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 Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 10:48 pm
Repairs - Dyakida and Mnyiri
Dyakida was warmly, surprisingly pleased that the reuniting of the sisters had gone well. She'd played a background role to be sure, but it had been... pleasant. There was always room for more pleasant things in this world, she felt. She crafted items of destruction - survival, yes, but she was not a fool. Weapons were for injuring and death, in self defense or on the offensive. That was what they were for. What she made was art, yes, but an art of war.
That she could also craft something as beautiful as a reunion was a true treat.
What could she ask from Mnyiri in return, however? The woman had made it clear that she was willing to offer a trade for this craft of Dyakida's, this reunion. And, with Sisters, it was a matter of pride to give something in return.
Dyakida fully intended to accept, but what?
What did she want?
Materials would be too ordinary. Perhaps dinner?
Dyakida smiled. Yes. Perhaps dinner. To start.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 7:56 am
[Paths Untravelled] - Master Blacksmith Class Solo
- 3212 Words -
Dyakida had just gotten back from a lovely day at the market with her friends, purchasing new raw materials and charms to use in her work. It had been the typical sort of day out – they’d ate, chatted, and generally had a wonderful time.
She left Peyla, her ever-present guide, chiming happily in the kitchen as she trotted up the stairs to her workshop, humming happily in the late-afternoon heat. She toyed with the dew on the wooden railing, tracing playful shapes into it with her fingers as she walked before. Her feet touched the carpet that marked the entrance to her rooms, and she let her fingers take flight. She smiled as she set down the new materials - she’d put them away later, when she didn’t feel so inspired... inspired to craft.
She hummed excitedly as she felt through her materials. She selected them with care: twine from the box that held red-dyed specimens, a stretch of oiled wood, and a few strands of leather. She was ready to make a bow. Perhaps not the best bow she’d ever made, but a bow none the less, sure to be beautiful and to serve it’s Alkidike well. Her hands and soul had never been so ready, not since the day weeks ago when she’d had that fight with Semashi and they’d parted on such poor terms. Perhaps one day they would reconcile, as Sisters and as friends, but it was clear that Semashi was not the one she wanted to spend her life with.
The following weeks had been difficult for her - unused to having her heart injured by another in that way, Dyakida had found it overwhelming and difficult to work on anything more than arrows. But things had been getting steadily better, and now… and now…
She was over it and ready to work again.
She sat down at her workbench and stretched her fingers, feeling them strain eagerly. She would make a beautiful bow, simpler than her other designs but wrapped with red twine and lovely none the less.
She braided the leather and tested it before stringing the bow. The process she began was a complicated one, but she knew exactly what she was doing. The feeling of putting that process into motion was wonderful. As she strung the bow, testing it appraising, she wished that it was her bow. Or, at least, that she could see enough to use it as it was meant to be used. As she forced the bow into place, she imagined having such a thing at her side, ready and willing and willful. But that fate had been stolen from her long ago with her sight, and there was no use crying about it now. Still, she could imagine what could have been, and she sighed at the delicious feeling of a strung, ready bow.
She enjoyed the feel of it as she traced out her design with her fingers, carefully tracking in her mind where her fingers went until she was satisfied with the idea. She held it in her head as she reached, tranquilly, for her etching tool to mark it.
She found nothing.
Her fingers quested in the hollow in her worktable that held her tools, skittering awkwardly for several moments before she concluded that the etching tool was not there. Nor, indeed, were her other tools.
Her forehead creased in confusion as she reached under the table and felt along the floor... nothing.
She crawled along the floor of her room and felt the floor again, as well as under her bedding, in her carefully sorted cupboards, and amidst the pile of finished weapons waiting for their wielders... Nothing.
Where were her tools?
She had a sudden, unpleasant flashback to her time the Oban camps – nasty memories of opression... her tools, taken from her, lost forever in the invader's pillaging. These tools were replacements for the ones she'd lost, crafted by a Matorian craftsman. She loved them for the way they sat in her hand and were cool to the touch. She loved her tools – Tools were the soul of a craftswoman as a weapon was the soul of a warrior... and she had only just gotten used to these. She could not lose her soul again. They could not be lost.
Her hands shook as she unstrung the bow and set it aside before she stumbled out into the house, rousing her sisters and sprite in the search. They could not be missing. She needed to find them.
Her Sisters were only too happy to help her. They searched through the whole tree-house, and the grounds around it. They had no luck, and eventually someone sat her down and gave her soothing food and drink when it all became too much and she broke down crying in the midst of it.
Finally, her sprite came through for her Peyla appeared, anxious and chiming, carrying one of the tools as proof. Dyakida’s sensitive fingers confirmed - it was one of her tools. She remained at the table as the Sisters followed the sprite to the rest of the set...
