“So… that is how Harpen eats,” Reonda said, watching as Nyal effortlessly ripped off a piece of bread now held in her talons with her teeth.
Having near zero experience with Harpen, Reonda had not expected just how flexible their bodies were. Nyal wasn’t the most graceful eater she had ever seen, but the Acamian was fascinated at how she could turn. A part of her couldn’t help but find it a bit terrifying, but she kept it to herself. After all there were far more pressing matters for her to think on, and a hawk that had yet to return from surveying the nearby woods.
Ten minutes after the initial introduction and some attempts to communicate to talk with the hen, Reonda had given Nyal some food and used the time to try and figure out what was going on. All she had gathered from the Nyal was that something happened the previous night, but she wasn’t aware of what that was. Not that her Historia was going to be able to tell her anything either, for she was not the holder of the Historia of the Past. No, the Historia of the Present only told her what was going on when its pages were opened, allowing her the briefest of glimpses into the world around her. Even with a different Historia, she wouldn’t have been able to see what happened.
“The only things obscured from the three historias are the oracles and oracle vessels,” Reonda whispered. Her eyes looked to Nyal’s Historia as she spoke, which the Harpen has placed on the ground so she may eat. “It just so happens that the hen I come across is a vessel like me. What luck.”
“Reonda Reonda?” Nyal called to the Acamian, causing her to look from the Historia to the hen. There was a look of concern on Nyal’s face, making Reonda painfully aware that she had started grimacing without realizing it. “Te grekiq trenaq te grekiq trenaq?”
Even though she didn’t know the words, the concern on Nyal’s face made it clear what the Harpen was asking. She quickly switched from grimacing to smiling, followed by a thumbs up. Nyal returned the smile and then tried to copy her motion with her free talon. Reonda couldn’t help but find said attempt worth a giggle. Nyal joined in, unable to help but finding it funny as well. If anything, the feeling of laughter helped given her current predicament.
“I’m fine don’t worry,” Reonda reassured her, knowing that while the words wouldn’t carry meaning the tone of them would. “I’m sure rarri and tatti are too.”
Though her words were meant to cheer Nyal, the mention of her mother and father got a different response. Talons curled and dug into dirt, and her smile fell away to a frown. Reonda cursed herself for the carelessness of her words, realizing she had made the situation worse. She reached a hand out to give a pat on the back, but froze up and retracted it. Instead her attention was drawn to the sky, noticing a hawk flying down towards her.
Nyal watched as the human stood up and held her arm up. The hawk landed on the arm effortlessly, and Reonda gave it a small bit of meat from her pouch. As the hawk enjoyed it, Nyal’s attention turned to the Acamian’s figure and then landed on the book strapped to their waist. She looked from her Historia to Reonda’s, quickly realizing how similar the books seemed to be.
“Camp a distance off. Deserted, but possibly where she ran here from,” Teolus told Reonda after gulping down the meat. He looked past her shoulder and down to her waist. “Oh, she’s awake now, and wants your Historia it seems.”
“Huh?” Reonda asked before the feeling of something touching her waistline caused her to freeze up.
Teolus was unaware of the fact she had frozen up and focused on Nyal. The Harpen gave a tug at the book, but the clasps that kept it on Reonda’s waist hadn’t been undone. All she did was push the Acamian toward her, bringing the book right into her nose and sending her to the ground. With Nyal’s wings no longer in contact with her body, Reonda found the ability to move returned to her. She clutched her head in her free hand as she realized why.
“Their words – their false truths – are still believed by a part of my mind," She said, pulling a bit on her bangs with her fingers. “I figured I would be free of their influences, knowing what I do.”
“You’re young. Young minds are easy to morph,” Teolus reminded her, hopping his way up to her shoulder and giving the hawk version of a pat on the head. “Will take time to unlearn and overcome. You are capable of doing so, however. I know that.”
“I hope that you are right,” Reonda responded. She removed her Historia from its clasp and turned to face Nyal. The young Harpen looked on as Reonda, with a part of her mind screaming for her to reconsider, kneel before her with the book in her hands. “You are intrigued, I take it?”
Nyal did not catch what any of that meant, instead grabbing her own Historia. She placed it on the ground in front of Reonda and opened it. The Acamian did the same, with Teolus flying over her and in front of the hen. Without a bit of hesitation, she placed a wing on the hawk’s head and patted it. Reonda couldn’t help but smile at the sight.
