deep-set in her wrinkled face, lifted to peer at K'airos through the shadows with a sad look. K'jhanhi's expression turned down even further, features deepening with reluctance but... "Your willingness to acknowledge your mistakes shows you well in the eyes of Azeyma, but it doesn't absolve you of them. You will spend your time under the eye of the goddess and the tribe considering why you did not try to stop your sister and how you might change that in the future."
"I didn't give her the chance to stop me!" K'aijeen spun on the elders. "That's insane! You might as well punish half the tribe! You're mad."
K'airos had no more words to choke on. She only accentuated her sister's by letting out a few loud sobs against her will.
Resting his chin atop K'airos's head, K'thalen watched first his youngest daughter and then the elders. "If that's what they think is best, then that's how it is." He kept up the gentle petting of K'airos's back. "Don't make it more than it is, K'aijeen. You make adult mistakes, sometimes you have to take the adult punishment."
"Adult punishment would be banishment, but then they wouldn't get to watch me suffer." She turned to glare into the shadows of the tent. "Love and wisdom. Pretenders."
"You are the only pretender!" K'airos managed to shout without moving her head to look at her. The short burst of anger was quickly quenched by the constant sobbing.
"Go to the firedancer," K'deiki murmured from the shadows. "Let this be done with."
K'aijeen scoffed, "With his stupid messed up leg? I'll have to build my own rack. That's fine."
"I'll help," K'thalen muttered, not looking all that eager as he urged K'airos towards the tent's door. "Come on, K'aijeen."
"And if I’m not willing, who will force me?"
"Please, stop." her sister mumbled, having moved by the door. "This...all this has been enough."
"Don't make this harder than it already is," the nunh shook his head. "It's not a death sentence, which is what you claimed you wanted." He tried for a bit of a smile, though the expression felt off given the situation. "I've been on the rack more than a few times myself." K'thalen then reached out to gently take hold of K'aijeen's arm, intending to guide her out of the tent.
K'aijeen did not resist letting herself get dragged out. The question had been an academic one, and the answer was: no one. They could watch her cook if it would satisfy them. She didn't care. There was nothing worth recovering in this situation that could be salvaged.
K'airos left the tent and lingered outside. She found no one to hug, so she wrapped her arms around herself.
With a last glance to the elders, K'thalen left as well, with K'aijeen in tow. He gave what he hoped was an encouraging look to K'airos and said, "Let's get back to K'ile and your mother, and then we can get this over with, hm?"
"You think you can just move past this?"
K'airos rubbed under her nose, and then over it. "Stop." she said. "We'll forget about this..."
"I think I got past my mistakes. You can do the same for yours, K'aijeen." He chuckled lowly, without any real humor. "Both of you. I get that you mean well, but... there are better ways."
"There are not better ways! The tribe's ways are archaic! And I cannot get past something that has been destroyed. You won't even acknowledge what you've ruined!"
"You never explain." K'airos shook her head. She started walking, keeping her eyes away from both of them. "If you don't explain, then... I don't care what I ruined."
K'thalen grimaced. "I'm not trying to ruin anything. I'm going to help you get through this." He kept up their pace, passing between a few scattered tents. His ears could pick up the chattering of the huntresses not far off as they prepared to leave on the morning hunt. The camp was quickly becoming its usual hub of activity, and it was with some relief that they arrived at the shaman's tent when they did. "Piru!" He called out. "Hope you're done fixing that wimp's flesh wound already. I need him for something."
As they walked towards her mother's tent, K'aijeen said to her sister, "What am I supposed to explain? I've never learned faster than I learned from the book. It was like it was reminding me of things I already knew! Mother's teaching was slow and simple. And where am I supposed to get another one? And how am I supposed to work on anymore projects without it? I'll never learn anything ever again now!"
K'airos pouted. "Good." she said, letting her anger vent out. "We'll have fun with less dangerous and...and horrible things.Like when you didnt't have that book!"
"And when was that, Airos? When did I not have the book?"
"I don't know! Why don't you tell me?"
Inside the tent, the tangy scent of disinfecting herbs filled the area, though K'piru had finished cleaning K'ile's wound several minutes past. She'd worked diligently, only breaking down into tears once or twice since her daughter had left with her nunh to see the elders. She was tightening the wrapping about K'ile's leg, murmuring a few shaky prayers to the idol resting nearby, when K'thalen's voice sounded through the skins of the tent, followed by two equally familiar voices bickering. She gave the tia next to her a worried look.
