❋ Naqenni

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

❋ Itching Under the Skin ❋

There was much to be said about destiny. Great futures. High hopes. It was easy to play on the innate want that burned in every living soul for something better, always, than whatever it was that a given individual had in the present. Wars had been and would be fought again over want for more. Over entitlement. Pride. Ambition. And destiny.

It was always especially easy, though, to spin a tale of greater things to those with little. And the more that had been lost to bring a person to whatever state of ‘little’ they were at, the more injustice and want for vengeance burned in their veins.

That, so far as Naqenni could see after fifteen years in her village, was what drove her mothers—her cousins, all of them, with their lovers and new daughters and new village and ‘fresh start’ with budding young warriors. But it couldn’t be what drove her, because she had never tasted what they lost. She had only ever been fed the promises of what would come when things were right again.

And, naturally, she lacked perspective—though she couldn’t see that much herself.

From her viewpoint, in the narrow, carefully honed and carved tunnel that encompassed all things she saw and understood to be true, she was crafted—first of her kind—to be something more than what came before her. Something which changed the wrongs of history and, in time, altered the tides of the world she and her sisters walked in.

She and her sisters, though, had never set foot off of their island.

Unlike her mothers and cousins. Unlike the warriors who fought in wars past. Unlike anyone who had ever touched sole to soil on the island of ‘Chibale’ which was almost more concept than reality to her, Naqenni and her sisters had no graspable concept of what it was they were fighting for. But this, she felt certain as she sat beside her mother’s stretch of bedding, watching with intent as Kasama’s chest rose and fell and her breath came ragged and wet from her lips, was not it.

Kasama had always been the fiercer of her two mothers. Strict, and enforcing. She taught Naqenni use of the bow, and had been the matriarch of their small tent. From the beginning, she had always pushed the hardest. Tested and challenged Naqenni where Izeri would have given her the benefit of the doubt. Some tests and challenges had left bruises or scar lines—pink threads of permanently angered flesh marking up the otherwise gray spans of Naqenni’s skin.

Two weeks prior, Kasama had suffered an injury in the field. A scuffle with natives. It oughn’t have been much, but in the time before she was treated, the wound had festered, presumably exacerbated by the jungle’s toxins — harsher on the bodies of her Alkidike cousins than her sisters, born to the land — and though the damage had been treated after, she had soon come down with fever.

Whatever the title, it was a degrading, messy disease that stripped shame from the victim.

Naqenni had never seen either of her mothers sick. Not like this. And perhaps it ought to have been more distressing. Sad. Agonizing. Concerning to watch her caretaker for all the years of her life flounder in physical indigence. But all that she could think, in the hours she was set to tend to her, was that she never wanted to be reduced to such a state. Wallowing and helpless on a stretch of bedding. Body desperately attempting to rid itself of the toxins that came with sickness in any way it could, caring not of dignity.

“You look pathetic,” Naqenni said. “And smell worse.”

There came a ragged, jostling sound in Kasama’s throat, and then it was clear she was laughing—if it could be called that. “You.” She shook her head, a subdued twitch of movement, and her dark eyes looked glossier than they ought when her antennae flicked against the pillow beneath her. “You…may be rid of me soon, sweet flower child. Do you look forward to it?”

Naqenni studied her mother, then turned her attention to the shallow water bowl beside her bedding and took up a rag to wet it and clean the sheen of salt sweat from the older woman’s brow.

“What will you do. When I am not around to protect your mother, and there is an infestation of islanders at our village’s edge. What will you do.”

“If.” Naqenni grimaced. “If you are not around. You speak pathetic. Like you are already dead—”

The slap was unanticipated, and harsher and more stinging than she would have given the infirm woman credit for being capable of. Apparently, the shock of it showed, because instants later, Kasama was laughing again, a rough, garbled and stretched sound like wet rocks clacking against each other as they scrambled out of her throat. “So I do. But still, we spoiled you. What will you do?”

Resisting the urge to touch her cheek — it wasn’t necessary, it didn’t even hurt — Naqenni let her mind turn to the question, and a familiar, anxious, itching impatience stirred within her.

‘Leave.’

The answer had been on the tip of her tongue for longer than it had any right to be, perhaps. But Naqenni couldn’t see it that way any longer. All her life, she had been promised greatness. Destiny. Change. The power to conquer. But all those things had awaited on the distant horizon. Kasama — stinging though she had been in her ways — had been an anchor of sorts, pressing her on and honing her path. But still, here she sat, on an island that the mainland had forgotten existed, breathing in the ‘toxic’ native air, sharing space with festering earthling natives that, despite their ‘weakness’, seemingly couldn’t be culled down to nothing.

