Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naqenni sat alone.

Before her, the surf beat itself against the dark rocks, far below. Above her, the great sky stretched, open and bright with midday. In her lap, a book rested. It was an old tome, weathered by the years with a history that began decades before on the Alkidike mother island of Chibale. It spoke of Aisha, mother goddess to her older cousins and caretakers, and to her rearing-mothers, Kasama and Izari. Being the woman she was, it was Izari who had carefully kept after the book, guarding it through the long haul and later referring back to it as their camp struggled through the years to acclimate itself to the new terrain.

The tome mentioned nothing of Elzira. Of course it couldn’t have, old as it was and ‘new’ as her sprouting was, but to Naqenni — whose entire life was defined around the sister tree — the absence still felt wrong, leaving the text lacking and incomplete. She wondered when and by whom the lore of their new goddess would be written. It seemed high time, to her.

On the subject of time, however, she squinted upward, shielding her eyes to study the angle of the sun before pursing her lips. It was also high time she get on to her lessons. One of the more experienced women of the camp, Lumikani, was arranged to train her today, and as Naqenni pushed to a stand, tucking her mother’s book under her arm, she knew she was already decidedly ‘late.’ That seemed no reason to rush. She had been training much of her young life, as soon as she had the strength and coordination to begin, and for all her eight and a half years, they still had yet to let her use what she was learning.

She knew, of course, one day she would, but in the short term, it seemed unnecessary to concern herself with whether or not one of them waited some extra minutes or hours for her to get where she ‘should’ be. The end result would be largely unaffected. After making it back to camp, she set away her book and ignored her mother’s fretful, if quiet, reminder that she was set to train before the sun reached its peak, was she not? And headed for Lumikani’s tent.

Naqenni glanced about, red lashes flitting down with a squint as she noted that her tutor was not where they would be if they were to train blades. Nor was she, Naqenni confirmed, inside her personal dwelling. Her pursed-lipped look of indignation relaxed at the edges, though, when she spied the great beast that the older woman had taken under her care. Beside it stood Lumikani.

Though most of the dangerous beasts of Yael fascinated her in degrees, Naqenni found the limbara, with all their size and might, to be among the most intriguing, always inspired to wonder upon looking at them what other ferocious things lurked in the world that she had yet to see. Knowing that this woman was the first to successfully take one for her own, Naqenni did have a slew of questions. Not wanting to appear over-eager, however, she schooled herself first, setting back her shoulders and relaxing her posture before stepping up to the pair.

“Did you name it?” she asked, but continued on without a breath of pause. “They must be the fiercest creatures on all of Yael, to look at them. With mouths like that, I’m surprised they didn’t eat all the earthlings here already. You’d think they wouldn’t survive. Do they move very fast, big as they are? I’m going to catch one, one day, and ride it myself, and I’ll name her, but I haven’t decided what, yet…”

Naqenni’s eyelids narrowed. ‘Lucky’ to find one, she said. Timing, she said. It couldn’t be that hard. They were huge — or they certainly seemed so from her eight-year-old perspective — with great feet that left tracks in the porous soils of Yael. Though admittedly she hadn’t had a chance to actually track anything or learn to hunt of her own accord, it couldn’t be difficult if it was a task everyone managed. Besides, if they came in herds, that ought to make it all the easier to find.

For the sake of not wasting her own time and getting on with her lesson, which she did consider herself to take seriously regardless of what the older woman said, she settled for not arguing on that point. She made note, though, that if possible, Lumikani would be the first to see her astride such a beast if—when she caught one.

“I have discipline…” she muttered offhandedly beneath her breath. Then, louder: “And I don’t need breaks. And I always work just as hard as I need to. So maybe you don’t need to bother being cross about it. You were busy with your beast, and I was busy reading, and I just saved us both time…”

It made at least a little sense, if she spun it that way, didn’t it? She was fairly sure it did.

Masigo.

In spite of herself, Naqenni’s eyes widened a small fraction. She didn’t mean to show it, but it was thrilling to hear about just the same, and her quick imagination spurned her to immediately picture the older woman out in the thick of the jungle, alone with her might and her blades, together with the great beasts and nothing to rely on but herself. It made her pulse quicken, and put a tiny bounce to her step despite all efforts to look dignified.