K'ile tried to give K'piru a look of encouragement, but could only manage to appear indifferent, or maybe nauseous.
Standing reluctantly, K'piru clutched at the remaining scraps of bandage in her hands before moving towards the door. It felt weighted down with lead beneath her fingers as she pulled it aside. When she saw her daughters alongside K'thalen she tried to hope, pleadingly, "All's well...? Aijeen, you're... you're alright now?"
"A few years ago," D'aijeen answered K'airos. "That book's the only reason I know anything. You don't know anything about the world because all you had was mom's useless lessons."
K'piru flinched, overhearing her daughter's words. Her tail lashed once behind her, whacking the tent wall, and then tucked in against the cloth that hung about her legs. "Thalen..?"
"K'ile's in there still, yea? If he can walk, I need him for a bit." The red-haired nunh leaned to one side as though he could peer around K'piru.
K'airos voice increased in volume. "At least she was teaching me something. So thanks! Thanks for teaching me your...your wonderful book!" She managed to stop crying long enough to shout that.
"You wouldn't have understood," K'aijeen muttered. "You would've just taken the book away right away, and I'd have never learned anything."
In the tent, K'ile laboriously tried to stand on his injured leg. "Yeah, yeah. I can guess what this is probably about."
"You don't know that! You never trusted me!" K'airos complained to her sister, still pretty loudly.
"No," K'aijeen replied, quietly. "The book was for me. The things inside..."
K'piru watched K'thalen for several seconds, unblinking. She shifted her weight to one bare foot, then the other, her ears fidgeting back against her skull. She drew in a long, thin breath through her nose and then let it out with a faint sound at her youngest daughter's words. "She... the elders..." The color drained from her skin and she spun around to K'ile. "No! You can't! I won't allow it!"
Wincing as he put some of his weight onto his own leg, he said, "I've got no say in it, K'piru. Not a single word."
"You do!" Her hands wrung at the scraps of cloth in them, nearly tearing them to bits. "She's a child!" A child by a few years. And what's more, K'piru could not see that punishment bringing any good. No, she feared it would only drive K'aijeen further. Perhaps even drive her away. "You can't do this to her!"
"Piru, come on," K'thalen set a hand on her shoulder from behind. "It won't be that bad. Just let him do what he has to."
"I don't care," K'aijeen directed the words towards her mother, into the ten. "Put me on the rack today. Tomorrow everything will be the same. Nothing will be different."
"You won’t have that book!" K'airos retorted. "That will be different!"
"I don't have the book now," K'aijeen muttered.
Shrugging off Thalen's hand, K'piru squared herself off in front of K'ile, set begging eyes on him. "Things will be different, Aijeen," she breathed out. "I'll--you'll know how much I--you will put me out there in her stead!" Her tail shivered. "If you need a reason, this--Aijeen's mistakes are my fault! She would not have done any of this if I'd... cared more! Please--"
"Ah, c'mon," K'ile groaned, pulling on his ear and looking at the wall. "The rack's not that bad. If you feel bad just go out and give her a drink every now and then. Nobody'll stop you."
"What? No!" K'airos complained. "This isn't your fault! She'll grow up out of this...and I will too! She just..." She didn't finish, instead falling into passive sobbing.
Not that bad - but enough, K'piru knew, enough to wither whatever might have been left for her to hold K'aijeen here with. She didn't know how to speak that to K'ile, though, so she just dropped her head.
"It's just a day," K'thalen hummed lowly, squeezing K'piru's shoulder uncertainly before giving a shrug at his brother and nodding towards the girls outside.
"It's fine," K'ile said, limping towards the exit, eyeing the girls. Then he muttered to Thalen, "Y'know, we might want to organize a hunt for that... thing. Monster. Thing."
K'airos had forgotten that the monster Aijeen had created was unlikely to spontaneously become dust under the sun. "Will it last that long?" she asked, looking at Aijeen. "It's not complete, so maybe it will just...die?"
The older man grimaced. "We'll take care of it after this." He gave an unhappy look at K'piru's back before turning to his daughters with a "Let's go" expression.
"I don't know what it's going to do now," K'aijeen answered. "Someone destroyed my means of control."
"We'll tell people to watch for it," K'ile said, walking along. He flinched at pain in his leg, "Damn it. I'm not going to be much help."
