Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 10

We crept forwards, Leotie out in front and seeming to meld into each tree trunk, but nothing stirred amongst the two dozen structures. Even when we passed the poorly delineated boundary of the primitive village, the only movement we saw was a pair of annoyed and startled junco birds. Leotie couldn't resist taking both with deadly-accurate stones from her sling and, once their wings stopped frantically beating the air, the only thing we could hear was the trickle of water and faint rustle of wind through the leaves above.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

Leotie, of course, immediately made me feel foolish, "I already told you, foolish man; the tribe that hunts here moved to a different site for the season," she swept into the doorway of the nearest hut, dart in hand and Niknik at her side.

"So...it'll be empty at least until spring?" Serina asked. Despite her soft voice, she still clutched a knife in one hand and forced magical light through the tip of her staff.

"Maybe," Leotie grunted, checking one structure after another.

"We can stay here for a few nights then?" I asked, looking forward to the prospect of sleeping under a solid roof, protected by four sturdy, if primitive walls.

Leotie grunted something unintelligible but affirmative, but it was Serina that spoke next, "Why not just ...stay here? For a season or two?"

I must admit, the prospect of stopping our ceaseless flight was appealing, especially in such a lush land with such a timely gift from the gods. But I thought that Leotie, having come from this life, might know better. So, I glanced back and forth between both women, hesitant to say anything.

Leotie spoke gently, though I'm sure if it'd been me who'd made that suggestion, dear readers, she'd be kicking me in the shins. "If this camp belongs to the Kroyu, it's probably some sort of spring or summer base for their hunters," she ran a hand along one of the huts, "Though, it seems more like a winter camp," her brow furrowed. Still, she continued, "If we're here when they return, they might take it as theft of their property or land. An invasion, even." She looked at me, "And Kiravi told us what happens when Gavic is invaded."

I nodded in agreement, that faint glimmer of hope at finding a new homestead guttering out. But, dear readers, Serina again proved just how much of her seeming naivete and innocence masked a beautifully altruistic worldview that was so at odds with mine and Leotie's. Of course, over these years, her desire to help others has gotten us in trouble just as often as not, but I digress.

"Well," Serina peered into another empty hut, "What if we make a gift for them? I mean, there's deer and birds and all sorts of other things to eat here, even though it's winter, right? And I'm sure that stream is just full of fish that even Kiravi could catch." She blushed even as she and Leotie laughed at my expense, "So yes, it'd be a gift. Tribute to them for letting us use their homes. If they don't come back, well, we just use the extra for ourselves." She wheeled on Leotie before the huntress could respond, "Wouldn't your tribe welcome such a gift?"

To my barely concealed satisfaction, Leotie spluttered out her response, "Well of course we would've. But they might still attack us before we can show them, lover. I mean, we don't even speak the same language as them!" She closed her eyes and brushed loose strands of dark red hair from her eyes, "And...that's a lot of work for us."

Well, godsdammit, I realized I must have been rubbing off on the girl because what she said next was something right out of my rakish time in Anghu, "You've made it seem so simple so far, darling," she smiled beatifically, "A bird in our pot every night. How hard could it be to catch two?"

Leotie grumbled and tossed her head back like a professor at the academy with a particularly difficult pupil. But Serina was probably right, unlike I had been all those times I received the same look from the wizards in my youth. "I suppose, lover, that it could be done. But, but..."

"We either do this thing," I added carefully, "Or we have to keep running all about this land avoiding these Kroyu, until when?"

She rounded on me, those round and exotic and bright eyes fixing me with something between a glare and a much more personally insistent look, "That's right, Kiravi...until when?"

Well...shit, dear readers. That was the question, wasn't it? Both women were looking at me now, the same intense curiosity on their faces. I felt something against my leg and looked down to see Niknik curled up against me, lending his silent support.

"Until," I coughed and tried to organize the scattered thoughts that had been nagging at me ever since leaving Tebis. The answer was the same; it was just our group that had utterly changed its dynamic. "Until Serina gets a better understanding of her goddess."

"And after that?" Leotie pressed. There was an almost imperceptible edge of panic there, beneath her fiercely alto voice, and all I wanted to do was soothe it.

