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“His name,” the handler said in her same gruff, sandpaper-y monotone that Damissan had grown used to over the course of their interaction, “is Nazakai.” She patted his fat neck. “He eat grain. Many nuts. Grass. Animal shi—”

“And you’re sure he’s the most even tempered of all of them?” Damissan asked, dubious in spite of himself as he eyed the hulking beast. Dark brown in fur tone for the body but topped with a blanket of deep, burgundy red, and dotted with orange crystals, the beast looked healthy, but on in years, and massive. It may well have been a very normal size for quhar—it probably was—but to Damissan, standing before it in person, it felt especially intimidating. Added to that, the thought of trying to control it and depend upon its aid through his travels into the desert, and he was admittedly especially concerned about its reliability and relative friendliness. He stared at it. It stared back. “I think he is glowering at me.”

The woman gave a dry, clucking sound that might have been a laugh, and tapped the beast’s flank again. “He do that to everyone. No worry. He is very gentle. Quiet. Likes to sleep. Always give him big drinks before long travel.”

“Sleep?” Damis repeated, catching and hooking on the word. “I will be traveling frequently, you realize. I can’t have him sleeping all the time—”

“Only good time,” the woman said, waving him off. “Just likes it a lot. You said ‘most gentle.’ Nazakai is most gentle. Never bit one woman. Only bit one man.”

“Bit—” Damissan cleared his throat. “He bites…?”

“Only bites when you mean. A hundred and fifty pieces,” she said. “You want, yes?”

Damissan opened his mouth, glanced to the beast, frowned, and then with no undue hesitation, nodded slowly. After taking his money, the handler guided ‘Nazakai’ out from his stall, explaining again approximately how much he ought to be fed and watered, and other basic maintenance. To Damissan, who had never particularly liked animals and on top of that had next to no actual experience with them, it sounded like an expansive list of things to keep track of, but at the same time, he couldn’t very well travel completely alone into the desert, and knew he would need the animal for baggage purposes at the very least. When finished with their exchange, she passed him the quhar’s lead.

There was a single, gut-dropping moment in which Damissan imagined that all the worst would happen at once—it would charge him, bite him, gut him through with its horns, trample him or simply not move or respond to anything he did, and he would never be able to do this. But when he convinced himself to finally click his tongue and pull tentatively at the lead, Nazakai gave only a soft grunt of sound and followed forward. Damissan’s sigh had never been more relieved.

His last contact with his connections to nobility was with Razhim, a family servant — whose name he had specifically asked and made a point to remember — who waited outside of the handler’s stall with a cart full of the various things Damissan had deemed necessary and purchased for his journey. Together, they loaded them onto the beast—which translated primarily into Damissan attempting to help, being silently corrected as Razhim wordlessly fixed his work, and eventually standing back to watch and try to remember exactly how the man managed to fasten and pack everything so securely.

By the end, he hoped he wouldn’t have to take off much on a daily basis, simplifying the issue of re-packing. Then, it occurred to him to wonder if he was expected to take everything off and on again every day for the sake of the beast. He opened his mouth, almost asking, and then decided against it, opting instead to wing it. It would be obvious, likely, once he got used to it. Surely.

Thanking Razhim for his aid, he sent the man on his way, and encouraged Nazakai forward again. Though the response was not as quick, after some grunting and pandering, the quhar consented again to move, this time at a decidedly slower pace—if that were possible. Damissan opted to ignore that, though, it would be fine in the end, once he and Nazakai adjusted to one another, and he couldn’t very well lighten the load. They would simply have to make do.

They did so for all of the hour or so that it took to get near to the edge of the city. Then, at the outskirts with the gold desert fully visible and stretching out before them like a gravel sea, Nazakai stopped.

Damissan looked to him. He waited. After it became clear that the beast wouldn’t be starting on again on his own without prompting, he called to him. He clicked his tongue. He pulled at the lead. He pushed at the quhar’s flank. As he began running low on appropriate and reasonable ideas, he resorted to debate.

“You cannot stop here. We have so far to go yet! Don’t be afraid of the desert. If you haven’t been out there alone yet, neither have I, you know.” A pause. “This will be a terrible start to our working relationship if you can’t manage to listen to me. You know I could almost forgive you being a beast if you would just—”

Nazakai gave a deep yawn that sounded almost like a moo. Or a groan. And then shut his eyes.

