During the walk, the big bear called Vetoka stayed close to her. At first it had made her nervous. Ulric’s preferred animal shape was a bear, and it unnerved her when she thought about it. But, after a little walking, she became grateful that he was there because he let her lean against him. She was tired, sore in a way she had never endured in her relatively simple life with the Ieshans.
Rosalea could smell from the smoke and cooking smells in the air that they were near a place where people were well before they got there. Even so, she felt a lot of admiration for how the settlement blended with the landscape. Brambles and trees appeared to get a lot thicker, but the warriors made their way through them without trouble, pathways that were almost invisible becoming clear only as they came right up to them. The “buildings” were not permanent. They were tent-like in structure, though not in the way she was used to. These were not flimsy fabric that was meant to be put up or taken down in the course of an hour or two, but rather had deep stakes within the ground and firm structures and layers of insulating leather and fabric that suggested they took maybe multiple days to properly assemble or disassemble.
I guess this is how they have been hiding so effectively from the Ieshans. At least one thing Ulric had told her was true so far: the Uryans really were not that far off, and looking, she felt, to kill Ieshans. Especially considering the close proximity they had relative to the Ieshan castle; she had stumbled into them without even meaning to do so.
“I will take you to the Neesa, and she will deal with you.” The man the others called Taigan said after they had walked her along without talking to her directly. She had gathered he was a leader of some sort that the others respected, but she did not know for sure what that meant about his ranking overall. She had no idea what a “Neesa” was though, it was the first time she had ever heard the term.
She was walked through the camp to a canvas building near the center. Each of the homes she saw had flags or paintings with specific animals, and she noticed they sometimes the same animals nearby them at different times of day. One that had a picture of a bird of prey on a red background had a big golden eagle perched on the roof that morning. Another that showed a badger had one lounging in a shallow den he had dug next to the entry way. A way to show their bonds with their familiars?
“Wait here with Vetoka,” Taishan said, pointing to the spot she was standing, as if to say that she should not move a single step.
She grew aware that there were many people coming to stare. Everyone here had dark skin similar to the Ieshans, so she didn’t look like any of them. Everything about this is awkward. I do not know what they want, except that they do not seem to want to hurt me. I suppose that is because the liana told them not to, but I am clearly unexpected. She felt the color rising in her face, and even though she willed herself to calm down, she felt it would never fade as long as she was the focal point of the day.
Taishan returned from within with an old woman on his arm. Her dark, wrinkled skin and long tightly braided black hair, approached fairly quickly. She had lots of gray streaks that helped show her age. “I am Alvi, Nadia. I am the Neesa of the Wind Walker camp,” she said, holding her hand out. When Rosalea met her eyes, they were the most yellow she had ever seen.
Rosalea guessed that the liana had told the woman the name they wanted her to use, even though Rosalea did not feel like it was her name. She put her hand out to shake the older woman’s hand, but instead of shaking it, Alvi gripped it and immediately began to walk off, dragging Rosalea along with her. “The liana have declared you interesting to the Gods, so they have arranged to bring you here.”
“Uh, okay,” Rosalea stammered. What am I supposed to say to that? She stammered as she struggled to think of a way to say she did not know about Gods really or why she would be of interest.
“We have been watching the Ieshans a long time, Nadia. A long time, watching them try to force the prophecy into their favor. They make war on all around them, kidnap and enslave people, and have killed most of our people with their traitorous ways.”
Rosalea felt the same skepticism as she was feeling toward what Ulric had spent so much time telling her. It was probably because it was the opposite, the Ieshans were under constant threat of Uryan invasion according to him. Perhaps both stories were true in a sense… that Ieshans and Uryans spent a lot of time trying to kill each other. “A prophecy?” she asked.
But the old woman did not answer her, just towed her along to the back side of the settlement where there was a tent… that looked bare and empty right now. It had not always been so; she could see that there were footprints in the dirt up to it. “This became recently empty. You will use it. Liana shall watch over you. Who knows what mind spells the Ieshans cursed you with.”
