Private Tales What Does Not Kill Us

[Pern]

That settled her. He sounded like Hath. Looked like Hath. The black of his skin where it had once spider-webbed along his veins was gone. Pern curled her hands into light fists where they rested on her knees and felt herself smile without any sense of trepidation for the first time since they left Elbion. She felt the pang of bittersweet accomplishment in her chest like a magic sparkler spitting sparks of happiness, homesickness, relief, and something else entirely she couldn't quite name.

"Okay," she breathed finally and lifted a hand to wipe the sting from her eyes, "I am glad to have you back, Jusht Hath."

"Well I suppose I'll need a new teapot," Gilabree remarked as she began picking up the pieces of shattered porcelain from the grass, "time for a journey back to Alliria, yes yes." The last time she'd been there she'd nearly lost her head to an incursion of dark creatures! "Come come, on your feet again! Time to eat, rest is over!"

Pern pushed herself to her feet and offered her hand to her friend to help steady him, "Now to plot our journey back to Elbion."

 

[Hath Charosh]

Hath swung between emotions like a pendulum. He saw everything on Pern's face that he felt unfold within his own chest.

The dawning realisation that they had achieved what they had set out to do. At first, he had felt this would only be difficult because of taking Pern out of her element.

Instead after running into elves and having his own brother try to murder him and then the demon gathering strength, Hath had come to see that his own demise was the only way to contain it.

And yet here he was. Alive.

Those positive swell of feelings was burst quite suddenly at the thought of planning the trip home. The halfling clearly wanted to be rid of them.

"You got me here," he said firmly. His gaze travelled from Pern's hand up to her eyes. He gave a short, sharp nod.

"But I might sit here a moment," he added.

 

[Pern]

That earned him a warm smile. Pern would never in a hundred years take credit for their getting here. She would not have made it without him and there were so many instances that she'd come so close to death due to her own ignorant blunders.

"We got here together," Pern offered in return, gently placing her hand on his shoulder and squeezing, "take all the time you need."

She left his side then to follow Gilabree as well as she could into her house. Given her challenge with human-sized homes, a halfling hole was a whole nother game.

 

[Hath Charosh]

"We got here together," Pern offered in return, gently placing her hand on his shoulder and squeezing, "take all the time you need."

"Yes. We did," he stated plainly in orcish.

He visibly relaxed at the offer of time. He knew that the piece drawn away from him had been a demon that did not belong, but he still felt as if he had been torn.

Hath wondered how clean such a piece of magic could be. Would some of his own darker feelings that fed the demon have been pulled away or would some aspects of it be left behind? He could only hope that no matter how much it had hurt, the cut had been true.

He had not deserved Pern putting her life on the line for him. After so much travel together, they were really a small tribe of two. She might have been raised by humans, but some instincts were deep rooted. Orcs stuck together. It was how they survived.

Hath found that the scent of food brought some strength to his tired soul. He rolled onto his front and pushed himself up to his feet. He stood and approached the door.

Part of him new that he had a second motivation. Being alone with the newfound silence in his head was disconcerting. Not even the tug of the demon to try and get him to open up and hear its voice.

He looked at the door, glanced left and right to the extend of his own shoulders.

He knocked.

 

[Pern]

The door opened several moments later with the halfling standing there smiling brightly, "On his feet, on his feet! Well done - but you will not fit in here, no. You must stay outside and we will bring breakfast to you!"

With an excited chirble, Gilabree turned disappeared back into her home.

"It ish a bit shmoll in there," Pern agreed, carrying with her a table from inside that she'd taken out the front door and brought around. The sun warm on her face, she gently set it down in the clearing of the garden where Hath had previously been exorcised. She cast a glance around the area, feeling oddly struck by the strange dichotomy of enjoying the morning meal where a demon had been magically excised ... but she could not feel any lingering effects of anything strange. Not that she was particularly sensitive to that stuff anyway.

"Hath I-" but before the words could work their way out a very loud rumble like distant but enormous thunder sounded from the west. She blinked, looked to Hath curiously, and then felt the ground beneath her feet begin to shiver.

Then it began to quake.

And then it began to shudder violently.

Pern could hear the sounds of trinkets and plates falling from shelves inside the Healer's home as she lost her own footing and toppled to her rear.

In the distance the strangest and most gut-wrenching sound she'd ever heard echoed in on a strong gust of wind.