And Naqenni herself had never seen any of it.

Still, the word was heavy on her tongue, and it took some time to force it out. “Leave,” she said.

Kasama gave a garbled scoff. “Leave—”

“Nothing is happening here,” Naqenni bristled. “Except that more blooms are being blessed to us. That is business of the mothers who request them. I do not want to sit and wait, and wait, and wait, for children to grow and nothing else. I don’t know the world past the shore. How can I fight it if I don’t know it?”

“You don’t know this world—”

“I know it better than you!” Naqenni dropped the rag back beside its bowl, taking a moment and scowling to the flap of their hut door. “And your sisters can handle these earthlings. They already know the world beyond. But I’m eldest of my sisters, and when I lead them…I must know what to.”

Kasama made some grunt of a response, but it was unintelligible under the circumstances, and Naqenni’s attention had shifted, regardless. For the next three weeks, edging in on the cusp of Naqenni’s sixteenth bloom day, Kasama shifted into and out of consciousness, drifting in an indefinite morass of her illness. Eight days before Naqenni’s sixteenth year, Kasama passed to the next world, returning to the arms of their goddess. Whether that be her goddess, Aisha, or the new mother, Elzira, who could tell?

The earth was slick on the day of her departing ceremony, coated with a fresh, still-falling drizzle of rain, and steeped in the natural moisture of the strange jungle. It pittered down over the attendants like a spray, and Naqenni stood rigid and still beside her remaining mother, Izeri, as she clung poorly to her composure after the loss of her mate. Naqenni suspected that composure would only dwindle, fragment, and fracture with time.

As words were said, detailing Kasama’s accomplishments in life to the goddess — her feats of strength, her dedication, what had made her a worthy mother of one of the new blooms, and all that she would be remembered for — Naqenni wondered what her life would be reduced to at such a point. What would be said of her? Listed on the scrolls of history to be reminisced over by those who outlived her—what would matter at the end?

More than to have been a soldier for a cause that hadn’t yet seen its promised result, she hoped. More than to pass in her weakest state, far from her homeland, while the sky spat on her and the forests hummed, a strange goddess taking her into her keeping and the great bulk of the world continuing on as though she had never existed.

That couldn’t be what had been meant by ‘destiny.’ Something greater awaited, and Naqenni was going to find it.

All that remained to be done now, she concluded, was to resolve exactly how and when she intended to leave the island of her blooming and begin to assess the worlds beyond.

Word Count: 1,526

Quote:

All her life Naqenni had been built up with promises of a great destiny on her horizon. As she grows into a young woman, the non-arrival of this 'destiny' strains her limited patience, and the troubles of the real world as she lives in it become more potent. The loss of one of her mothers - specifically the one who pushed her hardest and was always fiercest in shaping her behavior - is simultaneously damaging and freeing. It removes the strongest thread controlling her life and tying her to the island and finalizes her decision to pursue her 'destiny' on her own terms.

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● From Separate Roots We Sprang ●

PRP: Link
Result: -

Word Count: - || Posts: 1

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Mildly Irritated Bug and Lil Slug ●

PRP: Link
Result: -

Word Count: - || Posts: -

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Doing Some Tracking ●

PRP: Link
Result: Naqenni and Ceylinae go limbara tracking. It's not quite as eventful as she might have hoped, but they do find one.

Word Count: 2,049 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Naqenni v. Akacia ●

PRP: Link
Result: Battle. Naqenni somehow wins.

Status: COMPLETE

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Naqenni v. Lenila ●

PRP: Link
Result: Battle. Naqenni loses to a purple squirrel.

Status: COMPLETE

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Creepy Crawlers ●

PRP WE: Link
Result: Naqenni and Ai find a bug. Ai is excited to eat it.

Word Count: 1,300 || Posts: 7

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Voice of the Goddess ●

PRP: Link
Result: Naqenni speaks with her little sister, the first Elarian mystic, and they discuss archery and the short history of their race, beginning with Naqenni herself and her bloom sisters.

Word Count: 3,808 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● The Grand Market ●

META: Link
Result: Naqenni sets foot on the mainland for the first time, but not under the circumstances she anticipated.

