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Naqenni was perhaps not the best of counselors.

She had known as much from the beginning — and had thus left initial tasks of assistance: healing, comfort, counsel — to those better suited to the work and instead handled what she did know how to do. After attaining the earthling’s head, however, it was a matter up to question when would be the best time to present it.

She wasn’t actually certain how Nivalis would take it, but it seemed evidence enough that at least this problem which had taken one of their sisters was dealt with permanently. And heads, like other meat, did not keep. So, bagging her trophy, she made her way back toward camp. Upon inquiries, she spoke in minimal terms with those who asked, informing them that the immediate threat — to the extent she described — had been eliminated.

It was only after making her way through the commotion, to the mystic’s tent where she stood outside it, that she realized she wasn’t sure what else she had to say for herself. But perhaps it didn’t matter. Actions were more relevant under the circumstances, and Nivalis surely had other sources for soft words. When she made her way in, she half expected there to be such company already present, but for this moment, at least, she was appeared to be alone.

After a moment’s debate, she set the ‘package’ at her feet and rose to stand at ease, arms clasped loosely at the wrist behind her. “The earthling who killed her is dead. With all of her company that I found.”

Nivalis was not a characteristically somber girl. Under the circumstances, of course, it was expected, but that didn’t make it any less distinctly unpleasant, and the needling insistence that she ought to have been paying closer attention — done more, sooner, to prevent this to begin with — pressed upon her with renewed force. She ushered the thought aside, at least for the time being.

The most she could take from her failure was a lesson, and any additional belaboring of the issue was only a further waste if she wasn’t bettering herself for it. At the question, she nodded with an affirmative grunt.

“Four,” she said. “They camped, not far from here. They had a warrior among them, and when I shot her, the others came. I put arrows through their heads and took hers.” She paused, eyeing her mystic and debating before adding with quieter finality, “They will not take any more of ours.”

Not those earthlings, in any case. But there may be more of them…

The thought lingered in the forefront of her mind — if there was one there could always be more, and if they had been willing to shoot once they would try again — but at the sight before her, of Nivalis’ folded figure and uncharacteristically depleted mood, Naqenni decided it didn’t need to be said—not now and not to her, in any case. Naqenni had looked when she was there, and those that she had already dealt with had seemed to be all of them in the immediate vicinity. And it would be safe here, regardless.

Any earthlings who attempted to make an attack on their camp itself would be walking into slaughter. That much she was confident of.

Only four.

Naqenni blinked. She hadn’t come looking for praise, precisely. She knew she could have done—ought to have done better, on the whole. But four was still four more than she had ever killed before, and more earthlings than she had ever encountered in that fashion. Had she been hoping for more…?

At the next assertion, however, Naqenni realized it was not voiced as a slight on her at all, but rather Nivalis’ personal disappointment. If it was ‘only’ four, then it had taken ‘only’ four earthlings to take one of them from their number, and in Nivalis’ company. It was a heavy guilt to bear, no doubt, and it occurred to Naqenni to say that it was misplaced: she was too young, yet. It wasn’t her fault or her responsibility to take on.

But it was. At least, to some extent.

True, Nivalis was very young yet and still surpassed in status by their matron—but she was no longer a youngling or prentice, and she was the mystic of their people. A novice and untested until now, but their mystic just the same, and it was difficult to argue that she had not, in some portion, failed. If only because she had pushed — or allowed herself to be guided — too far before being ready for what came with the territory.

But there, it was in part her own fault for not emphasizing enough the potential — despite their inferiority — that earthlings had to be dangerous. It hadn’t been properly emphasized to any of them, so far as she could tell, and though she had managed this small cluster herself in this instance, she was not stupid enough to think that if they had met with a collection of armed earthlings at their ‘market’ intent on eliminating them, she and two younger sisters would not have stood a breath of a chance at protecting themselves or Nivalis. And, she and her sisters and cousins all bore part of the responsibility for allowing the mystic out unaided—or in the company of only a fellow novice.

Aloud, however, she only breathed out and shook her head. “No,” she agreed, because anything else would have been a lie. “You were not. Not yet. Not for that. But you will not make the same mistake again, and you will be stronger for it.” At a heavy cost, but such was the path, and there were no second chances at history. “I apologize for my own failures. I should have been more attentive, and closer at hand if you were to be in any danger.”

