1629, Fire Season, Movement Week, Freezeday
Context
It is not long after Berra had her Little Disagreement with Irillo. She has taken time to go away and breathe and not kill anyone, and now she comes back towards Maalira. Session SO.5-11.
Events
It is not long after Berra had her Little Disagreement with Irillo. She has taken time to go away and breathe and not kill anyone, and now she comes back towards Maalira.
Maalira gives her a warm smile.
The little Humakti’s expression is closed down, but her eyes are too bright, and a little too red to support any theoretical claim of separation from the world. “Thank you for that,” she says. Her voice sounds tired.1Maalira passes Insight (Human).
Maalira pats the ground next to where she is sitting. “You are very welcome. Come sit down.”
Berra does that, after a short, formal bow. Up close she looks a lot more like a young woman who has been trying not to cry, and a lot less like a young woman who kills for a living.
Maalira puts her hand on Berra’s nearer shoulder and squeezes gently. “If you start bowing to me, I’ll tell the ducklings I’ve given you all the sweets the next time we see them,” she says.
“You’re my employer,” Berra says quietly. “And I need distance.” Then she puts her hand up to Maalira’s. “Not from you.”
“I understand. That wasn’t… pleasant.”
The warrior shakes her head. “No. If I didn’t love him, it wouldn’t hurt. But it wasn’t pleasant.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to be distracted?”
“I don’t want either,” Berra replies. “I guess distraction’s better?”
“I mean, we could just sit here and watch the sky,” Maalira says dreamily.
“It’ll be dark soon. And the reason I don’t want either is I’m after someone to fight. There any interesting clouds?”
Maalira points. “That one looks a bit like a bison, don’t you think?”
Berra looks up. “I think you see bisons a lot,” she says. “Bisons are basically just big blobs, right? So a lot of clouds do.”
Maalira laughs. “Well, I guess. What can you see?”
“Um, blobs? That one there might be a dra… a snake?” Berra sighs. It’s a short, frustrated sound. “The colours are good, though.”
“It’s a very pretty sunset,” Maalira agrees. “I wonder if it will be clear enough to watch the stars?”
“Probably. There aren’t as many clouds up there as make a decent herd. Less Red Moon out today as well, so the stars will be brighter and cleaner.” Berra counts on her fingers. She may have forgotten just how far to the West they are, and how the moon spins.
“That will be nice. We can watch the stars and ignore… things.” Maalira shifts her hand to the ground so she can lean on it.
“I’ll have to set a guard roster, and talk to Kolyey. She doesn’t know yet. I won’t stop looking after people just because they didn’t hire m… because I’m not hired on.”
Maalira smiles sidelong at her. “In order to guard me effectively, I expect you to make sure the whole encampment is safe, of course.”
Berra wriggles her features for a bit, trying to find an answer. “Yeah. Sorry. I know you wouldn’t try to stop me. But I do mean it about the bolg. You have to pay me.” A tenth of a clack, the smallest coin, it is also troll slingshot ammunition. That might be why Berra then asks, “If you take one of those out of a patient, is it yours or his?”
Maalira opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ll have to ask the next time I’m near a priestess.”
She digs around in her scrip then hands a small coin to Berra.
Berra rolls it around in her fingertips. “At some point, I think I need to go see Lord Eril. Maybe that’ll be back in Boldhome by the time we’re free, but I might have to wait until I’m in Tar… I… got muddled. I might have to go to Tarsh.”
“Why do you need to go to Tarsh?” Maalira asks.
“Because my High Sword might be there. The sorts of things I’ve seen this season are the sorts of things he’ll probably want to know in person.”
Maalira nods. “If you’ll have me along, I’ll come too? To be a healer, obviously.” The last part is rather more rushed than the first part.
Berra blinks, surprised in the last of the sun. “Um, I hadn’t thought of that. But you’re a White Lady. You can go where you like.”
“I can, I suppose, but it’s different if someone wants you there, or, I mean, if you’ve been invited, or at least not told not to…” Maalira trails off.
Berra freezes, takes a long breath, and then gives Maalira a polite smile. “I’m not asking you not to?” she says. There is little hope there, just tiredness.
