Tamin' Dem

[Nachanksy]

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[Nachanksy]

“’E comin’!” a voice ripped through the idyll of Concordia.

Who ‘’E’ was remained unspecified, but from the tortured look on the speaker’s face, ‘E was not someone to be welcomed.

“The whole forest heard…,” Nachansky, with despair, bemoaned and belittled.

At the foot of a Juniper bush, the hunter watched her brother run headlong into the Watchman’s trap. She would have tried to stop him, had this not been part of the plan. Of course, Josher did not know he was the bait, he would be running the other way right now.

“’E comin’ now!” repealed the overzealous alarm.

A boy of no more than six waddled through the ferns. He lapsed in judgement and speed when he came to the edge of the thicket, and wagered on wherever or not it was safe to cross out from the undergrowth and into the open. The clearing was thirty feet wide and slightly longer running north. The sun overhead danced over the wild grasses and bull reeds, hinting at wet ground and another set of dangers.

“Go…,” she whispered through clenched teeth. The sound of hooves was growing louder. “Go!”

Heart pounding, legs muddied, knees bloodied, Josher made his decision. The second his bare feet slapped down on the springy moss of the clearing, something burst through the tree line twenty feet to his right. He screamed, ran, and rumbled over the foetid heath. Nachansky disappeared into the shadows, a blur of bearskin and berries knocked haphazard from overburdened branches.

[Nachanksy]

When Josher made it halfway across the clearing his hunter was upon him. It leered down, toweresque, and red eyed. Its upper body was that of a man, but its head was a skull blazon with the sun. Dreads dangled like vines from his head, and fists the size of titans clenched about a blackened chain and a bow as thick as the boy was, and tense with power.

“Who trespasses ‘ere’, in Wild’s Wood?” The voice that came from the man was ethereal. It touched Josher’s soul, and began to tear it apart.

The boy dropped to his knees, gibbering and crying and all but given up. He hung his head, finding comfort in the water and the impending doom. He began to cry, a sniffle at first brought to full bear when the creature’s mastiff barked.

“I said ‘oo!” it repeated.

It tensed its muscly frame, and the snap in the air seemed to freeze time. The leaves on the branches overhanging the clearing became greener, forgiving themselves for lulling the woods into autumn for just a moment. When the copper and bronze hue returned to the world, the boy found his courage.

“I be ‘ere to ‘unt, we find d’rabbit, we dun tamin’ dem.”

“If you tamin’ dem, why be killin’?”

Nachansky appeared on the far side of the clearing, an arrow notched and heart racing. They revelled in this hunt for weeks. This was her moment. This was her test. This was her true dem way.

[Nachanksy]

“It be acciden’!” Josher cried.

He took a snotty intake of air, dredging the flies from the quagmire and the swamp. The smell of rot and ruin clung to his nostrils. With a feeble hand, he tried to wipe the run, but only made his face dirtier.

“Kellen’ dem accidn’ or no, you be ardship findin’ now!”

In a flash, the hunter cleared the gap between himself and prey, and set his mastiff’s snout to work. With three, long, bestial drafts of the atmosphere the boy was judged and found wanting. The dog, massive in stature and clearly unnatural, barked once, and loudly, when its search ended.

“What y’know do?” Josher spat.

He looked up from beneath a muddied fringe and glared defiant into the bloodlust eyes of his executioner. Then he dropped his gaze to the dark waters. In the motion, he saw Nachansky approach slowly from behind. Hope filled him.

The Watchman unclenched his fists, loosening the Mastiff’s chain and clipping it to his mohair belt. With one, tree trunk thick arm he pulled back the bowstring. It creaked like a venerable yew in a hurricane, and then twanged as he loosed an air arrow. The thud from that alone made Josher sway. If notched, he would have shot back fifty feet.

“If I were you,” the Cub said softly, “I would not miss next time.”

The Watchman turned and sent ripples out across the pungent marsh. His crimson eyes burnt bright. His bow notched sudden by divinity.

[Nachanksy]

Compared to their pursuer, Nachansky Kira was a gnome. Her black hair, tattooed face, and diminutive stature spoke of no threat to the indomitable man. She, though, was made of sterner stuff.

“Oo, you?” the Watchman asked, head cocked, muscles taught, shoulders arched.

“Cub,” she replied, using her spirit name, and not her mortal title.