In the possession of the very woman who had spurned her. Semashi.
Dyakida's Sisters decided that there was hell to pay. Semashi was no match for a group of angry Alkidikes that hunted her. After a little painful ‘justice’ of their own, they brought her before Dyakida the next day to explain herself and apologize in person. Dyakida already knew that Semashi was defiant and stubborn and a heartfelt apology was too much to hope for, but she at least wanted to know why in Aisha’s name the girl had taken her tools. She’d figure out what to do about it from there.
So she asked it right out: “Semashi … why?” She held her tools to her, running her fingers over their handles. “Why did you take my tools?”
“Because I deserve them.” Semashi spat.
Dyakida was taken about by the vehemence. “Why do you think that?” Dyakida asked, confused. The tools were hers, after all, bought in Neued with her own coin, and she hadn't even met Sameshi at that point. What possible claim could Semashi have to them?
“Because I’m not a rootsdamned cripple like you.” Dyakida tried not to flinch. The insult was not new. “I’m strong and able and I should have been able to do whatever I wished. Instead, I’m this - I’m a warrior, and you… you…” Dyakida was shocked at how that one word could be saturated with so much resentment, “You have my job.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She had a bad feeling about where this was going, but she had to know why.
“I wanted to make weapons, did you know that?” Dyakida didn't. “I wanted to craft, but my mothers pushed me to be a warrior. Nothing I said or did convinced them otherwise, so I became one!” Semashi’s voice was a growl, “But you - you were crippled, ruined, and you got to be a weaponcrafter. A blacksmith. Isn’t that fortunate? Isn't that so very fortunate? You lucky b***h!” Dyakida could hear the sounds of a scuffle – Semashi fighting the other Sisters.
She kept her face placid and her voice calm. It came out icy instead. “I’m not fortunate. You have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Yes you are! You had another choice! Because you were blinded, you got to have another choice! I had to be a warrior, not my dream... I had to be a warrior because I was fit, and able, and a proper Alkidike! Meanwhile, hybrids and people like you get to leave the warrior’s path and do whatever you want, and it’s not fair! I wanted to be a weaponcrafter! I...” her voice was punctuated by further sounds of struggling – she was feisty. Dyakida remembered that. “Was. Meant. To. Be. One!”
“What does this have to do with me?” Dyakida asked.
“Everything! I was meant to be one! And you stole it from me!”
“I don’t see how I could have.” Dyakida’s blood was heating with anger – she could feel it’s warm pressure in her ears. “That aside, if you want to learn the craft so badly, why not do so now? You say you had to be a warrior, but there’s nothing stopping you from taking up weaponcrafting anyway…”
“Yes there is, you stupid nondwa! Everything is stopping me, don't you see?” the girl howled, “Oh wait, you don't!” Dyakida felt the subtle movements as her friends shifted their stances, muttering threatening things. “You stupid weakling! I am a warrior now, and there’s no changing paths. There is no turning back.” Dyakida opened her mouth to speak, but the girl continued; “I had to resign myself to that! So, I became close to you, so I could be close to my dream, to what I loved... but you were so worthless that it wasn’t even enough!” The sound of fleshy impact - someone had made good on their threat it seemed, “I don’t love you!” the girl screeched in defiance.
Another impact. “That’s enough out of you…” said one of Dyakida’s friends. Clearly, there would be no apology.
“I never loved you!” the girl cried again, “You hideous, cowardly hag!”
Dyakida tensed, her nerves vibrating with repressed rage. She fought her own face, forcing into something steely and neutral. She could not show emotion. Not now. Not yet. Not now. “What did you call me, Sister?” she asked, her voice as calm and smooth as a Yaeli serpent.
“I called you ugly! I called you a coward! Because that’s what you are!” Dyakida raised a hand to prevent another impact-sound.
“You called me beautiful once.” she said, rising slowly from her chair. “What happened to that, Semashi?”
“Your work is beautiful, you aren’t. Cowards can’t be beautiful.” Her words stung. “Cowards don’t deserve to do the work you do. I do. I did.”
“Why did you steal my tools, Semashi?” Dyakida asked, advancing, picking up her wooden staff and holding it carefully in her hands. “If you wanted to learn so badly, if you wanted to be a weaponcrafter, why don’t you just do it instead of being so bitter? Why, indeed, don’t you just learn it?” It seemed so counter-productive, so negative, to act this way. Why do this when there was a better option? Why do this at all?
“And stop being a warrior? Cripple myself like you did? I’m not a coward like you. I’ll do my duty to my tribe as I’ve been assigned. But I don’t deserve that fate! I don’t!” The tears… the impotence… it was so much like how she had felt in her darkest moments. But Dyakida couldn’t feel sympathy. Even though she recognized the emotions, she could not relate. They had felt similar things, but this Sister, this girl, was nothing like her. “You don’t deserve to be a weaponcrafter! You only deserve to suffer and die in the jungle! A coward’s death!”
