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rainbowfic2013-10-02 07:50 am
jkatkina) wrote in rainbowfic2013-10-02 07:50 am
Entry tags:
Gleaming muddy horizons
| Name: | jkatkina |
| Story: | Fensirt |
| Colors: | Amber #3 (Mud), Skylight #14 (gleaming horizon) |
| Word Count: | 3123 |
| Rating: | G |
| Warnings: | none |
| Summary: | Kaitan's ideas are sometimes very bad ones. |
| Notes: | That got way longer than I thought it would, and kind of went sideways, but in a good way I think. Also, relates to this illustration post. Also! Mods? I think I need a color tag for Amber... which I hadn't realized before and will have to go back and add to a couple of entries once it's made. Hah. |
She had volunteered to help Pars's contingent with target practice that morning -- not without ulterior motive -- but it meant getting up early, a habit that Kaitan had well given up in the years since she'd come to Fensirt. Desnata's back was long enough for the short teenager to cling to her brother as they rode around the city, watching the pre-dawn monochrome give reluctant way to washes of red and orange and brown. Periodically they stopped in front of this or that house and waited for a Rider pair to emerge, Pars and Desnata greeting each member of their contingent as they gathered them up.
It was the matter of three-quarters of an hour before before they were riding out of the city gates, but to the sleepy Kaitan the morning ritual felt of indeterminate length. She was doubly unimpressed when, once they'd cleared Fensirt's sheltering bluffs, Pars threw his arms wide to the rising sun and exclaimed, "Aahhh. Look at that, Kaitan."
"No thanks," she scowled, squinting nonetheless in the direction of the horizon. The sun was busy spilling colourless but offensively bright light along the edge of the world. Pars laughed.
They followed the path of the eastern spring, the water little more than a stream this far out of the city. The sand on the flats was pale, but here, sediment dragged from the deep interior of the bluffs painted the rockway a rusty red. When the Riders had to cross the stream, the mud thrown up sat as bright speckles against their blue-and-tan pelts, and against the bare legs of the humans riding them. The morning was cool, almost cold, but there was not one pair of long pants or skirts among the pairs.
When they came to a halt, it was at a small staging ground of packed earth, marked off by light poles and a canvas gazebo. They'd cut through a corner of the flats on the morning's ride but had passed back into the badlands, the contingent thinning to a train until they could finally gather, a group of blocky muzzles and straight backs, surrounded by some of the most inhospitable-looking hoodoos that Kaitan had seen. She dismounted, following the cues of the half-dozen more veteran youths on other Riders' backs. In a few moments the contingent was once again made up of its natural duos of human and daemon as the volunteers clumped out of the way on the edge of the staging ground.
Without preamble Pars and Desnata waded into the mass of their fellow pairs, Desnata high-stepping and Pars segueing easily to his parade-ground voice. "Alright, folks," he called out, and the mass began to form itself into something more orderly. "You know the usual. Don't adjust your stirrups until the start is called, but you can get your bows ready.
"Helpers," and the mess of Rider pairs parted for Pars as he faced the group of youths that had come along on the morning's ride, "the targets are in the gazebo, and don't forget your quivers. For those of you who haven't been along for target practice before," and Kaitan frowned, wondering if this was for her benefit though Pars didn't look at her, "what you're going to be doing today is setting up and moving targets, and gathering arrows. You should have more than enough time to set up before we move through, but have an ear out for the call and get out of there if you do hear it. Get to it!"
It turned out to be a little bit more complicated in practice. She'd been one of the first to reach the gazebo, intent on grabbing a handful of the woven targets and taking off into the bluffs, when a hand grabbed her shoulder. Immediately stiffening, Kaitan turned to face a lanky brown girl maybe a year older than her. "No one's shown you how it's done yet, have they?"
"That's nothing for you to know," retorted Kaitan, disliking how far up she had to look to frown at the interloper.
"Well come on then," her new foe said, and then turned to head for the wide basket-chest that other kids were scooping armfuls of targets out of. Kaitan wavered, and in an act of protest edged towards the basket that held quivers instead. The other girl paid no mind.
She'd kitted up and whe was fumbling an armful of targets, following a couple of other volunteers back into the flat. The contingent had dispersed, leaving the youths on their own and Kaitan had a moment of uncertainty as she saw that her peers were clumping off into groups. She fiddled with one of the odd loops that bordered the targets and scowled.
"You're with us." It was that same voice, and as surprised as Kaitan was, it looked like the girl's pair of companions were too.
"That's that Friave kid," the black-haired boy beside her stated the obvious.
"Well, yeah, Calum, exactly." The skinny girl was unmoved, and she waved an impatient hand in Kaitan's direction. "So, Friave, get over here. What? I don't want it getting back to your family that my mother raised a snotty city brat." It seemed to Kaitan that the other girl been directing that one at her critic, and her annoyance with this tall interloper wavered. "I'm Bren Dibhal."
Still. "I'm not going to put in a good word for you or anything," she told the taller girl as she slouched to join them.
"Well, you should," Bren told her. "No one else has any idea what to do with you."