Word Count: 2,224 || Posts: 7

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

❋ One Size Fits All ❋

I want to stay in one of the Earthlings inns.

That was how this had begun, and Naqenni would not forget it—though she was unlikely to say anything about it either. The threshold should have been her first clue. At seven feet tall, her full height now she assumed, Naqenni already stood over many of her own sisters and knew no one that she looked up to physically in all of her home camp. Even the very tallest among earthlings were far, far below her—and it showed in their architecture. The simple task of walking through a door involved a duck and tuck: as though she were crawling into a box not made to fit her.

Unfortunately, that feeling was only set to grow.

Just looking at the little earthling developments was surreal. She had known of course, by description and explanation and now personal witness experience that their dwellings were very different from the airy and practical tents within Zinris. Instead of flexible huts and open communal spaces, earthlings made structures, sometimes like interconnected above-ground burrows, all shuttered in. Boxes is what they were, with far too many latches and holds and not nearly enough means for free entry and exit.

They looked like overly decorated and intricate versions of something that might be crafted to keep an animal contained, and yet, despite being large for an animal, when one considered personally being inside, they felt—caging. Stifling. Restrictive. Not to mention alien in every way, again. It was one thing to eat their food and breathe air that smelled of them, but upon stepping into one of these ‘inns’ it was as though she had voluntarily submitted herself to being latched inside of a trap which surrounded her on every side with their smells, their sounds, their things, and saturating her in it.

She felt like a collection of overly long branches wound together at the joints and forced to bend and fit herself within the box as she leaned over the counter. “We’re staying,” she informed the owl-eyed innkeep who looked to be an incredibly stunted earthling boy, even smaller than children of their own. Perhaps he was not fully grown?

“H-how lon—ahhhh…are you—are you allowed to…? Who are y-”

Naqenni dropped some marked and emblemed pieces of metal onto the counter, earthling barter coin she was fairly sure. Hunting was usually easier than dealing with earthlings whenever possible. It may not have been much, and she did not know how much was ‘needed’ in order to be ‘allowed’ within one of their dwellings, only that it was usually apparently custom to exchange these things when one did want to stay in a foreign dwelling and it had been advised that they not kill anyone or cause any unnecessary bloodshed to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Still, she couldn’t have said in the end whether they were eventually shown to a room because she had given over sufficient coin, or the owner was concerned she and her company would eat him and his son personally if they turned her away. She found she didn’t care. They were shown to a room, and that was what mattered to satisfy Nivalis’ whim.

Why anyone would would part with anything of value in exchange for what they got, however, would ever be a great mystery to Naqenni. She frowned at their sleeping arrangements. Boxes within boxes, and inside of those, filled smaller boxes with cloth atop. They were obviously intended to be laid upon. They did look something like very odd bedding, but again: tiny.

At least Nivalis was small.

For a child, the set-up was more satisfactory, and given that there were no other prominent objections (and they had already ‘paid’ for this space, and it was what the mystic wanted), Naqenni kept her grousings to herself and her expression. Nothing needed verbalization at this point. They were soon to be on their way home, and had experienced much. More than enough to keep Naqenni’s mind busy into the long hours.

Which was fortunate, seeing as even after the sun sank beneath the edge of the sky and Nivalis and their other company were presumably sound asleep, Naqenni sat awake, folded atop ‘her’ bed as best could be managed (which, as one might guess, was not particularly well), with her head bent up against the headboard and long legs bent at the knee, pulled closer to her for lack of sufficient length to hold them. Positioned as she was and boxed inside an of an earthling sleep-cage in foreign territory, rest eluded her. But moonlight did pour white through the small open window, and as the night progressed along its way, complete with the sound of restless night bugs and the soft inhale-exhale and stirring of the younger company in her keeping, sleep must eventually have caught her.

For she woke, bent as a festival bread-pretzel, strewn over the undersized cot like an animal which had chosen a resting lap ill-suited for its size, with one leg draped to the point of touching the floor on one side, and her head half falling off the lip of the mattress at another angle. If nothing else, it was an exercise in muscle discovery.

All of them hurt—including some she hadn’t known she’d possessed.

Word Count: 916

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● Naqenni v. Tacrith ●

PvP: Link
Result: Battle.

Status: wip

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● The Naked Truth and Bare Necessities ●

PRP: Link
Result: Naqenni and Pruu have a revealing encounter.