She was disgusting.
The girl’s rapid breathing, the jungle’s ever-present sounds, and Dyakida’s pounding heart filled her awareness with heat. “Have I not…” she said through grit teeth, “Suffered enough?”
“No!” said Semashi.
Dyakida raised her hand to halt her friends, before settling it solidly on her carved wooden staff – the one that Elder Yansa had given her, long ago “Yes. I have.” Dyakida said, as if Semashi hadn't said anything. She lifted the wooden solidness of it in her hands, “You, however, have not. You are a nasty, horrible, embarrassment to our tribe, spitting the same sort of poison that the extremists so delighted in. Look where it got them.” Her every word was bitter, carefully punctuated with reason and wrath. “You stole from a Sister and you show no humility or remorse. Instead, you say cruel things to her face when you should be apologizing for your actions – the theft, and those horrible rumors... You sicken me. Our mother would be disappointed in you. She very...” she moved closer, in time with her voice, “likely... is.”
“No, she is….!” Whatever Semashi had been going to say was cut short by the impact of wood on her flesh. Dyakida felt the strike reverberate up the staff into her arms. It felt good.
“She is disappointed in you.” Dyakida hit her, “You are a disappointment to all of us - The whole tribe.” Again,“How dare you break my heart and steal my tools and spout nonsense like ‘you didn’t have a choice’” Again! Her breathing was starting to catch, but she didn't care. “As if that makes your actions justified!” Again – a wet sound. Had she broken the girl's skin? A trill of horror rose in her – she didn't want to seriously hurt the girl, did she? But she couldn't stop now. She could no more hold herself back than stop the rain from falling. “How dare you insult me, and the elders who taught me, and the Sisters who stand by me by calling me unworthy?!” Again. “You are despicable!” her voice began to rise and she let the heat seep into her voice, no longer resisting. “You are scum!” She reared back the staff, her muscles tensing, bulging, readying for another strike. “You…” She relaxed, letting the staff slide down to it’s proper position, listening to the sound of Semashi’s whimpers of pain. “Are barely worth my time.” She turned away. “I leave her in your capable hands, my Sisters.”
Stunned silence, and then the sound of dragging. Dyakida returned to her seat, her shoulders aching from the force of her blows. She felt something tiny touch her hands, a chime ringing in her ears.
“I’m all right, Peyla.” she said, “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Another chime. “She was just saying the same things they all do. But I know what I am, and what I'm not Peyla. And, I’m not a coward.” Some of the things that she’d said had been new, though - about not having a choice, about Dyakida being lucky to be blind.
Dyakida had never thought of herself as lucky before. Resilient, perhaps - she had survived without her sight for a long time. It had left her helpless and vulnerable in many ways and more times than she could count. She both accepted and resented that she needed assistance to live her life. True, had she not been blinded, she would have been a warrior, wielding her bow against the foes of the Alkidike. She was only a weaponcrafter because she was blind, she’d only had that chance because she could not fight. Things were a little different now - younger prentices were going into the crafts these days, and it was no longer a realm of retired old women - but she would have been long past that if not for her blindness. She would have never had the joy of crafting if not for her blindness.
But yet, becoming a warrior wouldn't have been a tragedy. She would have accepted her fate to be a warrior with pride, as she accepted her fate to be a crafter. She could have done a lot of good as a bowwoman. Perhaps not more than she did now, but still – life would have been very good, then.
“I guess… I am fortunate?” she half asked the sprite, half remarked to herself. Peyla had no answers for her. She was already distracted, fiddling with Dyakida's antennae to try to cheer her up. “Huh. Me. Fortunate.” Dyakida thought for a moment. “I suppose I am.” It was an odd thing to think – that she was fortunate to be blind. She had spent so long in frustration, stubbed her toe and pricked herself enough times, that it was hard to think of her lack of sight as anything but an impediment. And yet, she hadn't complained to others about it, had she? She hadn't whined as disgustingly as Semashi had. Did that make her better, that she had complained and cried about it in silence and darkness?
Dyakida returned to her room pensive and drained, returning her tools to their proper spot. Her back was beginning to tense up - she would need a bath to sooth it, and she had a lot to think about, not the least of which would be the consequences for hurting a Sister. Dyakida felt she was justified, but she had never done something like that before. She'd never actually struck another person – be they sister or Earthling – before. Well, not outside of a life-or-death situation - her imprisonment and escape from the Oban camp was an exception.
