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 Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 10:30 pm
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Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:49 am
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Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:56 am
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ღ ❅ Sweet Sixteen ღ ❅
“You lost.”
To the west, Sauti’s sun sank towards the far horizon, murky gold in the yellowed air, and nearer to the looming crags with each passing minute. A breeze crisp with evening skittered down the streets of Tinerr, rustling his clothes and making Jakkoa’s skin prickle to attention, and he pulled his riding cloak closer about his shoulders. Then, he turned his focus on the girl across from him, his eyebrows raised.
“You lost,” he repeated, shifting to a half-sit against the circle of red bricks surrounding the well at his back. “That’s a silver you owe, and you have to admit that I’m the most handsome boy you’ve ever laid eyes on in all your life.”
Teya Harrister was a narrow girl with a no-nonsense face and squared shoulders, but long, waving blonde hair only a shade or two darker than Jak’s own. Her blue eyes bore into him for several protracted seconds before she rolled them. “You cheated.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“You knew Ethis wasn’t home—”
“I did. But knowing something someone else doesn’t when you make a bet doesn’t make you a cheater,” Jak said. “It’s how betting works.” At her look, though, he softened his expression for her sake and put on a smile. “But I am sure if I hadn’t known, yes, you would have ‘won’. Does that make you feel better?”
After an indignant huff, Teya eyed him for a long moment. Then, she dug into her trouser pocket, fishing and pulling out a silver coin piece before pressing it none-too-gently into his outstretched fingers when he opened them.
“And?” he said, fingers coiling and tucking the silver away.
She shook her head. “You might be pretty.”
“That’s not what we agreed on. You said you would admit—”
“I said I would tell you you were beautiful,” she said. “Not ‘handsome.’ And I didn’t say I would ‘admit’ to anything. Just that I would say it. It doesn’t make it true, or even mean I believe it.”
“Of course it doesn’t make it true,” Jak said, gold eyes meeting her stare with amusement. “It’s already true—whether you say it or not can’t affect that. I just want to hear you say it. And I did say it had to be the most—”
Teya jabbed a finger to his chest. “You…are the most beautiful boy I’ve ever laid eyes on,” she said. “And the most vain, self-absorbed—” He pouted, and she narrowed her eyes. “Don’t give me that look, sunny locks.”
He reached out, giving a gentle tug to her hair. “Speak for yourself.”
“Funny looking long ears,” she quipped back, and he shifted his posture, tipping his head. A wind lass through and through, she didn’t sport that particular feature herself. “Yellow-eyed freaky deaky.”
“I think they make me look exotic.”
“You think everything makes you look—”
“Jakkoa.”
Jak’s gaze snapped towards the voice, shoulders sinking down and back and brow furrowing at the sight of his step-mother. “Yes, ma’am?”
Palvari stood with her hip cocked, his little brother, Jorah, perched upon it and clinging to his mother’s neck and hip despite his solid three years of age. “Tammock’s been lookin’ all over for you, child. The Trantes are here and he’s working all on his lonesome loading up while you dance the streets. I’d have sent Alise out after you but she’d lose her way, young as she is. You, though, ought to know better.”
Jakkoa slipped from the well’s wall, dusting his hands over his front and shrugging off the hand Teya had placed at his shoulder. With a glance to her, he opened his mouth, and then thought better of it, and pushed a smile into place instead. “If I never return, maiden fair, it is because I have been swallowed by the long mountains, and the shadows that creep between them.”
She scoffed, the heel of her palm butting up against him in wordless reprimand for the dramatics. “Don’t be ridiculous. But Jak—”
“Write a ballad about me?” he asked, backing up as he did, towards Palvari. “Even if you have to start over a hundred times to make it perfect, and befitting of my memory…”
“It will go a little something like this!” she called out as he turned to go. “Oooohhh, Jakkoa he was a boy so fair, he’d spend five hours to brush his hair, and by the gods was he so vain, that one day he was eaten by a mountain cat!”
“That doesn’t rhyme, Teya,” Jakkoa said without so much as a glance back. If she said anything else, though, it was quieter and out of earshot or swallowed up by the winds before reaching his ears.
Barrish and Rina Trante were present at their wagon as promised, and already well underway discussing things with his father, as well as packing, unloading, and rearranging. Now that Tammok had a family of his own, he couldn’t give the mountain tours that he once did, apparently, before Jakkoa’s birth, but they were still on the move almost constantly, acting as a go-between among the small towns of Sauti and up into Zena and back again, transporting goods for trade and playing the part of a carrier for those with more stationary lifestyles. Jakkoa was quickly drafted to the process.
It was well into early night by the time they finished, after which he brushed down and fed their aldabuk and three capramels with the help of the older of his two younger sisters, Alise, milked the two females, and then joined his step-mother in preparation of dinner. When that was finished, the dishes washed, the food packed, and Jorah and Amarda had been settled to bed in their furs, the stars twinkled like salt diamonds against the black night overhead, and the moon glowed, full and round as a bowl of milk.
Jakkoa sat with his boots off, bare feet dangling over the back lip of their wagon as he settled with his qiita: a traditional string instrument defined by a long, varnished wooden neck supporting its six strings threaded over a wooden bowl of a resonating chamber, topped with carefully cured, primed and stretched leather, in this case aldabuk skin. It could be played with the fingers for a more harp-like sound, or plucked and thrummed to the livelier pace of a drinking or traveler’s song around a rowdy campfire.
Jak played quietly, opting for the softer option and experimenting with his notes while his siblings slept, all just unobstructive enough to make out the sound of his father and stepmother’s voices as they spoke around the opposite side of the wagon. Hushed intentionally, as though not intended for the ears of their children.
“…and they’ll be coming through, in a few days.”
“But we agreed…Tammok, we agreed we wouldn’t be on the move again so quickly with Amarda sick, and Jorah—”
“It’s only a bit of a cough, isn’t it?” his father answered. “Besides, it would only be me to leave, not you. I would travel up with them, Rickar and his company, take the few things that we wanted to deliver all the way to Zidel. You could remain here with the children, and Jak to help you.”
Palvari scoffed. “That boy is but a child himself. Do you know I caught him gambling again today, when he ought to have been minding wagon with you?”
“Gambling?”
“He was with that Harrister girl. By the goddess I forget her name, but you know the one. It’s all he ever gets up to with her and that lot of boys she calls brothers. Betting any coin they can scramble together on this or that and stunting dangerously for it. She’ll end up with one in the belly before long if her mother doesn’t see to it she minds herself better, and Jak, if you don’t have a word with him about handling coin less recklessly, he’ll be a man on the street one day who’s gambled the clothes off his back.”
“Children make silly wagers all the time. As you said, he’s not a man yet. Perhaps starting early will teach him some needed lessons. Besides, there’s a difference between a kid’s bet of a few spending coins and ‘gambling.’”
“It’s all gambling, just with less to lose.”
“Do you know if he won or lost?”
“Tammok.”
A tug to his sleeve jerked Jakkoa from his eavesdropping, bringing light to the fact that his fingers had paused on his instrument strings long ago, and he glanced down. Amarda’s summersky-blue eyes peered up at him from under a mop of dark blonde hair, her favorite thick, woven blanket pulled tight about her shoulders in a bundle so that only her toes peeked out the bottom as she settled beside him. He arched his eyebrows.
“Ama…you should be sleeping. And leaning so close, you’ll get me sick. Don’t you want to get better?”
“It’s not that kind of sick.” She spoke quietly enough that the hoarseness in her voice was almost impossible to notice. “Even though momma thinks it is, it isn’t. Jorah keeps moving and kicking me and fussing while he sleeps, so I can’t.” Touching a finger to the bowl of his qiita, she glanced up to him. “Are you writing me a song?”
The preceding commentary gave Jakkoa pause, but after a moment, he adjusted his grip and position, making no move to usher her off as Amarda settled her head against his arm like a pillow. “It so happens I was,” he said. “But I couldn’t think of a pretty enough title. How do you feel about My Little Mountain Flower?”