If she had been there-

But she hadn’t. Perhaps next time. In the meantime, her neck flushed up into her cheeks at the thanks, and she glanced downward, one of her antennae coiling. She had let one of her younger sisters die. While she was awake, in her tent, doing nothing—or certainly nothing of so much import as seeing to their safety. It didn’t seem to be any situation deserving of thanks. But, she dipped her head.

“I appreciate your gratitude. But I hope to be much more deserving in the future. If you would forgive my shortcomings…I would like to be nearer to you, and have notice if you intend to undertake anything of a dangerous nature.” She hesitated, because as much as she wanted to play an immediate role in Nivalis’ safety, she knew that many of her cousins — due simply to wealth of experience — were as fit or better for the task. “Or be assured that you will have someone as or more capable accompany you. Even as you grow more powerful, there is always risk in battle…and there is only one of you.”

Naqenni was among the eldest of her sisters, but even she had two to stand in her stead if she failed severely. Elzira had and would likely only bloom one mystic for many decades. So far as she was concerned, Nivalis was thus the island’s most precious creation. She could not be risked so brazenly in the future.

Naqenni watched on in silence.

It was impossible to miss the anger, of course. Nivalis’ gaze lifted with it—finally up from her lap—her stare sharp and heated as her lips curled back, and Naqenni was ready for whatever came then. If the mystic wanted to be angry, she would not be the one to forestall it, and if she wanted to be angry with her, then Naqenni could take it. Everything she had said was true, and so far as she was concerned, anger was more productive than grief or self-pity anyway.

When it died though, petering away as quickly as it had come, and Nivalis lowered her attention again instead, Naqenni felt a soft breath leave her—and small splinter of something suspiciously close to guilt needle its way back into her chest.

It wasn’t a fair burden.

Not on Nivalis, or on anyone tasked with such responsibility so young. But, she supposed, there was nothing to be done about that.

I wouldn't ask for you to set aside your life to be wary of me and my doings, always…

Her brow furrowed, and argument waited at the tip of her tongue: that was what she was there for, at least in portion, and certainly what she wanted to be—if ever needed, in any case. As Nivalis continued, Naqenni was at least placated with the thought that she wouldn’t be straying out of the bounds of safety any time soon. At the thanks, she dipped her head in a shallow nod.

“Always,” she said. “If you do find need in days to come, I am at your service.” It was another moment of hesitant, hanging silence before she added—because it felt inadequate to do nothing else, “I am…sorry for your loss.”

Our loss.

Though she hadn’t known the girl personally, there was no denying it felt personal to her as well—Zinnia being a sister to her as were all the Elaria. But to Nivalis she imagined it was a more private and deeper hurt. Buried closer still to the heart such that it would feel inaccurate to equate them. Insulting, even.

Naqenni had felt a strange hesitance initially, a stiffness born of two competing factors. Nivalis was on the one hand her little sister, no longer a small child but still far from grown and of an age where it still felt appropriate to be…gentler? Touch? Consul? She had left that to others initially, but in the girl’s presence, pressed by the weight of their loss, it felt wrong to stay—if she couldn’t be of more help.

But on the other, despite her youth, Nivalis was still her mystic. Her superior, in a sense that she was destined at least to one day overtake the matron, and despite being one of her sisters, they had not known each other as growing younglings—not the way sisters who shared the same caretaker mothers did, and Naqenni was not especially accustomed to holding or coddling.

When Nivalis moved, though, perching forward and catching at her, Naqenni felt a flush of heat dust her cheeks, and a very brief stutter of uncertainty beat against her chest as she eyed the slim fingers clasped at hers. In a moment though, she breathed out, more tension than she’d realized she’d been carrying expelling itself with the exhale, and she found that letting her legs bend was easy enough. When she did, she settled just beside and behind Niva, legs folding loosely beneath her and arm looping over as she’d gone down so that she could tug gently, inviting the younger girl into her hold if she welcomed it.

“I do thank the goddess that you, at least, are safe.”

Naqenni watched, letting her fingers curl lightly to hold when Nivalis caught at them, and it was different—even Izari, the more affectionate of her caretaker mothers, had always been sparing with overt or lingering displays—but not objectionable, she decided. Nivalis’ presence always invited a desire to shield her, and in its own way, this felt like a variation on that. At Nivalis’ words, she breathed out.

