Coincidence of coincidences, her birthday happened during the beast tide.
Instead of a festival of good food and good company, she got beasts and blood, she’s not sour at all about this fact. She wonders about what her family will do when she gets back, hopefully nothing too extravagant. She honestly just wants to see her family at this point, she’s tired of all the violence and injuries.
Speaking of, she got a few more!
Nothing major, just cuts and punctures from claws and teeth, but they are plentiful, and a few hit her limp arm. Those hurt, a lot. But that’s fine! She can dig through her very generous portions of meat with some level of glee as she finally doesn’t have to be drowned in beasts. Tantra takes another stick of kabobs and eats them with practiced care. She's never eaten kabobs before, never knew they existed, but there's some novelty to a bunch of meat cubes on a stick. Also the spices the villagers used are sublime. There are children running and pestering doting parents as they rush through the crowds. A few of those that have lost someone are here, and you can tell by the way their smiles seem just a bit brittle, like a ceramic pot with just a hairline crack.
They’re sitting at the seat of honour with the elder, even though in the grand scheme of things they didn’t really do all that much except for Rakan.
Speaking of.
“Hey Rakan,” Tantra says after she’s chewed and swallowed the cube of meat.
“Yeah?” He replies with his mouth distinctly full.
Tantra scowls but decides not to comment, “during the beast tide, I was doing this thing. Brute forcing gathering rather than finessing it, eventually it started to feel like something was squeezing my soul.”
He raises a brow at her, “that’s compression kid.”
“Compression?”
He takes a swig from his wineskin and sighs in contentment, “That’s what I said.”
“Is it something I can train?”
He snorts, “Not even close to that point yet kid, but it could be good for your will, so long as you don’t cross the screaming sign in your mind.”
“I won’t”
“Good, then go ahead and keep doing it, won’t do much for you but progress is progress as they say.”
“Hwhat are we talking about?” Yorin asks with a mouth full of food.
“Just one of the old ways people used to cultivate that got forgotten to time because it was generally useless compared to its peers.”
“How do you know about it then?” Kisrin says, thankfully being a gentlemen and swallowing before joining the conversation.
Rakan takes a bite out of his scrag, “Sect master’s old, and if you get an audience with him he’ll throw some random tidbits about cultivation at you. Mostly useless.”
Etra scrunches her brow, “why not teach something actually useful?”
“Probably something to do with worthiness, I don’t know, I’ve only talked to him a few times.”
“What’s he like?” Tantra asks.
“Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?”
“You making it a habit to repeat what I say? ‘Cause it’s getting annoying”
“Perhaps if you deigned this one with more than one word answers, this one wouldn’t have to echo your words.”
Rakan grumbles as Yorin snickers.
“I don’t know what to tell you, he seemed like he had a stick shoved six feet up his ass and talked like everything and everyone was a nuisance.”
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“Sounds like my grandpa,” Kisrin says, “maybe it's something to do with age.”
“I hope not, I like being a chucklefuck.”
All three kids stare at him.
“What?”
They shake their heads in disappointment.
-
Yorin skips down the streets of Terkat, waving and at the passerbys he passes with a big smile plastered on his face. Terkat is clean, very clean, so clean it's hard to keep up with. Yorin isn’t exactly diligent with his image, much to Tantra’s chagrin. But that’s fine! Cultivators are meant to break the rules after all.
Well hopefully not all the rules.
An-y-way.
He knows a lot of people in the market square, considering he lives right beside it, so he knows where to find what and how to haggle, not like Tantra with her blasé confidence but he’s good enough where it gets him decent deals. Combine that with his robes and they practically give him the stuff for free.
He gingerly opens the door to his home, finding Yorik and Erick giving each other death glares. Hmmm, nope, not his problem, he turns to look for his friends and finds Tantra and Kisrin meditating. He sits between them, making a perfect triangle and waits.
Kisrin is taking deep breaths while Tantra lets out the breath almost as soon as she finishes drawing it, must be doing that new technique then. Other than gathering Qi quicker he really doesn’t get the point of it, but Tantra will do as Tantra does. Her control technique is useless too and yet apparently it’s the key to a quick foundation, so who knows, maybe she’ll be a collector of generally useless techniques and turn them to gold.
As he waits Yorick and Erick continue their staring match, ah children.
He doesn’t know what started this but it was surely idiotic.
As it should be.
Eventually Kisrin opens his eyes and gives Tantra a capital L look before he realizes that Yorin is right there. He blushes hard when he turns his head, and Yorin has to hold himself back from laughing, so that he doesn’t interrupt Tantra’s gathering.
Kisrin just scowls at him.
Yorin smiles.
He sighs.
“Yorin,” Tantra says suddenly, breaking off from her meditation, “It seems as though you’ve finally learned manners.”
Yorin just shrugs at her, “where’s Etra and Rakan?”
“Etra’s at home,” Kisrin says, “and Rakan is doing whatever Rakan does, why?”
“Well,” Yorin says, “I may or may not have gotten us all something to commemorate (I think that’s the word) our first beast tide”
“Oh?” Tantra says as she raises a brow, “and what might this be”
He riffles through his bag and pulls out three white bead bracelets.
“They’re made of the bones of a real strong beast!” He exclaims, “it’s real tough, Toris had to use a claw from the same beast to even carve out the beads.”
Kisrin and Tantra each grab a bracelet and examine it.
Tantra puts it on, leaving it to tighten around her right wrist as she holds out her hand to inspect the jewellery.
“Well,” she says, “you certainly won’t be competing with the jewellers, but it has its own charm.”
Yorin almost deflates at that, but then he remembers that Tantra’s probably seen some of the best accessories coins can buy, so maybe it was a compliment in a way?
“Tantra,” Kisrin says with a raised brow, “one of these is more than most villagers can afford, let alone three.”
Tantra goes red with embarrassment, “apologies Yorin, I meant nothing by it.”
Yorin waves her off, “It’s fine! It’s more for the memories than looks anyway.”
“Do I get one?” says a voice over his shoulder.
He turns to see Erick with sparkling eyes.
Yorin smiles wide, “of course!”
-
Saying their goodbyes was a difficult thing for Yorin, she could tell he wanted to stay, and she could sympathise with the feeling, but in the end he chose to keep going on the journey. Kisrin’s village is far to the south, meaning they’ll have to pass through multiple cities and kingdoms. Luckily the months after the beastide was enough time for Tantra to regain mobility in her arm. It’s…very ugly, leaving a lot of it as just purple scar tissue.
She doesn’t like to look at it.
She wonders how many more scars she’ll get before they make it to Ralth? She’s already got a new one on her belly and out her back from where that bastard ran her through. Still has the Jian too, nestled safely in Rakan’s artifact, she’s pretty sure it’s the necklace, but he has an assortment of other jewellery on his person that could be carved with arrays.
Apparently it's to make it harder for thieves to distinguish which one is the real artifact, which brought up the question of who would be stupid enough to rob a cultivator?
Apparently a lot of people, if they’re desperate enough.
Which is another curiosity.
“Yorin?”
“Yes?”
“Where were the beggars in Terkat?”
He shrugs, “we don’t have any.”
Tantra scrunches her brow, “how?”
“By housing them or kicking them out,” Etra says. “If they’re a kid they go to live with Clairmont, if they aren’t they’re shown the door.”
“That sounds…cruel.”
Etra nods, “It is, but the other villages take them.”