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 Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:55 pm
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Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:03 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 5:59 am
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 1:50 pm
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2016 2:46 pm
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:04 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 8:12 am
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Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2016 10:25 am
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✦ Stick 'Em With The Pointy End ✦
Sajahka had never given much thought to his future.
Under the hand of his masters, the ‘future’ was an elusive and almost fictional or fantastical concept. It was what he spoke of with Nyko in private corners, what his friend became so animated about and dreamed of endlessly. A perfect be all and end all utopia that had been fleshed out — mostly by Nyko — in so many different ways at different times, but in the end all consistent in one way: it was not real. Not yet. Not then.
Without his freedom, the actual futures he had had in front of him were nothing to look forward to. Each ‘tomorrow’ only promised and delivered more of the same. Work. Heat. Pain. Restriction. Endless, changeless circles. Every expectable real new day meant nothing more than those before it, his hands bound to perform the tasks bid of him, his body an instrument for someone else’s will, and there wasn’t much else there to grasp at.
It did not help that Sajahka was not the dreaming sort.
He had engaged in Nyko’s dreams of a future, and put great value in them of course, but he found it difficult to immerse himself in fantasy. While he was willing to fight in the moment and to the end for things he considered worth it, impractical or very distant non-realities had little in them for him, and he found it difficult to become overly invested personally in things he could not see or touch. His ‘dreams’ were Nyko’s dreams. His ‘goals’ were to get Nyko to his goals.
And yet. Here he stood.
Free.
Alone at the edge of the sand where the sea met the shore, watching the surf roll in and the sun light the sky. And he had a future. Abruptly — almost jarringly — his entire world had shifted and opened up, and while it was what he had always wanted, he found himself strangely unprepared. Because previously, he had thought little beyond wanting freedom himself, little beyond all the things about his previous situation that he didn’t want, and now that they were behind him, he found himself with the new question: What did he want?
What would he do with his freedom?
Some of that answer was still centered around Nyko. He still intended to follow the man, if he would have him, to aid in whatever he saw fit to pursue going forward. But before then, before Nyko healed, before they left here, he had choices in front of him. Fortunately, one of the first was also one of the simplest and not really a choice at all. Thumbing over the hilt of one of the knives he kept at his hip, Sajah moved, stepping away from the next inward rolling swell and moving along the beachside towards the cluster of establishments that made up the Buhawi ‘camp’ apparently called as much despite the permanence of most of the setup.
He had always known — at least for however long he had known he would want to learn to fight at all — that he would fight with blades. Knives, specifically. Swords were too long and unwieldy, heavy and difficult to hide. A spear or a trident even more so, to an all but ridiculous extent. While he understood their usefulness and value in the right hands, and even the versatility they could bring, it was not his style. Any heavy or blunt weapon ran the same problem. And he had no interest in or affinity for magic.
Which left him with his knives, and in the end, they were more than enough.
He’d learned his first, most basic techniques as a youngling and growing prentice in periodic, private sessions with one of the older slaves under his masters who had consented to teaching him in the rare opportunities that arose. He hadn’t had real blades then, though, only makeshifts, and now, with all the time in the world suddenly afforded to him, he fully intended to capitalize on his changed circumstances and build upon his shaky base with proper equipment.
To make the process even simpler, Xewai had stated that among the camp of individuals there were those trained in the individual weapon types and specialties—as well as basic skills and trades, but that much could wait. For the moment, it was the first portion he was interested in.
Ezoli Faratta must have been sixty years old, but aside from the age lines creased into her face — and everywhere else on her body for that matter — she showed no signs of slowing down. She lived in a home built up amidst the rest of the camp, together with her third daughter, her husband, and their four children. He’d been directed to seek her out, the ‘master’ of the art — or certainly one of the best — but when he arrived, he hesitated.
Noises skirted out from under the door. Childrens’ laughter. Movement. The pattering of footsteps, and the calmer tones of older voices. Was this really where he ought to be, and even if so, was it a moment he could intrude upon? The concept of family, he realized — of a functioning, cohesive and active family unit that actually lived and breathed together under the same household happily and in peace — was by this point so alien to him that he barely knew what to do with it, even when separated by a door and walls, let alone—
The door opened.
He stood, had half raised in hesitance as though to knock but not there yet. A small Matorian stared back at him: wide, inquisitive yellow eyes, a mass of black-green hair, and starry pale speckles. Their gender was impossible to tell, given the age and neutral dress. A moment later, the child twisted to call over their shoulder.
