Private Tales Scorched Earth

[Fife]

Following him inside, her eyes scanned in open curiosity. It felt like a tavern in here, which (oddly) made her feel more at ease. Nobody was paying her any mind and the strictly neutral expression on her face helped her mentally balance herself after his sudden statement.

Fife did as Raigryn did. She picked up one of the thinning bowls and inspected the offered dishes. They smelled spicy now, and she watched him help himself to something dark. Dark meant more spicy, right? Fife fought back the urge towrinkle her nose at his bowl. She had no shame about getting the yellow dish.

Filling her bowl, she poked a piece of bread into it and waited to pour herself a mug of milk as well. She hung close to him and cast her gaze around while she waited her turn. Her eyes caught more of the gestures that Aretta had done, and her interest piqued.

But curiosity couldn't overcome the way her stomach was always gnawing at her spine. She poured her milk and picked up her food to follow Raigryn. She was far more interested in whatever this stuff was called than watching the expressionless Idemni speak.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn said next to nothing as he set a brisk pace back to their tent. He was led by his stomach and not particularly mindful of how much shorter Fife's legs were than his own.

He ducked through the tent flap and set his bowl down on the table. Raigryn wasted no time in taking his chunk of not-bread and sipping it into his sauce.

Raigryn made a low groan of pleasure and rolled his eyes.

"Soo goo..." he muttered. He turned his attention to searching his pack for his spoon. Many inns on the road expected those passing through to bring their own cutlery so it was one of the most important items they carried with them.

 

[Fife]

Keeping up was a bit of a chore, but Fife was accustomed to her short legs putting her at a disadvantage to his long stride. She walked quickly after him, jogging a few paces every now and again to stay close behind.

She didn't mind hurrying back; he had been right that she was hungry. She came in after him, set her bowl down, and watched him rummaging around for a spoon. Fife smirked and shook her head as she went to dig out her own spoon. He might have bribed her out of a mood with food, but his stomach had led them all around the world.

Refraining from jests that he would no doubt have turned back on the topic of food, Fife sat across from him. She poked experimentally at her food to look at what was in it before bravely scooping up a bite.

Fife's eyes almost immediately began to water from the spice. Perhaps because she had lived off of random bits of whatever she could get her hands on, she had no tolerance to the tingling burn in her mouth.

Thankful he had brought her back here instead of eating with the Idemni, she grimaced and quickly swallowed. This was the not spicy one?! Fife's face was red and she coughed as she reached for her milk.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn tried not to laugh, but he didn't entirely hide his smile. He pushed her mug of yaks milk closer.

"Try mixing a little milk in with the sauce," he offered. "Then try a little more dipping in the bread. I'll get more milk if you need it. Trust me, after a couple of months of this regular stew will seem utterly bland."

He resumed scoffing his own food almost immediately after dispensing his wisdom.

 

[Fife]

The milk relieved the majority of the sting in her mouth, thank the gods. Setting the cup down again and holding her hand over her mouth, Fife gave the dish a dark look. How she was supposed to get used to this was beyond her. How he just happily wolfed down his own dark dish honestly baffled her.

Following his advice, she mulled hers with a little milk and cautiously sopped up a bit with her bread. Breathing in through her mouth to cool it down, she ventured another bite, this time getting some vegetable that helped. Her face was still red and she put down her spoon and got another drink.

Raising one hand, she gestured to the bowl and gave a thumb up. It's good. Raising the other hand, she gestured to the bowl and fanned her burning mouth. But it's spicy.

She was probably going to have to take him up on the offer for more milk. Fife coughed again and scowled at the bowl. Nothing this good had any business being so cruel.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"You'll get used to it," he repeated. He had to keep his amusement down. After monsters and ghouls and dogs stealing her for a dance he was enjoying the simplicity of a quiet meal in their own tent.

He cleaned his own bowl with the last crust of bread, took a swig of milk and offered her the rest of his own.

