Welcome to Gaia! ::

In The Twilight Lo I See

Red stained the towel.

It matted together sections of it, clotting the fibers, and when Sajah dipped the rag back into the shallow water basin before him and wrung it out over his shoulder, the water, too, was marred red. His teeth touched together, eyes focussed on the sandy gravel as the liquid licked over heated, dry skin and trickled into and past the open gash at his back. It was mid-evening, and most of the masters’ tasks for the day were done, but Sajah had two more vats and a full new shipment to load onto the outgoing cart for market within the hour. He tipped his head, cracking his neck and then rolling his shoulders to gauge the sting.

Wholly bearable.

After wringing the towel once more and running it a final time over his back where he could reach to clean what he could, he stood, plucking up his shirt from the ground as he did and rolling it before fastening it at his waist. Sunset hues painted the evening sky bloody shades and the air tasted of salt and heat, filled with the muted sounds of market and the nearer tittering of voices: masters in the house, servants nearer and bustling about through the back quarter. The actual living and sleeping spaces for the house help was a raised shack of a building, detached but for one connecting walkway protected by an overhang and leading to the main house. All of them slept there in close confinement, leaving little room for privacy.

It didn’t stop certain goings on.

“Tamaqo, Tamaqo—ah-ah-ah!”

Sajahka kept walking. Past the servant house and the long hall and to the storehouse. As he arrived, he dusted his bare feet and then slipped back into the thin sandals he’d left there. Essito, who also frequently worked heavier manual labor tasks with him, spotted his approach, and all but immediately gestured to what still remained to be loaded up before they took the last carts into town. As though sensing how much delay the task would put between the given moment and supper — if he would even arrive in time for any to remain — his stomach gave a plaintive gargle. Sajah ignored it for the time being, and got to work.

It would be dark before he returned.

Sajah had not been anticipating company.

His was the last cart out to take to the trade point. He knew the route well, had walked the path from the masters’ house to town a thousand times in his life, surely, and given the hour, it was a task he wanted over with and done. His feet hurt; his skin was already too-dry again, caked with salt from the day’s evaporated sweat; his back stung, and his muscles felt like rope, hardened and stiff after too long left in the sun unattended. Interruptions were not welcome.

And he didn’t recognize the voice, besides.

As that particular oddity clicked, his mind flit immediately to his options. The Bharam family owed their wealth to trade and involvement in a wide berth of economic pursuits. Thus, a cart of merchandise — even unassuming as his own — had enough value in it to be a more than worthwhile take for a petty thief. Normally, the servants of the house were not permitted weapons on their person, but being fully aware of the ways of the world and the real risk of theft, laborers were permitted blades for the purpose of defense on such trips as this. In this case, just beneath one of the forefront satchels, within a half-second’s reach.

Sajah’s fingers itched. He waited, listening and watching from the corner of his eye as the stranger approached. Young. Matori. Distinctly unfamiliar. He looked to be alone and was making no further sudden movements, but those were not immediately telling. Eventually, however, Sajah opted to keep his hands where they were: on his cart, gripping and dragging as he continued forward at the same pace.

If the boy was a thief, he’d already blown his element of surprise and Sajah was ready. If he was a begger, he would soon learn that Sajah had nothing to offer. Anything else, and he would likely grow bored when he discovered how poor of a conversationalist Sajahka truly was. Most persons in it for the entertainment gave up shortly.

When his follower did not, Sajah spared him a longer glance, and an eventual stiff nod.

Perhaps if he were very lucky, the boy would decide of his own devices to inform him how he’d learned his name. Or leave entirely.

Sajah wasn’t feeling especially picky.

Alive.

Was it a question to anyone whether or not he was alive? Or, since this stranger was here, knew his name, apparently sought him out, and was evidently either surprised or relieved by the fact, perhaps the better question was: Who didn’t know he was alive? His parents. If they were. Though it was the first conclusion to come to mind, however, Sajah mentally tucked it back, for it was far too early to be taking any mental leaps.

And he had a job to do.

He eyed his company, surveying the boy and weighing his options, all the while pulling the cart at its steady pace. Then, coming to his own private conclusion, he slowed the wagon, stopped it, drew his blade from its resting place, and fastened it at his side before notching his head and gesturing to one of the wagon grips. Far be it from he to refuse free labor, and under the circumstances, he felt he had reasonably little to lose.

Still, however, it left the question:

He tapped his chest, and then gestured to the stranger, questioning. He’d said he would explain, and at the end of the day, exhausted as he was, Sajahka was always ready for a change in pace—and a new story.