Lips curving up around a yawn, she shut her eyes, nodding. “It’s good.”
Thus, Jakkoa began again, playing a soft, experimental melody that threaded into the night air, meshing with the winding breeze and humming of moon critters—one of many simple compositions that he’d put together since beginning to learn the instrument. When Amarda was asleep again at his side, he set it away, and maneuvered himself as carefully as he could to lift and tuck her back into her bedding, this time slightly further away from Jorah, who did indeed look to be stretching fully out and stirring with substantial frequency. His father’s face greeted him when he returned to the back lip of the wagon.
“You’re still up.”
Jakkoa nodded, and for a long pause after that, quiet stretched between them. Since his father had come around back, as opposed to directly settling for the night with Palvari, Jakkoa anticipated that some line of planned-for interrogation, questioning, or general discussion was in store. Boisterous as he could be when charming a crowd or customer, however, his father often needed a moment to gather his thoughts when it came to more serious conversation. Jak settled to a sit.
“You are almost sixteen, you know,” Tammok said at length, and Jak glanced to him, watching as he shifted his weight and set his hands on his hips. “I know…your mother and I were never quite sure what day it was, but…” He nodded, squinting up towards the moon as if in its silvern glow a calendar lurked. “Nearly sixteen.” Another pause ensued as Jakkoa waited for a more to-the-point elaboration of what his father wanted to talk about. “Palva said you’ve been making bets again.”
Jak debated, studying his father’s expression and trying to discern if this were the topic in question, or another diversion. Eventually, he shrugged, watching his father’s face as he said, “I won.”
The smile that Tammok tried but failed to hide gave him away, and Jak relaxed. “There’s a boy…anything good?”
“Just a silver piece, but…” Jakkoa pulled one knee up towards his chest, lifting his gaze to the stars, “…little things add up.”
“Your mother used to say that,” Tammok said, and Jak’s gaze flit back down, focusing on him. “All the time, she would say that…” Though he had done so more when Jakkoa was younger, it was rare now, to hear his father talk of his mother, and the moment gave him pause, the silence that followed heavy with things unspoken. Then, his father broke it again. “Your uncle Rickar is coming through Tinerr in the next few days.”
This sounded like destination topic, and Jak listened.
“He’s coming with a travelling party of a dozen or so, and they’ll be heading up to Liem, Coeld, and Zidel in quick order, faster than we’d make the trip as a family. But we have several things best sold in Zidel, and a pick up there. Palva doesn’t want to move again until your sister is well and your brother begins sleeping more soundly…so I will be travelling with them alone, leaving you here to—”
“I don’t want to be alone with her that long.”
It was immediately obvious that this response was both expected and unwanted. “You will not be alone, Jakkoa…you will be here with your sisters and brother, your friends in the village, and—”
“They’re not my friends.”
“Jak.”
“They’re just like any other set of anyone my age,” Jak snapped. “They think and say and want and do the same things, and maybe for a little bit it can be entertaining, but eventually it’s boring and I couldn’t really make friends with anyone anyway since we’re always moving about and we would leave again in the end. But even that doesn’t matter, because as soon as you’re gone she likely won’t let me so much as leave the wagon. It will be, ‘Clean this, Jakkoa.’ ‘Fetch that, Jakkoa.’ ‘Hold your sister, Jakkoa.’ ‘Quiet your brother, Jakkoa.’”
“She won’t—”
“She hates me.”
“She does not hate you, boy,” Tammok clipped, and Jak’s gaze twitched back to him, not even bothering to restrain his glowering pout. Tammok was having none of it. “I understand that you two do not get along so well as you could—”
“It’s more than that. She doesn’t want me around at all, Papa.”
“You’ve said it,” Tammok conceded. “And I’ve heard you say a dozen and again times, but I don’t see it. And I don’t believe it.” He shook his head. “Palvari loves me, and your sisters and brother…and she loves you, Jakkoa.”
Jak gave a loud, withering scoff, slouching back against the side of the wagon as he did and folding both arms around his legs as he brought the second up to join the first at his chest. When he opened his mouth, however, his father continued.
“She expects more from you because you are the eldest—”
“She hates me because you made me with mother and not her. And because you loved mother then. And because when she looks at my ears and eyes and sees—”
“She expects you,” his father interrupted sternly, “to act responsibly, like a growing young man and a future leader of a household…like an adult. Not a whining, petulant teenager.”
Jakkoa glowered at him from beneath gold lashes. For a long moment that lasted as it was: a staring contest between Jakkoa’s pout and his father’s unmoving expression. Then, as abruptly as it all came, Jak abandoned the look, straightening his posture, sitting up, dropping both legs over the lip of the wagon to dangle and pinning his father with something starkly more serious.
“Let me go instead.”
Tammok blinked, visibly thrown by the rapid change in course.
Jakkoa took full advantage of the space to make his case. “Amarda is sick and Alise or Jorah could become so soon, too. We don’t have much left in terms of coin, mostly just things to barter, but you’re far better at bringing in game than I’ll ever be on my own. I’ll be mostly only useful doing the things Palva can do already without me, and she’ll complain I’m doing them wrong besides. She doesn’t want you to go, and would be far happier if you didn’t, and it’ll be good for everyone to have you here. But I can take whatever we need up to Zidel without any trouble. I know how to barter, and I know where and what needs to be sold and to who, and I know Uncle Rickar. He wouldn’t complain having me along—”
“You’re fifteen—”
“Sixteen,” Jakkoa argued. “You said it yourself.”
“You’re still a boy,” Tammok said, frowning. “Spring is here, but only just…the weather will not be kind, further north, and the company…”
“You just finished telling me I was almost a man. We’ve been through Zena before when it’s been just as cold, and I have mother’s blood in me besides. I know the route and the land, and you said it was a party of nearly a dozen. It isn’t as though I’ll be alone. I’ll be with your brother, and it won’t be a long trip…”
Tammok eyed him, brow furrowed, but evidently at least considering it.
“Let me make the trip instead,” Jak entreated again. “Please, Papa…?”
Finally, his father sighed. “I will discuss it with Rickar when he arrives, and speak with Palvari about it in the morning…for tonight, get some sleep. We can grapple with details with the sun at our backs.”
It was as definite of a ‘yes’ as Jakkoa could have hoped for in the moment, and his spirit swept upward with a rush of contained victory. He managed his expression, though, keeping it from betraying too much elation all at once, but smiling nonetheless.
“Goodnight, Papa,” he said, and after his father bid him goodnight and he slipped into the shadows of the wagon, closing it up for the night to stave off the chill and crawling into his own bedding, his pulse still thrummed with private excitement. Never before had he travelled without his immediate family — or, certainly not anywhere of significant distance — and the concept was freeing in a way.
Soon enough, he wouldn’t be bound by this old wagon’s path at all.
Word Count: 3,037 |
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 5:51 pm
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ღ ❅ A First For All Things ღ ❅
[ Pt. I ]
Jakkoa’s uncle Rickar was a broad man, five years his father’s junior, but taller than him by nearly a full head, and a good hand’s breadth wider in most directions. Next to him, Jakkoa looked like a sheet of gold fabric, ready to catch the wind. When the man arrived in Tinerr, he spoke with Tammok as promised, and after some discussion, agreed to take Jak in his father’s place. Items for transport were exchanged and loaded, and before the day’s end, the pair was on their way. For all that Rickar outsized his brother in girth, however, Tammok made up for in words. Rickar, by contrast, was a quiet man, prone to long silences that eventually taught Jak to pick his topics wisely, and not be disappointed when those that he did went nowhere.
It suited him well enough, aside from bouts of private restlessness. Fortunately, they were not each other’s sole company for long. A day and a half out, and partway up a mountain, they came upon Rickar’s planned-for travelling crew, the last golden threads of the setting sun’s light streaming between the rocks of the surrounding mountain range upon their approach.
