Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naqenni clicked her tongue, and then — listening to the reverberations of the rushing water — she puckered her lips into a tight circle, and whistled. Long, low, and then shriller. Her caretaker mother, Kasama, could mimic the birds to near-perfect accuracy. Naqenni was a far cry short of that, but she had at least learned to make a tune, and it echoed off of the dark rocks, bounding down the long tunnel like a skipping stone.

“Likely,” she agreed after letting the note die and beginning to progress deeper. “But no matter. It just means more for us, and no diseased footprints to worry about on our way…I hear near half of them are deformed anyway, and all of them are stunted, almost as small as children. They must hideous. When I have a weapon of my own, they won’t be on the island for long. I’ll…”

Naqenni trailed off, spying a section of river where several rocks jutted up from the sides of the bank. Though the rushing current was obviously far too wild to swim against, the visible rocks looked close enough that one could almost hop from one to the next, and cross to the other side. Her gaze flit to Ceylinae, and then back. The stones gleamed with dampness, but other than that, were uninhibited by mossy algae or growth. They ought to be more than enough, if she timed her balance right.

“I’ll clean them out. You and Ku could help if you liked.” Angling herself before the first, Naqenni drew a breath, hopped, and—grinned. To either side of her, water rushed like a roaring beast, and her feet were wet, but steady. “It would speed the process some. And then, once the island was all ours—” Just before making her next leap, Naqenni’s heel slipped a half inch. Her body froze, muscles bunching rigid as her balance tipped and then flailing when a splash licked at her ankle and her other foot skidded down, and over the lip of rock.

The latter half of her scream was swallowed by the crash of the rolling river over her head.

Her fingers scrambled. Her legs kicked. In the first instant that her lips made it above water, she sucked a breath, only to choke on the next wave into her mouth. “Mother—!” The river was a hand twice the size of her, all around her, a thousand hands gripping, dragging, tugging, bashing—

But in the next moment that her body crashed against something solid, her small arms snapped outwards, reaching, snatching, scrambling for any source of a grip, and her fingers had the lip of the river bank. With each yank of the current, though, her fingers lost traction on the wet stone, only barely allowing her to get her head above water, let alone pull herself out.

“Ceylinae—” she sputter-coughed out, and then, unaccustomed as her lips were to the word: “Help!”

Naqenni’s pulse bounded between her temples. She couldn’t breathe. Every other suck of an inhale drew water, and her palms were scraping against rock, her body battered against it—and then, Ceylinae’s hands were on hers. In that single moment, as her sister tugged and Naqenni felt her grip, her pride was not a component. There was no space or time in her thought process for shame or second-guessing, she felt only a surging rush of relief, desperosity, and raw drive. She returned Cey’s grip, kicked, and dragged at the slick lip of the river rock, lurching to scrabble and scrape before finally beaching herself on the stone.

She coughed. She spat, elbows, knees, and palms to black rock as she hacked the water from her lungs, and then, then, when at last an inhale drew nothing but clean air into her chest, she felt the first buddings of pride. Shame. Heat swam towards her cheeks, flooding into them and darkening the gray to a muddy, reddish ash color. She pushed to a stand. Her soaked hair slopped to her shoulders. Her teeth threatened to chatter. Her antennae twitched, and she opened her mouth, but the instant her gaze locked on Cey, her posture only stiffened further, shoulders squaring off.

“You won’t tell anyone! We aren’t even supposed to be here, so you can’t anyway, but you won’t even think about it, or you’ll be sorry you ever did, do you understand? We went swimming.” She glanced to Cey, still dry, and felt the burn in her face climb higher, towards the tips of her ears as her hair dripped. “I went swimming.” She ‘spun’ on her heel as quickly as she dared on the wet rock—which wasn’t especially quickly—and started immediately back towards the opening without a backwards glance.

Next time she felt tempted to attempt something she hadn’t before, she would do so without an audience. What bothered her even more than that, however, was the unshakable, niggling fact in the back of her mind that refused to leave her no matter how she tried: thanks to this, she owed her sister a favor. One that couldn’t be repaid by anything less than the value of one of their lives.

It was a heavy and unwanted burden to tote, but hers alone just the same.

Naqenni paused at the foot of the rocky cliff face. Light from the gourge’s opening filtered down, illuminating her frown, but puzzlement, now, had replaced anger, at least in part. In spite of herself, she glanced back, studying her sister surreptitiously from beneath skeptically narrowed lids. She had expected more argument. If she were completely honest, the mere fact that Ceylinae had aided her surprised her a pinch in retrospect. Despite being family in certain senses of the word, they were also warriors. Fighters. Out for their own pride and each striving to be the ‘best.’

Wouldn’t it have been easier for Ceylinae to be the ‘best’ if one of her three competitors disappeared down a dark, subterranean river? Naqenni brushed her thumb over the cold stone of the cliff, and released a withering exhale.

“I didn’t—” ‘…need to be saved?’ There seemed little point in arguing that. True or not, it was a moot point. She settled for something else. “I might have made it out on my own,” she said. The bitterness in her tone was angled more towards herself than anything. “But…” The edge in her voice softened, “…it made it easier, with you here. I suppose, if you slip up later…” She rolled her shoulders and drew a breath. “Well, I won’t be the one to tell on you, and if you ever…” She flicked her fingers, “…fall off a cliff, or into a ravine, or a pit, or are attacked by wild beasts…you won’t have to handle it by yourself if I’m close enough to do anything about it. Alright? And…”

Squinting upward, Naqenni briefly cupped a hand over her eyes to block the sun as she studied the cliff face, and then glanced towards her sister.

“Unless you want to try your hand at swimming also…yes, I am heading back.” She started her way up the cliff, one careful grip at a time.

This time, there would be no slipping.