"I think it will be nice to be in one place for a while. It can be a harsh life here, bit it's also a simple one."

 

[Fife]

At least he was trying not to laugh at her. As he said, it got a little easier the more she ate -- probably because her mouth was burnt past the ability to taste. She made no bones about drinking the milk he passed to her.

Raigryn was full of odd musings today. Fife sat her cup down and looked up at him. Wiping her face on her sleeve, she simply nodded. She still had some questions, but she could just as easily wait and find out. It wasn't like Raigryn to plan ahead to know how long they would be here.

Sitting with her hands in her lap and kicking her feet a little, she chewed her lip for a moment as she thought on what he'd said earlier. Something was off, but she couldn't put her finger on it. He was as unknowable as a portal stone, only revealing his secrets when he was ready.

Fife sat up straight. She signed thank you, then looked uncertain before continuing. She pointed to him, then herself, and held up two fingers and moved them left to right in tandem. Finishing, she pointed her hand to the ground.

Thank you for bringing me here. It wasn't half of what she wanted to say or what needed to be said, but it was as much as she could say for now.

Fife settled her hands back in her lap for only a moment before hopping up and picking up her bowl. She mimed like washing the bowl with a rag and hitched a thumb over her shoulder. They didn't have any water to clean things yet. They didn't have anything but this table and benches and the things they carried in here.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn smiled softly at Fife. She didn't realise just how much she took in her stride now. How most people she might have met in the first years of her life would never have grown this far.

Many people in this world preferred control over a very small patch of it rather than exploring all it had to offer.

"If you take them back to the big tent they'll have some of the younger warriors washing up by now. Would you like me to come with you?"

Raigryn looked down at his fingers. "I need to wash my hands either way. Their spices can stain your finger nails."

 

[Fife]

Only when he asked if she wanted him to come with her did she realize he'd really meant to say she alone. Fife looked at him, then the bowl, then the tent flap. She was mostly grown. The idea of going to a tent alone shouldn't have been intimidating.

But seeing other people was. Seeing strangers. Still, Fife looked at the bowl again and drew a deep breath. She had grown to rely on him too much; she needed to stop hiding behind him like a kid behind their mother's skirts.

Shaking her head no, she picked up his bowl and gave a thin smile and a thumb up. Wish me luck, she said silently to herself.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

The train, entirely ordinary empath within him saw exactly what she was thinking. It ran all through her body language, through the direction of travel of her eyes. He didn't even recognise the precise signs, they went from his eyes direct to understanding without his thoughts getting in the way.

"Very well," he replied. "If I'm not here when you get back I won't be long."

Raigryn pretended to busy himself unloading the rest of his pack so that he didn't follow her out. This was a safe place for them. An exceptionally safe place. The Idemni also had a very stern outlook on crime. Punishments were harsh. There were no gangs and no thieves here.

Once Fife had a few minutes head start he left and went to scrub his hands. He didn't like to think that he was already becoming accustomed to their ways but after so much scrubbing it seemed a shame to leave sauce stains on his nails.

He did get back before Fife. Rather than the table he was sprawled across a pile of cushions at the back of the tent, reading a book they had picked up on the way. It was a historical account of the formation of a magical academy on the Allirian reach and its sharp downfall.

 

[Fife]

She made her way back to the big tent and ducked inside. She'd prepared for wary looks and to feel distinctly like an outsider in their home. Fife hadn't planned to be put in front of a pail of water to wash their dishes. Her skin was tingling from the brief touch and she bit her tongue to keep her faces to herself.

With their bowls and mugs washed, she left with as much dignity as one could while running away.

Hurrying back, she sighed and rubbed her shoulders to purge the feeling of hands on her. She was fine. Raigryn had made it back first and had occupied the pile of cushions at the rear of the living space. She gave the book in his hand a cursory glance while she took a seat beside the cushion pile. Sitting at the table felt too distant but sitting on the cushions was far too close.