“You know these men well?” Jak asked as they came around a rocky bend.
Beside him, his uncle grunted. “Enough,” he said. “Years.” Then, as they closed in on the camp, which had already been set up in light of the waning hour and smelled of smoke and the beginnings of food, Rickar pointed, giving names as he did. “Juran. Lartell. Ellion. Grenn. Relina…”
Given that there were just over a dozen of them, most circled around a growing center fire, and the rest putting finishing touches on tent raising or otherwise securing the site for a night’s camp, Jakkoa quickly lost track of names. He made note, though, of those he could, and set himself to paying attention, that he might pick up the rest along the way. When they drew close enough to dismount, a man approached, shorter than Rickar but squared off at all angles and dark enough in complexion — from his dirty-blonde beard, to his tanned beige skin and blue-green eyes — that he could have had Tale blood in his lineage. Otherwise, however, he fit among his fellows, all of the wind tribe.
“Ey, Rickar, what’s this, then?” he greeted as Jakkoa’s boots hit stoney earth, gaze moving from his uncle, to Jak himself and giving him an open once-over. “You didn’t mention you’d be having a new lass along, eh?”
Jakkoa gathered his mount’s reins, unstrapping and relocating one of the packs at its back to his own shoulders. If he’d earned a copper for every ‘tease’ he’d gotten in relation to his sex, he could have bought a wagon and beast of his own to pull it, so it didn’t seem to merit answering. The man was evidently joking, in any case. Across from him, his uncle gave a guttural snort.
“This here’s my nephew. Tammok’s eldest boy, Jakkoa. First trip without his family, this is. He’ll be takin’ the trek up to Zidel with us.”
If the man was surprised, he didn’t show it but for an instant, after which he spared Jak a wink. “I’d heard Tammok made off with an iceling lass in his early years. Never saw the result of that ‘til now, but Bergchi take me before my time if you aren’t the prettiest thing I’ve seen come from scandal.” He held out a hand. “Juran Makkosh. Welcome to the big family.”
After adjusting the weight of his pack, Jakkoa extended his hand and returned the shake with a smile, subtle but there. “Jak,” he said. “I’m happy to be along and look forward to the company.”
Juran’s own grin stretched, teeth flashing. “I bet you do.” He notched his head to Jakkoa’s pack. “Let me give you a hand with that, eh? Get some weight off your shoulders. Come introduce yourself.”
So, Jakkoa did just that.
They’d caught the troupe in time for supper, which was prepared and consumed with relish, and after which, talk and music became the primary focus of the evening. Jakkoa spent that time putting names to faces, making himself part of their various activities and acclimating to the group. He spoke for some time with Relina, a woman from western Sauti who’d travelled across several borders, making her living on the road with her music, when not actively trading. Then, storytelling became enough of an event that it pulled most everyone still awake into the fold — either relating or listening.
His uncle retired to his tent at around that point, advising Jak to do similarly, but after nodding and agreeing, Jak proceeded to ignore the advice as soon as the man slipped from sight. Instead, he settled to listen.
“…so there I was, a good day’s ride in fair weather east of Secer in near dead winter, alone and a half mile out from my camp, huddled in a cave with not a spitting clue whether or not I’d see daylight after this blizzard again. I got on me nothin’ but a skinnin’ knife and an old fire stick, and this shadow is creepin’ closer round the corner. Scfff, scfff—sccff, scfff…” The speaker imitated claws with his hands, hunching himself in the shadows of the fire. “I hear its paws and the clickin’ of its talons, and I’m so cold this point mind you, I’m half gone upstairs. I figure it’s a mountain beast. A great cat or some other wild thing worse than anythin’ I could imagine. I ready myself, though…”
Jakkoa settled his weight back, adjusting his posture to a leaning sit as he listened.
“…and around the bend it comes, me wired up as a perzi with its tail bent ten ways—and it’s a wee raptrix pup. No bigger than the length of my arm yet. A mess, but clearly not a wild thing, musta got itself lost and hidden in from the storm just like myself. Close to Secer as I was, I later thought to myself it wasn’t so strange of a thing after all, but by the goddess, in that moment…”
The explanation went on, but from there, Jakkoa’s attention wandered sidelong. During the unfolding of tales, eventually a cluster of their group had pulled away, a handful of five men now off to the side, handling what looked to be a deck of playing cards. Glancing to the woman at his side, Jak gave her a light, attention-getting nudge with his elbow.
“Relina…what are they playing?”
She glanced up, blinking at first and looking where he pointed, then grunting. “A betting man’s game,” she said. “What exactly you call it depends on where it’s played and who you’re with, but…around here, usually thieves’ poker or twenty card chase…” She looked ready to leave it at that and turn her attention back to the storyteller, but something in Jakkoa’s expression must have tipped her, for instead, she raised her eyebrows. “It’s a numbers game, guessin’ your chances and tryin’ to beat the dealer. But they play for real coin.” She shook her head. “Not somethin’ for young boys.”
“Would they mind if I watched?”
She scoffed, but her lips curved up as she shook her head. “Nay, I’d say it’d give ‘em somethin’ finer to look at than their ugly faces while they went about it. But if you—”
Jakkoa, though, was already standing, and after a ‘thank you’ for her explanation, he didn’t look back to see if her eyes followed him as he approached the group of men. They were playing atop a makeshift table — a plank of flat wood, covered by patterned cloth atop which they placed their cards and bets — five in number, total, until Jakkoa’s arrival. As he stepped up, the man who had greeted he and his uncle, Juran, looked up first.
“Aye, boys would you look here…if it isn’t Rickar’s little tag along calf…” The man’s smile was toothy, and backed by quiet chuckles from his crowd. “Welcome, lad. Can we help you?”
“I wanted to watch, that’s all,” Jak said with a shake of his head. “May I?”
After a brief upward twitch of his thick brows, Juran shrugged. “Surely, be our guest. You can sit right here by me if you like. We’re ‘bout to start another round. Have you seen it played before?” There was a roll to the man’s accent as he spoke, subtle but notable. Jak shook his head in answer to the question, but did not hesitate before settling as offered, adjusting himself to sit at the man’s side.
“Similar,” he said. “But not this.”
“Fancy yourself a gambler, do you?”
Jak glanced to him, but did not answer, and a moment later, the cards were being shuffled and redealt. He watched several rounds in silence, observing the interplay of the men and the application of the rules. They played with a two-suit deck of knights and scholars, black and gold, respectively, and the goal was ever to beat the dealer, attempting to bring the ‘point’ count of a four-card hand as close to but not surpassing nineteen. The rules were not complicated. If anything, the more he watched, the more simple it seemed, while all the while, the plays continued to circle, coin passing hands with all the verbal back and forth that went with it.
Finally, as a round ended, Jakkoa shifted in. “I’d like to join.”
Word Count: 1,589 |
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 5:55 pm
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ღ ❅ A First For All Things ღ ❅
[ Pt. II ]
Immediately, Jakkoa’s request to join earned him stares.
“We’re playing with real coin, lad. Better to watch, I think—”
“I have some silver.” Jak curbed the urge to add that he had been watching entire time and knew quite well that they were betting with currency. Still, his statement was met with a frustrating mix of amusement and discomfort.
“We don’t want to bet you out of your allowance, eh? Why don’t you watch another round or so and then make off to bed like a good lad.”
“Let me in one round…” Jak said. “If I lose, I’ll sleep and leave you all be.”
“And if you win?” Juran asked, tapping thick fingers to his deck as he shuffled it. His eyes looked green in the dark as Jak met his gaze.
“After I win, I’ll keep playing until I have something worth quitting with.”
“After you win,” Juran repeated. He kept his tone even, but the corner of his mouth edged up with the words, evidently amused.
“Aye,” Jak said. “After.”
A handful of seconds passed wherein silent debate passed. Then, Juran relaxed his posture, flicking once more through the cards before nodding to the man at his left. “Alright, you heard the young man. We’ll start a low round to ease him in, eh? Bets on the bottom bracket, cap at three silvers.”
