Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naqenni had seen the tracks earlier.

Obviously a sister — or rather, cousin, since the footprints looked grown, unlike those of most of her fellow Elzira blooms — and leading out of Zinris in a mostly cohesive pattern. She hadn’t followed them all the way, then, for though they’d sparked her curiosity, she had left it for a later date. Her cousins in particular often wandered out of the camp itself and the only thing truly notable about this set was the regularity: an oft-traveled path, if not always exactly the same.

Still, she had let it sit, tucking it to the back of her mind for later investigation when, one morning before many were up to do much of anything, she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure leaving camp, very near to that trail.

Perched upon a rock outside her mother’s hut, carving stone in hand and arrow flint in the other, her antennae twitched, toes curling against the granite with curiosity. The next moment, she slid off, scooping her crafting supplies into her bag, shouldering her quiver, and taking only bow and finished arrows. Fiddling tasks could wait.

This was an opportunity.

Naq followed after Ai for some time, trailing as closely on her path as she dared without giving herself away. A fresh path, at least, was easiest to follow, and allowed her to leave more distance and keep her cover. After all, if her elder cousin was going to such lengths to hide her path, varying it and slipping out in the dim hours of morning, it seemed unlikely she would share the final destination of her path willingly, if caught.

Fortunately, that soon became a non-issue.

It wasn’t a short walk, but as the mouth of a cave became visible, Naqenni felt a spark of triumph, certain that the wait was soon to pay off, and it—did? As she encroached upon it, gaze moving from the rock overhang to the torches along the inner walls and the light from inside, she squinted. That was certainly Ai, her shape outlined amidst the darker interior by the various sources of firelight.

But what…was this?

Initially, Naq felt a swell of irritation or disappointment. Was this an empty cave—? Well, no, there were these pots scattered about, but what of and—

As Naq edged in, though, and her buggish eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, she noticed the walls. Not just ‘oddly’ colored, but intentionally colored, and not with random shapes, but with trees, vines, crawling mushrooms and fungi. It was a jungle, she realized. Akin to and yet alien in relation to Yael’s own. Dark, thick, and tall. The paintings spanned the walls with varying amounts of attention to detail, and Naqenni’s antennae flicked and curled with curiosity.

“Where is this?” Now that she was there, there seemed no reason to keep quiet.

Naqenni paused in her tracks.

While, admittedly, she had anticipated some upset — Ai had clearly gone to some substantial lengths to keep this little private cove of hers just that: private — she hadn’t predicted quite the amount of upset that came radiating off of the other woman a moment later. But no matter. Her gaze flicked, taking in the scene: from the paint staining the alkidike’s hair to her fingers to the stone, to her brushes, and then the walls again. Clearly this was an involved process, and for as much as there was there already, Ai must have been building upon her work for—weeks? Months? Years?

Naqenni found she couldn’t guess, never having seen so much of an artistic endeavor in one place and having no concept practically speaking of how long such things took. Still. Her antennae twitched behind her long ears and she shifted her posture back, more or less ignoring Ai’s ire entirely and continuing to take in the fascinating anomaly that was Ai’s work.

“I followed you,” she answered, unperturbed. Not likely new information to Ai, but she had asked. “And no,” she added, stepping forward instead and reaching to touch one of the walls, testing for wetness, texture, and anything else that contact might tell her as though, in absence of Ai’s personal explanation, the paint itself might offer some insight if she only got up close enough. “Is it supposed to be here? Or the mainland…” She tipped her head. “It doesn’t look like here, so if it is you didn’t do a very good job.”

Ai’s testiness had not subsided.

Naqenni watched her older cousin slam her things about and perhaps she ought to have given the woman more credence: she was an accomplished huntress, many years her senior—and so on, and so forth. Naqenni found she cared significantly more about this strange world depicted by the swaths of crude paint than about respecting her elders.

Until a hand slapped hers away.

She jerked back at the affront, stepping aside—some, finally—though her eyes were now trained on Ai again, expression etched with irritation. But, Ai was speaking, and thus, before Naqenni decided what exactly to snap at her, the new information trickled in. Her attention turned back to the display. Chibale.

And Aisha.

The Aisha, mother tree to which her cousins swore by—or had sworn by once. Clearly, Ai had not let go. Naqenni tipped her head. “You miss it.”

As the edge to Ai’s tone wore down and her words took on a more tutoring quality, Naq listened with — for once — genuine interest, and found herself taking a step back to look—really look—over the sweeping stone canvas, and give Ai the space to talk and gesture.

Many of her cousins missed their homeland, Naqenni knew. And, even if they were not all equally open or vocal about it, she suspected many also still felt ties to Aisha. Though she was bloomed of Elzira and entirely dedicated to her own goddess—and did feel Elzira should be the principle focus of those of her cousins who had chosen the correct path forward—she felt, now with sixteen years under her belt, that perhaps this amount of ache for something lost was permissible. Understandable. Inevitable even for some.

And, in any case, not as offensive as it might have seemed in her earliest years. She was curious about those roots of her history, and Ai had managed to set that world on display in a way none of her cousins had attempted, let alone accomplished in this magnitude.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Perhaps when we have the strength and numbers you will see it all again.” She hesitated, studying the mural another moment before adding, “I would like to see it for myself as well.”

“Mm. Sooner better than later,” she agreed.

Waiting was not Naqenni’s strong suit, but in this case she had little choice in the matter. Fate seemed intent on teaching her the art whether she wanted it or not. At least now, finally, some things seemed to be progressing.

Naqenni blinked at the latter offer, and then at length, shrugged. “It might do some of my sisters good to see, since we never have. There is nothing like this to show us what your lands were, when they’ve only been described to us. But, it’s yours to share or not and theirs to find or not.” If Ai didn’t want others prodding about the space, she wasn’t going to go out of her way to make trouble for her. But neither did it feel like her solemn secret to guard—she’d found it, after all, and surely that meant eventually, someone else might also.

She glanced to the older woman again, considering before asking, “How long?”

Ai, like many of her cousins, had been very young during the war. Fierce, but — if Naqenni were to guess — similar to her own age then, and surely, the wounds of losing her homeland had been freshest then. The mural, too, seemed to illustrate a long timeline. Gradual progress and improvement spanning a great distance. And the paints she had were still fresh, which meant she was still building upon it.

It was something of a wonder to consider how much time might have been put into the evident labor of love, and a sharp cynic within her argued that that time could have been better spent a hundred other ways. But even warriors needed to rest. And, as she herself had admitted, there was nothing like this elsewhere. Ai had fashioned something all her own.

Fifteen.

Ai had been younger than her now—only barely, but younger just the same. Naqenni could imagine it. It was what she envisioned for herself in a sense, after all: to have the strength with her sisters at her back to fashion a fighting force fierce enough to face nations and reclaim their history. After the blooming of the mystic, some of her urgency had ebbed, and the history they’d been told was that of their cousins. It was this island that was her home.

But still, she could imagine. See herself leaving it and then fighting to return. It was more difficult, though, to appreciate the scope—how long Ai had been without, and the fact that seeing it again was certainly possible, likely even, but not guaranteed.

“You won’t forget.” She glanced from the mural, to Ai, studying her. “And when I see it for myself, we can cover it in the blood of those who tried to keep you away.”