“Mumaaaaaa! There’s a strange man at the door!”
Sajahka wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected from the encounter, but ‘children’ had certainly not been immediately involved, and if he had felt out of place before, that sentiment only mounted as the younger thing skipped out of the doorway and past him, onto the docks. Apparently, whatever role the child thought they had to play in making certain their elders knew of his presence, a shout over the shoulder sufficed, and whatever the child had planned on doing before spotting him in the doorway now took precedence. He stood awkwardly still, wondering for a few moments if he ought to—shut the door again? Wait? Make some variety of noise?
He dismissed the last option almost before it occurred to him. ‘Calling’ for anyone was not a pretty process when he was involved, and he prefered to leave his vocal chords out of interactions with others to the greatest extent possible.
Fortunately, someone had apparently heard the child’s call, because a moment later, there came the creak and tap of footsteps, and a woman — visibly pregnant with child — approached the door, smiling when she spotted him.
“Good morning,” she greeted. “You’ll have to forgive Miika. She’s a bright girl, but has only a moment’s patience for the rest of the world. Can I help you?”
Sajah gestured to his throat, indicating that he couldn’t speak, and then hesitating as he glanced into the house. To his great surprise and relief, however, no extra explanation proved to be necessary. After taking in his initial gesture, her eyes flit to his knives, and then her expression lit with understanding.
“Oh, you must be amidst the newest ones taken in — Nyko? Or Sajikah?” she asked.
‘Two’ Sajah gestured, holding up two fingers to indicate the second. Though it wasn’t the correct pronunciation, he was accustomed to it. He would never be able to verbally demonstrate the ‘right’ sound himself, and so his name became whatever others took away from it and reinterpreted the sounds as.
“It is wonderful to meet you, Sajikah. I am Narassa,” the woman said. “Wait here a moment and I will let Mami know you are here.”
‘Mami’ as the case would have it, was indeed Ezoli Faratta, and she looked exactly as she’d been described to him. She greeted him with a toothy smile, and — to Sajah’s great relief — also proved, like Xe, to be in the category of persons happy to make up for his silence with more words of their own. In fact, with her he quickly got the impression that even if he could speak, she would have been dominating the conversation, happily rolling along with whatever it was she had to say. Fortunately, among those things were useful bits of information, and between her talking and his nodding or shaking his head, it was quickly communicated that yes, he was here to learn, and yes he wanted to train with knives, and yes, he was ready for whatever she had to teach.
By mid morning, she had him on an open stretch of beach, correcting everything from his footwork to the curve of his back to the hold on his blades, and proving that it was possible to spend an hour without pausing one’s talking.
On the whole, it was a mutually beneficial relationship in the making.
Word Count: 1,575 |
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Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2016 1:34 pm
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:51 am
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✦ Family By Any Other Name ✦
Sajahka knew there was a reason he’d been rescued, and that that reason was family, both terms being relative.
In truth, he hadn’t seen anyone he considered family other than Nyko in more years than he cared to count. Most of his life, if he were honest. For the great bulk of his growing experience, family had been a concept, a construct, and a memory. Family was a prickling of remembrance when he smelled something particular, a fleeting ghost of feeling stirred back into life momentarily by unexpected words or phrases and then lost again when the moment passed. Family was an abstract, and a structure other people lived by and built relationships on with it as a foundation.
But not him.
His parents had not been a part of his life since he was small and though he knew with conviction that there had been positive experiences there, the single greatest event which stood out in his mind when he drew up thoughts of them was his mother, and the day he had been mutilated to punish ‘her’ behavior, however arbitrary or unfair it was. Every moment surrounding that occurrence sat, forever etched into his mind as though carved against his skull itself, and he couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t erase it. Despite knowing in his later years that that was part of his masters’ intention: to exercise their power in permanently damaging and corrupting the emotional bonds between their property, still the experience lingered with him leaving a foul flavor at the back of his throat.
And thus, in the face of his best intentions, ‘family’ still often inspired a negative reaction in him. Though he apparently had his aunt — whom he had never heard of until the rescue event — to thank for his freedom, he was not entirely sure he wanted to invite strangers, related by blood or not, into his life.
But, he knew that he could not avoid the interaction entirely.
Thus, some week or so after their successful escape and delivery to the small Buhawi camp in the aftermath, Sajah conceded to being ‘ready’ to have those who asked for him informed in order that he might meet with them. He did not know what he expected.