Word Count: - || Posts: -

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

❋ Patience ❋

Naqenni needed a mount.

She had known as much since near the beginning of her training, of course. She had no talent for magic, nor any interest in it for herself—though she understood that some of her cousins and inevitably sisters would dabble in the end with it to augment their physical fighting and hone that instead of making use of a beast, it felt too ephemeral for her. Unpredictable, unmanageable—and predominantly an earthling tool.

She preferred her bow as it was, and a blood-and-teeth beast at her side, eventually. ‘Eventually’ however, was turning out not to be soon enough. Though she was young yet, she had come far in her training, and now with the mystic coming of age, it was more critical than ever that she be at the head of her game, ready to lead her sisters and fill whatever role needed of her with competence and confidence. She had no shortage of the latter, but was well aware that at least in terms of beast wrangling, she was behind—or, if not that, then to the point where it was critical she make more progress. Now.

She intended to bring home a limbara. Ceylinae, after extensive effort in terms of tracking, studying, and training with those already in camp, had succeeded in capturing hers. A young, dark male, not grown, but likely perfect for training.

It was something of a private embarrassment that she was trailing her sister in that regard, and the fact that Cey had worked so hard for it only seemed to make Naqenni more peevish about it. Ceylinae had hers, so Naqenni couldn’t go long without. Thus, it was with a prickling of frustrated and determined energy that Naqenni packed for several days’ travel and whatever those days might bring: firestones, some dried meat and fruit to supplement whatever she hunted, a rolled leather tarp to double either as bedding or shelter depending on what was more necessary at the time, her weapons, netting, and rope.

She set out before dawn, slipping from Zinris in the shadows of pre-morning, and fully intended not to return until she had what she left for. In the past, she had hunted both alone and with her cousins and sisters, but never had she set out alone for more than a day at a time. There’d been no need. The island was sizeable, but it had its limits, and by now she had trekked through most of the territory not explicitly dominated by earthlings.

This, though, was different. A matter of pride, as much as anything else. Besides, she had lead the small team which traveled all the way to the mainland with the mystic in tow, and still considered that a far riskier endeavor than scouring her own island. It was the actual beast attainment and containment portions that might prove more challenging.

She would tackle that—literally or figuratively as the case might be—when the time came.

The time was frustratingly slow in coming.

For a day, two, and then three, she moved through the muggy underbrush of Yael’s jungle, in the trees and on the ground at varying points with no success. On the fourth day of nothing, she successfully found some—but it was that: a small cluster of them, all adults and healthy so far as she could tell, though it looked possible that one of them was pregnant. It didn’t help her now, but she did trail the group for some time, awaiting any opportunity to separate and subdue one individually.

None presented itself.

She grew restless.

And then impatient.

On the sixth day, a storm hit the island. The endless layers of natural growth which made up the jungle’s canopy softened the bite of heavy rain, but did nothing to diminish its volume, and despite the shelter of the trunks, wind howled so sharply at points that all of the land seemed to bend with it. Naqenni stayed in the trees, high enough to be safe from ground predators, but in the lower branches, to avoid the chaos the wind wrought on the flimsier higher perches. From there, soaked, she watched, and when one of the limbara strayed further from its fellows than any of them had yet, in the midst of the storm she took her opportunity. One arrow — coated with the sap of a variety of local flora which possessed heavy tranquilizing properties — she sank into a back leg.

Whether due to the storm, lack of immediacy in effect, insufficiency of toxin, a poor shot, or simply impressive resistance, the first accomplished little more than to get the beast’s full, roaring attention. Her second arrow, aimed for another non-vital and hopefully non-crippling leg zone, missed, clacking uselessly against armored shell. Her third hit. The beast rammed sidelong against the trunk of her perch, but was ill-equipped to get anywhere near even the lowest branch. Its sounds of challenge, however, and the way the tree shook to its beating, made Naqenni’s pulse skip, and she felt a flare of thrill. After days upon days of tracking, endless idle hours watching and waiting, finally, come what may, a moment of action was upon her.

For an instant, every soreness in her was forgotten, swept clean by the rush of adrenaline. Soaked to the bone, with everything on her plastered wet to her body and her muscles stiff from long periods of idleness, Naqenni moved in that moment as she had on the first day: gingerly and quick, like an insect born for the trees. When the limbara staggered, stumbling forward through the mud and redirecting—apparently giving up on her and opting instead for retreat as it became more disoriented—Naqenni secured her bow over her back and darted. Her feet brought her across the branch like running a tight rope, and at the end, she leapt—and landed, a jarring, messy clutch to the hard, jutting scales of the beast’s back.