Maalira half-smiles back. “Good, because I was going anyway,” she says.
Berra smirks, then chuckles, looking down. There might be a blush happening around the ears.
Maalira also looks down, smiling a tiny bit, and shifts her position so that she can fidget with a leaf she has picked up.
Berra hands Maalira a blade of grass after a few seconds of watching.
Maalira makes a tiny slit in the leaf with her fingernail and feeds the blade of grass through it.
“Well, I was thinking you could make a whistle with it, but that works too.” Berra sqpeaks quietly, watches peacefully. Her emotions seem to have run out.
“I’ve never managed that whistle trick,” Maalira admits.
“You kinda have to pull the grass really tight,” Berra says. “But some people don’t have the hand shape for it.”
Maalira pulls the blade of grass back out of the leaf and offers it back to Berra. “Show me?”
Berra rips the grass in two, lengthways. “Better when it’s thinner.” The slimmed-down blade goes between her hands, held by the bas of her thumbs, and the tips, in a diamond. “See like that? Then when you try to straighten your thumbs but still grip it, it stops being able to get away from the Air, and sings to it instead.” She blows. There is a teeny, shrill peeeep
Maalira grins delightedly. “That’s amazing.”
Berra hands over the grass. “You’ve got be be determined not to let it slip,” she says. Her hand is right there, ready to be brushed against. She does not seem to have noticed.
Maalira takes the grass, quite accidentally brushing her hand against Berra’s.
“Hold it between the thumbs at the base, then close your fingers on it.” Berra has entirely kept her cool.
Maalira tries to get her hands into the right position.
“Now press the thumbs together,” Berra encourages her. “Top and bottom. Then unbend them, so they pull the grass.”
Maalira manages to get her thumbs to do what Berra is describing. “And now I blow through it?”2Passes DEXx3.
“Yeah. Find the way that it stops making fwwwuh sounds, and kind of move back and forth around there. It’s where it’s thinnest but the blade bit isn’t always obvious.”
Maalira attempts this, and makes a sort of fwwwuh sound.
Berra watches, believing.
Maalira tries several more times before getting a tiny sweet trill out of the grass blade.3The DEX roll covers success, but Maalira fails Play (Instrument) so it takes her a while.
Berra grins widely. “See?” The light is changing, and Yelm is dying, and the grass blade made a sound.
Maalira grins back, holding Berra’s eye. “Thank you!”
“I should probably go tell people who’s on watch and stuff. Want to walk with me?”
“Yes, I could do with a walk too,” Maalira says.
Berra stands without effort, even armoured, and offers Maalira a hand.
Maalira takes her hand with a smile.
Berra is strong. Of course she is. “I dunno yet what we’re doing with the evening. There’s a lot to think… two more of them to find maybe, and it’s all complicated.”
“It is,” Maalira says, bouncing a little as she is pulled to her feet. “We’ll deal with it one thing at a time though.”
“Right. Yes. Morale’s about to be shit and I should go round and start dealing with that. First stop is… probably talking to Irillo, but Nayale’s going to be trying to work out what to think and how the hell to think it.” Berra does not quite roll her eyes, but she take on a wry expression. “I never thought I’d be old enough to teach.”
Maalira snorts. “It’s more that she’s young enough to be taught.” She pauses for a beat. “She thinks very highly of you.”
“That’s… at her age, I’d already lived through a lot of things that killed a lot of people. But as soon as I get to thinking I might live, I’ll be getting sloppy.” Berra steers the conversation towards one of the two options.
“Don’t get sloppy, I want you to live,” Maalira says. “I guess Nayale has been lucky with her growing up time.”
Berra half nods, and then says, “Great Winter,” with a wince. “D’you fancy telling her that she did the right thing? She wonders.”
“I will,” Maalira promises. “She needs to hear it.”
“Then, let’s go walk round and be peaceful and I’ll talk to Irillo.” Berra gestures back towards where the others have been singularly faliing to interfere.
Maalira nods. “Let’s do that.”
- 1Maalira passes Insight (Human).
- 2Passes DEXx3.
- 3The DEX roll covers success, but Maalira fails Play (Instrument) so it takes her a while.