The Doman tribe, a collective of orphans, herbalists, and sun worshippers had trained her well. She, as a daughter of the Wilds, was every bit its protector as the Watchman. She, on the other hand, was not quite so willing to kill to protect it.

“We are allowed one rabbit per month per moon. Such is dem’ ways.”

The Doman took all they needed to survive, and no more.

“Two t’day dem ways broken!” A roar spoiled Nachanskys’ nerves. She frowned.

“Like he said an accident.” The trap had snared a buck and the struggle brought with it mother. “We no take new moon, dem ways sound.” She flipped from common to the patois of the wilds. Fae and common folk mingled in the woods, and the language along with them.

“Taxin’ and thinkin’,” the Watchman mused. His voice sounded, for just a moment, almost human. He leashed the mastiff tight, and set down his bow. It hung from his cliff-esque shoulder on a knot vine strap.

“Please!” whelped Josher.

Cub snarled at her sibling, loosed her arrow, and felt it thud into a tree trunk in the distant sanctuary of the woods. She cursed.

[Nachanksy]

“If you keep failing to shoot straight, Nachansky, you’ll never pass the trials.”

The inhuman voice became human, and the redness in the Watchman’s eyes faded. The mastiff, as though transmogrified became nothing more than a wolfhound; ears pricked and fur flaxen in the sunlight.

“Wha’?” Josher gasped. He looked at the back of the titanic man with curiosity and lingering fear.

With a mighty tug, the creature grabbed his horns and pulled off his mask. Beneath, a grizzled veteran of too many summers glared at Cub. He dropped the deer’s head, treated and stitched with a padded layer, and let loose the chain. The mastiff ran to Josher’s side playfully, and began slobbering boisterously over every inch of his ‘master’.

“You could have easily caught us in the brook by the fisherman’s hut,” she replied sharply. She slung her bow over her shoulder and strapped her furs tight over her chest. "Certain, in fact.”

“Be glad, then, that I went easy on you daughter,” he forewarned.

“Easy? Dem ways tested with my ‘ead, not my arm!” Her cry, full of sedition, echoed the sentiment of every youth of the Doman that had to take part in the Wild Hunt.

“You speak patois only with the wild men, Nachansky. They are beneath you. It, now, is beneath you.” He picked up the mask and rested it on the end of his bow. “I only test you so hard because I am king, and you are my daughter.”

“What about me?”

[Nachanksy]

“Oh Josher, I’m sorry.” The king made short work of the marsh to his son’s side. He picked him up like a bundle of fur, and put him on his left shoulder. Seated atop his world, Josher smiled meekly. “Did Nachansky not tell you today was the day?”

“No, dem ways unspoken!” he said jokingly. He ruffled his hair boyishly, only to act proper when he saw her piercing glare and knowing suggestion of impending violence. “No, father, she did not.” His clarification was stiff and gaudy, like most of their family ‘traditions’.

“Well,” father grumbled as he turned. “When it’s your turn for the tests Josher, I’ll make sure it involves bears.” He chuckled. Nachansky, scared of bears after one mauled her and made black face paint and arm tattoos a necessity to hide her shame, stuck out her tongue.

“Again?”

“Not today daughter, the sun is soon to set. You must both do your chores for mother, and then be off to bed before Council.”

They drew together, a mud stained, tired family unit and walked east.

“How did you know I would try and trap you here?” she asked non-chalant.

“I am called Hood, the Windborne for a reason.” He smirked. He knocked aside a branch to stop it slapping Josher in the face, and then raked a mulberry bush of its fruits for them to snack on. “I smelt you, your fear and fluster, and let you make the same mistakes.”

“Which are?” she pressed reluctantly.

[Nachanksy]

“You refuse to follow the Ways. You think your brother is a tool. You forget your size is not a weakness, but a strength.” The flippant imparting of putdowns was Hood’s way. He meant well, but Nachansky still hurt.

“Will you ever be satisfied with me?” she moaned. Her footsteps became tired and heavy.

Josher giggled. He bobbed up and down on his mount, swatting branches out of the way and wiggling his toes. Ever the apple of his father’s eye, he loved every minute of watching his sister’s torment. He knew it would be his turn someday, but that day, in the eye of a child, was a lifetime from now.

“You are the source of eternal pride and winter’s kinship to me Nachansky.” Her father’s voice took on a warm, syrupy quality. Through a thick beard and moustache, his words sought to pick up her confidence after yet another unsuccessful hunt.