It snarled its objection over the storm, and in retrospect, mounting it quite so soon, even in its disoriented state, may not have been the best course of action. The rain made finding purchase on its scales more difficult, and Naqenni clung, heels digging to hold tight at its sides as it bashed forward through the jungle. They weren’t the fastest of beasts, but when furious and injured, it was fast enough — a tipping, jarring, wet ride — but bound for briefness.

When its running slowed and its body bent forward, long snout lowering near to the earth as it fought (presumably) the effects of the drug in its veins, Naqenni slid from the scaled back to the ground, taking rope into her hand and admittedly, the reality of attempting to ‘lash down’ a massive predator some ten to fifty times her own bodyweight in the mud and rain, even with it partially debilitated, was more of an ordeal than she might have envisioned.

It thrashed.

She wrangled.

Its snout batted against her, and in a moment of poor fate, her feet braced against slickened stone—and lost traction. Her back hit mud. Something gored into her leg. Naqenni had of course intended to take the beast as her own, which necessitated avoiding maiming it or otherwise damaging it in any permanent way. Or had. When face to face with it on ground level, she found instinct for survival kicked in with more force any other prerogative, and with a shriek as it tugged, dragging her body through the mud-leaf-rain-and-rock soup that was the jungle floor, she twisted, burying a blade in its eye, and again around its mouth—and again, and again. Her mind did not track how many times she drove the blade in and where, only that deep seemed imperative, and only after it stilled did she manage to pull free.

Her pulse beat wild and rough in her chest. On some level she knew she would have to assess the damage to her leg, but ascertaining that it would not be moving after her was first priority, and after that came the thought that there were more of them not far. But the throbbing in her limb re-inspired interest there, and there didn’t seem to be anything coming immediately to the beast’s aid. Still, she pulled away first, retreating into the trees with some difficulty and inspecting herself there. Whether thanks to the angle, the inhibiting toxins, or sheer luck and lack of opportunity in the time provided, it hadn’t managed to snap bone. There was, however, a deep, lengthy and messy gash running down her calf, which needed immediate binding and cleaning.

Yael, fortunately, was littered with caves. After applying the most basic and temporary of bindings — lashing it off with a strip of cloth to minimize blood loss — she picked her way through the trees, further away from where the rest of them had been and out to the rocky outcroppings. She found what she needed, and in the remainder of the evening, spent her time in the comparatively dry cave, doing what she could to dry herself make fire from cave moss and tend more fully to her wounds.

Come night, the storm had waned, and though she knew she oughtn’t exacerbate her condition, the fact that there was so much meat waiting to be collected (and wasted, otherwise), drove her out when she woke to the new ‘quiet’ of no rain. She progressed carefully, both for the sake of her leg and in wariness that its fellows may have returned, but when she came upon the carcass it was, for the moment, abandoned. She dropped to the forest floor, and cut away at it.

Without the help of a hunting party, she would not be able to take all or even most of it, but that couldn’t stop her from cooking and drying some of it. Naqenni worked as quickly as her body allowed, potently aware the whole while — as she cut, toted, cleaned, and cooked — of the irony in her labor: she was only tasked with this because she had failed so thoroughly at what she’d been intending to do with the meat instead.

But perhaps it was lesson enough that no matter how long it took to carry through successfully, Ceylinae’s method of aiming for a youngling of the beasts first was — loathe though she was to think it — more advisable. She made multiple trips.

On the fifth, the carcass was not alone.

At first, Naqenni assumed the extra movement to be the return other limbara, but as she edged in and observed from a higher perch, it became clear whatever this was was significantly smaller. A foreign beast, she realized. And predator. It circled her kill, so intent on the limbara that it didn’t bother to look up at first, giving Naqenni full opportunity to watch it: four-legged, with a long tail and covered in what looked to be similarly thick body armor to the limbara, though the similarities ended there. Significantly smaller, with a powerful snout and long, puncturing forerunning fangs, it looked built for speed and tearing down whatever it caught.

Years earlier, she would not have recognized a janarim. They were not native to the landscape and even now, were not anything she’d expect to find in Yael’s jungles. Contact with the mainland had been prolonged enough by this point, however, that occasionally, the spillover would make it further inland. Trader’s beasts escaped. Ships wrecked. Persons and their goods were lost. At some point this creature must have been brought in, and she had seen those like it on her voyage to the grand market. There was no mistaking it.