There was no way to know exactly what Nivalis had been told, how she had been raised by the Matron, or what impressions were given to her specifically by those she interacted with most. But Naqenni knew that in her earliest years, she’d been raised to understand herself and Elzira as embodiments of the future in the making, a corrected and reborn vision of something destined to right past mistakes and prove true superiority among the rest of the world. Though she was not old yet, suffice to say that where her assumptions, too, had once been that she was superior by design and fated not to fail had been amended in part and portion gradually over the years.

Perhaps ironically, given that she had made the trip with the mystic herself, it had been that voyage across the salt sea and far onto the earthling shore that had convinced her: no matter how perfectly Elzira had crafted them, they were not invincible, and as compared to overwhelming circumstances, some things would inevitably be beyond control. Perhaps it was the Matron’s faith that Elzira would protect them that lead their ‘mission’ into being approved, but in retrospect, Naqenni was not so comforted—even less so, now.

“You did everything within your power,” she said at length. “Sometimes it is not enough. Sometimes everything we have is not enough…but we must live with the outcomes we survive to see.” She debated a moment before continuing. “We have been raised to know that the goddess made us strong, and that earthlings lack in that. And we are. And they do. But…they are dangerous animals if they arm themselves, and more intelligent than the ones we ride.” Her interactions with them had been limited, but despite all she knew, they spoke. They crafted buildings. They tamed beasts. They traded in mass fashion, and if nothing else existed in quantities she hadn’t properly conceived of until witnessing it herself.

“I think that sometimes our cousins forget their strengths in their pride and age…but our sisters need to be reminded that even small, ‘weak’ earthlings are not all docile sow. It is no fault of yours that their threat was not respected for its worth…but we underestimate our enemy’s strength at our own cost.”

It was an understandable sentiment at face value, particularly coming from the perspective of the girl before her—one, like Naqenni and perhaps to an even greater extent, who had been reared since blooming to understand that she was capable, powerful, and destined for more than those about her. Yet, as Naqenni was only beginning to realize, there were dangers that came with the confidence borne of that perspective, and it might well have been some miracle that Naqenni herself hadn’t brought about greater tragedies through her own brashness.

She had certainly had — and still had — ample of it, only barely tempered by what she had seen of the earthlings on the far shore.

“We are trained longer and stronger than their children,” Naq said, “but you did not go against their children or their young warriors, as you and Zinnia are. Had you, it would have been no battle, for they are not trained as you. Earthlings are largely weak because they do not focus on their strength as we do and many are not trained at all. Those, though, were the bravest among them, to have strayed as foolishly far as they did.”

To have come from a race of largely untrained cowards Naqenni at least assumed those they had faced must have been if nothing else bolder and more foolish—and capable enough to have taken on two of their own, which was a testament to something. Still, despite her efforts, it wasn’t clear if anything she had to say was useful to, let alone encouraging for the girl before her, and it was such a rare occurrence for Naqenni to want that more than anything else.

To have something to say that would ease the situation.

It did not seem to be one of her talents.

“Whatever it was,” she said at length, “it is behind you. All that can be done is to make it nothing next time you face against them. If there is anything to that end that I can aid you with, I will service you as best that I can.”

It wasn’t a battle to begin with.

Naqenni’s eyes narrowed briefly, minutely, and a quip came to mind—she knew that, and what she had meant was-

But it hardly mattered, and it wasn’t her place to argue with the mystic. Certainly not over something such as this, particularly when the younger girl was as upset already as she evidently was. If Nivalis and Zinnia had gone against earthling children their own age, she was certain there would have been as little ‘battle’ as there had been in this case, but in the opposite way. Earthling children, left alone to their own devices, were helpless as the small, fat, penned animals earthlings kept for feed. Ripe to shoot without struggle, or so she imagined.

But earthling children did not tend to wander the jungles alone.

And rather quickly, more pressing matters presented themselves. Was Nivalis crying? Naqenni felt a stiff splinter of unease, and quelled the impulsive instinct to shift or squirm, instead holding herself forcibly still despite discomfort of indecision—what was she supposed to do? Training, hunting, battle, strife, argument and contention—all these things she thought she knew well enough how to handle. The grief of her young tribe leader, however, was alien territory.

She could not even recall ever consoling a tearful friend—if any of her sisters could truly be called that. Cooing and coddling felt out of the question, as they did not come naturally and hadn’t been asked for. But leaving, too, felt inappropriate, and as much as she did not want to linger needlessly if it bothered the girl to have her, nor was she prepared to budge until it was clear Nivalis did indeed want to be alone.

“I will leave if you bid it, mystic,” she said at length. “But my time is never wasted on you.”