Jakkoa’s first winning hand earned him a round of amused cheers, and a private, elated sense of satisfaction. He did not win every play, of course, but after his initiation, it all felt smoother, easier, and distinctly more real to be an active part of the group. He managed not to lose the small handful of coin he started with, instead gradually through give and take building up his stock as his eyes followed each play through a deck.
Three, two, and a swordsman… meant there was one less of each of those in the remaining stack and in other players’ hands. The deeper into a round it got, the more difficult it became to juggle in his head — if two of the four five point cards had been pulled and many counter cards laid, then the odds of a face-ten value being drawn rose with each play — and he was far from perfectly on point, but it helped to try, and more than once, having an idea of what remained in the deck tipped the ‘odds’ in his favor.
When he’d made twice what he’d started with and the hour was waning, he ought to have stopped. For all its intrigue, there was still more chance involved — particularly as he got tired — than was wise when betting, and he had made significant grounds. It would have made sense to quit.
“Alright, two double or nothin’ rounds and we’ll call it close.” Juran glanced his way. “Slipping off on us, golden boy?”
‘Yes. Yes, yes…goodnight everyone.’ Jakkoa opened his mouth, glanced to the cards, and: “Not a chance,” he said. “I will when we all leave.”
It was, unfortunately, a terrible mistake.
Of course, it was always a terrible mistake to take part in an ‘all or nothing’ gamble without chance of redemption unless there were no odds at all and it was a question of fact. A thread of adrenaline got to him, though. An irrational cockiness and sense of inflated confidence that he recognized, but was equally powerless to ignore—or chose not to. He’d done well so far. He was calculating his chances, why shouldn’t he do well one more time? It would double his winnings. But then, luck was loyal to no one.
“No,” he blurted before he could curb his tongue when his last play fell short, earning him — much to his chagrin — a chuckle from Juran. Frustrated heat gathered at his throat along with a tight knot in his chest. “I want part of the last round.”
“You’ve nothing left to put in, lad…that was all you got.”
“But if I just—”
“I’ll front the boy his cost,” a third voice cut in, and both Juran and Jak’s gazes snapped that way. The speaker was an older man, late thirties to early forties with strands of white threaded into his blonde beard. He’d spoken the least of the group, and as such, Jak had yet to catch his name. He dropped a small handful of coin in the center table, presumably equal to all it was that Jakkoa had earned and then subsequently lost. “Let him in on one more round.”
“In exchange for what?” Jak asked. In retrospect, perhaps he shouldn’t have, but a ‘gift’ with no expected payback rarely sat well with him. In response, the man tipped his head.
“If you win the double, you take your coin, and hand me back mine. Even split, no one loses, you get your winnings back. If you lose my money in addition to yours…” The man gave a vague toss of his fingers as though weighing options before glancing to him. “You can come spend the night in my tent and we’ll call it even, how’s that sound?”
There was a brief bubble up of laughter from the surrounding company, though if Jak wasn’t mistaken, Juran did not look as amused. The suspicion was confirmed a moment later, when the man spoke up. “He’s just a kid, Lio—”
“What’s your name?” Jak cut in, ignoring Juran and turning his focus to the man making the offer.
Blue eyes met his stare. “Ellion,” he said. “Ellion Makkosh.”
“Jak—” Juran started.
“I’ve never shared a man’s furs for a night,” Jak said. “So just a chance at winning back what I’ve lost alone doesn’t seem a fair wager by comparison, and I don’t think I’d dream of gambling my honor for so little. So, no. But if we alter the terms…” He glanced to the man. “If I win, I take all of it. My lost earnings and yours, doubling my take. If I lose…” He tapped his cards together, offering them to a frowning Juran to add them to the shuffle, “…then I will come to your tent.”
It was clearly not what anyone at the gathering expected to hear. After the moment it took for the information to sink in, however, the reactions came in mixed, most looking as though they were trying to decide if the exchange was serious or not. The man in question, though — Ellion — took his pause, and then gave a minute nod and roll of his shoulders, notching his chin to Juran that they might get started.
“You got yourself a wager, kid.”
Grunting, Juran began his shuffle.
Word Count: 1,134 |
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Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 7:41 pm
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ღ ❅ A First For All Things ღ ❅
[ Pt. III ]
Thhp, thhp, thhp, thhhp.
Jakkoa watched with rapt attention as cards were dealt out. He took his when given, fanning them between his fingers. The rounds went, play by play. Five plays to a full round, after which the points were tallied. Jakkoa held even until the final drop, at which point he bared his: a scholar, two, three, and a prentice, which could serve as either a one point or ten point card.
“Sixteen,” Jakkoa said.
Juran eyed him, pursed his lips. The others in the circle played their hands, after which, Juran flipped his. “House. Nineteen. Turn in your coins, boys. It’s been a good night.”
The heat started low, at first, gathered around the base of his neck and climbing. It was a silly thing. A ridiculous thing, but all the same it kept it up, crawling from there to his cheeks and out along the length of his ears. His pulse felt like a small amphibian in his throat, physical and thrumping.
“Jak.”
He blinked, glanced to Juran, and then cleared his throat, nodding and pushing over the lost coin into the pile. It felt decidedly less like a traditional loss, however, and more symbolic somehow, his fingers half-numb at the push.
“If you don’t want—”
Jakkoa stood, smiling. “Thank you for allowing me to join your game. It was a pleasure.”
He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do at that point, but what he did was glance to Ellion — who was not even looking at him — purse his lips, and withdraw. He headed to his uncle’s tent first, but watched the group as he did. The rest of the camp had since retired, leaving the site quiet, and mostly dark but for the last embers of the dying center fire. The ‘gamblers’, however, lingered, discussing things now out of earshot. He fetched his brush, a hair tie, a hand mirror, and his bedroll.
When he glanced again from behind the tent flap, Ellion was still speaking to Juran, the only two of the group remaining. He brushed his hair. Braided his hair. Eyed it. Undid and redid it, and they were still talking—
Then, finally, Ellion stood, retreating to one of the tents.
Jakkoa waited until Juran did also before slipping from his, out across the site, and into Ellion’s.
“Get out.”
Admittedly, it was not the greeting Jak anticipated. He stared for a moment, waited, and eventually opened his mouth. Ellion turned before he got a word out, gaze flicking once over him. He lifted a rolled smoke, trapped between two fingers and aglow at the end to his lips, drawing in and blowing before he repeated himself.
“Go on,” he said. “Get out.”
“You—”
“Figured I’d give you a shot at not losin’ everything. Stupid of you. And of me. Figures. But get on back to your uncle’s tent. Don’t think he’d be pleased not to find you there come morn.” After saying it, the man crouched, tapping the barrel of his smoke to a shallow clay ash bowl and letting it sit there a moment as he moved to unfasten his boots. Once finished, he retrieved his smoke and glanced back up, eyeing Jak — who had yet to move — as he drew on it. “How old are you?” he asked at length. “And don’t bother ly—”
“Sixteen.” Jakkoa dropped his sleeping roll, and then knelt beside it—directly next to Ellion’s own furs, for there was little room to spare in the small tent. “Just so.” After stretching it out, he sat cross-legged atop it. “And you?”
“Full of a lot of nerve, you are…” Ellion’s gaze trailed up him, narrowed with suspicion or just speculation, Jak couldn’t tell. “Said you were a virgin, didn’t you?”
“I said I’d never slept with a man. Not that I hadn’t ever with anyone.”
The man stared for a long moment, then broke into a sort of scoffing laugh. “Don’t know what you’re shootin’ for, kid, but you aren’t going to find it here.”