It couldn’t have been especially familiar with limbara, but had apparently decided meat was meat, and after sufficient inspection, began tearing at the carcass itself, eating in hunks whatever it could rip free. Naqenni considered shooting it. She didn’t need the meat—of the janarim or the limbara at this point for that matter. She could have salvaged more, certainly, but had a sizeable amount already. The creature was a danger, however, to the extent that it was nearby and might come upon her in a more vulnerable time if she let it go now. But engaging it had some risks of its own; she had never shot one before and it was possible they could climb trees—though she doubted it, being that they were desert beasts. It wasn’t a risk she needed to take.

And, as it happened, a choice taken from her hands before she acted upon it anyway.

The janarim noticed the returning herd of limbara moments before Naqenni did. She scaled higher in her perch. The janarim bristled, talons bracing in the mud and jaw still dripping a shred of bleeding meat as a low growl rippled from its throat. There were many of them, though, far larger than the Oban beast, and predators themselves none too pleased with the state of their fallen member. The scuffle was brief but violent, ending when one of the limbara caught the janarim in its jaws (in a manner Naqenni could relate to with a grimaced wince) and tossed it, sending it battering against the trunk of the nearest tree, at which point the janarim fled, the darkness such that Naqenni couldn’t guess the state of its injuries.

It wouldn’t likely be back.

And the meat, now guarded by far more teeth than Naqenni was willing to wrangle with, was no longer a gathering point. So, she returned to her camp. It would do her leg well to have less strain of movement, after all, and she had managed to gather no small portion of meat already. For a day, she worked alone, too far from Zinris to tote it all in her state and unsuccessful in her overall promise to herself still besides. The weather dried — to whatever extent Yael ever ‘dried’ — and sunlight returned to filter through the trees. Her cave smelled of smoke, cooked meat, salt, and curing spices.

It was evening when a familiar, low growl rippled from the cave’s entrance.

Naqenni held herself still as she looked, studying the shape of the beast set against the backdrop of the jungle beyond. Up closer and not next to the already massive limbara, the janarim was larger than she realized—but still smaller, if she remembered correctly, than those she had witnessed in the desert. Whether stunted or not full-grown, it still had perfectly functioning teeth, and with utmost care, Naqenni crouched, pinching a stone in her fingers, and answered with a growl of her own, sending the stone clacking to the cave entrance just shy of the beast. It yipped, scurrying back and out of sight—quicker to retreat than she anticipated. But now that it had found her, more likely to return.

Taking up her bow, she left the rest of her work in progress and walked instead to inspect the area the beast had been. Spots of blood dotted the stone, trailing the animal’s path out. After some debate, she moved to her supply, cutting free a thin strip of meat among that still uncooked, and laying it out—as well as keeping several similarly sized ‘bait’ variety strips for herself to have on hand.

When the janarim returned, it was at night, slower, and with an observable limp. It ate what had been provided, and after initial wariness, another that she tossed for it slightly closer to herself. It did not progress further into the cave—but this time, without any projectiles to send it on its way, neither did it flee. She lost track of how long they watched each other, she at her fire with her weapon and meat stacked and hung, and it at the entrance, hunkering and waiting, but eventually stooping to lay on the stone without venturing further.

When she woke, the janarim still had not moved.

Suspicious, she rose, stretching and testing herself on her own leg before taking her weapon in hand and moving closer. Its eyes were shut, but as she drew in on it, one opened, and it stirred, but did not rise. A warning growl emitted from its throat, though it sounded higher pitched and more pained than prior, and died out on a pant from its muzzle. She had assumed that after fleeing the limbara and herself, it could not have been that seriously injured, clearly having the capacity to move about on its own. But perhaps the will to live had given it temporary strength in its escape and the encounter had a deeper lasting impact than she thought.

She moved closer still, stepping around to inspect it. The beast, other than the flare of nostrils and twitch of a paw, did not move.

It did not look to have any gaping wounds, and was no longer losing blood. It had a smell about it, though, which lead her to a different suspicion: limited or not to begin with, its injury may have been infected. Unused to Yael’s toxic climate, it was not surprising then that the beast’s immune system might struggle to fend off the effects, and if whatever it was had already grounded it, it was unlikely to survive long on its own barring some miracle recovery.