"That's what I'm here for. Always was hard for you to keep up." Even in all this, K'thalen somehow found room for a bit of a jest, though his expression wasn't particularly happy.
K'ile gave his brother a sneer.
K'airos wasn't paying attention, to the detriment of them all. She stared at the ground, unsure of everything.
"Racks go in the middle of camp, right," K'aijeen said this and began to head that way, not waiting for anyone, deliberately keeping in front of them. "You're all afraid and reluctant. Not me."
"This isn't a competition." her sister mumbled in answer.
K'ile at first moved to keep up, but stopped when his leg held him back, grumbling expletives.
K'thalen chose not to respond to his daughter's needling, keeping up with her and trusting K'ile to come along at his own speed.
***
The elder's tent moved around the desert like a wandering dune, but relative to the rest of the camp it never moved. It was right in the center, large and closed, smelling of alchemy and old people. The combination did not please D'aijeen, but she did not complain as she let her father pull her along. At some point, as much for her own comfort as anything, she'd begun to walk beside him under her own power. "K'airos shouldn't have left," she said, as the passed the central bonfire which was burning down to cinders from the previous night, though already women were arriving to build it back up. "She's going to be in trouble, too."
"Don't worry over K'airos," her father rumbled as he approached the tent's door. A fetish of bone and braided sinew hung from it, and he gave it a look and a hopeful thought before pushing the door-skin open. He called out as he did so, "Elders, I found our food thief. I think it would be best if you speak with her."
After finishing crying over the sand, K'airos stood up and followed her family, her sobbing diminishing with each step until it reached a point of balance. She had left her spear behind, somewhere. She didn't remember, but still felt as if she was dragging a few dozen on each hand. Seeing her father entering the tent only added another dozen. She stopped behind K'aijeen, her arms crossed and facing down.
"Thief! Why don't you just tie me to the racks yourself, dad!" D'aieen tried to yank herself away from her father, to present herself to the elders under her own power.
Thalen released K'aijeen easily, though he made sure to place his body close to his daughters, should she try to bolt. "It'll all go better if you keep your cool, K'aijeen."
K'airos had some angry words to add, but they chocked in her throat and only came out as another sob.
At the sound of K'airos' sob, K'aijeen ((NOT D'aijeen, by the way)) snapped her gaze around to her sister, having not heard her return. The next words were uttered from the smoldering shadows of the tent, however. A low, elderly voice...
"It is too early for this. Did you not give warning, K'jhanhi?"
The shadows fell back into silence only for a moment before another voice, similar to the first but with a weary quality spoke, "We all did. I had hoped she had heard us, in this matter at the very least."
K'airos kept quiet, raising her head to look at D'aijeen.
K'takka's tattooed face lifted from the shadows after a moment, her silver eyes glowing with concern as she set her gaze on K'airos. "Oh, Airos, why do you cry granddaughter?"
"I helped her." she barely managed to answer, the words blending together
"I've not known you to cry over causing trouble, Airos," that tired voice spoke. "There is more. But..." In the shadows, a thin hand gestured. "Step inside, all of you."
"What I did was the best possible use of resources," K'aijeen said boldly, stepping before, gesturing broad. "You won't believe me. I proved my trap works, but that won't matter, will it?"
"What you made was a monster!" K'airos snapped sadly, still outside. "You shouldn't be proud!"
Thalen turned so that the tent's door was kept open by his body, looked at K'airos, and let out a short breath through his nose. "It was something dangerous, that's for sure."
From further in the tent a low voice grated out, "From stealing food to monsters? Child, explain yourself."
"It wasn't supposed to be a monster!" K'aijeen shot back, "And it doesn't matter! It's gone! Why are you outside. What are you afraid of me now?"
Reluctantly, K'airos stepped into the tent, holding her arms tightly against herself. She took one long breath. "Aijeen used parts of the beasts to make another beast with...with...magic from a book!" she said, feeling that each word escaped at once from her mouth, each one trampling into the next and causing her sentence to be an high-pitched and fast mess.
There came the rattling of air through old lungs and then the low voice's owner stepped forward, K'jhanhi's yellow eyes narrowed. "That sounds dangerously like things no child of Azeyma should ever thing to touch."Â
Behind him, the tired voice now sounded worried, "How did you come by such dark magic, granddaughter?"
"It doesn't matter!" K'aijeen spun back, cutting the air with one hand, "It has nothing to do with the food! It has nothing to do with the tribe! Are you all senile?"