Damissan’s arguments became progressively less polite from there.

“—and if that is not enough and you still cannot bring yourself to move, I swear by my God I will replace you, don’t think I won’t, and since I’ve already purchased you, I’ll have you chopped up, and turned into all varieties of meat, and a handbag, and a coat, and use your horns for—”

At first, Damissan assumed the interruption wasn’t actually directed at him. It couldn’t be because he wasn’t with anyone, hadn’t been, and wasn’t planning to be with company of any sort, and so it was just that—an accidental interruption by a passerby to someone else. Except that he was on the outskirts of the city, on the path out and there were very few others there at all, none of them close, and Damissan had already stopped talking in his surprise, so he spared the speaker a glance.

It took a moment. The voice was familiar. The face was even familiar, but distantly enough that it didn’t immediately click. And then it did, but unfortunately that didn’t make any more sense, so he continued squinting, miffed and baffled at the man—what was his name? Xiila…Xir—Xilaam. Xilaam felt close but not quite on point.

“Who—” Damissan shook his head, because that wasn’t even quite right, since he had at least a vague idea of who. “What are you—? What do you mean wait on you…?” he asked. “What are you doing here? And what does my location have to do with—you met my parents?”

There was more to be said, surely, and Damissan could have pointed out that he didn’t have a girlfriend and even if he did—well, it didn’t seem to matter nearly as much as the rest of it, and he could spare a moment later to be concerned that he was being encroached in on by another very large beast. This one with talons, and presumably carnivorous teeth.

But for now, it was easiest to focus on his immediate company and discern why in God’s name a random man he’d met on the street some weeks prior was here, now, talking to him as though he should have been expecting him. After one more glance to the beast the man was riding, though, Damissan figured at least one step back was in order to remind the thing that personal space was a living concept that ought to be respected and really, he’d probably taste terrible anyway.

Xilarn.

Well, it was at least one small blessing to be reminded of the man’s name without having to ask, and now told, it was very familiar. Surely he could remember it, particularly since he was apparently going to—

Damissan shot the man another, similar, but more exaggerated look of confusion as he went on about wanting more ‘to go on’ in order to, presumably, find him in the first place? But why would the man possibly need to know specifically—why would he come after him at all? A half second after that thought, however, the fact that Xilarn’s tailing him was a result of a meet-up with his parents set a rapid fire string of puzzle pieces towards snapping into place to form a more cognizable whole, and Damissan was on the cusp of opening his mouth again—when the beast moved.

Really, it was far too large to begin with. He had just taken a retreating step. Surely even to an animal, that could be properly interpreted as, ‘Let us both keep our friendly distances from one another.’

Unfortunately, such body language was evidently not within this particular beast’s repertoire of understanding. Damissan emitted a small, very muted and strangled sound in his throat as it sniffed, got far too close, and—he was taking a scuffling, staggered jerk-step backwards at about the same time Xilarn encouraged the thing off of him. In the aftermath, it took him an extra moment or two to process that the man was speaking again.

He shook his head. “Going with…?” No, absolutely not, there had been no talk of anyone going with anyone. “No one is coming with me,” he said. “I said that I would be making the trip alone. So of course they didn’t—” Of course they didn’t tell him that they had hired someone behind his back to do so and only let this fact be brought to light after it became far more difficult to rectify the situation and clear up the confusion. Damissan released a petered breath, and then pursed his lips. “They…failed to mention that,” he admitted at length. “I imagine because I would have told them I don’t need company.”

It wasn’t actually, probably, a terrible idea. Particularly given how very little of anything he’d done completely on his own before, including several necessary for survival. But admitting as much seemed needlessly embarrassing at a point where everything else already seemed to be discouraging forward progress.

