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 Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:04 pm
Autumn was underway. It was much too soon, in Mac Gabhann's opinion. He had been so focused on his usual occupation of gathering stories that he had neglected to begin gathering food to last him the winter. This was the first season that he would be providing for himself instead of relying on his father, and he was already off to a terrible start.
The young centaur had two bags that he wore draped over his back and hanging down at the sides. They usually bulged with books, scrolls, quills, and ink; instead they were filled with a motley collection of edible but unappetizing things he had scrounged together from the forest. He slumped wearily down next to a stream and twisted around to take the bags off, then leaned over and, wincing, washed his cramped hands in the water. Picking things from bushes and trees took muscles that he had never used in writing and thumbing through pages.
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Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:05 pm
 On the opposite bank of the stream, a pair of handsome, limp rabbit carcasses were strung together on a thin but strong thread of woven grasses. They were propped up rather neatly against a carefully crafted quiver. The quiver had a braided strap of leather and contained a bundle of tediously hand-made arrows, of which the maker had taken great pride in creating.
That was not all. Beside the hunter goods, wrapped in a soft but light cloth of woven material was a finely fashioned bow. It was clear the weapon was a masterpiece among many its master had worked on to perfect. Such was the care put in shielding it from the elements that one knew it was very valuable to its owner. However, despite so much care put into protecting it, there seemed to be nothing to prevent the theft of such prizes. Either the one in possession of such items counted themselves a very confident hunter, or they were merely careless enough to leave their belongings lying out in the open.
There seemed to be no sign of another being in sight...but for a soft, cheerful humming drifting a little farther upstream, where the water way broadened and deepend a little more. It was a young woman's voice, and occasionally the humming would transmute into a few words of some ancient song. Some small splashes were heard. A curtain of bright orange-red hair trailed in the water, sweeping out with the current. It washed away much of the dirt and debris tangled and picked up by the centaurette's dragging tail.
A pair of moderately slender, yet strong-looking arms pulled back her hair before letting it fall down her back. Fortunately, she faced away from the teenage male not too far in the distance, and thus did not see nor hear him approach the stream. Her humming and the sound of the water flowing were enough to disguise any noise he had made, even from the ears of the proud huntress as she bathed.
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Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:35 pm
Sighing, Gabhann shook his hands off and rubbed his face. It was then that he noticed the collection of objects across the water. He frowned at them, as if not sure he was seeing things right, then looked around in panic. Dead animals and weapons -- a hunter was nearby! He lurched up and tried to control his panic. What if he was taken for an animal and shot by accident!?
Yet soon he realized that he was indeed quite safe. First of all, the hunter's weapons were there on the bank, so it would be quite an interesting phenomenon if he was shot with them lying there. Secondly, the sound of a voice was drifting downstream to him; it seemed to be humming.
He swallowed and caught his breath. "Fool," he whispered harshly to himself. His heart was still pounding and he tried to calm it down.
Best go talk to the hunter, he reasoned, and make sure that his presence was known. It would be even stupider if he were to ignore the threat and walk away and find himself bleeding to death from an arrow wound. Being a bit more paranoid about his belongings than this hunter was, he picked up his bags and headed upstream.
As he got closer he could tell that the humming voice was female. He peered through the trees and bushes, spotting orange hair similar to his own -- though obviously much longer. As intelligent as he was, it took a few moments for him to realize what he was looking at. Young woman... standing in the water... what was she--? Ah! His eyes went wide and he froze, clutching his bags to his chest, involuntarily making a small squeaking noise. Forget trying to calm his pounding heart. Now the beats were hardly distinguishable, and his chest was filled with a single massive resounding thud.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:03 am
At the faint squeak, the teenage centaur girl paused in her business. All was quiet but for the rushing water. She remained still as a statue, but for the swerving of one of her ears. It twitched in Mac Gabhann's direction. A pair of eyes the color of fresh, vibrant spring grass soon followed, the wide-eyed youth soon within their sharp sights. It was very lucky that when she turned, it became evident that she had not removed her leaf-sewn top. Her hair, long as it was, would have provided little cover for her exposed upper torso.
"Well well well...if it isn't a 'Peeping Tom'," the female called musingly with a small giggle. She didn't seem angry. At least not outright angry. "Though you seem more like you've stumbled upon something you shouldn't have. May I help you?" she offered sweetly, offering him one of her radiant smiles.
Taking the whole of her vivid, fiery locks in her two hands, she wrung out the water as best she could and carefully made her way back to shore. "No matter," she told him dismissively. "I was about to get out anyway. My catch is going to spoil if I don't cook it soon."