Sajah watched the stranger carefully. Listening. Waiting. The more he spoke, however, the madder he sounded. He had been ‘watching’ him? Seen what had been done to him? That idea alone was unsettling, and again, the pads of his fingers itched, hyper aware of the weight of his weapon at his hip. But not yet, at least. Out of his mind or not, the boy so far seemed harmless.

Then, he mentioned ‘getting out’ and Sajah’s shoulders stiffened, eyes barely narrowing with wariness. Even talk of fleeing the masters could result in among the harshest sentences. And if they took the thought seriously—

Sajah shook his head, gritting his teeth.

But then, the stranger mentioned his family, and Sajah’s lips pursed, ears flicking minutely. The man sounded quite entirely out of his mind. Rambling on about nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. The sort that could inspire a master to make an example by death if the threat of fleeing was taken seriously. When he pulled something from his pocket, however, Sajah’s attention honed on it—and froze. For half an instant, his exact surroundings faded into the periphery, his feet stalled in place, and a tight chill lurched in his chest and then prickled out under his skin.

Immediately after, he snatched it, tense as stretched leather and hot in the face. His mother’s. It looked like his mother’s. There had to have been a hundred or a thousand of them crafted, but he had only ever seen hers, and this was it. The same color, the same notches, the same discrepancy in the carving. But why would anything of his mother’s be in the hands of this—

His eyes snapped to the stranger again. Clasping the figurine, he gestured to it forcibly, and then splayed his hand, sweeping out over the desert, questioning, and back to the figurine. Where. Where had he gotten it, and how? Without being able to sign to the boy, though, Sajah was stuck—in the desert, ears hot with confusion.

A moment later he shook his head sharply and set down his portion of the cart, stepping out in front of them and clearing a flat portion of sand with his foot. Then, kneeling, he scribbled with his finger in the grains: WHERE DID YOU FIND IT? WHO ARE YOU

The question, ‘What is the Buhawi?’ occurred to him belatedly, but he’d already forgotten exactly how the boy had said it, and his skills with letters were limited enough. He let it be for the moment. This seemed pressing enough.

His aunt.

Sajah listened with rapt attention, his expression equal parts intent, dubious, and suspicious. He remembered his mother, at least, speaking of a sister at some points in his childhood. But it had been years ago. Years since he had even seen either of his parents, and he had never in his life met his aunt—or, apparently, his ‘uncle’ and to hear them being spoken of from a stranger’s lips was strange at best.

‘Said that you would believe…’

How could she know anything he would believe?

But then, how could she know anything at all. Clearly, there was more going on than Sajah had all the pieces for at the given moment, and there was little he could do about it immediately. And the boy still hadn’t given his name. Sajahka’s lips thinned, but he pocketed his mother’s figurine and stood, scuffing through the traced letters again with his shoe until the sand was merely that again: sand. Best to leave nothing for the feet that came behind them to stumble upon.

Moving back to the cart, he took the paper and charcoal too, held it for a moment, but then changed his mind, handing it back with a dismissive gesture before moving to take up his side of the cart. He had nowhere appropriate to carry the writing utensils, and for now, the boy was right. He needed to finish his task and be back to the masters’ house in a timely manner. Later, he would have many questions. But for the moment, he indicated to the sun — hoping that the stranger understood in at least some fashion that he was agreeing time was of the essences — and then gripped his side of the cart, beginning to move again.

Town, at least, was already in sight.

‘Xe.’

Sajah let the name sink in, turning it over in his mind long after the boy left—along with everything else ‘Xe’ had left in his wake. To keep them his, Sajah tucked the parting-gift bundle to his waistbelt, for fear that, were it left on the cart as it was, someone would comment, be suspicious, or otherwise simply take what was in it. The delivery, though, went smoothly, and bringing the cart back afterward was of course a non-effort as compared to when it was full and bearing down the weight of all its goods on his shoulders.

He made it back late as anticipated, but not late enough to merit any punishment. The masters had retreated to bed, regardless, and the guards were tired. As he slipped into the servants’ building, tucking to his narrow stretch of threadbare cloth that served as a ‘bed’, he found his fingers repeatedly moving back to the figurine at his waist: touching it, thumbing over it, withdrawing it when he dared and turning it over in his hands.

In the relative privacy of at least a space shared by his own people, if not himself alone, he felt safer inspecting it thoroughly, and felt a strange swell of conflicting emotion as he did so. It seemed unreal, in a way. And yet simultaneously potently real, there under his fingertips, as smooth and delicately carved as it had looked so many years ago when his mother had showed it to him.