She touched the butt of her bow to its side. Another growl reverberated from its chest and it shifted, visibly attempting to move and snapping at air, but wheezing after with a canine whine. Snorting, she withdrew her bow and stepped back around before it to study what she had to work with.

It wasn’t a limbara.

It wasn’t as large, she thought, as even those of its own kind.

It was sick, and in a matter of time it might be dead. She certainly was no animal attendant and had no way of knowing what of Yael’s landscape had gotten to it or what would cure it. But for the moment it was alive. It was here before her. It was a predator with a build for impressive strength under better circumstances, and beyond it, she had nothing else to show for herself and her trip beyond the meat of the beast she had tried and failed utterly to make her own.

This beast was what she had to work with, and while it occurred to her to kill it then, put it out of its pain and give herself time to heal before returning to the goal of attaining a limbara, she did not entertain the thought for long. It was not the opportunity she had been anticipating, but it was an opportunity just the same, and even if the beast did die or prove useless, she would be no further behind for trying to make use of it — unless it maimed her, she supposed — than if she’d not attempted at all.

With the creature in the state it was in, the risk, she decided, was worth it.

“If you live,” she warned it, stepping back towards her things to gather what she would need to restrain, clean, and tend to it, “I own you.”

Word Count: 3,378

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

❋ To Kill Becomes Her ❋

Naqenni had left Zinris with the intention of not returning until she had with her a limbara. She returned with meat, a gashed leg, and an ailing, injured janarim in tow. Her caretaker mother Izari had always been more of a healer than her sisters—a warrior, who fought beside her mate in the uprising and had proven herself then surely, but always tending to others when they came licking their wounds and especially familiar with all the plants (boons and poisons) of her homeland. When she had come to Yael, she had learned those here, too, gradually amassing information over the years.

Despite how much she had receded after the death of her mate, she readily tended to Naqenni when she dragged herself in and played a quiet but vital role in recommending how to go about dealing with Patience, the janarim. The weeks after Naqenni’s trip were dominated by that: recuperation for her own leg, and grappling with Patience, both in the form of addressing her sickness and wound and attempting to keep her controlled in the moments she felt strong enough to resist.

On all fronts, however, Naqenni was making progress.

It was late evening some weeks after she had returned, the sun low in the trees but not yet set. She stood some fifty paces outside the tent she still shared with her caretaker mother, inside a clearing and fenced off section of earth she’d fashioned for what was there with her. Patience lay at the opposite end of her enclosure, tethered in, but with her muzzle off for once—a reward for ‘good behavior’ relatively speaking at their last feeding session. Her snout had stayed to the ground, even when Naqenni hopped the fence. Her eyes, though, opened the moment her feet touched ground.

“Awake,” Naqenni observed. It was a good start, to see the beast more consistently alert during the hours one might expect it to be. Izari seemed to think that the risk of her dying on them — at least from whatever affliction had affected her when she’d brought her in — had passed. All that remained was to monitor the healing of her physical injury and determine if she had the temperament to be tamed.

She did not have the opportunity to approach before Patience raised her head, nostrils flaring and attention turned, not to Naqenni, but to the edge of camp, where there did—now that Naq looked—seem to be the first ripples of a commotion. Someone screamed. The hair at her nape prickled, a deep-seated dread stirring in her gut and she barely heard the reverberations of Patience’s growl. She was striding forward, hoisting herself briskly back over the fence, plucking up her quiver and bow, and moving in on the growing crowd of her sisters and cousins.

Nivalis. The mystic’s name buzzed between them, along with the name of another girl Naqenni didn’t recognize except to think that perhaps Nivalis had spoken of her before. She must have been one of the younger Elaria, and then, at all but the same instant as Naqenni forcibly wove her way through she heard and saw.

“—straight through her stomach—”

“Someone get help—”

“She’s already passed to the goddess.”

Zinnia.

Elaria blooms had passed before in the near to two decades that they had been on this island, due to sickness, injury, or otherwise—not many, but some. Never had one been killed. And not attacked by an animal, but struck through, with an arrow, like an animal. These earthlings thought they could be hunted.

Little could describe the emotion that swept through her then, except that she had failed: her mystic, her sisters, her tribe—and she would not again. She cut through all of them, out of the crowd, and into jungle. Nivalis would be tended to by those already around her and better equipped to deal with that portion of the aftermath. As the eldest sister, she had a different duty, to immediately rectify the earthlings’ mistake.