A mountain lion came up with her pack held by a strap in his jaws and he set it down in front of Rosalea. ”I look forward to chatting with you more often when you learn how to mindspeak."
Rosalea saw this earn a side-long glance from the “Neesa” Alvi. The mountain lion looked up and blinked eyes at her, as if he had been chastised and did not understand it. Rosalea felt like she was missing a conversation somehow. “You go inside now,” Alvi said, guiding Rosalea by the hand she had seized captive and pulling her around in front of her old and bent frame. Then she pushed on the small of Rosalea’s back to shove her toward the tent entrance.
It was warmer in the tent than it was outside. There was a red-glowing stone that seemed to be a source of heat. She closed the flap and felt… a little relieved that no one else seemed to be here and that for a moment she had no eyes directly on her. She felt like she did not want to leave the inside of the tent again and face any more Uryans. Rosalea was bone-weary, and it was with great relief that she put out her sleeping pallet near the warm stone and crawled into it and went back to sleep.
The next few days, she was mostly ignored. The Neesa brought her a basket of food. She was also brought wood by a woman who did not introduce herself. Rosalea knew she was being regarded with suspicion, and so she kept to herself. She did not feel she had the energy to try and run from this group of people right away, and the days of quiet helped her to recover and tidy her magic. It also gave her time to learn how things worked.
Alvi, it turned out, was the actual tribe leader. This was because she had no liana of her own, but rather, seemed able to commune with any of the liana as well as take any of their shapes. This allowed her to coordinate the words of the Gods throughout the tribe. Yet somehow, she was still considered a Uryan instead of Ieshan… but the only distinguishing factor Rosalea could see was that Alvi had no mind control and could not hear any animals speak that were not liana.
However, the liana had decreed that Rosalea was to stay until spring. The Uryans were not that happy to have her. Some worried, out loud, whether she was a “sleeper” case. This meant that she could apparently have mind control on her that would not do anything until a specific thing happened for her to respond to.
On one level, it made Rosalea feel a little bad, and definitely awkward, to find herself almost outcast like this. On other levels though, she was empathetic. She had run away to get away from their mind magic, and it definitely made her rethink Nerric’s tendency to be obedient to Ulric.
Time began to slide by slowly. Fire pit stones had a weekly enchantment, so she was sometimes be visited by an old man with a boar liana; sometimes with his wife who brought her bread to eat, while the stone was renewed. At first she had tried to talk to him, but he was not responsive, so she had become quiet each time they visited. She did learn that they were using terra magic to invite the heat to stay around after the fire went out.
Rosalea spent time sitting on a stone outside her tent that was rather chair shaped, and she kept herself busy weaving baskets - an activity recommended to her by the Neesa. “Recommended” in that she brought a pile of reeds and dumped them off with a “keep busy!” In this way, she grew a little familiar with who passed through, and she began to understand that this clan was nearly two hundred strong. The Ieshan castle could not probably spare enough men to come here and fight them, even if the Uryans lived in paranoia of it. Likewise, even if these Uryans all grouped together to attack the castle, they probably could not breach the walls.
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Rosalea did not discuss such things with anyone though. She would have been terribly lonely, but the liana were frequent visitors to her tent, most often without their human companions. Sometimes they just sat with her, and sometimes they taught her things about her magic. They were a lot more patient than Ulric, and Rosalea found that she was learning quickly from them. The first thing they taught her to do was how to talk to them with a magical connection, so she could think what she wanted to say, rather than speak out loud. It felt like having intense thoughts, looking at the animal she wanted to talk to and thinking directly to them.
She also found that it stirred up a lot of gossip. The Uryans could hear the liana’s half of the conversations with her as they taught her. Therefore, as she learned about her plant vitae magic, that information spread through the tribe. When one taught her more about her terra magic, which she had a very hard time utilizing, this too spread through the camp - both that Rosalea had this magical affinity and also that she was bad at it. Rosalea could, as she got better at focusing on the liana, hear their responses to the gossip.