He managed to keep at least some of these frustrations to himself, but was still scowling as he stalked back in front of his beast, plucking again at Nazakai’s lead as though this time it might magcially induce different results. “It might have been nice of them, I suppose,” he said, “if they were already so determined to hire me ‘help’, to warn me—and you—that the decision was out of my hands. But apparently—” He tugged; Nazakai grunted, “—basic communication is an area my parents and I are lacking i—if you could begin to move your fat brown arse at any moment within the next fortnight, that would be—”

Nazakai’s first step forward caught Damissan so off-guard that, at his already-leaning angle with the lead, the sudden lack of tension resulted in an immediate stagger, and drop, arse to the sand. Nazakai paused. Damissan scrambled, hastening immediately to get out from directly in front of the likely four-hundred pound beast. Then, one grunt-moo on Nazakai’s part and a shake and huff of his great head later, and he was moving again at a slow plod. Damissan’s cheeks gave a slow burn, thankfully invisible against his dark skin, and he proceeded to ‘lead’ the way, attempting to — as casually as possibly — dust the sand from his clothes, particularly at the back.

“So long as we stay on favorable terms…”

Damissan certainly did not need any extra reason to be wary of a large, unfamiliar, unpredictable beast with paws the size of his head and a wingspan likely his body length three times over or more. But if he had needed that extra reason, the low growl and bark from the animal that followed in the wake of Xilarn’s cautionary statement was more than enough to tip that wariness into sufficiently severe concern. Any promises of ‘jesting’ that followed did astonishingly little to sooth his nerves.

He kept well away from it. Gadot. It. The beast.

‘Get used to,’ indeed.

There was something distressingly final about the way Xilarn said that it was ‘coming along’ as well, as though all of this — not only Xilarn’s own presence, but also his carnivorous mountain hound — were decided already and anything Damissan argued to the contrary would be wasted breath. He shook his head.

“‘Or otherwise,’” he repeated. “I hope they told you I intend to visit all seven nations, and as many towns within them as conveniently possible, so if you’ve only prepared yourself to dedicate a handful of days or weeks to this, you might save yourself some time and tell them now that they should find a replacement—or not bother. I don’t see how you could expect me to have made it far yet, as I’ve only just begun this morning. I had to load this…” ‘Thing…’ “…Nazakai, my quhar.” Perhaps if he called it by its name and leant some credence to it, he would sound better equipped at handling it—like Xilarn and his ‘Gadot.’ Either way, Nazakai was more specific than ‘this thing’ and he supposed he could get used to the name.

Admittedly, he likely would have derived some humor from witnessing anyone scramble about on their arse. Regardless, Damissan found it distinctly less pleasurable to be the target of such ‘good humor,’ and by the time he righted himself, if he hadn’t been glowering already, he was, shoulders stiff. Instinct brought many things to the tip of his tongue, ‘Watch your tone.’ ‘Do you enjoy walking the line between ‘bold’ and blatantly antagonizing?’ ‘Laugh all you like, but keep in mind men have had their tongues cut out for less.’ He tempered them all, frowning at the fact that they still occurred to him so quickly. It wasn’t exactly a high offense to laugh at someone’s minor and temporary ails.

He let out a breath, and rolled his shoulders until they fell into a more relaxed resting state. “I am travelling to Jatine,” he said. “I will spend a handful of days there, at most, seek an audience, and speak with those of the church there. Then I will resupply what I need, and head towards Tivrod, and do the same there before preparing for a journey into Jauhar, with Neued as the first large stop. I—” ‘—assume there are actually more cities than just these few scattered on the map.’ Realizing that might very well not be true, and not wanting to make his potential mistake blatantly obvious, Damissan settled for something more subtle. “If I encounter any smaller settlements along the way, I will take rests there, and speak if there is enough of a population to merit it. I am not going to the beach. If I only wanted to ignore my parents and enjoy myself, I would—” ‘—have continued to do exactly as I had been doing before now.’ “—not have had to leave home at all.”

The fact that Xilarn thought his stock of supplies was enough to last a ‘month’, however, did give him pause, and reason enough for a second glance towards Nazakai. Perhaps that was why the beast was upset. Though he was built to carry, and he did seem to be plodding forward now with reasonable ease.

“I didn’t want to be insufficiently prepared if things did not go according to plan,” he said. It seemed to be the most reasonable way of saying that he had very little idea of exactly how much of anything he would really need on a daily basis.

“If you tire of me,” Damissan grunted. “Most reassuring to know that my parents elected someone so loyal and dedicated to the cause.”