‘There was a time before all of this,’ she would tell him then. ‘A time of better things and better places. One day, we will make it back there. You and I and your father. Ubeli’ae will take us home to the sea…’

Frowning, Sajah set the trinket away again. With the disappearance of his parents, he had stopped believing in gods and still didn’t, but the day’s events stirred up memories just the same that he had tucked far away, and left him with infinitely more questions than he had answers.

A rumble from his stomach, though, reminded him that in this moment, his options were still limited. He picked apart the ‘care package’ left by the stranger — Xe — and was more pleased than he was ready to admit to find food within it. Carefully, and as quietly as he could manage, he ate before tucking away the rest, and settling to sleep if it would find him.

But, as the fates would have it, something else would find him first.

Xe had promised to return.

It was difficult to say whether or not Sajahka strictly believed that he would. He certainly didn’t expect that he wouldn’t, but if he didn’t, it wouldn’t have been a surprise, either. He was a stranger who, from Sajah’s perspective, had quite literally appeared out of the desert at a moment’s notice. In retrospect, the entire situation felt odd, obscure, and again, unreal in its own way. The only physical evidence Sajah maintained of the encounter was his mother’s trinket still tucked at his side, and the medicinal ointments left behind, apparently for his cuts.

In the quiet of the night, however, as the moon rose over the blanket desert and the breathing of his companions slowed to the quiet, even rhythm of sleep—and snores—it was easy to forget and tuck away as an oddity, irrelevant for the day ahead. Until he heard scuffling outside.

Distinctly not the movement of guards.

Sajahka may have been at the cusp of sleep, but his life had instilled in him light habits in that regard, and in a moment, his eyes were wide, intent yellow slits surveying the night shadows and fixating on the door. It creaked. His teeth grit, and he was up, moving forward.

“I, um…I have an appointment to keep with Mr. Sajahka…?”

Too late.

Just moments too late, Sajah’s hand slipped over the boy’s mouth, gripping and silencing whatever more he might have had to say. Not here, rattled fiercely in Sajah’s mind, but lacking the physical capacity to verbalize the thought, he was left giving a curt, distempered snort that sent his breath dusting through the boy’s hair. Softer than he remembered it looking, part of him noted in the fleeting instant before others began to stir in the room. Quiet, questioning murmurs bubbled like a ripple through the ranks, and Sajah held his breath, eyes shut and body tight to the interloper so that he, too, remained still.

If they could just not deal with anyone else…

Seconds passed.

Sajahka counted in his head. One, two… One pair of yellow eyes — Tiffi, who shared sleeping space all but directly on top of him — fixated on them, and Sajah held her stare. At length, though, she made some quiet, dismissive grunt of a sound and settled back. Exhaling silently as he could manage, Sajah gave a stiff nudge, and encouraged Xewai out.

All other things being equal, the risks were lower if they conversed in the night air, so long as they didn’t stray far.

Others had seen them, of course. More than just Tiffi, Sajah knew it. But then, they were all in the same position as he. They all wanted their rest, and they knew well enough they wouldn’t be getting explanations out of him. They would ask — later — but for now, he reasoned that he had at least a few minutes to attempt to resolve some lingering communication issues. When they first made it into the night air and Xe began apologizing, Sajah assumed it was for babbling out with talk the moment he stepped into the room. Then, when he reached into his sleeve, Sajah’s eyes traveled, moving down over the boy’s front and down, and down, and up.

His eyes narrowed.

What in the name of blood and tarnation—

Xe passed paper into his hands. His gaze flicked up to the other’s face, back down, and up again before he grunted, taking the sheet stiffly. He hesitated, though, as his attention actually focused on the blank parchment, lit now only by moonlight. Blank. Waiting. What questions did he have? There were a thousand, but he didn’t know the words or letters for all of them, and they didn’t have the time. It all felt surreally obscure, with so many ‘who’s and ‘when’s and ‘what’s and ‘where’s involved that he didn’t know where to begin and they only had a span of moments before their time might be interrupted.

Who will you take me to? When will we leave? Who will be there? What do you need from me? How do I know to trust you? What if something goes wrong? Why are you actually here? Where will we actually go? What will be done when I get there, as I have no money? What do I risk if you fail?

The last, though, was obvious, and Sajah knew before starting that it would be a waste of time to scribble. The punishment for absconding from the masters was death. Giving a terse scoff of a sigh, he lifted the stick of charcoal:

where after here
when go?
how

And then, after a moment’s consideration, he scribbled beneath:

i have frend - no leeve without