So awkward, she thought many times before fall’s pretty colors dwindled to dried out browns and little else. By the time the winter snow was starting to accumulate, she had become good at channeling her green vitae magic through the reeds and form intricate and beautiful baskets by sculpting them with her thoughts and hands. She knew when the weather would shift, she had become good at understanding what she was seeing in the air, and she had grown comfortable enough with her magical vision overlaying everything that she no longer tried to restrict it.
Taishan had a son, named Taigan, who was sent to teach her from time to time… anything he thought she should understand about being Uryan. She learned more about how to butcher animals and tan the skins. His little sister, who was not even half Rosalea’s age at not quite seven, also came with him and told her about cooking things she had learned. Rosalea wished she wasn’t learning from a child this young, but she had to cook very little in her life, and so even a child was able to teach her some things.
“So, you don’t really cook, you barely sew anything practical, you don’t butcher food, do you hunt?” Taigan asked one morning. He picked up her bow and quiver, looking them over.
“That, I can do. I am actually very good at it,” Rosalea said. He gave her skeptical eyes, so she held her hand out for her bow and arrows. They went outside. “Pick me a target,” she said.
He pointed to something deep enough in the woods that they could barely see it. “Any one of those four icicles.”
“Very well. I will knock the third one furthest from the trunk of the tree off.”
Taigan raised a brow at her as she took her stance and drew back the bow. She held her breath, focusing on the air around her, using her magic to read the movement and direction of the wind. She sighted through the cradle of the bow, lined up her shot, and released the arrow.
The icycle broke, but as it fell, the rest of the ice and snow on the branch fell, covering it up.
Taigan was still nodding appreciation, and he came with her as they went into the snow to find the arrow to reuse it.
He was quiet. He wasn’t like Nerric at all. He did not chatter when it was not meaningful, and he was blunt when he did talk. He was taller than her, and she thought, probably a bit older.
But, she felt calm around him, and she appreciated the way he was willing to let her prove herself, and that he was happy to help her improve herself when needed.
No one else got close to her, nor did anyone try to learn to know her. She was alien to them, and she never lost her brand of being an Ieshan. It was not helped by her regular conversing with the liana, and eventually by her broadened ability to speak with the horses and other animals around the camp.
One day, as she was bringing back a snow hare to skin and turn into a stew, applying most of the skills she had learned here, some level of tension about her presence she was unaware of snapped.
She did not see the rock coming for her, nor did she expect anyone to try and hit her with one. She suddenly found herself face first in the snow, the whole side of her head smarting terribly. She rubbed it and slowly got up, the hare lying in the snow beside her. She looked at the woman, who was red faced and angry, staring her down. “You! My son is dead, and it is your fault, Ieshan witch!”
Her vision swam in tears from the pain that the first rock caused. She was well aware that the woman was winding up to throw another one, and the easiest answer would be to call on her magic to block it, but her focus was so disrupted that she thought she might be better off trying to just dodge it. Then again, the women frequently used rocks to hunt small animals, and so were usually very good shots with very powerful throws. Indecision paralyzed her.
The woman threw the rock. Rosalea cringed, expecting it to hit her. There was a loud slapping noise, as if it should have hit her, but she felt nothing. She blinked open her watery eyes, and saw Taigan dropping the stone. He shook his hand. It was probably numb. “Shona, you know that is not true. Your son succumbed to the cold and his illness, and he would have died if Rosalea was here or not.”
“She is a witch! She cuts into the bonds between us and our liana! What could be more proof against her?”
“All Ieshans can hear all animals, including liana,” Taigan said patiently. “What shall I tell my father or the Neesa if you keep on like this?”