“Were there a great many of them?” she blurted. “Were they all as big? Did you kill all the others, or did they run? Do they bleed a lot? It must be difficult to fight them with so much armor—but Mother Iza says their bellies are softer and you can get them that way, did it take you a long time to find them?” When prompted, Naqenni drew out her practice blades, perching up onto the balls of her feet as she did and rocking back a half moment later with budding energy. “When will I get to use real blades, and go on real hunts? I could, you know, and I’d learn faster if I was doing something proper instead of all the same practice things…when did you get your first blade? I should get one at least as soon as then—sooner, I think…”

Naqenni squinted. It was one thing not to have any of her questions answered. Hadn’t the older woman been listening at all? She’d asked surely half a dozen. But it was another thing entirely to be interrupted. She hadn’t finished yet, and Lumikani hadn’t even used the interruption to speak to anything she’d been discussing.

“I wasn’t lazing at all!” Even as she said it, however, Naqenni did as she was told, drawing out her blades and lifting her arms to hold them outstretched to the sides of her. She did want to get somewhere with the lesson, after all, and boring as this seemed, it couldn’t last forever. Fortunately, the practice blades weren’t even that heavy. “I was reading from one of Mother Iza’s tomes,” she said. “About your mother tree, Aisha. But there aren’t any tomes on Elzira, are there? Will we be writing them as we get older, my sisters and I? It should be written of. It seems silly to—”

As a twinge of fatigue pinched through her arms, the tips of her blades dipping the barest fraction, Naqenni frowned and straightened them. It wasn’t a hard exercise. And they truly weren’t that heavy, she reminded herself. It just seemed as they grew more so by the moment. A surreptitious glance towards her ‘tutor’, however, revealed that Lumikani showed no signs of speaking up. Naqenni drew a breath and crimped her fingers tighter.

No matter. It would be done soon enough regardless. She notched her chin up.

“I could write of her later, when I grow older, if I had the time. I may not, though. I suspect I’ll—” Another stiff breath, and an adjusting of her grip. “I suspect I’ll have other things I’ll be doing. But an Elaria should write of her. Perhaps if there is an especially weak bloom, she could learn to, since—” Heat crawled up Naqenni’s neck and into her face, darkening her deep grey cheeks and making the pink of her natural markings look all the more flush. “Since she wouldn’t have much else useful to do…”

Her eartips began to burn with heat. Her arm muscles tightened, straining until she could barely feel them. Her antennae coiled. Her toes pinched. Her neck hurt, and it felt she’d been holding her arms out for as long as Elzira had been growing. Another very brief glance towards Lumikani helped nothing. Naqenni pressed her tongue to the backs of her teeth. She would not let them drop. She could not let them drop. But this was a ridiculous exercise, wasn’t it? What good did it do, other than to make—to try to make—a fool of her? Probably none. Just the same, it had started, so she would follow it through.

“When…” Naqenni fought not to squeeze her eyes shut as her arms wavered. Up, up, up—stay up! “WhendidyoudecidetofightformotherAisha? As opposed to the hy—brid sympathizers…”

Naqenni breathed out. Her face burned. She breathed in. Her arms burned, numb, but somehow also in so much hurt that she couldn’t seem to think of anything else but how magnificent the moment would be when they dropped—or fell off, whichever came first. As a result of her split concentration, listening was hard, but when she wanted to think of anything but her arms, it helped at least to pour as much of her focus as she could in that direction.

A mystic.

Hadn’t there been an alkidike one of those? What had happened to her? She had been told much, even over the course of the short few years she’d been old enough to remember such things, but still her mothers told her far from everything. There was also, though Naqenni couldn’t fully appreciate it yet, a great deal of vagary and confusion that surrounded the tales told of war, meaning that even when such things were spoken of, there seemed to always be different versions. Still. She had no personal experience with a mystic, and it seemed strange to throw such an important thing as the writings of her people to blind faith that such a person would be bloomed. Perhaps Elzira would never designate one.

Unfortunately, the sting in her arms made it difficult to articulate such thoughts. “How…do you know…a ‘mystic’ will even…be bloomed? We’re not just like…you…” Similar. She knew that, but still—then, the later words came, and she bristled, teeth gritting. “I have—” ‘Endurance? Strength? Faith?’ All of those things, surely, but given that she had little breath or focus to spare, the thought got cut short and truncated to the core idea: “I am not weak!”

She all but screeched the last word, blood so focused it felt as though her pulse was everywhere under her skin and in her throat and behind her eyelids.

Sadly for her pride and despite all her most fervent demands that they not betray her, the muscles in her arms bent the next moment. Bowed. Sagged. And a moment later, to her abject mortification, her blades clattered loose from her fingertips to the earth. She shrieked. Had the older women been one of her sisters, or her arms even been functioning, Naqenni would have lunged, done—something.

But her arms were not functioning. Her body from fingertip to shoulder felt filled with sand or molten steel. When she bent to snatch her blades back up, her fingers barely moved to her call, and she did grip them, but they felt like the weight of mountains in her palms. The corners of her eyes stung, threatening to further betray her frustration — anger, humiliation, and determination — but she didn’t want to cry. Not here. Her tutor would get all the more wrong of idea.

