When the purple coloring left his eyes, Walker found himself....small. Incredibly small. As if he was lying flat on the floor, looking up. Strange disjointed thoughts struck him as he fully merged with Kwaya's pages.
Food;Cold;Tired;Food;Move legs;Move arms;Tired:Food;Cold;
The thoughts kept coming, but his vision didn't make sense. The images he was seeing were blurry and confusing. Things kept appearing and disappearing within seconds, as if they'd never existed. Although he was living Kwaya's life in this moment, parts of his mind retained themselves, keeping himself together. When he was Triton...He found himself only with Triton's thoughts. This time, he was still himself, viewing another person's life while secondary thoughts filtered in from the background.
Flickering;Noise;Approaching;Faster;Noise;Noise;Touch;Shaking;Warmth;Food;Tired
Time sped onward, as if it were a VHS and someone kept mashing the fast forward button. He watched from Kwaya's eyes as the floor moved a little higher, then higher again. The people around her changed, from blurry and perplexing, to having notable characteristics. Purple hair, light brown eyes, some with brown skin, others with green. Touching, cooing. He figured it out at that point. Kwaya was still a baby, growing up.
But in all of the memories that kept moving on, they never smiled. It could be a cultural difference, but he didn't think so.
Three years pushed by in the blink of an eye, then slowed down again to highlight a critical moment. They were speaking a language he shouldn't know, yet, because he was within her memories, it translated into his mind piece by piece as it came in.
"Why?"
"Why what, child?"
"Why be I so different from you?" Kwaya touched her brown hair, "Why no I look like yah?"
The woman who had raised her looked over with a piercing look. Her two sets of eyelids closed simultaneously, a brief pause in her actions, before she stopped kneading the bread in front of her. Wiping her hands on her apron, she placed an open palm under her chin and leaned on it, never taking her eyes from the child in front of her, "We found you in a barn, girl. You do no spring from our seed."
Kwaya was shocked. All this time they'd raised her, and she had always had doubts that she was ever truly theirs. Now she knew why, "I'm no one of the Umplari? Am I?"
The woman shook her head, "Nay, girl. Me named yah after me grandmother, who was the kind to take in strays. But you no be one of us, except by custom. Yah hair never be the color of the sunset, and yah eyes never see da bottom of the sea. But it ain't all so bad, yah?"
"How it no all be so bad?" She said, a drop of water streaking away from a single eyes.
"Yah not be trapped here like da rest of us, now, off you go." The woman said, then went back to her kneading as Kwaya stumbled away, her world changed in nothing but a moment.
Walker didn't know what to think about that, or why the Book of Souls felt it was important to show him. Time zipped forward several more years. He caught snippets in passing moments. Training with a....bucket? He wasn't crazy, she was using a bucket as a weapon. Monsters rising out of the sea, attacking the villagers as they passed by. Kwaya defending them, killing crabs the size of large dogs. Becoming shunned by her people, the Umplari, who it turned out didn't believe in killing. Time slowed down, the vision showing Kwaya's hands tied up loosely by rope. If he had to guess, she was about thirteen at this point. A group of village elders sat in a group around her, dark purple hair crowning the top of each head. The elder in the middle was speaking as the world became less hazy.
"-un yah know da ways, Kwaya. No killing, no ever."
"If I no kill them, they kill us all." She protested, straining against the rope as she held her hands over her head, falling to her knees. "I no want to, but it no be a choice. For da village."
"It not da way, Kwaya." An elderly man said from the side of the group, "Each killin, each murdah, it be a stain on the soul. You be staining yaself, an us, by being wit you."
"Faddah, it no be fair."
"It be da way," He replied with a shake of his head, "You no understand meh, us. You be too different child." Her father looked at the group, each nodding in turn with one holdout. The elder looked for a long moment, Kwaya turning to look at the elder woman as well. A moment later, her mother nodded. Her father turned back to look at her, his face shifting to something like sadness, "I be so sorry for this Kwaya, but we no have a choice. Ya be gone from us, after this. Ya may take a skin, an a bit of food, but ya be gone right away."
"No! No! It no be fair!"
"Fair? No, it no be fair....but it be the way." He said, then one by one, they turned away from her.
Kwaya worked from left to right, begging, pleading for them to change their minds, but nobody would turn around no matter how much she tried. With one last look at her father and mother's curved backs, she stepped outside. A villager was waiting for her with a beanskin bag for water and a small beanskin pack with her food. Just before she started to walk away, he placed a hand on her shoulder. Looking at what he held in his hand, she understood and quietly knelt, internally bringing forth the last bit of dignity she had left. She made not a sound as he did his duty.