Not that he supposed it made sense to argue at this point, particularly since he had just made his case out for the opposite result. Did he, or did he not want the company? He released a breath, relaxing in spite of himself because truly, it wasn’t all bad. Loathe though he was to admit it aloud, he was aware that there were dangers to travelling alone even under the best of circumstances, and ‘without any practical experience in the matter at all’ was not the best of circumstances. Neither was harsh, desert terrain with long stretches of desolate sand without civilization. Or an animal companion he’d only just attained and had no reason to trust yet. Or all the variety of other potential unknowns or pitfalls.

“It was more surprise than anything,” he admitted at length. “I don’t suppose I lose a great lot of anything to have company, and quite honestly, if or since they were so determined to hire me a guard, I’m relieved they settled for someone I had at least met. Were you a complete stranger, I might have had greater reservations about your sincerity and intentions. As it is…I have never actually enjoyed being alone for great stretches of time, so perhaps it will break up the monotony of travel.”

He shot Xilarn a look at the commentary on travel.

“I have spent the past week or so in market gathering the goods I needed, and I did have them all prepared, I simply needed my…” He glanced to the quhar beside him, “…travelling companion. Or, the one I planned for, in any case. And then I had to load him, and I didn’t have anywhere to store him prior to departure…in any case, it all happened in due time. I was in no special rush, and judging by when you actually found me, it seems unlikely you would have caught up with me at all had I indeed left successfully ‘at the crack of dawn’ as you put it.” A pause. “Perhaps I will purchase a cart in Jatine…” Damissan shook his head. “And I did not say I was opposed to ever stopping at a beach or enjoying myself, just that I don’t intend to spend all the while doing just that. It would seem a waste to completely pass up opportunities to see the sights of local areas once already there. I certainly can’t spend all my time talking…” He spared Xilarn a glance, “…contrary to what you might have come to believe thus far.”

Then, because the desert stretched long and yellow before them as far as the eye could see and it did look to be an ominously long trip ahead—certainly not one he would want to make without conversation now that he had someone to converse with, Damissan introduced the first topic of casual conversation that came to mind. “How did your reunions with your family go?”

“Especially brave,” Damis agreed with an amused quirk of his lips. “Just as I was especially brave to stand up unarmed before a crowd of hundreds of, apparently, ornery and cantankerous common folk with murderous tendencies. But, if they were determined enough, I would assume they could find as many people ‘willing’ as they liked for enough coin to make the offer attractive. I’m not that abysmal for company.”

As Xilarn’s attention turned to his beast, Damis watched with wary curiosity. He had never gotten on well with animals, personally. At least in part, he attributed that to the fact that he had little to no experience with them growing up, and by the time he came into his middle to late teens, they all still seemed foreign, unpredictable. Things to be wary of or eaten, or otherwise used as a means to an end. Not—that. Whatever it was that the older man clearly had with his beast was a new concept. One he knew of, of course, well aware that persons sometimes bonded closely with their animals, but not one he’d ever witnessed so closely.

The licking looked rather disgusting and unsanitary. But apparently, Xilarn was accustomed to it.

Damissan concluded it was probably best to simply ignore the antics—at least, until the ‘display’ was apparently for him, at which point he met Gadot’s irate stare with dubious amusement. At least this time it looked too ridiculous to be taken as threatening. He supposed he could only hope that was an accurate judgement call, but since it reminded him of the enthused tongue-lolling of happily exhausted hounds after a hunt, he felt reasonably safe.

“Most impressively offended,” Damissan said. “I will do my best in the future not to underestimate his prowess at outrunning grazing herd beasts.”

Damissan was not blind to body language, tone, or expression, and while the last time the subject had come up in passing, it had felt innocuous enough, this instance gave him the distinct, immediate impression that bringing the topic up was a mistake, and it ought to be let go. Noting the tension for future reference, he filed his curiosity away for a later date and moved on as quickly and smoothly as possible without any further comment on the matter.