“Teolus,” Reonda said, Nyal looking at her after it was spoken. She figured the name would draw the Harpen’s attention, given its harparic origin. Reonda pointed to the familiar as she repeated herself. “Teolus. Teke Teolus.”
“Teolus!” Nyal mimicked, turning back to the hawk and giving them even more pats. “Krokra Teolus.”
“Okay, that is enough,” Teolus said, hopping backwards till they were no longer under Nyal's wing and flying back onto Reonda’s shoulder. “Quite a childish young Harpen, isn’t she?”
Reonda rolled her eyes before focus returned to her Historia. As a way to show Nyal they were the same she placed her hand on one of its empty pages. The hen turned to watch the familiar sight of jumbled ink forming the pages, words with no meaning in either language scattered about. Nyal followed suit with her own Historia and placed her wing on it. The same result occurred, and both knew that if one was to ask their books to show them something, it would do so without hesitation.
“She is vessel, just like you!” Teolus cawed. Reonda gave a nod as her familiar learner what she already knew.
Reonda picked the book up and showed its ink scattered pages to the Harpen. She pointed to it, a smile on her face.
“Historia. Teke Historia,” Reonda explained.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“His…toria?” Nyal asked, tilting her head. She looked to her book, then to Reonda’s, and then back to hers one more time. She tapped it with her wing as she looked back at the human. “Kiere te Historia kiere te Historia?”
Reonda had done her best to guess at what certain words or sentences Nyal said were, and her guesses at that one threw her for a loop. “What is Historia '' was the question she believed had been said, and if she was correct it meant one clear thing: Nyal had no idea what she was. Reonda has been painfully aware of what she was from the very moment she was born, so seeing one completely unaware of a major part of Rag’na’rog’s history was astonishing. She cursed her inability to tell the hen, for with neither knowing each other’s language she could not explain to Nyal the truth of her very being.
“I… I’m sorry,” Reonda apologized, eyes glued on the ground. “I’m so, so sorry. I want to tell you but… but I can’t. I’m sorry, Nyal.”
Much like Reonda, Nyal had also turned to guessing at what the other was saying. Those words however, “I’m sorry”, needed no guessing. The sudden regret in the Acamian’s voice made it clear how she felt. In an attempt to soothe her worries, Nyal rushed forward and embraced the human, not noticing the sudden tenseness that came with the contact. Nyal could hear what she assumed was another “I’m sorry” at near whisper level, though she wasn’t entirely sure.
“Si geriq. Si geriq,” Nyal replied, her words gibberish in the human’s ears but the emotion in them clear as day.
Despite the ever-present fear of her mother and father seeing it in the back of her head, Reonda dared to return the hug. Her arms didn’t touch Nyal’s form, the invisible glare or her mother and father already strong from the comfort she was showing. She did her best to calm a heart that was starting to beat faster, silently telling herself that she was safe. When Nyal pulled away, Reonda followed suit and smiled at the Harpen.
“Th-thank you,” Reonda said. “I appreciate it.” She got to her feet and turned her attention to Teolus. “So, you said there was a camp some ways away.”
“Yes. Twenty minute flight, probably an hour away on foot,” The hawk said with a nod. As he responded, Nyal also got back onto her feet. “Is abandoned. No sign of Harpen or human. Possible parents are searching for her. Also possible something bad happened.”
“Then our best bet is to head in the direction of the camp. Hopefully we will know if it is or not once we get there,” Reonda said. Teolus nodded and took off to the sky and flying slightly ahead to act as a guide. The Acamian, meanwhile, turned back to hen. “Nyal, we are gonna find rarri and tatti, okay?”
Her words were accompanied by actions that she believed best conveyed what she was trying to say. Nyal got the idea after a couple of seconds and gave a firm nod, or at least that was what Reonda assumed. Giving her own nod, the human turned around and motioned for Nyal to follow her. The Harpen did so without a second thought, and they started down the road to what Reonda hoped would be a happy reunion.
----------------------------------------
All Nyal was certain of was this: Reonda had mentioned her parents and seemed to know where they were. She had no idea if she was right, if they still lived, or if she could trust the human, but she had no other choice. Wandering in the forest with no clue where she had fallen asleep wasn’t gonna do any good. In the end she had to put her trust in a lot of things that normally she wouldn’t. That included the idea of Reonda being truthful, and the hope she wasn’t putting the wrong meanings to words she didn’t know.