“I made a bargain, and it was to spend a night here—”
“You can lay, if you’re so determined. But mind you I sleep the way the gods made me…” Ellion made the statement in the process of following through with it, overcloak and then shirt stripping from over his shoulders, followed shortly after by a hand moving for his leggings. “And right this moment? You have the benefit of me tired and not givin’ a whole lot of damn about much. If I was you, I’d take full advantage of that and see myself on out back to your uncle while the chance presents itself. Come morn, if you’re still lingerin’ about in my space and happen to be the first thing my hand finds while I wake, I can’t promise I’ll behave so well as I ought.”
Jakkoa frowned, opening his mouth because what was that supposed to mean? But then, Ellion was as clothesless as ‘the gods made him’, and Jak diverted his gaze, cheeks coloring in spite of himself as the sound of shuffling ensued. Several moments after Ellion had settled under his furs and squarely turned his back to him after blowing out the sole candle previously providing light to the room, Jak sat in silence in the darkness.
It was tempting to leave.
Though perhaps it ought to have been a relief, instead Jak felt oddly rebuked, and out of place. Unwelcome, even. To slip out of the tent, though, would be to concede on some level his discomfort, and beyond that, perhaps more importantly, to default on his bargain. The latter wouldn’t do. So, in the quiet dark, Jakkoa braided his hair to keep it neat in the night, stripped for sleep, and settled in his furs.
He would leave in the morning, and none of it would matter.
Word Count: 994 |
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Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:26 am
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Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 4:57 pm
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ღ ❅ Gray Sky Morning ღ ❅
Skimming fingers. Brush. Touch.
Breath.
Neck.
Jakkoa stirred, mind groggy with the haze of sleep and weighted by the lingering sense of dreaming. In the dream, calloused fingertips traced the line of his throat. A mouth touched just beneath his ear. A hand caught at his hip, tugging him back and fitting him against—
He blinked, frowning, lashes still heavy as reality continued to seep in. “Wh…?” He shook his head because something was not right with this picture. “It’s not…morning yet…”
“Has anyone ever told you you have real pretty long ears?” Between the scratchy unfamiliarity of the voice, its closeness, its deepness, and the sudden click into focus that almost nothing about him was familiar—Jak stiffened. He jerked around, immediately as wide awake as his body could manage and facing off against the face of the man sharing his sleeping quarters. There was next to no light in the tent, no candles, and no hint of sunrise yet, making Ellion’s features a tapestry of black and grey shadows.
“What were you doing?” Jak hissed.
“Thought that much was obvious.”
“No—” Jak twisted, huffing shaking his head as he lifted a hand to rub at his eyes. “It’s not—it’s black out, and I was sleeping, I don’t know you, so get—”
“Sun’ll be risin’ in an hour’s time if that, and you didn’t seem to take much issue with the ‘not knowing’ part last night. Told you to get out then if it pleased you, but if you were still in my bed come mornin’…”
Heat crawled up Jak’s neck, into his cheeks until it felt as though it were warming the whole of his face, and he glowered into the darkness. “Well, I changed my mind,” he quipped. “I don’t like being woken by strangers when it’s black and not morning. It’s rude, and not what I bargained for, and I—”
“Get out, then.”
Jakkoa lay still for a moment, still frowning in Ellion’s general direction, though now from a vantage point of laying on his back in the furs and squinting up at the older man. “Now…?”
Ellion shifted, and in a moment, they were closer together again, his larger, heavier body blocking Jak in, and Jak stiffened—but not so much so as last time, for there was warning now, and still the opportunity to leave, and not everything about it was unpleasant. Jakkoa’s hands took up a temporary perch on Ellion’s chest. Not pushing, yet, but holding ground.
“I don’t think you’re fully on the wagon for what I’m trying to communicate here, kid…this here?” Ellion’s breath skirted his ear again as he spoke, close enough to dust at Jak’s hair, and Jak shut his eyes. “This is my tent, and my bed, and in my tent, the things I wanna do, those are what get done. In your tent? Maybe you do what you want. You wanna sleep? You get out, and you get in your tent. And yes. ‘Now’.”
Jakkoa eyed the man, and was loathe to admit that already, his view of him looked clearer, as though the dark was already lifting just slightly. Perhaps it was his imagination, though, or his eyes adjusting. He curled one of the fingers at the man’s chest, scuffing it through the coils of hair there. The man didn’t smell bad, was fit, and had seemed attractive enough the night before. Surprised though he’d been, he had been prepared for—even expected this sort advance from the man and wouldn’t have made the initial bargain if he hadn’t been willing at the time.
And when it came down to it, he really, well and truly did not want to gather all his things, dress, and trek through the undoubtedly icily frigid morning from this tent into his uncle’s, no telling who would see or question him in the process.
So, he gave a small huff of an exhale. He adjusted his hips, and then he spared the man an underhanded glance from beneath gold lashes. “How much effort on my part do you think will be required in doing what ‘you want’ to do?” he asked at length. “For example, I don’t suppose there’s much chance I could sleep, and you could do…whatever it is you’re wanting to?”
Ellion eyed him for a long moment. Then came some snorted cough of a laugh, and in the next instant, before Jak had full time to react, he was being flipped and redeposited, yelping in his startlement as he landed, stomach down to the furs and backside to Ellion’s chest and—well, backside to most all of Ellion as that were, except for a touch of lips to the tip of his ear and the grunted words that accompanied them.
“You’re welcome to try…”
Needless to say, ‘trying’ rapidly became an exercise in futility—and not one which Jakkoa actually felt all that attached to in the end after all. By the time they finished, the tent was a distinctly paler shade of grey, and most of its inner details were visible. Jak lay still, eyes shut and then at half mast as Ellion moved about the tent, washing and dressing before heading out without a word. For a time, Jak intended to go back to sleep. He was thoroughly satisfied—more so than he’d expected, certainly—relaxed, and at ease.
But, unfortunately, no longer tired at all.
Awake as he was, continued rest eluded him stubbornly and in time, he gave up on it, rising instead and washing also before brushing his hair and dressing for the cold morning. When at last ready, clothed in boots, soft leather leggings, tunic and vest, he pulled his cloak about his shoulders, and slipped out of the tent. A fire glimmered warm in the cool morning, the sky still dark enough overhead to see stars, and under his feet, the gravel earth crunched with his footsteps.
Ellion did not look up from prodding the edge of the growing fire, where he had started a hanging pot to boil, but he did ask: “Coffee?”
Jakkoa blinked. “What does it taste like?”
Ellion’s eyebrows snapped up, attention lifting to him with evident surprise. “You’ve never had it?” At Jak’s head shake, he made a miffed noise. “For an adventurous boy, you have a lot of firsts ahead of you. Sit.”
Jak hesitated a moment, but sat, and proceeded to watch as Ellion worked, tin cups clinking and clacking, and a small metal spoon scraping down into a sealed container of some deep brown powder that he served into the cup before adding the heated water. There seemed to be a whole process to it, and while Jak was familiar with various plants that could be cooked into teas, this looked different.
“Bitter poison,” Ellion said at length, holding out a small tin mug to Jak, and Jak, after an assessing glance, took it, blew on it, and sipped.
Immediately, he sputtered and coughed, for it was horribly bitter and strong and who would drink— “I thought you were kidding,” Jak accused over Ellion’s laugh, but the laugh went on—deep and full and surprisingly good natured. Not wholly unobjectionable, if Jak were willing to admit it to himself over his own peeved scowling at the overall flavor.
Finally, Ellion cleared his throat, shaking his head and taking the mug back. Wordlessly, he fiddled more with it, adding in a white powder and something else—sugar, that was definitely sugar, and milk powder, Jak suspected for the first, though nothing was labeled. After stirring it together, the drink looked decidedly less ominous in blackness and more of a creamed caramel color. He held it out again. “Here.”
Still, Jak eyed him warily.
“It’s better now, I promise. Try.”
Jak did. First in the smallest of sips, but — when that proved to be satisfactory — then more so. It was better. Good, even. Sweet, smoother, and warm on the tongue, and he relaxed, sipping with a more contented hum. Ellion eyed him for a long, lingering stretch before moving his gaze on and fiddling with his things to retrieve a rolled cigar.
