Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naqenni — fingers and toes nocked into the best gripping points she could find on the rock — peeked upwards towards her company. It seemed like a question with a fairly obvious answer, so far as she could tell, and she wasn’t sure why it merited calling on a distant goddess who surely couldn’t hear her here.

But, thanks purely to the fact that the alkidike had seemed to make decent company as compared to the rest of their tribe, she opted to answer. “I want to see the river up close,” she said, shrugging as she did. “You’ve been down to see it, haven’t you? Why would we come all this way and then not touch it.” She glanced down, antennae flicking as she shifted one foot lower, then the other, and followed up with her hands. “If you’re worried, you could tie off a rope up there or something. If you have one. I didn’t bring one, but I don’t use them when climbing. Maybe I would later when the cliffs were very steep, or on outsider soil. When was the last time you were off the island?”

Naqenni moved as she spoke, inching downward and testing each foot and hand hold before lowering her weight to it and making her way. The closer she got to the foot of the rock and the wetness of the cavern floor, the louder the rush of the pounding river, until the mere sound of it felt like a physical entity vibrating through her. She wondered, if one explored deep enough, if there were portions of it where the currents were slowed or segments cut off enough from the rest that it flowed gently enough to swim in.

That would be exciting to find.

Naqenni snorted. “Of course there’s a difference between you being down or me—one’s you, the other’s me.” Finding further bracing points, she continued down until Ai’s instruction reached her, at which point she glanced, spotted the landing spoken of, and did as directed. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to, in this instance, and once upon it, she stretched, fingers reaching high above her head as she peered about.

“It’s cooler inside,” she said. “Like the ocean side coves, but even more. Are there other places like this? Are they all as cold? Have you been far enough in to see if there are places where the water is calm enough to swim? I want to explore more…”

As her attention flicked to Ai, however, Naqenni had an inspired moment of at least the fragment of sense that it took to realize she was ‘pushing her luck’ with the older woman.

“It could get dark, though, I suppose if we stayed too long. I’m glad to at least know where this is though. I won’t tell anyone you took me, so you don’t have to be upset. Do you want to go back up?”

Immediately, Naqenni brightened, gaze and attention darting back to the cavern at hand. Light from the exterior opening made visibility best from their current vantage point, but given the dampness of the cavern, it reflected deeper, too, catching and rebounding off the water and to the glossy dark cavern walls. In the hollows, mossy flora of various sorts gathered, sporting a variety of color and shape assortments as fungi tended to do. Naqenni skimmed a finger along the near rock, eyeing what grew there before taking Ai for her full offer and starting off down the flat area of the landing to explore what was readily available.

“I will see it all eventually,” she said. “Mother Kasama says even the whole island isn’t so big as even one part of the mainland, but I want to know of all of it before retaking anything else. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to worry about fighting far away earthlings if you don’t even have control over the ones here already. Can you eat any of these?” The question came as abruptly as most of her subject changes, but was at least accompanied by a curious flick of her fingers to indicate one of the more abundant patches of fungal growth, blue-purple, shroom-like and rippled at the edges. “Or are they poisonous? I want to take it back and show—”

She paused, considering that perhaps showing anyone a plant that she found in a place she oughtn’t have been in the first place was a bad idea. It was frustrating, though, since it was so unique looking. She pursed her lips.

“Well, perhaps I wouldn’t show anyone, but I like the color. Do you know much of plants? There are so many.” She had the sense, at the very least, not to touch with her bare fingers until assured of a lack of toxicity.

Naqenni continued to study the fungi as her company talked, listening with one ear and debating with the rest of her attention. When Ai finished, she curled her toes, and reached for her waistbelt, pulling out the very small knife — equatable more to a utensil than a weapon — that her mothers had allowed her to carry with her and plucking out a section of cloth, too, from a pouch at her hip. Layering the small square of cloth over her palm, which she brought about for purposes just such as this (collecting and investigating was an all but insatiable urge and habit), she reached up with her other hand and knife, and carefully edged the blade’s tip around the base of the fungal growth. Once severed from the rock, the sample dropped into her cloth-protected palm. Folding it up, she tucked it into her waist pocket.

“A blade is alright,” she said. “But boring, without more. I’ll learn to be good with them because they’re useful, but I couldn’t think only about them all day and every day. If you found something else you liked, you could do both, and be all the better for it.” Turning back towards Ai, she paused a moment, eyeing her speculatively and cocking her weight and hip just to one side as she did. Then, she asked, abruptly as anything else, “Do you have a lady?”

As Ai’s face scrunched and colored, Naqenni made mental note, privately far more pleased than she even expected herself to be. It seemed somehow impossible not to be amused by such unmistakable — if likely unwanted — abashment from someone who presented herself so seriously and rigidly. Naqenni’s toes curled to the cool stone, antennae curling in rare good humor as she started over towards her older cousin.

“Mother Kassama says a woman will change you. She wasn’t much for anything but fighting until she met Izari. Maybe you don’t have to be a kissy type. But if you’re not, and you don’t like girls, or plants, or anything else, what type are you?”

Naqenni bristled, puffing at the cheeks like a small, disgruntled animal deeply offended. How dare she tell her to—she didn’t have to shut up for anyone! She opened her mouth to say as much, or to at the very least say something, but never got that far, Ai already striding past her. Naqenni’s antennae twitched irritably, and for several moments, she still floundered. In the end, though, she convinced herself it didn’t matter. She didn’t care for an answer regardless, and she’d succeeded in her aim of testing the other woman’s boundaries.

Narrowly satisfied by this, she started back for the way out and began to climb. There was a passing urge to do so as quickly as she could, race the other to the top and then dart off to show her how adult she was—in all her grand seven years of age. A splinter of caution, though, held her at bay, wariness in the base of her spine keeping her to a more careful pace as she crawled up. When she did reach the top, however, nothing stopped her from darting off, quick as her small legs could carry her out into the jungle underbrush and towards home.

Along the far western edge of the island, blocked completely from view by the forest of swampy tree trunks, the evening sun sank low towards the horizon, and in the evening air, shrouded in foggy mists, the first of the night bugs were just beginning to chirrup.