But I was still a young, foolish man, wary of the wide world, "I suppose we'll have to find someplace to settle down," I scratched absently at the mostly healed tattoo on my chest, "Or I'll have to figure out how Kapak does all of his...qhatuq things.

I could tell that my answer wasn't wholly acceptable to Leotie, but she accepted it nonetheless. I'd find out more about that later, dear readers, in a fashion that would only make my insides ache, but that would be getting ahead of myself. Then, in that chilly and empty village, she just acceded with a brusque nod and squared shoulders.

"Alright. We'll stay here and stockpile what we can. We all need to be ready, though, in case Serina's plan doesn't work."

Serina and I shared a grin, and even Niknik chuffed his laconic agreement. So that was that. We'd finish out the winter in this strange town, in this strange land.

And, with that, we set to work with a passion stoked by Serina's earnest belief in the goodness and goodwill of a people she'd never met. We woke before dawn each chilly day, untangling from however we'd ended up after the passions of the night before, and set to our tasks. Leotie spent that first week examining every pace-length of surrounding woods, carefully comparing her knowledge from Anghoret against the Gavican flora. Serina passed her mornings in one of the empty buildings meditating over the broken god-stone fragments and her afternoons crafting snares and fish baskets. I did my best to fish the bend in the stream -- which wasn't much help at all -- before realizing that my best possible contribution was simply to stockpile firewood.

I supposed every one of the dozen or so huts could hold a few families, based on the scorched hearthstones on the floors, and set about the daunting task of filling them. Ranging further and further from the village, it was only a matter of time before I'd collected all of the decently sized deadfall that had survived the last brush fire. Then, realizing that the only abilities I had to contribute were raw strength and magic, I took one of Leotie's stone axes and started to experiment.

One morning, with Leotie giving me a kiss before tramping off into the woods to set snares and shoot her daily clutch of birds with her sling, and Serina embracing me before disappearing into her hut, I hefted the short-handled stone ax and plodded into the misty wood. The day before, it'd taken me an entire day to cut down a mid-sized pine, strip its branches, and chop the trunk into manageable logs. If I'm anything, dear readers -- other than crude, lecherous, and brutish -- I'm lazy, and I wasn't especially keen on spending so much time and effort on each of these trees. I'd been using my brute strength but non of my magic, and I resolved to substitute one with the other.

My mind went back to the battle in the Ketza when Sata had forced his raw magic into his staff. He wasn't the first I'd ever seen cast that type of spell, but it wasn't something I remembered from the Academy. Whether or not someone had tried to teach it to me, I had no idea, but I certainly didn't remember it if they had. I'd flipped through Qusirlay's gifted spell-book and found something that might be relevant in the tiny, cramped pictographs, and a bit of the youthful curiosity I'd all but lost in Anghu flared within me.

So, there I stood, in front of another great pine taller than any in Anghoret. Reading through the spell one more time, I hefted the simple ax and focused inward on my conduit. The associated words of power were unfamiliar and stilted in my mouth, but I could feel some sort of effect nonetheless.

The ax-head took on a pale yellow glow, and I could feel it tremble in my grip. "Well...here we go." I swung the ax at the trunk, but as I focused on the tool and my shifting weight, my tenuous concentration on the spell faltered for an instant. Most of the stored magic bled out of the ax and into the cold morning air, and the bark and wood only barely fizzled and hissed.

"Shedia's tits," I grunted, working the ax loose and scowling at the faint scorch marks in the wood. "Let's try this again, you rotting piece of shit."

I cast the spell again, focused, swung hard and accurate at the bite I'd taken out of the tree. But, once more, nothing. The rest of the morning passed like that, one failed attempt after another, with barely any more wood being cut from the mocking pine. Then, emptying my mind, I forced more power into the silently judgemental axehead and focused only on my arm, the worn wood of the tool, the glowing head, and the waiting trunk. And I swung.

Of course, I'd forgotten to focus on my footing and promptly tipped off balance to tumble awkwardly towards the ground.

I barely managed to get the glowing tool out from under my falling body and instead obliterated a nearby stone in a flash of hot, brilliant magic. Rock shards nipped at my cheek and exposed arms, and I roared and howled with as much immature frustration as pain. Then, in a pique of anger and impatience, I rolled onto my back and launched a bolt of raw magic at the wound I'd already inflicted on the trunk.