“You’re even prettier by day,” he said, lighting the tip of his smoke and squinting outward as he drew on it before exhaling towards the fire. The grey-white coiled through the morning like a spirit. “That’s a rarity.”
Jak thumbed up the tin of his mug, thoughtful before sipping. “I didn’t know you thought so last night, when you sent me away.”
Ellion scoffed. “Didn’t want a young thing makin’ a quick choice they’d regret come morn…and I was tired enough to let it go.” He spared Jak a glance. “And you stubborn enough to stay. Maybe was a bit less worried after that tha’ you were acting too quick for your own good.”
“Makkosh is Juran’s surname also,” Jak said. If the abruptness of the subject change caught Ellion off-guard, he blinked once, but otherwise didn’t show it. “Are you brothers?”
Ellion grunted around a puff of smoke, gaze narrowing briefly before he shrugged. “Half-brothers. He’s got a pinch extra…” He reached, flicking lightly at Jakkoa’s ear as he said, “…spice runnin’ through him. Like you, eh?” Frowning Jak leaned away from the flick and lifted a hand, rubbing at his ear and ignoring the slight. Ellion chuckled, but thankfully moved on quickly. “We’re here peddling spices, mostly, runnin’ from as far as western Tale up, up through to Zidel. And you…” Ellion eyed him. “What are you doing here, boy?”
Jak blinked. “Taking the trip up in place of my father,” he said, “so that he can stay with his wife and my sisters and brother and not leave while my littlest sister is sick.” It was true, of course. All of it. But after having said it, Jak’s thoughts lingered a moment on his last interaction with Amarda, and of his restless eagerness to get out and make the trip himself. “And I’m…looking for something,” he added finally.
Ellion’s eyebrows rose. “For ‘something?’” he repeated. “Something you expect to find gamblin’ with old dealers and laying with men twice your age?”
Jak tipped his head. “Certainly more likely there, engaging with who I’m traveling with and learning from them, being part of their stories, than if I stayed in my uncle’s tent the whole while, don’t you think?”
It was enough, at least, to earn him a laugh, and that — in the moment — seemed more than enough. “So you’re usin’ me, are you? For my body and whatever great knowledge I’ve got to impart in the meantime while you go about your grand quest for ‘something’ out there in the universe?”
“Absolutely.” Jakkoa sipped his coffee, finishing the last of it, and Ellion’s grin was feral, but amused, and took the mug wordlessly, beginning to prepare another without comment.
“Wanna learn a card trick, kid?”
Of course, Jakkoa said he did, and from there progressed their morning around the small campfire until and as their fellow travelers began to stir and rise from their tents as well to set the day underway.
Word Count: 1,898 |
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Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2016 7:46 am
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ღ ❅ The Things She Carried ღ ❅
“That was your aunt’s.”
Jakkoa startled at his father’s voice, fingers pausing where they were as he glanced back to him. It was late evening, after supper with the moon having long since risen to light the night sky, aided only by the dwindling campfire and, closer to Jak, the warm yellow-orange glow of a lantern propped in the back of their wagon bed. He let his fingers drop from simple bead set to his lap and folded a foot beneath himself.
“She was a healer?” he asked.
His father nodded. “More of a mind for it than anyone else in the family, she had. A will for it no one could shake her from though…” Tammok shook his head, “…no one from this side of the family ever gave our blood any special bond with magic.”
Jak blinked. “She wasn’t very good.” Though stated more as a realization than anything, it still had the inflection of a question, and immediately, his father shook his head.
“Oh, no, she was very good, in time. Stubborn as a quhar, and persistent as one, too. At first, she made up for her struggles with magic by learning the land and books better than anyone. Wasn’t an herb, shroom, petal or root that she didn’t know how to make use of, and she had a steady hand and eye…she did everything she could with what she had, like we all do at our best.”
Jak didn’t ask what had happened, of course, for he knew, old as he was now. His father’s eldest sister, Jaranna, had been involved in the first Oban war, having felt a calling at the time to oppose oppression and a further insurgency against all of Tendaji’s peoples. At the time, when news of her death had come fresh and close to home, his father had spoken little of the specifics, and nothing directly of her profession or the details of her involvement. Now, Jak supposed, it made sense.
“What are you doing rooting around at this hour? Usually you are on your instrument by now, or…”
“Sleeping, or reading, or packing for the morrow…” Jak tipped his head, and then shrugged, slipping a leg up. “It was a new box, I hadn’t seen among our things before. I was curious…” He spared his father a glance. “And pondering the meaning of life, Papa.”
Tammok grunted. “Your Nana, she said that after the war with the amazons…every time she looked at it, she would only think of how much Jaranna would have wanted to be there, too, fighting again. It distressed her, and…she thought it better that we take it so that ‘her spirit could inspire the new generations.’ I told her none of her grandchildren from me were going to be fighters.” He hooked his thumbs on the belt of his pants, frowning. “But…that I would take it just the same, for now.” A pause stretched there between them, after which he looked up to Jak specifically, and tapped at his collar before reaching. “This…” He slipped his fingertips beneath the beads of a dangling neckpiece at Jak’s throat, “…is new.” His gaze flit to the gold hoops in Jak’s ears. “And those.”
“They were gifts.” Jakkoa adjusted the set of the necklace after his father’s hand withdrew. His trip to Zidel had been engaging, and longer than expected, but a success on all fronts in his opinion. He’d returned but a day before. “I got to know a near everyone by the end. Uncle’s friends and some he didn’t know as well, and I made a friend.” His hesitation on the word ‘friend’ was nearly insignificant, but there just the same. “After I’d sold what you’d sent me up to and I was already in Zidel’s market, I saw some things I knew I wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. Not the same, anyway. I didn’t want to spend our coin, though…he was kind enough to get some for me.”
Tammok eyed him for an extended pause, and ignorant, Jakkoa was not. He knew well enough that his uncle Rikkar would have said something to his father, almost surely, on the subject of Jak’s ‘friendship’ with Ellion over the course of their travels. What exactly, though, and in how much detail or speculation, he had no fair idea.
Finally, his father said, “Were you born a daughter to me—”
“I wasn’t. But if I was, I imagine I’d tell you the same that I will now, besides: I’m not pregnant, Papa. I’m not hurt. And I can manage myself.”
At the word ‘pregnant’, his father sputtered, but let him finish before shaking his head. “I didn’t fear—” He drew a breath. “I simply…do not want you to sell yourself short, Jak. There is a lot in this world…and you are young, yet.”
“Trust me, Papa…” Jak’s voice took on the barest hint of leering suggestion. “I sell only for the best price I can get, and wouldn’t dream of undervaluing my assets.”
His father was unamused, immediately stiff in posture and expression. “Were I a stricter man, I might have struck you for that.”
Jak’s gaze snapped to him, startled, and then away, face blooming abashed, angry heat. “I went to Zidel. I sold what we needed to—near all of it, for good prices. I brought back profit. I wasn’t hurt, and all went as it should have, but you’d have hit me if I—?”
“I did not say would or will,” his father grunted. “I will not, but you should mind your tongue, just the same. I think I give you a great deal of leeway, so as to make your own mistakes and learn lessons as you will…but by the gods, do not abuse that.”
Jak dropped his back to the wagon wall, eyes diverted and lips shut, pressed thin.
“You did bargain well, with what you were sent up with,” his father said at length. A concession, of sorts in the quiet between them. “And…it is a great relief to have you back safe.” He looked ready to leave, there—and even took a step, as though he meant to. But he paused after that one step out. “Might you just…please not give Palvari reason to ask and discover the specifics of how and why you attained…” His gaze flit to Jak’s necklace, “…whatever gifts were given to you by your friend?”
Jakkoa thumbed at his wrist, rubbing the pad of it back and forth and avoiding his father’s gaze.
“Jak.”
He glanced.
“Please.”
