Volkarosh had been fighting for her life for as long as she could remember. Every day had been a fight for survival ever since the great roaring whiteness had separated her from her family. Food had not been easy to find, nor drinkable water or warm shelter. It required work and countless hours of searching and effort. She had been in conflict with the brutality of nature for so long that it was normal to face death every day in some way. And, in spite of it, she survived. She prevailed. She had not done it alone, however. Ruelash – Lashy – had been with her the whole time.

They had fought for their lives against the unrelenting forces of nature together, and they had prevailed. She knew, too, that he fought others more mortal and defeat-able than the elements. She had watched as he clashed his blades against – and into – the bandits they had met in the roads of Sauti and in the expanse of the Tale. Even before they had left their shelter in the freezing wilderness, she had known what a fight between two people was, and how her companion felt about it.

But sometimes around the fire, in the cold depths of night, he told her of a very different kind of fight. There, it was not two people, but whole masses of them, clashing together in a horizon of violence and blood. He told her about the screams of battle and the dead piling upon one another like tortured sculptures. He told her stories of in-the-moment action, of single moves that could have cost him his life, but had instead taken anothers. She would watch his eyes grow distant and his movements more animated, and Volkarosh knew that, whatever war was, he loved it and missed it dearly.

But she herself did not understand. The idea of war seemed so far away, many miles and a lifetime ago. Just the idea of so many people in one place was a hard one for the isolated child to grasp, though she vaguely remembered the village she once had lived in. Ever since he had come to Jahuar, though the idea that there could be enough people to have a war had become a possibility, but the concept of war was not clarified. In fact, Volkarosh was confused. Lashy's interpretation of it was not the only one.

Volkarosh was intrigued by this. So, she asked everyone in her life about it at some point, dutifully collecting all the information she could. War was something that was clearly important to the adults in her life. It behooved her to understand their feelings on it, and built her own opinions from what she understood. That was the plan, anyway.

With Ruelash, he loved war and battle because it made sense to him, just as surviving in the wilderness had. Volkarosh wondered if anything else truly made sense to him. There were moments when she wondered if her grown up friend understood the world around him at all.

Her mother was similar. She gloried in war and reminisced about the days when she and Ruelash tore through the Oban ranks and, even, snuck into their camp. Somehow, though, Volkarosh could see that she was different. Iroia didn't love war. She loved Volkarosh, and Arronthain, and Votzhem. If she had to choose between fighting and her family, she would choose them. She didn't think Ruelash would have chosen her over a war, and there was the key difference between them.

Her father was similar, in a sense. His priority was his family. He wanted to stay with them. But she could see something else when she talked to him, something that could pull him away. Being an Alkidike meant a lot to him, she knew. He did not love war, but if the Alkidike were to go to war... Volkarosh thought he would follow. The idea of that – that he could leave them , just like that – stirred something in her chest, half pride and half unease.

Aunty Kaalnia said that war was not fun, and that it was not something Volkarosh should think about. She was dismissive and casual, but Volkarosh could tell that there was more to it, something strange and aberrantly sad behind the carefree grin and the facepaint. The child pressed at her, trying to find a better answer, but each time she did, Kaalnia rebuffed her. It was frustrating.

And Arronthain... Arron knew nothing of war.

So, to Ruelash, it was truth. To her mother, it was fun. To her father, it was a duty. To Kaalnia, it was something to not be spoken of... Volkarosh sat on a branch, nibbling on the saved remains of a cookie and tried to decide what war meant to her. She was stymied. War, she had gathered, was something that you had to experience before you knew what it was.

So, she settled for a compromise, a way of thinking about what she had found:
War... she thought, staring into the luminesence-gilded canopy, Is a storm. A storm that is far away, but could come again at any time. And when it came, the people around her would scatter like leaves in the wind, pulled in different directions by their unique desires and feelings.

And when that time came, she needed to have a plan.