 

[Hath Charosh]

"It ish a bit shmoll in there," Pern agreed, carrying with her a table from inside that she'd taken out the front door and brought around.

He was able to see her clearly, see her thinking about the situation. Hath was tired, but he felt more alert than he had done in some time. He could think clearly without another voice trying to drown him out.

Hath felt relief. There was something strange about finding himself in the small garden of a halfling as Pern set about laying a table. There was a relection of how their trip had started in Elbion there somewhere.

"Hath I-" but before the words could work their way out a very loud rumble like distant but enormous thunder sounded from the west. She blinked, looked to Hath curiously, and then felt the ground beneath her feet begin to shiver.

Having been unable to trust himself for so long, he immediately thought this was internal. A side effect of the magic or simply his body about to shut down. It was like the high pitched whine that came before losing consciousness from a blow to the head.

It was very real.

As Pern fell back, he dropped to one knee. He bared his tusks to the sky, but he could see no threat.

A horde of cavalry?

Then came the cry and instinct froze him in place.

 

[Pern]

The earthquake continued for several minutes, growing in intensity so fast that trees in the nearby woods began to topple just like Pern. Over the immense rumbling she could hear cries from other villagers in the hamlet and watched as birds flew frenzied into the skies.

What was happening?

And then just as suddenly as it all began, the valley around them settled. Dust filled the air which had grown eerily still and quiet.

Pern clutched a hand over the edge of the table above her and looked beneath it across at Hath. He was ok, but -

"Gillabree!" she scuttled back to her feet and rushed to the door, pushing it open against the weight of fallen furniture inside, "Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"Here!" came the halfling's faint cry, "I am here!"

With some struggle through the mess of the home, Pern managed to carefully get their host outside to the stone bench of her garden. Gilabree gently dusted herself off and smeared blood over the side of her face as she realized she had a cut on her head.

"What...what wash that?" Pern looked between the two, having never experienced an earthquake before.

"Land turtle," Gilabree replied, "shifting in its sleep. Not felt one of those since I was a wee bab."

 

[Hath Charosh]

Hath should have been quicker to the house, but he was still disorientated. He also would have needed to find an opening he could squeeze through. He was relieved when they emerged, half expecting the squat dwelling to come down.

He towered over the seated Gilabree. Taking a knee, he quickly looked at the source of her bleeding.

"Not so bad," he said, standing up again. Faces always bled heavily. The cut was from a small knock and might need some resin or a stitch to help it.

The halfling probably had better remedies and magics than he could suggest.

"A land...turtle?" he asked. He had never heard the word before.

The flat savanna rarely experienced such tremors. Pern had seen how the arid landscape could change in just a few hours of unbelievably heavy rain and thunder.

Hath was glad that the angry movement of the land was nothing to do with the magic they had released.

 

[Pern]

Gilabree did not seem terribly concerned with her head, though she did take a moment to rifle through her smock and many pockets for a handkerchief to press against the cut.

"Oh yes yes," she nodded quickly, winced, then smiled as she continued, "in some lands I believe they are called Terrahorns. Turtles so big they hold entire kingdoms on their backs! Their slumber lasts for an age and then they awaken to churn the lands anew and feast. They created the mountains of the Spine and furrowed the rivers into the great sands. One is said to have awoken in the cradle of Espressa, turned south to the sea and was never seen again but left the delta in the pattern of its shell. There are only a few that I know of from old texts ... one in the far south, one in the Wilds to the far east, and a third in the sands to the west."

Pern's eyebrows shot upwards into her hairline as she listened - it sounded like a fairy tale her father might've told her but she could not ever recall such a story.

"I have never heard shuch shtoriesh, have you Hath?" Pern looked at him curiously. Did the orcs live long enough ago to have witnessed such a cataclysm?

 

[Hath Charosh]

"No," he said bluntly.

He searched for any stories that could make sense of this. Orcs passed down their heritage over the camp fire. Stories were lessons, handed down generation to generation.

"The winds breathed life into people," he stated. "Where it met the stone it created dwarves. But orcs are of the wind and go everywhere."

It was a much simplified version of the tale, delivered in the common tongue.

"No one speaks of a walking...thing...that made the mountains before the dwarves," Hath said.

He glanced skywards, concerned about seeing a shadow about to swallow up the village. He offered Pern a concerned glance. The halfling was smiling, which he could not understand.

"It would not wake?" he asked.