"It matters when you're putting family at risk, K'aijeen - including yourself," K'thalen barked. "This goes well beyond stealing - or borrowing - some food."
K'airos followed her father's bark with her own: "You keep saying how stupid we are and then never explain anything!"
"Because you don't get it! You're superstitious and afraid!" K'aijeen's back was to the elder's, shouting angrily at her family. "It wasn't a monster; it was a thrall. It would have helped, but K'airos destroyed the book! For no reason!"
K'jhanhi's thin lips set into a line, and arms that still bore much of the muscle that had kept him nunh for a generation folded across his chest. "K'aijeen Thalen, were you a few dozen moons older, the risks you've taken would be enough to send you into the sands."
K'airos choked on some more words that never came out. She held both hands together, rubbing them right under her chin, her eyes wide open. She didn't know where to look, and so she looked at the ground.
K'aijeen snapped around at K'jhanhi, leveling the massive man with a glare one would expect from a much older -- and much larger -- being. "Were I a dozen moons older I'd have already replaced you. All of you."
"Do not speak such things! If your mother could hear you," K'deiki breathed a sigh, bowing her withered face briefly.
"She doesn't care." K'airos mumbled between sobs. "She doesn't care about the tribe, her family or...or her sister!"
"Betrayers and ruiners!" K'aijeen shouted at the floor, "I could summon an ocean of fresh water for you and you'd condemn me for it! You don't know what love is or you'd recognize it!"
"Instead you summoned a monster," K'jhanhi intoned, old voice grating like coarse sand on dry stone. He turned to look to the painted face of K'takka.
It was K'deiki who spoke next, however, "What if she is not fully in control of herself? Perhaps something has driven her to... this."
K'takka did not meet K'jhanhi's gaze. She had pulled herself back into the shadows, only her sad eyes gleaming from the darkness.
K'aijeen stomped, "Do not do that! Coward! I am in control of myself! If you're to demonize me then do it directly!"
"I burned the book." K'airos said, as if it explained something. "I...I think this is her."
Seeing no help in K'takka and little more than attempts at conciliation from K'deiki, the former nunh turned back to his granddaughter. He did not enjoy these things. "In control of yourself or not, these things cannot go unpunished. We might have been lenient had it been nothing more than some stolen meat, even after the warning, but there is only one punishment short of giving you over to the sands that can make up for the dangers you've danced with, child." He let out a rough breath. "For one sun, the tribe will see you for what you've done."
As K'jhanhi spoke, K'thalen shut his eyes, one hand reaching out to rest comfortingly on K'airos's shoulder.
K'airos was hardly comforted. She barely reacted to the action. She held her breath.
"Too wise to exile a child, or too scared of the guild for doing what you really want to do?" K'aijeen gathered up her meager fram and said, "I exile myself. What do you say to that?"
K'thalen's eyes snapped open and he felt as though his head might snap right off his neck when he turned to look at his daughter. "K'aijeen, you're overreacting."
"I would say that you do not understand the weight of your words, child. We won't entertain such a thought." The old man looked passed K'aijeen to the tribe's nunh. "Where is our firedancer? This is his responsibility."
At that, K'thalen grimaced. "Getting... tended to by K'piru."
K'airos tapped her fingers against each other continuously as the elders spoke around her. Finally, she stopped and exclaimed: "I helped her! She couldn't have done anything without me! Let me take part of the punishment!"
K'aijeen's lips slipped down into a frown and she turned to K'airos, saying with a no-nonsense tone, "Stop being an idiot, Airos. You don't need to be punished."
K'airos answered that by choking once more and throwing herself to hug her father, muffling the cry by burying her face against him.
K'thalen's arms wrapped about his daughter easily, tanned fingers rubbing circles against her back.
K'deiki's pale eyes, deep-set in her wrinkled face, lifted to peer at K'airos through the shadows with a sad look. K'jhanhi's expression turned down even further, features deepening with reluctance but... "Your willingness to acknowledge your mistakes shows you well in the eyes of Azeyma, but it doesn't absolve you of them. You will spend your time under the eye of the goddess and the tribe considering why you did not try to stop your sister and how you might change that in the future."
"I didn't give her the chance to stop me!" K'aijeen spun on the elders. "That's insane! You might as well punish half the tribe! You're mad."
K'airos had no more words to choke on. She only accentuated her sister's by letting out a few loud sobs against her will.