An hour later, the only thing that was left of her in the village that had raised her, were a few toys left over in an empty room, and pieces of cut brown hair dirtying the outside of the Elder's tent.
Walker couldn't help but compare Kwaya's original village to monks from his own world. They too wouldn't lift a hand to defend themselves, believing it would stain their karma and force the world to accept a greater amount of violence. The fast forward continued, and he felt as if the Book of Souls viewpoint was skewed. He watched as Kwaya found a small village at the edge of the land. Speaking to the villagers, she found out that she lived in an underwater cave system, one large enough to be its own world, and that the upper world was ten times its size. The revelation thoroughly confused her. She began to take long walks, looking around the area and trying to find an escape to a whole new way of living. He watched as she defended herself from multiple opponents, time and time again. His view slowed down again.
As she looked different than those around her, she was undersiege consistently, leaning further and further into brutal violence in an attempt to get them to leave her alone out of fear of retribution. After a few days, when no more attacks came after she'd cut the leg off of the man who tried, she rested, allowing herself to gain more sleep than she had in the past. Eventually, she found an upwelling, a powerful current in the water that would push up, instead of away. It was in a quiet area, far away from the villages she'd come to know over the past few months.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Packing her worn water skin and pack, she picked up a modified weapon she'd made out of a rock, stick, and some rope, then began to step deep into the cold water. After only a few strokes, the upwelling's current caught her, and she was dragged up and out of the only place she'd ever known.
The flash-forward showed multiple screens. Each was a different point in the timeline. as she moved through the upwelling and toward the surface she felt was her only possible direction. She stopped three times.
Once, to fight off an octopus-like monster that followed her into a cave she'd escaped to upon seeing it. The battle was over in minutes, but the results of which, multiple wounds on her body showing themselves, took over a week to heal enough for her next attempt.
The second try pushed her into a cave almost by accident. A small cross-current caught her up and unpleasantly threw her inside. It took another two days, her food running low, before she was able to find a spot where she could escape to a higher current.
The last detour planted her in a side village. Only, unlike the others, this one didn't have people with green and brown skin.
The white-skinned people shied away when she approached them. Their skin tones were a kind she'd never seen before, only a single shade away from being the color of chalk, with red hair on top. When she tried to speak to them, they panicked, each running to their own homes and closing the doors, quietly.
From the village she was raised in's general ambivalence to the second village's hostility, she wasn't sure what to make of this one. Rather than enter and attempt to speak with them, she settled on watching from the outside. After taking a small amount of food and water, of course.
Their language was....strange. Rather than speaking out loud, they communicated with a series of hand movements and gestures. Sometimes even a movement that seemed almost like a dance. She identified a few words, things like rope and eat, or hungry as it were. But eventually, the charm of finding a village that was scared of her, rather than her being scared of it, began to fade. It was only the third day of her watching that something terrifying occurred.
Kwaya was sitting on a rock, a few hundred yards away from what she decided to call Chalkytown, when they all gathered at once in the middle. She couldn't see what they were doing, but there was a lot of noise, then a deathly quiet that felt unnerving in its suddenness. The circle of villagers disbursed, each going to their own home and closing the door in silence. After they'd all left, only a mother and a small child remained in the center of what was once a large group of people. The mother looked down at the child, no more than three or four years old, before quietly scooping it up into her arms and walking out toward the shoreline. Kwaya wasn't sure what was happening, so she followed along from above, taking careful steps to make sure she didn't knock over any rocks or pebbles that might cause noise and alert the village to her movements.
She settled on a large overhang, its point jutting proudly from a small cliff, and watched as the mother and child reached a haphazardly built single dock. There was a small poll standing straight up that she'd wondered at when first arriving. It stood tall, over ten feet, and had a series of ropes wrapped around it. They arrived in front of it, and the mother made a few hand signs at the child, her movements slow and almost sad. The child gave a single response, and then stood next to the pole, leaning against it. Looking at her mother, she stood still while the chalky woman wrapped her in the ropes, parts of it frayed and needing to be wrapped multiple times. Kwaya was disturbed by what she was witnessing and felt that she might need to intercede. She wasn't sure what was happening, but it couldn't be good.
As she took a single step to move down the cliff, something huge and black as night burst out of the water. Teeth the size of her arm snatched up the woman who was in the midst of wrapping her child, and was immediately dragged under the water. The coastline's color changed from its normal placid green to a deep blue as the woman didn't come back up again.
Kwaya watched for a short time, but the monster didn't seem like it was coming back. Moving down slowly, an eye always toward the water, she approached the child. It didn't make a peep as she got closer, just continued leaning back into the loose ropes, her white eyes always focused forward as if wondering when her mother would return.