 

[Pern]

"Orcs of wind..." Gilabree hummed in thought, "that is a tale I have not heard!"

Pern was smiling at Hath's words, thinking fondly of the stories told to her at the campfire's of his clan. But those warm memories were quickly dashed by the cold truth - they could never return. At least, according to Hath they could not.

"Wake?" the halfling shrugged, "Who keeps track of the ages and the cycles of their sleep I wonder. Not I! There aren't many that live long enough to see one wake, and few who survive their feast. But the stories do tell of rumblings when they dream." Gilabree bent slightly to pat the earth beneath her bench like she were soothing a fussing child to sleep.

"I shuposhe even turtlesh can dream," Pern remarked while carefully picking herself off the ground, "perhapsh we should put your home back together now?"

"Breakfast will be a scramble for sure!" Gilabree peeped with a giggle.

 

[Hath Charosh]

It had been days since the demonic force was expunged from his body. The pain had passed. Dark marks remained down his shoulder, spreading out from where the obsidian feather had pierced his skin.

He had been left with a sense of restlessness. There was no voice, but he could often feel his temper simmering just beyond the edge of his thoughts. He was himself, but not the version of himself he had been before that day.

At times their voices had not been so different. It had tried to become a part of his own wants and needs. Promises to survive. Leadership of his tribe, ownership of all the tribes of the savanna, keeping Pern safe, power and respect.

Hath sat on the soft grass and watched the sun rise over the far end of the valley. The orcs had certainly overstayed their welcome with the halflings of the small village.

Hath felt, rather than heard Pern approaching over his right shoulder. She walked more carefully than she had done. He supposed she would be changed more by this expedition than he had been by the demon.

"We must plan the route back," he said. "Following the coast would mean humans, but less orcs"

Less chance of encountering his tribe.

"There is another thing we have not spoken of."

He turned to look up at her.

"Pernillia. You were named after...a flower?" he guessed, a touch of amusement in his voice.

He had heard ignatius say the name, but had thoroughly forgotten it. For some reason that word had sunk in from those pieces he could remember of their arrival.

 

[Pern]

Hath had spent much of his time secluded in the gardens of Gilabree's homestead. He was a far too threatening sight for most halflings, and so when the call came out for a helping hand with other homes damaged from the quake - Pern insisted he stay and rest. She spent her time lending her strength to those of the hamlet, making friends wherever she went and even learning a thing or two from their own local smith.

When she arrived to where she'd last left Hath in a shaded gnoll of grass near the river, she smiled easily as she moved to sit beside him. Knees propped in front of her and arms loosely settled over them, Pern quietly enjoyed the lovely scenery before them while he spoke. His words drew her gaze briefly - yes, they would need to head home. Much as she liked it here, this little hamlet was no home for either of them and she missed her father dearly.

Speaking of which.

"You were named after ...a flower?"

Pern blinked, thought a moment, then smiled again with a nod, "I wash, yesh. It ish a shmall pink flower that bloomsh in the shpring on the outshide of wheat fieldsh. My father hash alwaysh liked them."

"What doesh your name mean?"

 

[Hath Charosh]

"It means...me," Hath replied.

He gave a shrug. A flower had been a good guess, it turned out.

Hath made a short, sharp sound of amusement at the back of his throat.

"You are not like a flower," he continued to muse. "More like a tree. Strong."

It did not occur to him that the culture she had grown up in placed very different values upon femininity to orc culture.

"I did not think that of you when we left Elbion. That was wrong."

 

[Pern]

So his name was just a name, which struck Pern as odd considering the culture of his people. Words held meaning and power, she'd found, but apparently not so in the way humans normally attributed them. But, she thought to herself, his name meant many things to her. Hath was brave and fierce, one of the strongest individuals she personally knew, but he was also kind and humble.

She cast a side glance at him as he remarked on her own, comparing her to a tree. Was he... complementing her? Pern wasn't good with things like this and she felt the flush of embarrassment fill her cheeks so she gently cleared her throat and decided to take some interest in a grazing calf in the opposite direction of him.

"Shtrong to a human," she replied quietly, "...lesh sho to a true orc."

The identity crisis she'd faced her entire life still had yet to find resolution. Pern had learned much with his tribe, but she still did not count herself among their ilk. She was a poor excuse for an orc, so far as she felt on the matter.

 

[Hath Charosh]

"Shtrong to a human," she replied quietly, "...lesh sho to a true orc."