Resting his chin atop K'airos's head, K'thalen watched first his youngest daughter and then the elders. "If that's what they think is best, then that's how it is." He kept up the gentle petting of K'airos's back. "Don't make it more than it is, K'aijeen. You make adult mistakes, sometimes you have to take the adult punishment."
"Adult punishment would be banishment, but then they wouldn't get to watch me suffer." She turned to glare into the shadows of the tent. "Love and wisdom. Pretenders."
"You are the only pretender!" K'airos managed to shout without moving her head to look at her. The short burst of anger was quickly quenched by the constant sobbing.
"Go to the firedancer," K'deiki murmured from the shadows. "Let this be done with."
K'aijeen scoffed, "With his stupid messed up leg? I'll have to build my own rack. That's fine."
"I'll help," K'thalen muttered, not looking all that eager as he urged K'airos towards the tent's door. "Come on, K'aijeen."
"And if I’m not willing, who will force me?"
"Please, stop." her sister mumbled, having moved by the door. "This...all this has been enough."
"Don't make this harder than it already is," the nunh shook his head. "It's not a death sentence, which is what you claimed you wanted." He tried for a bit of a smile, though the expression felt off given the situation. "I've been on the rack more than a few times myself." K'thalen then reached out to gently take hold of K'aijeen's arm, intending to guide her out of the tent.
K'aijeen did not resist letting herself get dragged out. The question had been an academic one, and the answer was: no one. They could watch her cook if it would satisfy them. She didn't care. There was nothing worth recovering in this situation that could be salvaged.
K'airos left the tent and lingered outside. She found no one to hug, so she wrapped her arms around herself.
With a last glance to the elders, K'thalen left as well, with K'aijeen in tow. He gave what he hoped was an encouraging look to K'airos and said, "Let's get back to K'ile and your mother, and then we can get this over with, hm?"
"You think you can just move past this?"
K'airos rubbed under her nose, and then over it. "Stop." she said. "We'll forget about this..."
"I think I got past my mistakes. You can do the same for yours, K'aijeen." He chuckled lowly, without any real humor. "Both of you. I get that you mean well, but... there are better ways."
"There are not better ways! The tribe's ways are archaic! And I cannot get past something that has been destroyed. You won't even acknowledge what you've ruined!"
"You never explain." K'airos shook her head. She started walking, keeping her eyes away from both of them. "If you don't explain, then... I don't care what I ruined."
K'thalen grimaced. "I'm not trying to ruin anything. I'm going to help you get through this." He kept up their pace, passing between a few scattered tents. His ears could pick up the chattering of the huntresses not far off as they prepared to leave on the morning hunt. The camp was quickly becoming its usual hub of activity, and it was with some relief that they arrived at the shaman's tent when they did. "Piru!" He called out. "Hope you're done fixing that wimp's flesh wound already. I need him for something."
As they walked towards her mother's tent, K'aijeen said to her sister, "What am I supposed to explain? I've never learned faster than I learned from the book. It was like it was reminding me of things I already knew! Mother's teaching was slow and simple. And where am I supposed to get another one? And how am I supposed to work on anymore projects without it? I'll never learn anything ever again now!"
K'airos pouted. "Good." she said, letting her anger vent out. "We'll have fun with less dangerous and...and horrible things.Like when you didnt't have that book!"
"And when was that, Airos? When did I not have the book?"
"I don't know! Why don't you tell me?"
Inside the tent, the tangy scent of disinfecting herbs filled the area, though K'piru had finished cleaning K'ile's wound several minutes past. She'd worked diligently, only breaking down into tears once or twice since her daughter had left with her nunh to see the elders. She was tightening the wrapping about K'ile's leg, murmuring a few shaky prayers to the idol resting nearby, when K'thalen's voice sounded through the skins of the tent, followed by two equally familiar voices bickering. She gave the tia next to her a worried look.
K'ile tried to give K'piru a look of encouragement, but could only manage to appear indifferent, or maybe nauseous.
Standing reluctantly, K'piru clutched at the remaining scraps of bandage in her hands before moving towards the door. It felt weighted down with lead beneath her fingers as she pulled it aside. When she saw her daughters alongside K'thalen she tried to hope, pleadingly, "All's well...? Aijeen, you're... you're alright now?"
"A few years ago," D'aijeen answered K'airos. "That book's the only reason I know anything. You don't know anything about the world because all you had was mom's useless lessons."