As her dripping tail followed her out of the stream, now entwined with bits of moss and small lily pads instead of leaves and twigs, it provided a heavy drag. Wringing out the water from her tail as well, she let it trail behind her in the dirt once more, apparently ignoring the fact that she had just wasted time washing it.
With little regard for the male teen's personal space, she walked up to him still smiling pleasantly. "I think I'd know if I'd seen a cutie like you around the Isles before. Yet somehow we must have missed each other. My name's Wasibru." She held out her hand in greeting. "Nice to meet you! Sorry you had to catch me at a bad time. Provided that wasn't what you were secretly hoping to do," she added with a little smirk and a wink.
"I'm sorry...uh...I think I may have lost my catch! Oh no...Where’d I put it?" glancing left and right, she sought her possessions behind rocks and under nearby trees, never suspecting she had left them further downstream. "No, no! Why wasn't I paying better attention? It was right here!" she yelled at herself, distressed.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:57 am
Having a hard time telling whether he was about to be eviscerated or not, Mac tread carefully. Or tried to. "H-help? Um, help, um... I-- n-no, thank you, no I'm... I'm all... set." He was barely aware of how completely unintelligible he was being, still hugging his bags as if his arms had gone into rigor mortis.
What are you doing? his mind demanded. Idiot! Wake up!
"Ahm," he managed as she came out of the water. "S-sorry, didn't mean to sneak up on you. I was only coming over, y'know... heard... something..." And this burst of coherence seemed to sap him of his ability to speak at all, for his voice trailed off. He pried his hand from his bag and shook her hand politely, his muscles remembering what to do but his mind forgetting for a moment. Then it remembered too. "Mac Gabhann. That's-- it's-- me, that's me." He swallowed and finished lamely, "Nice to meet you."
Slowly he was coming back to himself. It was not every day that he came upon a beautiful female centaur bathing in the river -- only this one day, in fact. But when she started frantically searching for her belongings, Mac Gabhann realized that he could speak properly if he put his mind to it. "It's down that way, I believe." He gestured toward the place where he had seen the weapons and the rabbits. "I saw it from across the stream."
Holding the two bags to his chest with one hand finally proved too much. One slid from his grasp, and though he fumbled at it he ended up only dropping both. "Yeah... I'll just... um..." He bent down to pick them up and slung them over his back where they belonged.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:16 am
Laughing light-heartedly at the young man's stammering, Wasibru shook her head. "No need to apologize. It wasn't your fault. Mother always warned me that females should be a bit more modest when bathing...I supposed I just picked up the bad habit of bathing wherever I wanted from my elder brothers."
She cast him a sympathetic look while she continued to feel around for her bow and arrow, not truly paying attention to her actions. "I always thought that story was silly. You know, the one about the hunter who accidentally stumbled upon the Goddess of the Hunt while she was bathing? And then in her rage she turned him into a deer so that his own hunting dogs chased him down and tore him apart." Her merry tone had changed to a somewhat distant and melancholy one. "It wasn't his fault, the poor hunter. Then again, I don't know what dogs are, but then he probably shouldn't have kept them to hunt with, now shouldn't he?"
It was an odd thing, her talkative nature. One never knew if she had a point to make or if the teen was merely ranting on for the sake of conversation. Whatever it was, it was nearly impossible to determine whether Wasibru had intended to frighten her new acquaintance with her story or if perhaps she had only hoped to strike up a conversation with a bad choice of topic. She continued to smile when she caught his gaze. Her brilliant eyes sparkled with laughter when they met his own, intensely meadow-green ones.
"Mac Gabhann..." she repeated almost dreamily. "What a beautiful name. Does it mean something? Do you mind if I call you Mac? Or Gabby? Oh! But-" Wasibru put a hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me what it means if you don't want to! I'm a little too curious for my own good, see. About everything. Once I ask a question, I just can't seem to stop and I tend to annoy people that way, so I better not start." Ashamed of herself, the centaurette stared down at her hoof, which she pawed the ground with absently, her hands clasped behind her back.
As the handsome young male spoke up once again, however, Wasibru looked up and beamed at him. "It is?! You saw it? Oh, thank you so much!" Once again taking no notice of personal boundaries, she flung her arms around her fellow teenage centaur in gratitude. "I forgot I had put it there...I'm so glad some bear didn't go off with it. They seem to prefer fish anyway...whoops!"
Reaching forward as one of the bags slipped from Mac Gabhann's hand, she tried to catch one but failed, worried that they would be in each other's way as they both struggled to catch the load. Yet no one caught anything, and both burdens fell to the ground.