“I did it, I held them,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t ever have to do anything that stupid in a battle, though, because I’d think about it first, and I’m not weak.” She felt weak. In this particular, specific moment, she felt very much so. But it hadn’t been a fair challenge — not that battle would be fair, which made failing unacceptable. There was nothing in the moment, though, that she could do about it but promise herself to do better next time, and save whatever face she had left. “What’s next?”

Her arms, by the goddess, would need to muster the attention to respond. Soon.

Naqenni’s teeth grit. Her eyes stung, burning with unshed tears and wounded pride, but she kept them focused and open, her exhausted fingers finding new strength in her anger—at least enough to dig into the hilts of her practice blades. She wanted to storm away. But that would only be ‘weaker’ still, and she had no intention of giving the older Alkidike even half an excuse to spit such accusations—lies—at her again. Given the time between this lesson and the next, and the next after, and after she would show the older woman her error.

Until then, she bit hard into her tongue so as not to snap, no longer wanting to even speak with her ‘tutor’. Obviously, only poor things came of that.

So, she waited. She listened. She absorbed and made note, and when the next lesson was revealed, she swallowed back the bubble of relief and elation that came with it. Admittedly, she had never been especially fond of blades, even when working with her own mother — who was nothing like this woman. Though she had never before considered that she might be poor with them — she wasn’t, she couldn’t be — they were tiring and awkward in her minimal experience.

But running…

She drew a breath, setting her blades down and stepping away from them to eye her tutor. By the goddess, she could run. She would not, however, until the other woman gave specific instructions, or began to herself. At this point in their training, Naqenni saw no advantage in making assumptions or jumping ship. She would keep pace, and do only and exactly as she needed to in order to prove to her company how erroneous her assumptions were.

She would be the best, not the weakest, and in time everyone, not just her mother, would see that. Her attention focused on Lumikani and her toes curled, stretching and relaxing—and waiting.

If for any reason you cannot keep up…

Naqenni said nothing, exhaled, and turned her gaze forward even as she complied, moving up to stand even with her company. She let her arms hang loose at her sides for the moment, fingers bunching and releasing once to urge the tension from them, and toes crimped towards the earth through the pliable leather of her foot-wraps. Other than that, only her antennae moved while she listened.

Then, they were off.

Though the temptation at the beginning of a run, when her lungs were full and her legs strong and unworn, was always to burst at first and sprint across the land in her best showing of speed and vibrancy, she restrained that instinct in this instance. Her lungs were full, breathing easy as they started out at a paced trot, and her legs did itch to push themselves—to see just how fast she could get them to move this time. But her arms still smarted of their last trial, and she knew better than to spend herself any quicker than necessary.

Besides, she did love to run. Even at a calmer pace, there was a rhythm to it. A soothing order to the pat, pat, pat of feet to the porous earth and the ever-shifting balance of weight and movement, like an interconnecting train of pendulums—back, forth, back, and forth. It also gave her something to focus on. To not think, but feel and dedicate herself to that movement instead of her internal emotions.

It was a welcome and familiar reprieve.

In — two, three, four — out — two, three, four.

Naqenni’s antennae coiled and twitched as she moved, filling in gaps of information about her surroundings that her eyes did not always catch. When they first made it out of camp, the path ahead looked well-worn, simple and unchallenging, but Naqenni gave no outward indication of objecting. Peeved as she still was in the back of her mind, running took forefront focus, and it didn’t matter especially much if the road to tread was dull.

Then, Lumikani’s path shifted course, and Naqenni’s weight and legs adjusted almost before her mind caught up. Something bordering a grin tugged at the corners of her lips, but she tamed the expression, schooling it back to neutral even as her pulse picked up. A change in terrain made running less of a methodical rhythm and more of a game all itself, finding one’s footing in an instant without time for second-guessing, adapting one’s balance and pace and angle to make the most of the wilderness in all its unpredictability.

She darted up, maneuvering between obstacles that she could, over the ones that she couldn’t, under those that allowed it, and through only the softest brush. Instead of running close-fisted, her fingers opened loosely, moving on occasion to guide or catch, brush to test the resistance of a branch or grip to allow her a heaving point from which to continue forward.

She almost forgot her company entirely. As innately aware of her as she was, responding in time to each adjustment of their course, this observance was more intrinsic than personal, so that the longer they went along, the more Lumikani and her movements became a part of the environment and a driving instrument of the game of keeping pace with it—as opposed to an individual towards which to harbor any personal disagreements or malcontent.

It made for interesting company.