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 Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:37 pm
Yelling aside, it was a touch-and-go week for both of them, Cato spending a long time sleeping and in something of a daze. In his brief periods of lucidity he picked up something of Val's routine and the rooms around him. His wounds healed with all his bedrest and by the middle of the week after he was beginning to get rather bored. He'd counted all the stitchings he could see in the animal hide roof above him, twice (there were two-hundred and fifty three) and in the periods were Val was absent he began to sit up and walk around a little. Oh, but his legs were stiff!
If Cato could have worked out what day of the week it was, he'd have known it was a Wednesday when Val walked in on him fiddling with the things on one of his counters. It was a small charm-like thing which Cato couldn't work out the reason of, and Cato dropped it guiltily as the older, larger man entered.
He looked like an oversized child. Still clad in his pants from his previous life, the shirt Val had given him a few days earlier hung like a very short dress on him, almost to his knees. His hair had grown a little, past his ears, and he brushed it out of the way as he backed up from the counter. Gods, he hoped the man wouldn't be jealous.
"I didn't move anything..." Useless to say - Cato had worked out that aside from the basics, his captor didn't speak very much common tongue - but hopefully his tone would get the message across.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 7:14 pm
As Cato's health improved, Val was around the shelter less and less, wandering off early in the morning to work and not coming back until around midday for short periods of time before leaving again until nightfall. Life in the tribe was by no means difficult, but tedious it was. Each dwelling sustained itself, be it food or weapons, or materials for repairs, and Val staying alone--technically--had to do all of this by himself.
He fished in the early hours of the morning, when the sun and salt wouldn't scar his back with burns, salted and dried most of the catch, went forraging through the fields on foot, where he picked up medicinal roots and other starches, or thick hempen plants to twine into rope. He went to the villages fire pits to make earthenware, or to pound bronze into sharp points. Weapon production was the only village-wide activity, aside from the usual games and brawls. You were expected to craft quality weapons, especially with the amount they lost during raids and other attacking tribes.
Then, however, life went on as it usually did, and Val found the days melting away faster and faster as the rainy season drew near.
Walking in on the boy fiddling with his charms, Val had a net slung over his bare shoulders. He wore his usual garb; a fur-hemmed wrap that tied around the waist and fell to about the length of his knees. Other than that, however, he wore little else. Shirts, after all, only hindered when you worked under the hot sun, and the midday heat was a testament to that.
Looking cuiously as the boy spun around, Val fastened the mesh net to a hook by the main flap of the tent, letting it hang nearly to the ground. It was not wet, which means he was likely out cleaning and drying it.
The thing in which Cato was toying with was nothing more than a good luck charm, fastened out of a hollowed piece deer antler and cut into the shape of a small hexagon along the internal ridges. A leather cord hung limp through the hole, making it obvious that it was--obviously--a piece of jewelry.
Walking over, he gave the younger boy a sidelong glance, then reached out and took the charm in his thick, calloused fingers. Eyeing it for a moment, he turned to Cato and held it out, giving a light nod in recognition to him.
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-CAL- 89 percent vanity Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:10 am
Back at home, Cato’s lifestyle would have seemed horribly hectic compared to Val’s honest, hard work here. Whoever wanted to be royalty would be in for a nasty shock; it was true Cato did very little physical work but he didn’t just get to laze around all day, oh no. It was early up in the morning for breakfast, usually spent with his mother, sometimes reviewing the daily paperwork with her. Then it was into the library to continue the work and look over the general spending, laws and other such administrative matters of the country which his father had lost interest in. This would take him until lunch, which he’d take either with his parents, brothers or occasionally friends. The afternoons would leave him either meeting ambassadors his father had neglected in the morning, riding out to visit important people and a variety of other highly important yet ever so forgettable things. Nights would either be spent in conference with family, advisors or attending extravagant parties and dinners. He’d sleep sometime in the early morning only to do it all again the next day. Sundays were catch-up-on sleep days. He wouldn’t give those up for anything.
Not labour intensive, more mentally trying or tedious. Cato’s far paler, far less built body was testimony to that, from years of neglecting any sword fighting and spending a lot of time with ink-stained fingers. Most of what Val did on an every day basis would be things Cato had never even seen done. Not a lot of princes got out fishing, after all.
Today marked the first day Val had actually seen Cato up and about the tent. It wasn’t that the younger boy had been hiding it, it was just that he didn’t really want them to come to this point. What did they do now that he was almost better? Why had Val – he’d found out his name a week or so into this – bothered to save him at all and what did he want with him? Cato’s eyes glanced at the net. Probably to work. That wouldn’t be fun.
Eyes flicking to the trinket he'd been fiddling with earlier that now lay in Val's rather large hand, offered to him. He'd really just been curious and now he wasn't quite sure whether Val was offering it to him to look at, or to keep. Well, there was one way to find out. Quite concious that the older man's hand was almost half a size bigger than his, Cato's fingers brushed against Val's palm as he retook the trinket, fiddling with it a bit as he took a step or two back. Now what?
"Ah...thank you."
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