It tore apart, most of the wooden fragments spraying away from me as the magic ripped from my hand and into the pale wood. Loud snaps echoed through the surrounding forest, and the upper trunk settled abruptly down onto the smoldering, shattered stump below it. A flare of both vertigo and panic rushed through me as I realized -- still on my back -- that the bisected tree was swaying and twisting, trying to decide which way it was going to topple. I was prescient enough to keep my eyes locked on it even as I scrabbled away, though I noticed my eyes were stinging and watering for some reason.

At the exact moment I realized the trunk was going to fall towards me, I finally noticed that it was also burning from the bottom up and that the flaming splinters from my blast had set the undergrowth around me ablaze.

Muttering every curse I could think of, I barely managed to gain my feet and sprint out of the way before the smoldering tree smashed down into the loamy understory. Even then, some of the boughs raked and clawed at me, tearing minor wounds along my arms and splattering me with pungent and sticky sap. Nevertheless, embarrassment and frustration outweighed pain, and I scrabbled to put out the worst of the growing fires before Serina or, gods forbid, Leotie could discover me.

That, of course, was not to be. As I kicked dirt onto one smoldering bush after another and emptied my precious beerskin onto the blackened base of the trunk, Leotie appeared with a ragged piece of deer hide and a withering, judgemental look. She didn't say anything at first, which was somehow worse, and, even once the small blazes were out, she took agonizing minutes to growl out her response.

"What in the infinite hells were you thinking?!" She bellowed, and the few birds that hadn't fled from the crashing wood and the blaze took flight.

Well, dear readers, for as much as I might've grown and developed by that point, I was still young and petulant and immediately grew defensive, "Trying to chop these gods-damned trees down faster so I can actually be useful!"

"And what, burning all three of us out of the village we just found is your idea of useful?" She barked back, but now that the danger had passed, there was a hint of teasing mirth beneath the anger.

"I didn't mean for that part to happen," I grumbled in a lame retort.

"Well, I'd certainly hope not," she hissed before pinching her nose, "I really can't leave you alone, can I? At least Serina has enough sense to not break anything when she's by herself," she jabbed.

Looking back later with the benefit of hindsight, dear readers, I always find a self-righteous smirk crossing my face. Then, however, both our heads whipped around as a muffled boom echoed from the village. Burying the immediate instinct to throw a pithy comment in Leotie's direction, I hurried through the faintly smoky woods with Leotie rushing close behind me.

Serina was stumbling about the open space in the middle of the village, smoke gently curling from faint scorch marks on her dress. Other than the vacant and stunned look on her face, she didn't seem harmed in any way. Either way, both of us rushed to her, cradling an arm and shoulder.

"What happened?" I managed to just edge out Leotie.

The huntress pried open Serina's clenched, gently steaming fingers to reveal one of the shards of the god-stone. Dying flickers of red-orange light shone inside its otherwise darkened luster, and a few motes of the same magic fluttered around her hands and wrists.

"Lover? Darling?" Leotie whispered.

"I...I tried to reach out to her again like I had before. It overwhelmed me." She glanced back and forth between the two of us. "Thankfully, I was in one of the empty huts," she added sheepishly.

"Is there another fire?" Leotie asked sharply, glancing at each of the mist-shrouded huts.

"Another fire?" Serina said.

"Don't ask," I grumbled.

"No, no fire," Serina said and yawned, even though it wasn't even noontide, "I, um, I might've broken the walls a bit, though."

Leotie glared at both of us and growled like an annoyed grandmother scolding younglings, "Since I can't seem to leave either of you alone anymore, the both of you can stay here and fix that hut Serina broke while I go out and feed us. And after that, you both stay together, no wandering off alone. At all. Got it?" We both nodded, cowed. Finally, she stomped off, grumbling, "We're not going to be able to stockpile a Kwarzi-damned thing with those two acting like fools."

I bit back the quick jibe that jumped to the tip of my tongue with a remarkable display of self-control, knowing that she was absolutely right. Serina and I shared a guilty look but didn't speak until Leotie was out of earshot. "Well, I suppose we'd better get back to it then. Show me what you did to the hut."

