Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. All was silent beneath the canopy, as though Viride was no wood but a cathedral. If so, no one seemed to mind the blasphemer that walked beneath its arching ceiling. The birds still sang hymns from bare branches, and the incense of decaying leaves, of lingering rain, of well-fed soil, rose up with every step Sarkan took. Today he didn’t wear his cloak, only an expression of grimness, a weight his heart echoed. Somewhat. The Percheron was tracking. He moved slowly, ambling along wider trails before splitting off onto paths that were little more than deer-tracks through the briars. With an expert eye he noted each hollow dug by a boar and each den home to a fox, but he’d never sought such ordinary prey and he wouldn’t be starting today. It seemed he was not the first of his kind that Denocte knew. That in itself wasn’t so surprising - Sarkan had been thoroughly impressed by how many magical beasts purported to make the forest their home - but such a wide flurry of activity was neither normal nor wise. He was’t here today to lay traps, but to find them; to better understand his potential competitor. A novice, surely, if not an outright fool - someone who hadn’t learned yet that one rotten apple would quickly see the whole lot thrown out to the hogs. Sarkan thought there were enough fruits to go around, if they picked carefully. It was a dreary day, the kind with a fog that seeped into your bones and took them in its teeth. All the edges of the world were muzzy-soft with muted colors, and even most sounds were swallowed up by the thick layer of needles and duff. But Sarkan’s ear still twitched at a whisper of movement, and he lifted his head to find a figure moving beyond him in the fog, little more than a silhouette. He might have let them pass unremarked, but his muscles were growing stiff, and everything was damp and cold, and he hadn’t heard another voice for hours. So he called after them, in his low baritone, and smiled when they looked his way. “Traveler - mind if I join you for a spell?” |
All Welcome - they all jump when they hear the sirens;
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 we are the ones who don't slow down at all The silence in here is sickening. O is not glad for it. Usually it doesn’t bother her, either, but here—knowing that there is a murderer walking in its midst, that somewhere in the copse of trees there is a man (it must be a man) who uses his knife as a bearer of his entitlement—it makes her skin crawl. It makes her heart beat too fast. As she weaves through the forest, the feeling of being watched only grows more intense. Birds with beady eyes peering down from their branches. Foxes wearing black masks peering out from the undergrowth. She watches them right back, eyes roving like searchlights, sharp and focused. Somehow it does not make her feel much better. For every one she catches, there must be a dozen more predators better-hidden. The hairs on the back of her neck are raised. Inside her something is quite tense, wound up like a clock forced to stop, like a wire coiled too tight—it is scraping at her with heated ferocity. But her stride, at least, is still relaxed. Her shoulders are not pinched too tight. She has never learned how not to look intimidating; and anyway, it is her natural state. Here it could be a windfall. After a while, the silence catches up to her, oppressive as a scarf soaked in chloroform, and despite her better judgement O hums under her breath. Some tune from her childhood (whatever that was meant to look like). A low song, the lyrics muddied by time, strangely soft in the mouth: had a wife but couldn’t keep her, had another, didn’t love her— “Mind if I join you for a spell?“ —up the chimney he did shove her. “Why not,” O calls over her shoulder. Her voice is easy, companionable, even; it would be hard, even for someone who knows her, to find the cold thread of contempt that runs underneath it. She turns to face him, and coolly (too coolly) returns his smile.
we are the ones who don't slow down at all Why not? Of course she knows: there are plenty of reasons why not. The forest is dangerous, for one, and new corpses are dug up every day. Why not? Well, monsters weave their way throughout the trees at all hours of the day and night, and this man may very well be one of them. O knows well enough why not. The list is miles long. But some part of her is certain it will take his guard down. He will think: what a foolish girl she must be, to say why not and not hear how careless she sounds. There is power, she knows, in looking dumber than you are. Frailer. Nicer. There is power in letting people underestimate you. So she says why not? with a crooked smile, with eyes that glitter through the fog with bright enthusiasm, and the shine turns your focus away from whatever lazy darkness is beginning to rise from underneath it. At her side, Tuchulcha whispers to be careful and the sound of it rumbles deep into her skin, like the pealing of a church bell. She waits for him a few meters ahead, in a clearing surrounded by a copse of trees, watching with quiet, focused eyes as he approaches, noting… everything. The broadness of his shoulders. The way he towers over her. The pocket in his camouflaged cloak she knows instinctively is meant to hold a knife. (Without even noting her hypocrisy, she wonders what sins, exactly, it is going to help him commit.) Now they are shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. O walks casually at his side. Overhead, birds are trilling in their strange, bright voices, and the movement of the leaves casts down a sound like whispering: if she were a little dumber, she might feel peaceful—lulled to complacency by the babbling of the little stream and the pattern of dappled sunlight and shadow underfoot. But instead she watches him, from the corner of her eye. Wary. Intrigued. For a moment there is only silence between them, pockmarked by the sounds of the world finally stirring awake around them. When he asks about the axe, she grins, half pleased by his interest and half amused in anticipation of his reaction to what happens next. O pulls the hurlbat from its sheath. She hangs it in the air between them, where it twirls lazily, like a leaf in the wind, and says in a high, cheerful voice all its own: “Not like this.” They both seem to grin at him then, sharp and certain. |