Wasibru watched, open-mouthed, as Mac Gabhann bent to pick them up. Then, unexpectedly, she clasped both hands over her face as she exploded into a series of girlish giggles. Eventually she couldn't take it and her hands fell from her face to clutch at her sides as she doubled over in a laughing fit. Gasping for air, she shook her head pityingly, reaching a hand out for the bags.
"You poor, poor boy," the female breathed. "I can't - I c-can't believe you - you're..." Unable to finish her sentence, she gently pried open his fingers and retrieved the bags from him herself. It was a heavy load, but the trick was all in how to carry it.
When her laughter had died down, Wasibru was finally able to catch her breath and speak. "Silly boy! You don't sling your load onto your back like a common human's pack-animal! You'll only injure yourself!" Supporting the bags from underneath, one in each arm, she demonstrated a safer way to carry them around. "This way you'll tire slower and you won't strain your back."
After walking a short distance downstream, the bags in her arms, she turned to look at him, grinning. "You coming? I'd really like to know, Mac Gahann," she addressed him politely, "what it is that you do for a hobby. It certainly can't be carrying around loads like this, can it?" She inclined her head curiously. “Your back would be ruined by now if it was."
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:25 pm
Talk of a story relaxed Mac Gabhann's nervousness. "It's a good warning story, at least. I probably should have remembered it. But as you said, it wasn't the hunter's fault. We were both somewhat oblivious and made a mistake. While I'm no hunter and I certainly have no dogs, I'm sure you could have found some way to tear me apart if you were thus inclined." He smirked ruefully at his own incompetence.
His smirk faded a little and his head filled with a musical sort of buzzing when she met his eyes, but he recovered quickly and changed it to a genuine smile. "My father calls me Gavvy, but you can call me whatever you'd like. The name means 'smith.' That's what he wanted me to be..." He laughed nervously. "No luck there, Father."
The hug took him by surprise, and he made a sort of "Hhrk!" sound. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him more than tiny things like a handshake. It was no wonder that he dropped both bags. He picked them up and watched her trying and failing to contain her laughter. "What?" he said, already haggard from his many embarrassments. She took the bags and showed him how he should have been carrying them. "Oh... heh... yes, silly of me..." He crossed his arms tightly, shoulders slightly hunched, feeling lucky that his skin was dark enough to hide the worst of any blushing he might be doing.
"Oh, no, this is just a... one time thing." He followed her along the bank. "I collect stories. Usually. Today I happen to be collecting... uhm... food." Another layer of embarrassment. Would she spurn him as other hunters had for foraging instead of hunting? "Yeah I don't carry around heavy loads. Scrolls and ink weigh a lot less." He pinched one of his thin, bony arms. "If I carried heavy things around much I might actually have some muscle on me."
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:42 pm
For a moment, as she gazed at him over her shoulder, Wasibru's smile slipped; her gleeful expression settled into one of thoughtful contemplation. Her lips were parted slightly, and she regarded Mac Gabhann as if seeing him for the first time, head still slightly tilted as if that would help her see him better. As if she was seeing him as more than just some good-looking male whom she had randomly met only minutes ago.
"So you know that story," she stated quietly, her voice considerably calmer than before. "I'm impressed." By the way her peridot gaze appraised him, however, it became clear that they shone with far more admiration than was practical for the knowledge of a myth. No, certainly there was something more she had heard in his words that had struck her with such a sudden awe and new respect.
"I'm no goddess, though," Wasibru pointed out with a grin, breaking eye contact as she faced forward, continuing downstram along the bank. Her voice had regained its jovial enthusiasm as she trotted with a distinct spring in her step. "And where I'm from on the mainland, no one would ever take you seriously if you were to tell them you thought I could tear you apart. In fact, I'm curious as to how you came to be of that opinion yourself." From the sound of her voice, it was easy to tell she was smiling as she spoke, though her back was turned.
"You have a father?" she asked, surprised. "That's reassuring to hear! Most taur I've met around the Cein Isles seem to have all been abandoned! Precious few seem to actually have ever known their true parents. I had begun to wonder if I was the only one. Then again, I'm not from here, so I suppose that doesn't count, does it?"
Listening intently, she nodded in aknowledgement every so often. "Gavvy...I really like that." She giggled. "A smith, hmm? Interesting." The sound of Mac's own laughter brought a smile to her face. Nervous as it was, it sounded honest and genuine. At least she knew she wasn't making him too uncomfortable. It had been her fear since she had left the stream and introduced herself. "Yes, fathers can be a bit over-bearing sometimes, can't they? And in my case, a bit over-protective. But they mean well. I'm sure yours just wanted you to be happy!"