“I’m in no rush,” he said. “You mentioned a day’s travel…but surely we won’t make it before nightfall at any rate Nazakai can manage.” ‘And with me walking, besides.’ He squinted up towards the arching skies above, and then out to the far horizon. It all looked blazingly hot and impossibly far away. The noonday sun — which it almost was, by this point, less than an hour off from directly overhead — did not make the trek any less daunting. “If you have a better suggestion,” Damis said, “my ears are open to hear it. Since we have just begun, surely we could travel at least some distance longer before waiting through the hottest portion of the day. I brought a tent.” Or, rather, he had the materials for what at least one merchant had assured him could be constructed into a tent if arranged properly. That he had no idea if this were true, or how to go about doing so even if it was, were matters for later discussion. Thus far he had been working with the prevailing opinion that, assuming he hadn’t been lied to outright, it couldn't be that hard.

Stopping a handful of paces outside of the city, indeed. Damissan could still just glance behind them and there was Sulburi. He could still hear it. People on the outskirts could still clearly see them, and taking a ‘break’ immediately felt—well, comical at best, and needless to say the idea didn’t enthuse him. He wasn’t tired yet. It was hot, but he was used to the heat, having grown up in it all his life, and so long as Nazakai was cooperating and his feet were not objecting to forward progression, he saw no reason to slow it down even further.

“If we don’t use it immediately, perhaps it will be of use…later.” Really, at any point. Damissan knew only very loosely what to predict on the path forward: desert in his homeland, many trees and softer earth in Jauhar with bugs and savages, grasses in Tale, and mountains in Sauti and Zena, with dropping temperatures all along the way. Of course, his only experience with these climates and landscapes was through description or depiction in textbooks or murals. But that added to the intrigue.

Or, so he hoped.

“I should be excited,” he repeated aloud, glanced to his company, and then smiled in spite of himself. Truth be told, he was excited. Granted, the day had not gone as planned so far on multiple accounts, from the process of purchasing his mount, to loading it, to starting out, to Xilarn’s presence at all and the large furred companion that came with him. But on the whole, nothing abysmal had happened yet. He was leaving his home city for the first time on his own, he had every option open before him, and everything was new. He was starting fresh, and in time, would be seeing the world. His smile stretched to a grin, and he tossed the look Xilarn’s way. “I am excited,” he said. “I don’t feel I need to rush it, but I do look forward to it. Do you know I’ve never been outside of Oba? I’ve never actually been farther than Orrod, so once we make Jatine, and past, it’ll be the furthest I’ve been from the capitol. Have you traveled much, before?”

Damissan opened his mouth to defend himself and say that everything strapped to his quhar had a very specific, planned-for purpose, and had been bought with care specifically for the trip—but Xilarn’s concession that the tent wasn’t the worst of ideas was enough to keep his tongue still on that subject, at least for the moment. It was at least partly true. Most everything on the beast had been purchased specifically for his travels. Less fortunately, he hadn’t known what he would need, and had relied on some combination of the local opinions (of merchants trying to sell him their wares), and his own whims.

Neither leant themselves, apparently, to ‘packing light.’

That, added to the fact that Nazakai had already evidenced his complaints, despite pulling through in the end, and Damissan suspected that perhaps, his own pride aside, it wasn’t a terrible idea to go through the baggage again with a more careful eye. One that wasn’t trying to sell him anything and did know what it was looking for, presumably. So, Damis settled for watching instead as Xilarn dismounted, and then listening.

The farther from Oba you go, the better it gets.

Truly, the man was a tireless patriot. Damissan curbed the initial instinct to shake his head. He didn’t very well know, after all, what lay beyond, and while he was still quite certain that his home country was, had been, and would always be not only ‘home’ but among the most beautiful and thriving of nations, that conversation could be argued another day. Instead, for the moment, it simply left him to wonder what had put such a foul taste in the other man’s mouth in regards to it.

“Beautiful and dangerous,” he repeated, musing, and then, before he could curb the words: “You make it sound like an angry woman. But a relief, regardless, to know you have experience with…” ‘…women…’ No, that wasn’t right. “Jungles and wild things. I suppose since my parents went to the trouble of finding me a bodyguard, I’d hope for as much, but as limited as you made their options sound, perhaps I am simply blessed.” He spared the man another glance. “What did inspire you to take the offer? Months on the road with a strange noble, young and ‘foolish,’ vile, rude…” Damissan sifted through memory, trying to recall what the man had accused all of Oba of harboring, “…shallow, and careless as I must be, being a fellow inhabitant of this great nation? You don’t look especially pressed for coin, or haggard as a drunk…a gambling addiction, maybe?”