They set out and Kaitan watched as Bren deftly shrugged one shoulder out of her top and tucked her bundle of targets down the front. It took her several minutes and several attempts at finding a way to carry them that didn't set her elbows all akimbo before Kaitan deigned to copy the trick.
Hanging the targets was hard work, but that wasn't the problem. She'd come prepared for that, given how many hours she'd spent scrambling up the bluffs surrounding Fensirt. The problem was watching the other three -- she'd learned in addition to Bren and the the black-haired Calum there was round-faced Annlia. They were like daemons made for the craggy rocks and while Kaitan was hefting herself up and sticking targets to scrubby bushes at a steady pace, they were up and down like nothing. The fact that even Annila, the shortest of the three, had a hands'-breadth of height on Kaitan didn't much comfort the redhead.
Annila had been making some friendly overtures, but despite the grudging thought that she should probably make the best of a mediocre situation and maybe some friends, Kaitan couldn't bring herself to respond with more than grunts. Anyways, making friends was not what she'd come out here to do. The way Pars had described it, she'd thought she'd be watching galloping Rider pairs performing stunning feats of archery, but whenever they finished an area Bren rounded everyone up with ease beyond her years and carried on to the next pass.
The practice tracks were circuits through rocky territory. There were only two of them, but they crossed over and doubled back on themselves in all kinds of ways. The landscape of red and brown stone lent itself to a stunning combination of craggy rock formations crumbling down upon themselves with age and tall, stately erosion forms that looked eternal. The paths that the Rider pairs took through them were marked with scatterings of bright white rocks gathered from one of Fensirt's quarries, and they changed semi-regularly; any given day, the loops and the through-ways they had to navigate were different.
From what Kaitan had gathered, though, the volunteers organized themselves the same way no matter what the route was. Every group of kids had three or four sites that they cycled through, setting up the targets on their first visit to a site and taking them down for good at the end of the day. Over the course of the day, though, they'd visit each site a handful of times, after the riders had been through. They'd gather spent arrows, move the targets, and then -- as they were now -- muster out to the next site, usually long before the riders returned for another pass.
It was only at times like this that Kaitan considered the possibility that Iunis might be right when he said she didn't have the attention span for real, adult responsibility. They were trudging over the same scrub and stone that they'd pounded twice already today and under the intrusive heat of the noon sun, and with nothing to show for it but sweaty back and scuffed elbows. She was certainly feeling impatient.
From the middle distance she heard the warning howl, fancied she could hear the pounding of blue paws. That had ceased to be exciting, but as they crested a hill she scanned for a dust cloud that might let her know where the contingent was.
She stopped and shrugged off her hood, squinted, shaded her eyes with her hand; by her reckoning, they had to have just finished a loop, and they were coming up on the area that Kaitan's group had just hung. They were closer than she'd thought at first and that did send a patter of thrill through her.
Craning her neck, she hoped for a glimpse of blue around a corner...
"Is everything alright?" Annlia's voice some dozen steps up the trail almost made her jump, and for a moment she was filled with the electricity of an impulsive idea.
"No, I dropped my bracelet! I'll catch up in a minute!"
"Oh -- um, maybe I should come with you?"
"I'll be fine!" Kaitan hastily reassured her. Noting that Bren was turning around to see what was going on, she quickly backed up -- Bren might be cannier to this kind of trick. "I'll catch up."
As she trotted down the trail, sweaty back forgotten, she grudgingly congratulated herself on the base sort of cunning. Not the most creative of lies, and if she was honest not at all convincing, but she'd fallen upon the right moment to use it. She scrambled down an incline, shooting a last glance behind her; no, Bren didn't seem fooled. She and the other two teenagers were just disappearing from view when Bren's holler floated over, "Kaitan?"
She sounded annoyed. Kaitan called back with especial glee, "I'll be right back!" Two things were now certain: that she wouldn't have much time to watch the Riders go by when she got back to the track, and that she was cheerfully tumbling down the path to a severe talking-to. She fiddled with one of her copper armbands and wondered if she should drop it among the rocks when she arrived, a kind of alibi.
Kicking up dust and setting loose stones to rattle, she picked up the pace. Ahead was a V in the trail, one branch leading down to the track and the other up and then along the ridge that defined its borders. She climbed the higher path until she came to a low, gnarled tree she'd noticed while hanging -- it leaned up against the base of the crumbling remains of a natural stone arch, and with a leap and a scramble she'd scaled the stumpy shrub.
The arch extended a fair way over the through-way, a perfect target spot -- in fact, when she'd tried to hang one there Bren had laughed and told her that the Riders had mastered that one their first week in the area. She thanked both goddesses, because now it was the perfect vantage point and she was almost certain not to accidentally be shot at.
Hugging the hot rock, she bit her lip and looked up it, and then down the track. She could indistinct voices calling, human and daemon -- the pairs were not far off. That didn't leave her long. Her heart thumping away with the same speed of those galloping feet, she pulled herself up the curved formation, fingers finding shaky purchase, and she didn't look down until she was almost at the place where the arch had collapsed.
When she did, it was higher than she'd thought. Her breath caught in her throat and her fingers locked against the rock, but when she heard Bren shout she instinctively whipped her head around to look.