This time he would not suffer her discomfort. He thumped a balled up fist into his chest, just beneath his sternum.

Orcs communicated with body language to cross the boundaries between tribes and dialects. This signal always emphasised the strength of a statement.

"Not just arms that lift a hammer and strong thighs," he said. "Strength. You could have run. You almost carried me here. Orcs are strong together. Not alone."

Hath watched her as she looked into the middle distance, refusing to look away.

He should have died in the wilds, far away from anyone Pern cared for. She had risen to her own personal challenge.

 

[Pern]

Cripes she'd never get used to that gesture. Pern startled slightly at the sudden thump beside her, recognizing it's deftness for what he was doing without really having to look. She'd experienced it plenty enough within his clans, both watching others conversations and on the receiving end. Pern had never used the gesture herself.

It felt just a step too tribal for her and she wasn't even sure she knew the right time to use it.

But she did feel his gaze on her, as intense as it was, she she did eventually look back at him. The flush of her cheeks was fully bloomed and completely unmistakable. Upon locking eyes with him her own widened, flaring the faint white rimming her irises.

How did she respond to that statement?

By smiling sheepishly, apparently. Pern ran an anxious hand over her head, pushing brown curls from her face, "I guesh sho," she did not deny that in his presence she felt a level of confidence and strength she had not before. But was that an effect of his company or simply the experience gleaned along the way?

"I would not want to make the journey back without you." She supposed it was him after all.

 

[Hath Charosh]

She did not take compliments well, but she eventually managed to acknowledge it. Hath met her gaze intently as she struggled, finally looking away as she brushed her hair back.

"I would not want to make the journey back without you."

"No. That would be stupid," he said bluntly.

He turned to look at her again. She still wore the warm blush, but he was looking to see if his words surprised her.

Hath rubbed his thumb to his middle finger. A common sign of slight amusement that avoided flashing tusks.

"I have not showed you to hunt enough and it would be very boring on your own."

 

[Pern]

Oof. Pern winced slightly at the bluntness. Really, it shouldn't have caught her as off guard as it did. Hath was not an eloquent speaker and never minced his words or thoughts. By now she had learned this was not so much an effect of his broken common as much as it was just his way with words.

Perhaps direct and blunt was best at times. Especially when it related to survival.

Her eyes glanced the gesture with his hand, recognizing it and knowing then to take his next words with humor. A chuckle broke between her own tusks, "Yesh, it would be," she wouldn't comment on the hunting part. Hunting just wasn't something she'd ever enjoy even though keeping herself fed required it.

"But... if I had the choish of other guidesh to get me there," Pern did look at him again, an easy and toothless smile there, "I would shtill choosh Hath."

 

[Hath Charosh]

"Good."

And it seemed that the conversation was done.

Hath stood slowly. He stretched into the sky as he faced the morning sun. Muscle flexed and sinews popped. He had been a lanky, rangy orc. Years of heavy fighting had seen his body adapt. He didn't carry the bulk that his bother had, but fed and rested he looked ready to take on the wilds.

He turned to Pern - and sufferening complaint - he wrapped those arms around her and pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Thank you."

Because even if she hadn't run, she could have stayed at home and never been troubled by the dangers they had faced.

"I will miss you, once you are home and back to your old life."

There was a chance he would never be allowed back into Elbion and that he would not see her again after this journey was done.

 

[Pern]

She'd moved to stand shortly after him, knowing their departure time was swiftly arriving. If they did not leave this morning, they'd be here another day which was just another day lost now that it seemed Hath was fully recovered. Pern was brushing her trousers free of dirt and grass when Hath's arms suddenly ensnared her like two willow trunks as a vice.

The orc released a hiccup of alarm and felt the heat of her face turn up as if someone had tossed fresh logs on a campfire. If she wasn't the very shade of the beets from Gilabree's garden she was pretty dang close.

His thank you rumbled in her chest like thunder and sent a flock of butterflies loose in her gut and up into her lungs where she felt them pop and dash away her breath. For several long moments Pern stood, immobilized by shock and alarm and a lifetime bereft of physical affection.

Sure, her father had hugged her and shown her plenty of love, but that was nothing, nothing compared to this. The two things could not have been farther apart in her mind.

"I will miss you, once you are home and back to your old life."