Hopefully, no matter which case was correct, being with the human girl would prove to help her understanding of acamese a little.
The walk to wherever they were taking her was proving not to be close by, and allowed her mind to once again wander back to the night before. She could feel a shiver go through her wings, down her spine, and into her tail at the thought of her assailant. His voice was familiar but not familiar enough, and she couldn’t make out his form. All she knew was that he wanted her dead, her parents had told her to run, and that the only thing she still had with her was her book, the Historia as Reonda had called it.
A Historia which she also had, and as far as she could tell Klaus was the exact same. After eleven years of living and no one having a book like her for all of it, suddenly she knew two people who had one of their own. The strangeness of it was clear, and it gave rise to many questions that she was not sure could be answered. Even if they could be she didn’t have the language skills to be able to ask those in question. At least not directly.
An idea reached her as she tailed behind Reonda and Teolus. Nyal opened her Historia and immediately pressed one of her wings on the page. She waited for the ink to fully form, glancing up just to make sure that she didn’t accidentally walk into a tree or bump into Reonda’s back. Once it was ready to respond, she thought about what she wanted to ask about before speaking.
“Historia, what was Reonda saying to Teolus earlier?” She asked quietly.
Nyal watched as the ink formed into more sensible letters, but what she got was not what she expected. Where she expected a conversation, all she got was one sentence. A sentence clearly not said by Reonda but by the book, and left her very confused.
"I’m sorry young lady, but at Rag’na’rogs behest I can’t peek into the lives of vessels."
Nyal stopped walking as she looked at the sentence before her. She blinked multiple times, as if waiting for this to be the first joke that the Historia ever made. It became clear rather quickly that it wasn’t, and it left more questions instead of answering them. What in Rag’na’rog was a vessel? She glanced up at Reonda and then back at the book, and then back up as she finally realized that she had stopped moving.
“What do you mean you can’t?” She asked for the book. “And what is a vessel?”
"At Rag’na’rog’s request, it was decided that none of her children’s descendants, otherwise known as oracle vessels, would know of each other. For this reason we Historia’s, the records of all that have been, will be, and are yet to come, are unable to record your lives. They can not spy on you, and you can not spy on them, child of Ar’ga’rou. That is the answer to both your questions."
Nyal’s talons did not carry her any further after reading that, mind trying desperately to comprehend what the book had nonchalantly revealed to her. She had known that the stories in her book were nonfiction; both her parents had backed up any story the book had told her. Yet it not only withheld information from her, but called her something other than “young lady”. The title itself was also something of concern.
“Child of Ar’ga’rou”, the Oracle of Death, said to be charged with setting Rag’na’rog to flame when it was time for the world to begin again. She was almost certain it had to be telling a joke now, for she was no Oracle’s child. Lasp and Aria had raised her since she hatched from her egg, something she distinctly remembered. She was no one's child but theirs… but the book had never joked before. It never withheld info, it never lied.
“Historia, Lasp and Aria were always my mom and dad, right?” She asked, biting the bottom of her lip as she tried.
"Yes. That I can tell you, young lady. They gave your egg life."
Nyal let out a sigh, a weight that had tried to press itself on her disappearing in an instant. She closed the Historia and looked at it with a tilted head. Even with the confirmation that she was litteraly the Oracle of Deaths daughter, it had still called her a child of Ar’ga’rou. Her mind was so stuck on that information she didn’t even register that it had indirectly called her a vessel.
“Nyal!”
Her eyes looked up from the book to see Reonda looking back at her far further down the road than she was previously. It was at that moment Nyal realized she had once again stopped walking. A part of her couldn’t help but feel a bit embarrassed at that knowledge. The Harpen quickly caught back up to her human companion. Reonda gave her a thumbs up just as they had done earlier. Nyal responded with a nod and smile.
She could put to the side what her Historia had revealed for the moment. For now, she was trying to reconnect with her parents. That came first, and until that was taken care of this whole “Child of Ar’ga’rou” thing she had just been made aware of didn’t matter. Besides, her mother and father likely knew something about it. She just hoped they were alright.
“They’re strong. I’m sure they are okay,” She told herself, pressing her Historia close to her chest. Despite the confidence she gave while saying it, a part of her mind doubted her.