Fife tipped her head to read the book's spine. Or try to. She slowly strung together the letters in her mind. A lot of good knowing it did her. It sure wasn't something she could easily sign. Curious nevertheless, she touched it with a finger. She wasn't much longer for this world, already sleepy.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

If she had plans for sleep, the world had a different view.

Raigryn turned the book over to look at the spine. Her turned it back again to face Fife and ran his thumb under the word.

"For-tin-ia," he read out loud. "It's not a word but a place. That's why it looks odd. There was a town east of Alliria and at one time it was..."

Stories were cut off as their tent flap was pulled aside. Aretta marched in, followed by a much smaller figure.

"Good, you are here," she addressed Fife. "It is time to choose a sword."

 

[Fife]

Resting her chin on her knees, she settled in to listen to him. Fortinia. The name sounded like it belonged in an old book. It was reassuring to know that she hadn't been able to make sense of it as a word because it really wasn't one she could have known. At least, like some, most of the letters were direct about what they were supposed to be.

Fife started when someone literally just walked into their tent. Her heart felt like it was in her throat and she jumped to her feet.

At least she was at attention when she realized it was Aretta. Fife wiped the look of surprise from her face and looked from Aretta to Raigryn. Pick a sword?

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn started to lift himself up from the cushions.

"You will not be needed. Your constant choice of the stupidly unwieldy chunk of steel gives you no place in helping someone choose a real sword," Aretta snapped. Raigryn grinned and the idemni finally allowed some emotion to creep onto her face. Apparently Raigryn was capable of getting under her skin far enough to elicit an expression.

"This is Ylerial," Aretta told Fife. "She cannot speak our tongue either yet, so these lessons will be...interesting."

The elf was genuinely a child. Perhaps in her early teens. Her bright blue eyes skimmed the room once before falling to the floor.

"An orphan?" Raigryn asked.

Aretta nodded. "Her father died well. She could not be left alone. She will learn our ways."

 

[Fife]

Fife but her lop and looked back to Raigryn. He smirked, and Fife wasn't sure if Aretta was amused or was going to break a stool over his head. Either way, he wasn't going with them. A day for independence, it would seem.

Aretta introduced Ylerial and Fife looked at the girl. Looked up at her. She looked about as young as Fife, which meant she probably was that age (unlike Fife). Like her, according to the Idemni's statement, she was an orphan and would be learning here, too.

It made sense she would be trained alongside a child. Small, unlearned, and foreign, they amounted to the same or similar skill levels. Fife made no bones about it, only looking back at Raigry one last time as she followed Aretta outside. She fell in line beside Ylerial, whose legs were still longer than her own. Fife held back a sigh. Belduhr had been insufferable, but at least he had walked slower.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

It was the first tent with any form of a guard. In fact it would become apparent that it was a wooden building with a canvas pulled tight across the beams.

A man and a woman stood still and silent by the door. They didn't even look to Aretta as she approached, but they also didn't block their way.

The hut was a single square room. There was a wide, open floor in the centre and racks of weapons ran all the way around the outside. Dagger, dirks, short swords through to long swords. Not an axe, poke arm or spear in sight. Certainly nothing as heavy as Raigryn's bastard sword.

"Find one that appeals to you, test the balance."

Ylerial frowned and looked up at Aretta. The idemni picked up a weapon and gave it a testing swing. It was clear the elf didn't quite get the concept.

 

[Fife]

Eyeing the stoic guard as they passed, she stopped beside Ylerial when they came inside the semi-fortified tent. She understood what Aretta way saying, at least, but it still took her a moment's survey to move toward any of the blades.

Surprisingly, none of them seemed to be as long as Raigryn's. A lot of them even seemed suited to her small stature. Fife immediately migrated to the daggers. Knives she knew. She flipped one in her hand, testing its weight. These were things she had been able to filch and learn from practice with sticks and cutlery. But she wasn't here to learn more knives. She was here for the sword.