What she saw instead was sky, and then a sickening rock-red rush, and then nothing.
When she came to the first thing she felt was an unbearable need to breathe, and panic because she couldn't. Her eyes popped open, and after agonizing moments she sucked in a breath that sounded like a cat being choked.
Hands were pulling her to sit up. She shoved them away and struggled to do it herself, feeling angry tears welling. She was shaky, dizzy, and felt like an asandus had kicked her under the ribs; worse than that, she was surrounded by concerned blue daemons and a couple of dismounted humans. Not only had she fallen, she'd fallen and they'd all seen it. And she'd missed her chance to see them in action. She squeezed her eyes shut, and struggled to get her breath back.
"Kaitan? Are you alright?"
She took a moment to sort out that it was Pars who was speaking in such an urgent tone, and who had asked that same question more than once now, but she'd expected that. She opened her mouth to respond and only got a thin groan. Her lungs still weren't quite cooperating. She felt a rush of impotent fury and forced the muscles of her ribs to cooperate, but it wasn't till he'd swooped her up that she found her voice. "I'm fine," she squeaked.
He deposited her on Desnata's back, and when Kaitan tried to wriggle to get down the daemon houghed at her warningly. "You stay put," she rumbled in that sonorous voice. "We're going to take you home."
"No! I'm... fine!"
"I'm really sorry." That was Bren and Kaitan's stomach dropped all the way back to the dirt she'd just gotten out of. "I was just coming to get her -- she was just coming back to get something. I didn't know she'd fallen." For a moment she didn't have to fight off tears of shame, instead confused -- was the older teenager covering for her? "She's quick, I'll give her that. Is she alright?" And was she sassing Pars?
"I think she'll be fine, but just in case." For someone who'd just a moment ago been practically shaking Kaitan for a response, he seemed pretty nonchalant now. "I'll take her home. You three, you'll be alright just three? Good. Get back to what you were doing. Now..."
She stopped paying attention while he made brisk arrangements for someone else to lead the day's chase. She was becoming more aware of the ache in her back, and just under her ribs, and grudgingly she admitted that it could have been much worse. By the time Pars had mounted up and Desnata had started a gentle walk, Kaitan had mostly gotten her breath back.
Pars gave her a little while longer before asking, "So, what in Zenite's halitosis-ridden maw were you doing?"
"I was going back to get something." She looked down at her hands against Desnata's sky-blue fur, frowning sullen defiance.
"Oh, no, I've pulled my share of doltish stunts in my time and I know one when -- never mind, I know what you were doing." It was hard to hear it from Pars. She expected disappointment from Iunis, but even though he couched it in sarcasm and a slouched posture, she could hear it in him. "Just, why? Why didn't you just ask?"
Kaitan had no answer for that. She balled her fists and slouched her shoulders. Struggling, she thought about the day, and the reason she'd dreamed up coming along on this trip to begin with. It seemed absurdly out of reach now...
That thought roused something in her. She straightened a little bit and, glancing back just enough to catch a glimpse of him, she asked, "I was hoping you'd put in a good word for me with the teacher pairs at the compound."
"What?" She thought she felt Desnata laugh, but Pars didn't seem at all amused. "What are you--? Kaitan, there isn't a suicidal idiot career path with the Riders. We're all committed to doing our best not to die."
"It's just that they chased me off from even watching the other day."
"It's their damn compound, Ky," he snapped.
"But it's not their land."
Desnata's head came up and around to stare at the teenager, who felt a moment of alarm. "I wouldn't say it's yours either." The censure stung, and felt undue from that direction. It was all well and good -- well, it wasn't, but it was unavoidable -- when her family told her she wasn't responsible enough to be a full member of the family yet; it was wholly another to hear it from the daemon. When she stiffened her shoulders in protest Pars added, "she's right and you know it."
She hated the feeling of tears welling up again, hated the heat of the day, hated feeling dusty and sticky and sore, hated everything about today. She clutched Desnata's hair and resolved her eyes on the familiar rocky bluffs of her city, just coming into view again; if she tried hard enough she'd be dry-eyed again before they made it through the gates. It didn't take long in the desert.
Later, as they were passing through the city and the noise of it was interfering with Kaitan's icy silence, Pars spoke again. "Are you really serious about this?"
Another jolt ran through her, this one more like hope. "Yes! I really am!" She'd tried to make her voice firm like she remembered her mother's, but the winding still left her with a squeak. She took a deep breath and tried not to squirm. "Pars, I really am."
"Huh." He sounded noncommittal, which was better by leaps and bounds than sarcastic. Kaitan bit her lip and did her best to express earnestness with every piece of her body, but she didn't get anything else out of him on the ride home. She was still looking forward to getting it from Iunis, who would be so pleased when he got the tale of why Kaitan and Pars had returned midafternoon, but it wasn't Iunis she'd been trying to impress today. Maybe today wouldn't prove to be yet another crossed-off entry on her list of good ideas. Maybe.
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Haha, thanks. It's good times, trying to work in a different set of dirty words.
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Your description of the desert rocked my socks too. AND MADE ME EVEN GRUMPIER IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO READ THIS.
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