Jak frowned, but eventually gave a withering puff of a sigh and a begrudging shrug accompanied by, perhaps, the most understated of nods.
It would have to do for now.
In the aftermath of his father’s departure, though, Jak did not immediately extinguish his lantern or begin prep for bed. Instead, in the dim light, he returned to the box of his aunt’s belongings and in it, in particular, the string of beads and a well-worn set of books: lists of herbal remedies, salve preparation, and instructions on identifying, cleaning and treating various wounds and infections. He ought to have slept. They would depart in the morning, early, now that he was back and his sister well again. The physician’s art certainly wasn’t an area he was familiar with, aside from the rawest basics of first aid, and he had no intention of taking it on for himself.
Despite his father’s words about persistence, talent for magic indeed did not run in his family, and Jak had been blessed with little to nothing in that regard. And unlike, apparently, his aunt Jaranna, he did not possess that single-minded passion for ‘healing the people.’ He did, however, possess curiosity, and found one of the texts in his hand and open, his eyes skimming for sections on ailments common to Sauti, and his attention engaged before he knew it.
In the morning, Palvari would scold him for burning so much oil, but the critique would slip off of him for once like rain on a greased canvas, his mind tired from a long night and thoughts distracted elsewhere.
The three years that followed that point brought with them steady, if gradual change. Though she had healed fully — so far as his family could tell, in any case — Jakkoa’s youngest sister Amarda continued to strike ill periodically, halting their travels at her worst points and slowing them at best. Each time, the symptoms were similar, generally passed over as a common cold characterized by fevers, disorientation, coughing, and fatigue. The longer this went on, however, the worse they affected her each time, so that by his eighteenth year, when she fell ill, the dangers felt far more pressing. On certain occasions, she suffered dizzy spells and memory loss or waking dreams and hallucinations in her fevered state. Once, she coughed blood. They could not afford the attention of a healer often, but each time her state became concerning enough for them to resort to it, they were told the same: it was just a fever, a cough, a cold, and the recurring nature could only be explained by natural sickliness—perhaps a weak immune system.
As he approached his nineteenth year, Jakkoa began to dedicate far more significant portions of his time to reading—and engaging anyone he met with medicinal talent. He traveled more away from his family, often with his uncle or other familiar parties which he came to know over the course of their travels, allowing him to make faster time and bring quicker profit back to the home front. And he collected anything he could in terms of useful literature on both known and speculated ailments prevalent to Sauti, Zena, and Tale, taking notes in his spare hours, keeping those texts most useful to him, and re-selling those from which he’d already gotten what he could.
Two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, Jakkoa approached his father, officially requesting to take his aunt Jaranna’s spell beads as his own. Tammok expressed expected concern, most specifically at the choice of a ‘fighter’s’ path, potentially dangerous in the long term, but Jak assured him he had no intention of taking anything he learned to a battlefield.
“I’m not a soldier. I’m not a mage…” Jak slit quick but careful with his skinning knife as he spoke, his father beside him, cleaning the hides of several he’d already removed. “I’m only a barely average shot after seven years all told with a bow. I don’t have a talent for magic…” Finishing with his cuts, Jak set his knife aside and placed his fingers carefully at and then under the edges, peeling with practiced precision. “And I am not willing to die for anyone, but…”
There was an extended pause there as he frowned, and for a moment, only the sound of his father’s scraping and cleaning, and his own hands working filled the in between. Then, finally, he spoke again.
“Ama keeps getting sick.”
“Jak…”
“There’s never not need for a physician. I’ve been speaking to the ones who’ve seen to her, and some I’ve met on the road. I’ve managed a few small spells.” ‘Sometimes.’ “And I’ve read up on more—and I’ve always tended to the capramels when they fall ill—”
“There is a difference between capramels and people as patients—”
“—and I don’t have to be the best at it, besides,” Jak said, ignoring the interruption and continuing on as he dipped his hands in the small water basin at his side, rinsing them before picking back up his knife and beginning to segment up the meat. “It will make good coin while I learn, be better than nothing for those I service, and for Ama…of course I don’t know as much, yet, as anyone who’s seen to her, and I don’t have the magic they do, but every other healer has a hundred patients, or a thousand, or more to split their focus between…” Jak turned the meat, carving close to the bone and frowning with mixed concentration. “I’ll only really have one.”
Word Count: 2,043 |
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:44 am
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ღ ❅ In All My Dreams I Drown ღ ❅
Water trickles down the mountainside. Slow, at first, but icy, melted from Zena’s snows no doubt, and it licks around Jakkoa’s feet at his ankles, stirring up a shiver that travels under his skin. He can feel it from the soles of his bare feet up to his throat, and when he looks, following the silvery trail of water up, up the rocky crags and into the high beyond, he knows more is coming. He knows he has to do something to avoid the inevitable, but always, there are temptations and distractions.
His own goals manifest themselves in the form of glimmering, smooth, opalescent stones gathered along the the floor of the ravine, and he has time, he tells himself—though some niggling sense at the back of his mind disputes this. He wants, even needs each of these stones. As many as he can gather to himself. It won’t slow him that much, and perhaps after, he’ll find a way out. He’ll find a way to keep this one, warm to the touch, and this one, smoother than anything, and then climb his way to the side after.
Cold water rises from his ankles to his calves, to his knees, to his thighs, and by then, he has pouches full, a tunic full, and this is surely enough, but the water makes it difficult to move, and the stones seem to grow heavier with each step towards the shore despite the fact that he has ceased gathering more. There’s a jutting stack of time-weathered rock near to where he started that he could have climbed, but that option is long since past, and the water reaches his hips, his waist, his stomach, his chest, his shoulders—and Jakkoa staggers, the current picking up and momentarily upsetting his footing.
He scrambles, the weight of stones sinking him, and he thrashes, abandoning them all as fast as he can rid himself of them and pushing towards the surface. But never quickly enough. The cold water beats down around him. For every breath that he manages to snatch in, three waves seem to beat at him again, throwing him into the tumult of icy tides until one particularly powerful surge thrusts him under, deep into the spinning dark.
His lungs burn. He loses track of which direction is skyward, and the water pulls too fiercely at him for him to find out. All around him, its cold seeps into his skin, his pulse thuds a wild, panicked rhythm in his throat, and his chest begins to convulse with the need to draw breath. Dizziness spins him, and then a sinking, creeping lethargia polluted by a sense of grevious loss, and guilt—
Jakkoa bolted upright, coughing and sputtering, gasping—and then frowning as his surroundings sank in, one hand rising belatedly to his throat to rub there. Under his fingers, his heart beat with all the fierce terror of cornered prey. But he was well. Awake. Dry. His eyes narrowed to a miffed squint as he lifted to a hand to his cheek, damp with cold water, and turned his gaze upward to the source—a thin leak in the overhead tarp where the knotting had come loose again at one portion and was letting rain in.
Mostly dry, he mentally amended, and shifted in his bed furs to sit up and then stand to pluck pull at the source of the issue, tightening things back as best he could. It was meant as a sort of sun roof, the tarp easy to pull away from the more sturdy structure of the main cover to their travelling wagon. But in heavy storms, things often got disturbed and the unfortunate placement occasionally left Jak to suffer the weather. Practice had made him quick at adjusting it for a temporary solution, but even after the rain stopped coming in, he found himself sitting awake atop his furs.
Around, a storm howled, wind beating the rain against the sides of the wagon and wailing like dark ghosts in the night. Further up towards the front cabin, not fully audible over the sound of it all, was his father’s voice, speaking in quiet tones with a stranger, their shapes outlined by lantern light. A healer, Jak knew now that his memories of the day — and night — before his restless sleep came back to him. Amarda’s fever had peaked in the late evening and with it, hallucinations which spurned terror-screams that still now made his blood chill to recall. They had sought out any aid they could in the moment and, in their desperosity, were now sharing their wagon with an Oban monk.