Fife put it back and looked around again. She picked up one that felt too broad and heavy, and put it back. Another was too light and long. Several were too large in general. Curves felt strange and sngle-sided blades felt like stacking her shortcomings and disadvantages.

Finally, however, she picked one up she liked. Its blade was narrower but it was still almost three quarters of her height. It was probably a one-handed sword for everyone else, but to Fife it worked better as a hand and a half.

Turning to Aretta, she held her choice. If it was a bad choice, she got the feeling they would be honest about it. If not... Well, then this was her mistake to live with from now on.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Ylerial had only started looking at the weapons when Fife did. She hadn't understood what was asked of her. The elf knew none of their language and instead had just resorted to following what other people did, rather than what they said.

The elven girl went almost directly to a slightly curved sword, similar to what was common among her own people.

Aretta looked at what they had taken. Her expression gave nothing away but he left hand flicked by her side. She slowly drew her own sword. It was relatively short, two sided and dead straight.

"A simple straight sword with a perfect weight is most common here, but neither of your choices are too far removed from that." She looked at Fife's sword, deciding that Raigryn's choice of hand and a half swords, unwieldy by their standards, had influenced her decision.

"Your decision is not final today, but for now those are yours. Leave them here overnight and I will make sure you have a similarly weighted training weapon ready by the morning and a scabbard. Return here and wait for me outside after breakfast and a wash. I suggest you eat well."

The elf watched Fife out of the corner of her eye to see what she did next.

 

[Fife]

Fife saw the hand gesture from her peripherals but didn't really see it. Had it been the same as the one for indifference? Suddenly Fife was a lot more self conscious about her choice.

But the choice had been made and, as Aretta explained, these would be their swords for the time being. Fife nodded and took her sword to lean it against a rack, but didn't put it back. With a look to Aretta to be sure it was alright, she glanced at the kid as well. She only seemed to do things after Fife did. Did she not speak even this common language? Something worse than being mute. She looked a little lost and even Fife couldn't imagine how confused she must be.

Summarily dismissed, Fife inclined her head to Aretta and gave a small wave to Ylerial as she made her way to leave. Sleep, a bath, and a full breakfast. Things she could do if she could manage the social aspect of two of them. Ducking out of the tent with a look to the guards, she set her feet on the path back toward theirs.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"They didn't give you your swords to look after?" Raigryn asked as Fife ducked through the tent flap. He was still on his book. Now he was at the table with a small candle burning down. He placed a finger between the pages as he turned towards her.

"I know you'll look after it, you did with your crossbow. Aretta will be...well, just look after the sword properly. How is Aretta's other student?"

 

[Fife]

Slipping into the tent, Fife took the other seat at the table and shook her head. She pointed a finger, then rolled it in a circle to another fixed point. Tomorrow. When he asked about the other student Fife shrugged. She frowned and thought about how to say what she wanted to. It wasn't worth wasting paper, so she would rather fumble through an explanation.

She held up her fingers as together, two separate hands with the fingers moving one after the other. The girl had only done what she had first.

Besides that, there wasn't much more to report on. Or, at least that she could say. Fife felt bad for her, and tried to let some of that come through. It was almost like a sadness -- an understanding.

Fife shrugged again. Then, with a slight smirk, touched her chest and made the numbers for 18 before wobbling her hand in a statement of uncertainty. Then, gesturing away from them, she signed 12, 13, and 14 before wobbling her hand again. She raised a hand to mark her height and then raise it above her head to indicate about where Ylerial stood. All together, it was a very roundabout commentary on either how short Fife was or how tall Ylerial was in comparison to their age difference.

Everyone was tall to Fife, though.

// Raigryn Vayd //

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"She was following you around? Oh, no, she was copying you? Right, yes."

This was often how their approximation of a sign language went. Fife did her best and a lot of questions and shaking or nodding of her head did the rest.

"Elves are quite tall in general," Raigryn explained. He placed a bookmark into his novel and sat up, crossing his legs.