Rationally, his expectations ought to have been low, and certainly there was a great deal of genuine reservation present in his gut. Despite having less than two decades of experience to his name, Sajahka had grappled with at least his fair share of disappointment—or negative occurrences, in any case. As the case would have it, ‘disappointment’ in the strictest sense had been relatively low prior to now due to the fact that he had rarely ever had anything positive to expect or hope for to begin with. Before his escape, he had resigned himself to the worst side of everything and only after making it out was he beginning to grapple with the other side of the coin: though infinitely better than the alternative, ‘freedom’ and the world beyond Oba’s borders was no utopia, either.
When in Oba, with nothing to base his imaginings on, intangible concepts like ‘family’ and ‘homeland’ were free to take on whatever shape his mind crafted for them. Impractical, implausible, or ideal constructions included. And, aside from the negativity unintentionally laced in with thoughts of his parents and mother in particular, there was a certain mental ideal that associated itself with family just as there was with ‘Matori’ and dreams of a homeland. All of it leant itself to building himself up for disappointment that he had no want or need for.
Matori was beautiful.
But it had not become ‘home’ the instant he set foot on its sands or let its waters lick up his ankles. It had not become familiar the instant he laid his eyes on its palms or the tide-smoothed pebbles that dotted its shoreline. It had not become his in any sense of the word as soon as it first became a part of his life experience. No matter how much it had been dreamed of, built up, or dwelled on it was still new and not etched into his history the way Oba had, and that was reality.
He suspected, as he stepped into the small, open air shack of a building that he was meant to meet with his aunt in, that ‘family’ would be the same on that front. Unfamiliar at first, possibly for always, and not his any more than the land he’d never walked was his despite hopes that it might feel like it. His pragmatism, unfortunately, did little to quell the stirring of hopeful potential.
He sat propped against a mounted wooden log, split and crudely sanded down to serve as a bench. Morning sunlight spilled in through the wide, paneless and unadorned windows, and the sea breezes that gusted through the structure were salty and warm. Fresh. His eyes moved out over the sand outside, white-yellow and bright with reflected light.
When she approached, he of course did not recognize her.
She might have been anyone: a member of the Buhawi camp, family to one of the locals, or simply someone wandering the beach for the sake of doing so. Still, because she was the only one approaching, his eyes focussed and gathered details. Older. Hair covered mostly by a sun shawl, but deep blue in the portions that strayed loose of the shawl’s confines, and dressed simply as most of the natives were. She wore sandals, and carried nothing with her. When her eyes met his, they were pale yellow, one of them milky along the edge as though she were going blind in it.
Her brow furrowed. “Sajahka?”
Sajah was accustomed to awkward initial interactions, silences, and never having the opportunity to say his part. Still, given the potential gravity of the situation, it felt more pressing here and heavy to tote: he couldn’t ask anything he wanted. He nodded. She took this as cue enough to continue.
“I am your mother’s sister, Isatta…” She hesitated there, her expression mixed as she eyed him, pinched and conflicted. “You will have to forgive me, I do not know how to give the words to you any more lightly, but…my sister is dead. Your mother…she has been gone from this world for years now.” Sajah could not describe the cool lurch in his gut then—not the battering ache he might have expected, but something more muted, chilled, and messy. “Perhaps you knew before now…” He had not. “But she spoke always of you, the child she could not live with leaving behind. I begged her not to act rashly after finally achieving her own freedom. She was all the family I had and she could make more children if she missed it so…”
Sajahka watched, processing the progression of the woman’s story with rigid intent.
“But always, she still spoke of you and lamented, and when she fell ill I thought that would keep her here, in safety and away from risking herself…” The woman — ‘Isatta’ — folded her hands in front of herself, rubbing one with the other as her brow furrowed. “Then the sickness took her to the gods.” When her eyes met his, it was with curious focus, as though seeking something out that she hadn’t found yet. “I heard of the Buhawi and I thought perhaps this was the answer. That if I saw her only son to safety, her memory could rest peacefully…and I could forgive myself for discouraging her want to find you herself…”
Whatever vein of hope Sajahka had held out for had dissipated, and his face had slipped to an expressionless neutral, his body rigidly still.
“I suppose it is too much to ask that you forgive me also,” she said.
It was.
“But if you should need a place to rest yourself in the Matori iles…” She hesitated. “I must say you cannot stay forever, for looking at you reminds me of her. But if you need only a place to rest until you learn your way…my home is open.”
Sajahka could not have said anything even if he wished it. But for once, he also had nothing to say. Whatever she was waiting for, standing there and watching him, she got none of it, and eventually, after longer than Sajah cared to keep track of, she released a heavy breath, and turned to go.