Rosalea slowly got up, staring up at Taigan. Taj had told her that he had turned sixteen a little while ago, which made him not quite a full year older than her. Yet, he talked to this woman as if he was an adult. More, the woman seemed to rethink her stance on this situation and decided to walk away. He crouched down next to her. She remembered in her mother’s memory that Ulric and Gaiden looked a lot like one another in a lot of ways. As he dabbed at the blood running down the side of her face from the first stone, she was aware again that there was not a lot of difference between the Ieshans and the Uryans. Though, Uryans tended to be bigger. Even though Taigan was still a teenager, he was already at least as tall as Ulric or Nashota.
“I am sorry that happened. Taj let me know you needed help. Shona’s got a good arm,” he tried to say light-heartedly as he showed her how his right hand was shaking. “How’s your head?”
She took the cloth from him and pressed it into the bleeding bruise. “I know it is not really my fault, and it is not really her fault. It is just the result of all the fighting and killing and suspicion. I am sorry that her son died. I would leave, but the liana will not let me.”
“The snow must first melt before we can consider that,” Taj chipped in from above. He was circling, monitoring the situation still.
“Do you want to leave us as badly as you wished to leave the Ieshans when you ran from them?” Taigan asked.
Rosalea was startled by that question. She looked up at him, and he looked away from her. “Um… no.” He looked at her; she could see he wanted her to explain more. She tried to find words for it. “Your people’s ways are very different. Ieshans are not ruled by so much culture, tradition, secrecy, or by being close-knit. Ieshans are really logical and value cleverness and politics. It is just… things are done differently, but I do not know that differently is better.” He nodded, but said nothing. She felt like she was supposed to continue, and to be fair, she was not sure what she was trying to convey about it all. “If I was not so shunned, I could imagine living like this still.” He looked at her curiously, and now it was her turn to look away. “The absence of mind control is certainly alluring.”
“I see. Well, you are no longer bleeding. Here, these are salves. Place them on your wound, and it will numb the pain and keep it clean. I will go to my father, and he will decide what to do about all of this.”
She did not know what he meant about doing about it, or what the “it” he was doing something about was supposed to be. She thought about the woman's upset, reddened expression, but also the sorrow in her eyes. Ulric had taught that grieving people placed unprovoked blame on unrelated things to ease their pain. He had taught it to her in context of fairly ruling the people, but she felt it applied here. It is not the worst thing someone has done to me because they were angry at me, she thought. She shook her head no at Taigan. “I do not think it is that important, if the liana think I should be here, I am sure hers was ready to interfere with her if she had meant anything really serious. She was clearly upset and hurt, and a big bruise on the side of my head is not all that much cause to make a fuss.”
He stared at her for a moment and shook his head. “Do you know you talk funny? You sound so… precise and fancy. Everything about you from your patience in listening to others, to your skin color, to your hair tells me that you and I are nothing alike. I have never, ever had anyone do a violent thing toward me that I lived near or called themselves part of my tribe. Yet you would brush it off. You would say that it is just a bruise.” He crossed his arms, “Do you have any cause to be kind to that woman? Did she teach you anything?” Rosalea shook her head. “So even though you are nothing like me, you seem like you belong in a place like here more than almost anyone already in it. The fact that anything happened at all has a lot to do with people like my father, who are supposed to be leaders, letting things run their course without doing anything to correct people’s notions. But you would also just accept it, and let it run its course and then leave when the liana let you.”
Rosalea was not certain what to say about that, but she felt that he saw too much in her. It hurt in a sense, but also it felt good in a way. Somehow, feeling like he saw how she really was, even if he was criticizing it a little, eased the anxiety she felt about the world and how she should be in it. She tried to formulate what she wanted to say back, but all that kept coming to mind was to thank him, and maybe, if he wanted her to, offer to stay. I could stay if you wanted me, she thought. Then, thinking something like that, made her feel heat and blush come to her cheeks. "I just think hurt people do things that do not usually make sense to them."
However, he just made his polite head nod to her, and excused himself to talk to his father.