But that seemed to snap her out of her deer-in-lamplights moment and made her blink in surprise. Hath would ... miss her? She frowned as she thought about this, quickly coming to mentally acknowledge that she would quite miss him as well. Beyond that, the very notion of returning home to the life she'd subscribed to felt ...

She didn't know how she felt about it, but she did know she deeply appreciated this gesture and so very slowly looped her own arms around Hath's chest to hug him back. Her own squeeze would have likely been perceived as weak or light, but she'd spent her entire life around humans who were quite easily broken and thusly learned to rate her own strength with others and mind her claws.

"We have a long way to go until I am home," Pern said quietly with her head against his shoulder, then looked up at him, "tell me again when we get there."

 

[Hath Charosh]

Hath had seen the warm flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. He had chosen to ignore it. Hath had not told her these things and embraced her just to make her uncomfortable; it was because he wanted to speak his mind.

He was patient when she squeaked like a halfling that had been trodden on by a giant. For a few long seconds it was like hugging a tree.

Pern embraced him back and Hath felt a warmth of satisfaction well up inside him. He drew her even closer against his chest. He let his hand rest against the back of her head and drew in the scent of her. One hand idly stroked up her spine.

She hadn't lived amongst their kind, hadn't grown up using body language and touch and smell as much as words.

"We have a long way to go until I am home," Pern said quietly with her head against his shoulder, then looked up at him, "tell me again when we get there."

Hath loosened his grip on Pern and leaned back so that he could look down at her. He offered a small smile - a very human gesture.

He had put the journey home out of mind and thought of what they had accomplished so far.

"I will tell you," he agreed, feeling a melancholy tug to know it might be their final parting.

"And I will not do this again without warning," he added.

---

They had a copy of an old map from the village. They had as much in supplies as they would need. Hath had lost his bow. He was not artisan, but had made a crude replacement

Despite their preparations, they still had to choose a route.

"Straight west is out," Hath said. "First too many elves, then too close to Vel Anir, then too close to the deserts. Giant scorpions and more humans.

"We can do north to the coast and follow it to Elbion. I know it less. Or the same way. More tribes. Maybe my own."

 

[Pern]

Having warning before a hug would be good, Pern thought anxiously, and nodded back with a smile of her own.

~~

She peered thoughtfully at the map long enough before pillaging her pack for a map of her own. Ignatius Osric had lead a long and fruitful life of great adventures that spanned across the many known continents. While he was no mapmaker himself, he'd kept a detailed journal of the many places and peoples he'd come across. Pern had in her possession one such journal that covered the area of lands from as far south as Vel Anir to the seas just north of Elbion. While many points of interest on his maps existed, there was plenty of barren spaces as well.

And, Pern thought to herself as she listened to Hath, who knew how much the roads and lands had changed since her father had journeyed out to these locations.

"My father wrote of a market town along the water in the north," she said as she carefully paged through the journal to the appropriate folded map and pulled it open, "here." A clawed digit gently pointed to the star on the map among many other markers.

"He deshcribed it ash remarkably unhuman," her eyes skated down along his list of notes to the star symbol on the left, "Wikkerton Market," she looked up at Hath, "have you heard of it?"

 

[Hath Charosh]

"Remarkably unhuman," he repeated.

It conjured some otherworldly market of faeries and elves playing tricks on anyone foolish enough to try and barter.

They had travelled south with the safety of the tribe. They would have to travel north without it. It would potentially be safer keeping close to roads that were well travelled.

"I have not. What does he say of it?"

Hath could read the symbols on a map, if they were literal representations. The words were meaningless to him. If they headed the route he was thinking of, then they could pass through the market. They would also come close to another city marked out.

"And what is this?" he asked, pointing towards Oban.

 

[Pern]

"Mm," Pern furrowed her brows as she flipped through a few more pages to an entry on Wikkerton.

"He shaysh it ish populated by elvesh, dwarvesh, orcsh, and primarily beashtfolk...ehhh, gnollsh, catpeople, lionmen. Nary a human in shight." She made a small noise of amusement, "It'sh like a revershe Elbion."

She flipped back to the map page and looked at the marker Hath pointed out, "That ish Oban. A kingdom of humansh that ride gryphonsh who are shaid to be deshendentsh of the Dawnbringer."

Having read plenty about the place didn't exactly make her an expert on it. But she wasn't sure they'd receive a warm welcome there.

"I do not know how friendly they would be to orcsh, but my father traveled there many timesh and I do have a feather of the Dawnbringer. That may count for shomething."