K'piru flinched, overhearing her daughter's words. Her tail lashed once behind her, whacking the tent wall, and then tucked in against the cloth that hung about her legs. "Thalen..?"
"K'ile's in there still, yea? If he can walk, I need him for a bit." The red-haired nunh leaned to one side as though he could peer around K'piru.
K'airos voice increased in volume. "At least she was teaching me something. So thanks! Thanks for teaching me your...your wonderful book!" She managed to stop crying long enough to shout that.
"You wouldn't have understood," K'aijeen muttered. "You would've just taken the book away right away, and I'd have never learned anything."
In the tent, K'ile laboriously tried to stand on his injured leg. "Yeah, yeah. I can guess what this is probably about."
"You don't know that! You never trusted me!" K'airos complained to her sister, still pretty loudly.
"No," K'aijeen replied, quietly. "The book was for me. The things inside..."
K'piru watched K'thalen for several seconds, unblinking. She shifted her weight to one bare foot, then the other, her ears fidgeting back against her skull. She drew in a long, thin breath through her nose and then let it out with a faint sound at her youngest daughter's words. "She... the elders..." The color drained from her skin and she spun around to K'ile. "No! You can't! I won't allow it!"
Wincing as he put some of his weight onto his own leg, he said, "I've got no say in it, K'piru. Not a single word."
"You do!" Her hands wrung at the scraps of cloth in them, nearly tearing them to bits. "She's a child!" A child by a few years. And what's more, K'piru could not see that punishment bringing any good. No, she feared it would only drive K'aijeen further. Perhaps even drive her away. "You can't do this to her!"
"Piru, come on," K'thalen set a hand on her shoulder from behind. "It won't be that bad. Just let him do what he has to."
"I don't care," K'aijeen directed the words towards her mother, into the ten. "Put me on the rack today. Tomorrow everything will be the same. Nothing will be different."
"You won’t have that book!" K'airos retorted. "That will be different!"
"I don't have the book now," K'aijeen muttered.
Shrugging off Thalen's hand, K'piru squared herself off in front of K'ile, set begging eyes on him. "Things will be different, Aijeen," she breathed out. "I'll--you'll know how much I--you will put me out there in her stead!" Her tail shivered. "If you need a reason, this--Aijeen's mistakes are my fault! She would not have done any of this if I'd... cared more! Please--"
"Ah, c'mon," K'ile groaned, pulling on his ear and looking at the wall. "The rack's not that bad. If you feel bad just go out and give her a drink every now and then. Nobody'll stop you."
"What? No!" K'airos complained. "This isn't your fault! She'll grow up out of this...and I will too! She just..." She didn't finish, instead falling into passive sobbing.
Not that bad - but enough, K'piru knew, enough to wither whatever might have been left for her to hold K'aijeen here with. She didn't know how to speak that to K'ile, though, so she just dropped her head.
"It's just a day," K'thalen hummed lowly, squeezing K'piru's shoulder uncertainly before giving a shrug at his brother and nodding towards the girls outside.
"It's fine," K'ile said, limping towards the exit, eyeing the girls. Then he muttered to Thalen, "Y'know, we might want to organize a hunt for that... thing. Monster. Thing."
K'airos had forgotten that the monster Aijeen had created was unlikely to spontaneously become dust under the sun. "Will it last that long?" she asked, looking at Aijeen. "It's not complete, so maybe it will just...die?"
The older man grimaced. "We'll take care of it after this." He gave an unhappy look at K'piru's back before turning to his daughters with a "Let's go" expression.
"I don't know what it's going to do now," K'aijeen answered. "Someone destroyed my means of control."
"We'll tell people to watch for it," K'ile said, walking along. He flinched at pain in his leg, "Damn it. I'm not going to be much help."
"That's what I'm here for. Always was hard for you to keep up." Even in all this, K'thalen somehow found room for a bit of a jest, though his expression wasn't particularly happy.
K'ile gave his brother a sneer.
K'airos wasn't paying attention, to the detriment of them all. She stared at the ground, unsure of everything.
"Racks go in the middle of camp, right," K'aijeen said this and began to head that way, not waiting for anyone, deliberately keeping in front of them. "You're all afraid and reluctant. Not me."
"This isn't a competition." her sister mumbled in answer.
K'ile at first moved to keep up, but stopped when his leg held him back, grumbling expletives.
K'thalen chose not to respond to his daughter's needling, keeping up with her and trusting K'ile to come along at his own speed.
![[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