Bathing supplies in hand, she went – alone – to the nearby river to bathe. Jauhar's waters were warm and dangerous, so she stuck to the shallows and the netted-off bathing area, tracing the ropes with her hands before finding a spot with a current that hit her back just right. She relaxed into it for a moment, letting the water wash some of her pain away.
She had hurt another sister. She was justified, yes, but would the elders think so? Her position in the tribe was, depending on who one spoke to, somewhat fragile. There were still elders who felt that only an older woman could handle the crafting of weapons, or that Dyakida should train as a warrior anyway despite her blindness. Those that felt Dyakida should be actually winnowed out of the tribe were, fortunately, rare and low in influence. However, attacking a Sister in anger was a serious offense... but so was stealing from a sister. Inciting public opinion against a Sister was somewhat sketchier, but there was a case to be made to the elders that Semashi was not behaving as a Sister should, and that Dyakida had attacked to “correct” her... but how many times had that excuse been used to excuse beatings on hybrids, on mixed race couples, and on male-lovers? Could she use that excuse herself to justify hurting Semashi, to make right the rage that had burned in her at Semashi's words?
Dyakida heard cheerful voices approaching and left the bath, wrapping herself in a drying blanket and leaving quickly for home again, Peyla guiding her gently. She wanted to be alone for a while. She supposed she shouldn't worry about it until it was an issue. She had many allies, after all – surely one would accept her true version of events even if Semashi spouted forth lies. Then, they would judge her according to that truth. In the meantime, what would she do?
She knew what she would do; She would pick up the abandoned bow and continue working on it. This was still her purpose. This was still what she would do with her life. And no insults from a spurned young lover or self-reflective revelations would change that. Perhaps she was fortunate to have things be the way they were, but it was as things should be, and it was as she deserved it.
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Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 12:45 pm
It was disconcerting, this sense of having happened before. Not too long ago, beneath Aisha's boughs, they had argued over the right of hybrids to exist and the right of the extremists to spout their views. Her Sisters had argued and railed and pushed back against the elders that tried, in vain, to stop them. And then, in the dry mountains of Sauti, they had lost too many to pride and greed. The poisoned island of Yael had the rest.
This time, it was over a course of action as minor as staying together, something that any Alkidike worth her blades did anyway in the harsh jungles if she wanted to come back alive and intact. Again, they had argued. Again, they had railed. Again, they had ignored the voices of reason. That the voices were partbloods were not lost on her, but Dyakida had to wonder if that was just a handy excuse. Her sisters hadn't listened to the elders, or the Mystic. If Aisha herself spoke, beyond the Mystic and her apprentice, then – Dyakida was certain – some Sister somewhere would find a way to not listen.
Oh mother, why did you make us so headstrong? she prayed pleadingly. Was their Sisterhood really so fragile that, the moment a Sister's pride was wounded, they tossed it aside and settled for anarchy and discord? And exile? How had they survived so long, fractious as they were? Could they regain their unity, or were they doomed?
Dyakida could feel the doom in the air. It lay heavy on her feelers like fog. It seemed inevitable, that the tribe could fall apart at any moment if she was not careful. It could fall apart if she was careful. It could fall apart, and she would be powerless to stop it... Just like before.
I must bite back my pride. she admonished herself, I must focus on what I can do, not what I cannot. Then, she wouldn't feel so useless.
Easier said than done. she thought softly. Easier said, than done.
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Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 9:53 am
[Creepy Crawlies] - World Event - Dyakida and Mnyiri
They returned safely. Though the 'spirits' were just oddly colored beasts from the south, Dyakida found that most were having none of that explanation. It didn't matter to Dyakida either way, not when some of her suppliers began finding strange, crystalline felines in their traps. The crystals were sharp and very lovely - great for weapons. Some were even taking the little beasts as pets, but Dyakida resolved not to do something that foolish. Sharp, crystalline animals with claws? No thanks.
She liked her skin the way it was.
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Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:49 pm
[Wine and Dine] - PRP- Dyakida and Mnyiri
After Dyakida had rested properly, she realized what she'd done. She wasn't as mortified as she thought she should be - she was a grown woman, after all. She could kiss whoever she wanted. But that kiss had been a promise - 'more when you get back'. A promise both to her and to Mnyiri - that there would be more, and that Mnyiri would come back.
Dyakida had made them while tired, and she wanted to talk about them and figure out just what was expected of her. She hadn't thought about relationships since her last one had turned out so poorly.
Was that what was going on? Unfortunately, Dyakida couldn't discuss it logically, rationally, over a cup of warm liquid with Mnyiri because... well... she was away. On her death quest.
Why did she feel this way?
Why did the elders do this?
Dyakida hoped that Mnyiri would return, for the sake of that promise, and to ease the sense of unease inside her.
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