The daughters of Elzira were not the ones to be hunted here.

This was their land, and they had made a mistake.

She could feel, though, the strum of every sense in her on alert. Night was coming and that worked to her advantage as much as anything, but did not change the fact that this was the first time she had tracked anything in earnest which used the same weapon as her and, loathe though she was to admit it, planned with a thinking mind. Earthlings were inferior; animals of their own variety, but not the same as the rest. This prey had arrows which could spear her through just as suddenly as they had Zinnia, if she did not pin it first.

Anger, though, overrode any thread of fear, and she observed every rule of caution in stalking the earthling not out of a sense of self preservation, but because this was the first action in defense of her sisters which was not training to do so, but doing so. If she had not learned by now how to avenge a sister — to defend her mystic — when earthlings encroached upon their territory, then she deserved to die and leave the task to Ku and Ceylinae. The goddess had made three of them, after all.

But she had no intention of failing.

She kept to the trees, her reedy body moving with all the self assurance of an insect equally designed for scaling the jungle’s foliage, and the path wasn’t hard to track, even from some distance. Nivalis and Zinnia had left…quite a trail. All the more reason things could not be left as they were. Her pace slowed as she drew nearer, body coming to a standstill and antennae twitching only so much as a leaf might in the breeze as she scanned her surroundings. As if to remind her of her recent failings, her leg throbbed where it had been gashed—healing well, but still fresh enough to make itself known.

The earthling moved. A glint of light, off of something metallic, and her fingers, already pinched to an arrow hanging loose and ready in her grasp, snapped up, threading and loosing her shot. At the outcry and thhnnk to follow, there was an answering scuffle further up. The first she’d shot, now on the forest floor, struggled to push upright, calling something out to its fellows. If it had been a warning, it was to no avail.

Three more of them appeared in Naqenni’s line of sight, all focussed on the one already fallen. She took three arrows in her fingers, aimed, nocked, and loosed—one, two, three—in succession. Through the eyes seemed sufficient, given that they hadn’t appeared to be carrying weapons. The first, however, now making some ragged sounds which — while indecipherable — she understood to be signs of outrage or grief.

She glanced about herself again, scanning the adjacent area to assure herself there was nothing else lurking to shoot from the trees before she moved from her perch, forward, over them—and down, dropping to land in a crouch before the archer. When she stood, she used her foot to turn the earthling over, onto their back.

It was a woman.

Naqenni couldn’t have said why it struck her as a surprise, except that she had always felt a sense of disgusting subjugation among the culture of earthlings with regard to their women, as though, without a mother tree to supply them with young, the need for women to do so made that their primary purpose for existence in the minds of men. Yet, here was a woman of their kind, fighting like she fought. Killing like she killed. Dressed strangely, certainly, with thin bent metal over her face and black stone growing out of her body. But female, nonetheless, and recognizable in that respect.

But she was not of Elzira, and had taken one of their own. She was not woman in the sense that they were—just a parasite on their island, like all the rest of her kind.

Naqenni stooped, catching at the earthling’s hair and dragging her up, from the forest floor onto her knees and away from her weapons. She tipped her chin, meeting the dimming silver glow of her eyes. “I hope you were not attached to your head,” she said. “I’ve come to fetch it for someone.”

Word Count: 1,417

Quote:

Plot Goals/Summary: Naqenni has always felt a driving sense of purpose. What the actual path forward ought to be, however, was never quite as clear and until the arrival of the mystic, Naqenni felt great restless impatience. Since Nivalis’ blooming, Naqenni has felt renewed reason to remain on the island—or with the mystic when possible if she travels, as she did to the mainland. Still, even in the trip to the Grand Market, Naqenni had not yet had to test herself against another thinking person, and she has never killed anything but animals before. This growth solo is meant to signify a tipping point in that. For the first time, she is not hunting game, but acting as a warrior. Also, while she has always spoken of how ‘worthless’ earthlings are, since she’d never killed one before she had never faced up against all the areas which they are alike. The fact that the earthling hunter was female is meant to force Naq to grapple with (and overcome in this case) the fact that even if they are not ‘the same’ as them, earthlings are also not the same as other animals.

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

● At The Mystic's Service ●

PRP: Link
Result: Naqenni brings Nivalis evidence of Zinnia's vengeance.

Word Count: - || Posts: -