Sajah did not stop her, but watched her full, slow retreat down the length of the long beach.
Word Count: 1,443
Quote: Sajah has not seen blood-family for approximately a decade, and the concept has lost some value to him. Still, like the concept of 'freedom' and the homeland of Matori itself, which tended to be imagined into the perfect state - the end of all problems - while in captivity, family, too, was a distant goal and he held out some hope for, if not the perfect storybook reunion, some kind of bond and closure. In this growth solo, Sajah gets his closure, and has to deal with the fact that just like Matori does not immediately feel like home despite being free at last, 'family' is also not all that it's chalked up to be, and he will have to carve his own path forward. |
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 11:13 am
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 11:14 am
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 1:08 am
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Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 1:37 pm
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✦ To The Flower In Room Five ✦
Sajah had never bedded a man before.
But then, Sajah had never bedded anyone before. Until the night prior, he had never kissed anyone. Of course, he had ended up taking that step along with a great many others all at once in succession, and by the end of it all—well, he could at least say he understood some of the appeal and why Nyko might seek it out. There was a thrill to it. A learning experience, rapid and deep if it was a stranger involved, and all the while with neither side knowing quite what they might be getting into, or what could occur next.
Sajah was accustomed to rising before dawn. Even when it was no longer required, his body seemed to do it instinctively, a habit he hadn’t broken himself of, even when he stayed up into the night (which was rarely, at least, as a result). One drink did not change that, nor did a full night of learning about Leukos’ more intimate details in a hands on manner. When they had finished, Leukos fell into a deep sleep and for once, Sajah had at least been tired enough himself to eventually join him—briefly.
He did not enjoy sleeping in strange places and had never done so with strange company, but the hour had been by that point too late for anything else to feel feasible, and between the alcohol, the exhaustion, and everything they’d engaged in after, Sajah simply couldn’t bring himself to be concerned that Leukos posed much of a threat to him. Sajah woke just before dawn, still beside the man he’d climbed into bed with, with Leukos’ dark hair strewn about like threaded black silk. He smelled of booze and perfume, and was dead asleep, his lashes feathery crescents on his cheeks.
Any initial splinters of wariness that came with waking up in unfamiliar circumstances edged away as Sajah’s memory of the night prior returned to him, and gradually, in the dark grey of not-yet-morning, a smile tugged stubborn at one corner of his lips. He slid, carefully untangling himself from the sheets and the man, and in the semi-dark, took a survey of the room. He had no way of knowing when the other man would wake, and his natural penchant for caution spurned him to work quickly, but everything he knew about the man — from how much he’d drank, to his mannerisms, to his general attitude — instilled in him the general sense that it was deeply unlikely he’d be waking up brisk and early.
Still, Sajah moved silently. He took stock of what the man had, dressed, re-armed himself, and pocketed what he found of the man’s money, both in the clothing he’d discarded from the night prior, and elsewhere in the room. By the time he was satisfied with his work, the darker grey of the room had warmed to a silvery near-dawn, lighting the sharp angles of Leukos’ cheeks and several thick waves of his hair.
There was no reason to approach, and really, he oughtn’t have, since he had everything he needed. It was only a risk to do anything more than necessary and he had spent half the night pretending the man was someone else, besides. There was no logical explanation for stepping any nearer.
But he did, just the same.
His feet made no noise on the floor, and when he reached, his fingers tracing through Leukos’ hair were gentle, guiding the strands out of his face with all the care that might have been applied to a consistent lover. When he braced an arm on the mattress to lean, he was sure not to put overly much weight there to avoid disturbing him, and dipped his head, touching his lips to the man’s cheek in a light kiss.
He left, as he was bound to, without a word.
At the front desk, after several rounds of miscommunication, he managed to get a slip of parchment upon which to scrawl a quick note. He didn’t consider himself the best with words, but the situation seemed to merit it.
leukos
thank you for your company your mouth and your body
i love the taste of you and the way you dance and your laugh is almost as pleasant as rolling waves
i leave some coin breakfast and water for your pretty head
see me again sometime
- s a j a h k a
At the bottom corner of the note, he scribbled a crude drawing of a flower. Then, after another exchange with the innkeeper, he successfully attained a glass of water and a fruit-roll. He left the note, drink, roll, and a tiny fraction of Leukos’ coin in a small collection on the man’s bedside table, and departed.
It was, so far as Sajah was concerned, an all around grand success.
Word Count: 827 |
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 3:54 pm
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