Kwaya pulled out a sharp piece of bone she'd been using and quietly cut the rest of the ropes away. She took off her jacket, swaddled her in it, then lifted the quiet girl onto her shoulder, carrying her away.
When the villagers came out of their homes almost an hour later, a spot of blue blood was on the docks, and both mother and child were gone.
As Kwaya pondered what they'd do, they just went about their day like nothing had happened.
Ritual sacrifice.....He tried to move past it, as it was likely thousands of years ago, but it wasn't as easy as all of that. To attempt to sacrifice your own child, and get taken instead, was a heavy load on his mind. Kwaya's actions thus far, however, were interesting. It made him want to sympathize with her plight, which wasn't what he wanted to do. She was a monster who had tried to devour his soul.....And yet......there was something noble about her thus far attempts at survival. She'd never let her hair grow back out, either. After the village had first shorn it off, she'd kept up the appearance. None of the memories thus far had really told him why, but he understood the emotional tie to where you come from and the emotional experiences that came with it.
Walker watched as Kwaya tried and failed multiple times to get the little girl to speak out loud. Eventually, she settled on just learning how to speak with her hands, understanding that she had little power in their dynamic relationship. A flash-forward later, it became the only way they could converse without any confusion. As he watched, and Kwaya's memories became further connected to his own, he began to pick up the language as well. A hook and twist meant mistake, whereas a lift and push meant get over it.
The little girl's name turned out to be Phylla, a Greek-sounding name if he ever heard one, and she had no interest in returning to her village. Kwaya agreed, and together they planned on leaving the small Chalkytown behind.
It was over a month before they felt they had the necessary supplies. Then, as they were leaving through a hidden cove, the great black monster appeared.
Kwaya stared at the monster in the water, Phylla on her back and the water already around her ankles. She had rigged the rope to hold on tight, so she wasn't worried about the little girl falling off, but she was worried about trying to outswim the monstrosity right in front of her. She stood still in the water for hours, her back beginning to ache and the skin on her feet already soft and irritated. Eventually, she stepped out, unwrapping the little girl and telling her they couldn't go right now.
"It goes for noise." Phylla said with her hands.
"Noise?"
"Yes."
"Okay?......Okay!"
The villagers refusing to speak suddenly made sense to her. Kwaya and Phylla came up with a plan at that moment. A day later, they stepped back into the cove. Phylla, already attached to her with ropes, patted her back twice. Kwaya nodded and pulled on the rope she'd been holding in her left hand. Far away, the rope was attached to a rock on a sloping cliff. They'd spent the last thirty-hours sleeping, eating, and hacking at the rock until it was just a bit unsteady. Sure, sneaking into the village to steal their supplies had been a bit hectic, but if all Kwaya needed to do was make some noise as she did so, it was easy to keep the villagers at a distance.
Kwaya pulled on the rope, hard. They'd had to twist and turn it multiple times to get through the porous entrance to their cove, but they'd done it, and now they just needed to wait and see. The black monster didn't move on the first smash they heard in the distance. Nor the second. It wasn't until the third that it sped away, aiming directly for what they'd worked hard to set up. Phylla patted her back again and Kwaya quietly slipped under the water. They kept their heads above for the time being, slowly moving out as further bangs slammed into the slope not too far away. After a time, and at a distance of only a few hundred feet from the upwelling, Phylla started to beat on her back in a three-hit rhythm. That was the signal they'd devised for the monster approaching, so Kwaya did away with all attempts at stealth. Pushing herself, she swam as hard as she could, aiming for the fast current ahead of her.
When they were only a few beats away, she could hear the water making way for something large. She pushed herself, finding a burst of speed somewhere deep within her tired body. They blew through the water fast, her legs kicking, and the current began to suck them in. She felt, rather than heard, the powerful force behind her as something tried to take a bite out of her leg, but she tucked them in and performed one more quick pull on the water, and then they were off and into the upwelling.
Walker felt his heartbeat begin to calm down as the scene ended. He was sure Phylla was going to get taken, or even that Kwaya might lose a leg at the end there, but it was just a close shave. The fast-forward occurred again, and when the scene slowed down, Kwaya and Phylla were on a beach somewhere. The sun shined above, and a man was talking to her. The scene zoomed in on the two waterlogged girls just as the man finished speaking.
"-said. If you want food, you need to pick a side."
Phylla didn't understand what he was saying, and Kwaya could only figure out every other word, but she gleaned just enough information to say, "Pick a side? In what?"
The man scratched the back of his head, "The war of course. What'll it be? Comrade? Or Prisoner?"