As the youth crossed his arms rigidly, Wasibru fought back another giggle. "I'm sorry," she apologized, realizing she wasn't helping in relaxing his tension. "I shouldn't have been so informal. I have a little problem with self-restraint. Another of my many flaws." Nodding as he explained his weighty load, her ears perked in interest. "Stories?! I love stories! You must know so many! What a fun hobby! If I tried that at home, though, I'm afraid my parents would think I'd gone daft and my friends would ignore me altogether."
She shrugged, beaming, as she found the whole thing very amusing. "A story-collector...The Cein Isles has so much freedom...if only my herd knew what it was like here." Her voice trailed off as she lost herself in thought. At least until Mac Gabhann mentioned his muscles, at which she could not surpress more giggles. "Oh, I wish I'd known! I could have helped you pick some. My friends and I used to go out berry-picking all the time together on the mainland. Hunting has its perks, but I really miss gathering. How you can just pop them in your moth whenever you get hungry and still have enough to go around, provided you don't start eating from your basket." She laughed. "Come to think of it, I should probably start gathering some for the Harvest Festival. Are you going to attend that, by the way? Oops...sorry! Being nosy again!" And with that, she abruptly shut up for the rest of their walk.
When they reached the area, the teenage female picked her way delicately across the narrower neck of the stream. Once on the other side, she assembled her belongings, strapped the quiver about her waist, bound her bow diagnoally across her back, and carried the dangling rabbits on her woven grass string with Mac Gabhann's bags in her arms. When she was ready, she trotted back across less dantily, but with as straight and proud a posture as she could manage with her burden.
"Here we are! Wonderful," Wasibru proclaimed, setting his bags at his feet and folding her legs under her as she stopped to rest. "Is there anywhere you need to be?" she inquired, hoping she hadn't just wasted his time. "I thought maybe we could eat lunch together and we could chat. I'd really like to hear about those stories!" her excitement matched that of an eager child. "I'm particularly fond of stories. But if your father's waiting for you, Gavvy, I'd be happy to assist you in bringing your food to him." It was clear she really meant it too. She didn't want him getting hurt on his way home. And with her bow and arrows she could provide them with some defence if they chanced upon danger, though she really had no idea how far Mac had to travel.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:05 pm
Under the weight of her scrutiny he squirmed a little. What does that look mean? he wondered, flustered. What does she mean? It didn't seem bad, however, so he didn't worry about it. Much. She really did seem impressed. This was quite an accomplishment, in his view, so he smiled.
"Why wouldn't they take me seriously?" he asked. "Anyone could beat me in a physical match, except maybe children. Even then, I know some pretty tough children. And you, you look... ahm... You s-seem... Well you're a hunter, aren't you, and I'm a scholar." He focused on sounding as objective as he could. "You look like you know how to take care of yourself." Stop talking and climb out of this hole you're digging. Yes, parents, that was a good change of subject. "I've noticed it too. I'm not sure what that's all about... Maybe a lot of people like leaving home when they're young." He shrugged, as if to say 'not me.' "I was raised by my father. He wanted a more manly son, but he makes do. He even takes me out around the isle to find stories." Then he corrected himself. "Used to take me, that is."
Her parents and friends seemed very strange to him. A storyteller, daft? Well... He chuckled to himself. "I guess everyone where you come from must be hunters and such, eh? A society like that would want you to grow up and be 'useful'." As if stories weren't useful, ha.
It was reassuring to hear that she didn't look down on gatherers. He found himself saying "Maybe next time we can go together," and when he heard the words leave his mouth he felt his face heat up. It didn't get any better when she asked if he was going to the festival. "Oh, I didn't really think about it," he mumbled, and hurried to keep up with her. He was not good at being in others' company, save for his father, who barely ever spoke. The company of written words was much easier to deal with. Words couldn't look at you and they never asked you to talk to them. Paper was patient; people, not necessarily.
He stood on the bank watching her cross to get her things, rubbing his elbow and shifting his weight and feeling like he ought to be doing something even though there was nothing to be done. She returned and he awkwardly joined her on the ground. "No, nowhere to be." He fiddled absently with the strap of one of his bags. "I'm gathering things to store, mostly. For the winter. There's no hurry." The offer to accompany him home made him twist the strap around his hand a few times without noticing, but when there was no length to play with he looked down and quickly pulled his hands free. "Oh! That-- that's-- oh, um... thank you. That's nice of you." With conscious effort he got himself to look at her and give at least half a smile. "Having lunch sounds good."
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