The red-orange light of the front cabin lantern was too dim from Jakkoa’s distance to be of use for anything, and after a half-minute’s hesitation wherein he considered attempting to sleep again, Jak dismissed the thought. It must have been, by now, some ways into the wee hours of morning, perhaps only one or two away from dawn, and tired though he was at his core, the restlessness in his mind dictated that he would not be getting anymore immediate rest whether or not he tried. So, he resigned himself to temporary wakefulness, and reached to light himself a small lantern of his own before sifting through the small trunk of his things beside his bed to draw out a book and several loose sheets of parchment he’d tucked inside it. Then, he set to reading.
He couldn’t have said how long exactly he did, but knew that in time his father’s voice drifted away, and his own eyes began to feel heavy. Then, the wagon creaked with movement, and he stilled, eyes snapping open and flicking to watch as their dark-skinned ‘guest’ moved through the back of the wagon. He hadn’t intended to say anything. Or, he didn’t think he did, until the words left his mouth.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Red eyes were decidedly the most unnerving hue Jakkoa had ever seen, piercing like blood, or the fire that was their namesake. Were his attitude more relaxed, he might have noted that these particular red eyes were tired, worn—and even sad—but in that moment, the finer points were lost on him.
“Blue fever, I suspect,” the woman said. “She shows a number of its signs, and it’s common to the area and those you’ve travelled.”
“I’ve never heard of blue fever causing hallucinations,” Jak said, tone sharper than it needed to be and quick on the draw. “And she keeps getting sick, and then better, but with the same things, just worse each time. Sometimes she forgets things she said if she was feeling unwell when she talked. None of those—”
“She has the fever, the cough, the chills…” The monk hesitated, and frowned, running a hand back through her dark hair, a mass of inky curls smattered with sporadic white like threads of ice. For a moment, it looked as though she might say more, or was debating, but then decided against it. “She is resting soundly now, and should be coherent when she wakes.”
“Just because a sickness has some likeness to a familiar thing does not make it so…”
The look she pinned him with in answer was, for a period, unreadable. After, however, something in the set of her shoulders loosened, sinking, and her brow furrowed. “I have seen…on rare instances, a more similar set of symptoms, but not enough to quantify into a named disease…and only ever suffered by those native to Oba’s sands. Of these patients, few and far between as they are who may not even have been weathering the same affliction at all, none survived to see their twentieth year. For your sister’s sake, boy…I would pray to your gods, and mine if it please you, that she is fighting a more familiar demon than that.”
The cold weight that the words inspired in him prevented an immediate answer, so that he could only watch, silent as she shifted her weight and cloak before proceeding to open the back way and exit into the storm, her magic like an ethereal glow about her as she pushed the weight of the closest rain away and he—in a sudden haste—moved to help re-shut the back of the wagon. In the aftermath and silence that followed, broken only by the moaning winds, he sat still with his knees to the paneled wooden wagonbed, still facing its back latch, and finally, shut his eyes.
‘I would pray to your gods, and mine if it please you…’
He pushed up and away from the back lip, took up his lantern, and moved towards the front portion of the cabin, where Amarda was tucked atop her furs. Silently as he could manage, so as not to disturb his now-sleeping parents as well, he settled to a sit beside her. Again, he lost track of time, and in this instance, couldn’t have been sure whether he dozed there or not, only that it was Amarda’s voice, muffled by furs and drowsiness, that pulled him back to full consciousness.
“Were you mad at her…?”
It took Jak a moment to process the question. “Mm…? Mad at who, little flower?”
“The big dark lady…you sounded mad.”
Jakkoa blinked, and then softened his posture, shaking his head. “No. I wasn’t mad. I only—” ‘—think she was wrong.’ If she was wrong about it being blue fever, however, and he was ‘right’ that it was something else entirely, the other possibility mentioned seemed far from favorable. So, he frowned. “I think…there is a lot out there we don’t know yet, and I…was upset that she didn’t know all about what was making you sick. That wasn’t very fair of me, was it?”
Amarda shook her head. “She made the fire go away…and she was nice to me.”
‘…none survived to see their twentieth year.’
A tight, burning knot of something akin to fear or anger—or both, and more—cinched in his throat, and it took Jakkoa a moment to swallow it down. In the time that took, Ama spoke again.
“Are you leaving…?”
This question threw him off-guard. “Leaving?” he asked, genuinely startled, for — though he had considered it — never yet had he spoken of the idea aloud. It was a vague, floating concept. Intimidating. Exhilarating. Fraught with dangers but, with every passing month, more necessary, it seemed.
“You decided…you…” She shifted on her bed furs, pulling a hand up under her chin and eyeing him with critical blue eyes. “You took Auntie Jaranna’s beads, even though you can’t do magic good, and you’ve got…lots of maps, and have been writing. I saw.”
Jak watched, listening, and — after the depth of thought process was conveyed — he hesitated only a moment before answering, “Yes…I do need to leave.” And that, as he said it, became the most final answer he’d ever given himself on the matter, either. “That healer…she helped you, I know, but she didn’t know enough. None of them know enough, but I need—” He paused, taking a breath to keep from betraying too much of his tension to eyes that most certainly did not need to see it. When he trusted his voice to be gentle again, he said, “You know that I would do anything for you, don’t you?”
“Even learn magic?”
His laugh was muted, half-strangled by the still-present knot in his throat, but there, and he smiled genuinely, eyes warm. “Even learn magic.” Reaching, he brushed careful fingers through her hair, the rain rata-tat-tapping overhead in a quiet rush for many long seconds before he spoke again. “I do need to go away, because no one here knows what’s making you sick, and I can’t let it stay that way. I might have to travel very far, farther than we’ve ever been in this wagon to lands you’ve never seen before…however far it takes to learn enough, and when I do, I’ll come back. And we’ll make you better once and for all.”
“We?” Ama asked, and Jak glanced to her.
“Yes, we,” he said. “Don’t you know, no healer can fix a patient that doesn’t want to be healthy again. Do you want to get better, Ama?”
Immediately, she nodded, blonde hair mussed atop the fur, and he smiled.
“Then you’re already doing your part. It’s time I held up my end of the bargain.” With that, he dipped, dotting kiss to the tip of her nose just for the predicted squirm and furrow of it that followed. “Get some more sleep…you’ll feel even better in the morning.”
“Promise?” she asked, already stifling a yawn as she did, and he nodded, feeling the weight of a much greater duty undertaken as he said:
“I promise.”
Word Count: 2,158
Quote: Summary: Jakkoa has a nightmare in which his selfishness in personal pursuits and hesitance to act on a larger, looming issue leads to drowning, a metaphor for his life to date at the opening scene and his failure (at that point) to address his sister’s illness himself. The nightmare speaks to Jak’s feelings of doubt and impending disaster. When he wakes he studies from a book on healing while an Oban monk tends to his sister Amarda, who has had an emergency spike in sickness, necessitating immediate care. When the healer finishes, Jak confronts her, asking about the disease and revealing that he doesn’t believe it’s a common or known one, but something new. The healer disputes this but does mention having seen some scattered instances of something similar in Oba, cautioning, though, that these cases all ended in early death. Distressed, Jak goes to his sister and reveals that he intends to travel away from the family on his own in order to seek a cure for her ailment, whatever the cost.
Plot Points
Revelation that Jak thinks Amarda’s sickness is something new or at least as-of-yet-unlabeled in Tendaji.
Foreshadowing that Jak will eventually have to travel to Oba (far in the future) in order to find his answers.
Revelation that Jak intends to leave home and his final decision to do so.
Character Development/Growth
Jak is inherently a fairly selfish character all about himself with his focus inward on his ego and his vanity - to this point, Jak’s solos and RPs (other than his class affinity which ties into this growth deeply) have been focused in that direction. With this growth, however, Jak is making the decision to sacrifice his immediate happiness, comfort, and safety for someone else (his sister), demonstrating a new maturity that wasn’t there before.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:29 am
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 7:50 pm
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 8:57 am
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 10:22 am
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Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 5:19 pm
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