"She could well be in her twenties and still be considered a child to their kind as well. Be careful around her Fife. It might be that an Idemni killed her parents and then decided raising her here was the right thing to do."

A sad smile lingered on his face for a few moments before he shook it off. The whole world was damaged, but it hurt to consider the children that shouldered much of the pain left after war.

"Now...whilst I said you might grow quite a lot, that was when I thought you were five years younger. Sorry to say you might not get much taller. But you know...you are a perfectly formed young woman. You might just be short for life."

 

[Fife]

He pretty well got what she was saying and Fife nodded. She didn't know much about elves, so everything he told her was new information. So Ylerial might not only be taller, but also older. And yet younger? Fife nodded again. He warned her to tread carefully, but she already understood far too well how dangerous children could be. But Fife shoved that memory far from her.

There were, apparently, enough ghosts in the room. Raigryn seemed almost... sad? It wasn't quite like melancholy, but he had been pointedly thoughtful today. Her mentor was generally a serious man, but not usually this sober like he carried something heavy on his shoulders.

Or, perhaps, she was reading too much into a weird day. He was allowed to have his moods. Fife let it go.

His comments on her height offered some levity to the day, however, and Fife burst out laughing, raising her hand to cover her smile as she hissed in her mute laughter. Her brows were high and she grinned through signing.

She tapped herself and shrank her thumb and index finger close together. I'm small. She tapped herself again and held her hands parallel to her front and sides, motioning straight down, then rapped the tabletop before leveling her hand over the surface. I'm skinny and flat. Still smirking in spite of her best efforts not to, she made a general gesture to her face, signed 12, man, and held her hand at waist height like she had before for children. And I look like a twelve-year-old boy.

She hissed in her equivalent of a chuckle and shrugged, touched her chest, and gave a thumb up. Fife didn't mind. Being short wasn't always so bad. She never had to worry about ducking through doors as he sometimes even had to, there was always room for her skinny rear in crowded taverns, and she didn't need to eat half of what he did. Being small and boyish had suited her just fine all these years.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn laughed in turn, the warm sound chasing away the shadows of the past. A touch of colour reached his cheeks as well.

The situation was still sinking in and he could feel embarrassment as much as anyone else. He was a worldly man who would gladly take the opportunity to put Fife out of her comfort zone, but that didn't make him immune himself.

"Well no you don't carry a lot of curves, though I should have realised you were, erm, not putting the weight where I might have expected when you started eating properly.

"If it is of any importance you look perfectly lovely in a dress. But you can wear whatever you like. Well, now we're hear you can wear whatever we brought or Idemni clothes. But you don't have to wrap your chest if you don't want to."

 

[Fife]

If he was even remotely red, Fife looked like she'd baked in the sun. Being open about being a girl was a learning curve for both of them. Drawing her shoulders up in a shrug that didn't relax, she bit her lip and twined her fingers in her lap. Being a boy had grown a lot more difficult once she'd been provided regular meals. Perhaps, now that she wasn't so afraid of hiding it from him, she might actually look more like a girl than a plank.

Talking about her body and femininity still made her cagey, even if he meant well. Being a girl had been bad, and she had done everything in her power to be a boy for so long that doing anything else was still frightening. The dress had helped, but so had the anonymity.

She wasn't ready to talk about it, especially when she didn't yet have the capacity to talk about the past. She didn't have a sign for I'm sorry or lie yet, and she wasn't going to linger on all of this long enough to get paper -- and have to look at those words every time she wrote something over the next few weeks. She was guilty enough.

Fife nodded, an acknlowledgement more than agreeing. This, at least, she could broach. She patted her ribs and chest, a slight frown having taken her features and eyes downcast, then wrapped her arms around herself. She held herself tightly and shrugged. It was comforting. Safe. The feeling was more why she did it than the guise.

But she unwound her arms and glanced up with a small attempt at a smile again. Her brown eyes met his for only a moment before darting away once more as she signed thank you.

// Raigryn Vayd //​