“Sure…,” she mumbled. She hung her head, bow swinging on her back, furs rippling and dancing as she bounced back and forth over copse and moss mound. The swamp soon turned into bracken, and they dove into the heart of Concordia and onward to the pathways home.

“I mean it, dem true ways.”

“Patois is for ‘commoners’, father,” she snipped. She strutted over a fallen log bespeckled with mushrooms and toadstools. She slipped.

As she smacked into the mud, she found reason to learn something from her failure. Her family’s laughter filled the autumnal forest with lustre.

[Nachanksy]

Present Day - Radasanth

“The smell of stagnation followed me through the woods for the rest of the day. By the time we got to the village, I baked hard in a shell of rotten bark and deer dung. Josher and Hood did not stop laughing and making fun of my comeuppance all evening, even in the council, I brought smiles to ‘dem true ways’.”

Quentin listened to the youth’s expeditionary tale with a warm, but placid smile. The bar hummed around them, bringing the finest people in the city to the common teat of debauchery, alcohol, and forgetfulness.

“Wha' happened to ya after that?” he asked, hesitant to press for too much detail.

In a chair fit for a giant, let alone a young woman, Nachansky cleared her throat, downed her drink, and shuffled nervously.

“They talked war.”

“War?” A raised eyebrow quickly turned into a scowl. Of course, she meant the civil war. Corone was only now recovering, and she had left her village a year ago. He let out a short grunt. “

The dancing sunlight glowed orange and auburn through the inn’s lacklustre excuses for windows. Laughter, inside and out, and the occasional scream of ecstasy or pain intermingled with the chitchat of conversation: cricket-like and boisterous.

“It’s the past now.” She sniffed. She played with her beaded dread. She stared longingly at her bow. She hated being in the stone tomb of Radasanth. Yet she loved being with The Man and his…woman.

“"I bet ya ain't forgot it, though…”

[Nachanksy]

“Dem Ways make it easier,” she confided. Heartfelt words fell all too easily from her lips when he found common ground. She had resisted meeting him all day. Confusion reigned.

“Ya'll haft t'tell me more about the ways ya keep talkin' 'bout,” he chuckled. In the background, a tankard met a skull, a pint hit the floorboards, and things got ugly.

The Empty Hand was becoming a full palm, and both stared permissively at the door. Nachansky longed to flee to the woods, the Concordia roving grounds to find a rabbit free of her father’s tyranny, and her brothers’ overbearing dependence. He, she had no doubt, wanted to tend to business too ‘mature’ for a nineteen year old...

“Another day.”

“Of course, Little Cub.”

“-Cub,” she snapped. She stood up, a tower of white fur and leather straps, and scooped up the gloves and bread on the table. She had not touched her meagre meal.

“Sorry, Cub. What'll ya do now?” he asked, confident and strangely friendly charisma confusing her further.

She padded to the door as she adjusted the bow on her back. She counted her arrows, fingering each in the quiver like an old friend. Certain she was whole; she stopped when she stepped into the dusk air. She lingered. Perhaps too long for her own good.

“Find dem true way,” she said in a thick bubbly patois. “Sleep.”

She left, a little tamer and a little less angry at the world for all its wickedness.

[Amber Eyes]

Thread Title: A chance to prove yourself (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27215-A-chance-to-prove-yourself-solo”)

Judgment Type: Full Rubric

Participants:Nachansky



Plot: 19/30

I enjoyed the thread. It gave me just enough background to pique my curiosity without over-explaining. The setting was sufficient to set the scene and yet it didn’t drag the thread down. I would have liked a bit more information about the family’s background to better understand the scene.




Character: 23/30

You did an excellent job of using the naivety to make me worry for the youngsters. You played upon their fear and excitement and their family ties to create and emotional bond. The thread left me sufficiently curious about where this character is heading and where her family is now.




Prose: 21/30

I enjoyed the brevity and language used. The perspective of a naive child is refreshing and well done. You have a knack for changing your style to fit your character that really draws the reader in. Excellently done.



Wildcard: 7/10

I really enjoyed the brevity and the usage of broken english. It was far from the normal thread and I had a lot of fun reading. I can’t wait to see what you have next. I kept this judgement short, but if you’d like more feedback please PM me and I will be happy to elaborate.



Final Score: 70/100

Nachansky (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17388-Nachanksy) receives:



1100 EXP!



Congratulations!

[Lye]

EXP Added!