She blushed, glanced at Leotie's receding back one more time, and led me towards the hut she'd chosen for her meditations. Smoke and steam curled from its chimney hole and from small gaps between the wood and reeds forming the walls. I ducked inside, eyes adjusting to the gloom reasonably quickly, what with the light streaming in from the new gaps. Faint scorch marks decorated the inner walls and domed ceiling, and the dust covering the mat of reeds on the floor had been blown into streaks pointing away from a central spot on the floor. The whole space smelled faintly of smoke, the acrid tang of magic, and something else that I couldn't quite place.

"What were you doing in here?" I asked, coughing slightly.

"I told you, meditating," she responded, though the blush that had never really left her cheeks deepened. "I finally saw something of her, felt her presence again, and my magic just rushed out of me."

I arched an eyebrow, "You must've done something different. You used one of the shards of the god-stone?" I sniffed again, uncertain what the other lingering scent was.

"Yes," she murmured, "I'm sorry. I should've been more careful." Her blush remained furious, but a smile graced her features, "Leotie said something about a fire?"

I groaned and tilted my head back, "I was...um, trying to cut firewood a little faster. My magic got away from me just a bit."

She arched her eyebrows, "Oh, I see. I suppose that makes two of us."

Eager to change the subject, I returned to talking about fixing the hut, "Right. Why don't you go and find some reeds, and I'll get mud from the riverbank to fix the wall."

Slogging in the stinking river mud and cursing every time I stubbed a toe on a god's-damned river-rock, I still pondered just what Serina had been doing, all while slopping mud into a hide pot. After only a few minutes of that, I found something that I figured might buy my way back into Leotie's good graces. The mud held dozens of strange little creatures which I first mistook for pebbles, but, as one snapped shut after revealing its pinkish interior, I realized that they were alive. They went into a separate little pouch, soon bound for the stewpot.

Of course, that's when it hit me, and I realized what Serina had been doing, or rather how she'd been doing it.

While she wove fresh reeds into the gaps and I slathered mud across them, I asked her more about her meditations, "What are you trying to do, Serina? I mean, what is the ultimate goal here?"

She didn't blush, just furrowed her brow and fussed with a stubborn reed, "You saw her. In the visions with the Ettuku and with the Pashudia priests. She doesn't know who she is, but she knows who she used to be."

"And she needs to exist," I added gently.

"Yes. And...and I know that I have to help her. I just don't know how." She grumbled, and the reed snapped in her hand, "I have to see her again. Not just a brief glimpse, but a real vision. A conversation, a touch...a kiss." She looked over at me, eyes searing in their intensity, "I feel like she knows...she knows how I can help her. She has to, because no one else even believes she's real."

"We do," I smiled at her.

"You do," she smiled at me, and my heart softened, "I know you believe me, and I know you want to meet her," she sighed. "I guess I'm trying to say that I won't be able to stop until she's real. I know that you and Leotie want to find somewhere, somewhere to spend forever together, as one little band. But I can't stop until I help her. Until I make her whole again."

"And that's why you used the god-stone," I said.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And that's why you were...pleasuring yourself at the same time." I pressed and stepped closer to her. That's what I'd smelled in the hut, amongst the tang of magic. This time she did blush, looking down at the muddy ground, "Because your pleasure always fuels your magic."

"Yes," she whispered, almost moaning, "I was desperate to see more of her."

I stepped even closer, my fingers brushing her bare arm, "Go and fetch one of your god-stones."

Her eyes snapped up to meet mine, "Now? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Let's see your goddess together."

She hurried away, and I smiled at myself. I turned my face up to the distant sun, wrapped in clouds and shrouded by pine needles and half-bare oak branches. The chill air swirled over my skin as I stripped naked, but the few rays of sunlight that kissed my skin warmed me in a beautiful dichotomy.

Serina kissed my shoulder blades like the sun kissed my face, and her smile tickled my skin. I turned around, and she was as naked as I was, the same thin shard of black stone loose in her hand, "Make love to me, my warrior-mage."

I felt strangely awkward, knowing this act was to build something else, but that feeling disappeared the moment her free hand caressed my growing hardness. Embarrassment and hesitation evaporated, all other concerns forgotten, and we tumbled to the needle-strewn ground in each others' arms. She mewled below me as I slipped inside her, whimpering with every thrust. The god-stone was cold and angular against my back, but I just focused on her nubile, petite body and the perfection of her tight warmth.