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 Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:02 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:05 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:10 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 10:46 am
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Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2016 12:35 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:34 am
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Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:03 pm
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❋ Daughters of Elzira ❋
“It’s not dead yet.”
“Stop, you’re hurting it!”
“Look at how it keeps trying to move along…it’s so stupid!” The third speaker giggled and lifted the mossy stick in her hand to prod the tintural caught between her and her company. Small as it was, it couldn’t have been more than a newly hatched youngling.
Unbeknownst to them, Naqenni watched on.
The girls were Bhaia, Miisa, and Ada—two, three, and four years younger than her, respectively. All Elaria; all bloomed from Elzira. But not like her. Not conceived by the goddess and from the goddess herself. Each of them had mortal, alkidike mothers who had begged Elzira’s blessing and later carried them from their buds after seeing proof — in the form of Naqenni’s conception, alongside the other two of ‘the three’ as they were often referred to — that Elzira could indeed bare young.
Their ‘game’ had begun when Ada found the young tintural alone. Lost, abandoned, or otherwise, it hadn’t seemed to matter. The small beast had a mangled leg and a deep fracture in its shell, already seeping. A wound beyond healing, it would surely die if left to its own devices. Upon showing it to her friends, the torment had begun. Prodding it. Stabbing it. Forcing it this way and then that or flipping it about and watching it struggle to limp along again after being righted. Miisa quickly lost favor of the situation and began vouching her objections, whining and simpering, but doing nothing.
Accordingly, her sisters ignored her.
Naqenni grimaced.
When the beast began making small, croaked bleating noises, she lost patience and stood. “Out,” she said, and the youngest in the trio jumped. Naqenni strode towards them, stooping to grab a large stone on her way and hefting it in her palm. She watched Bhaia’s tentacles stiffen and flick. “Get out of my way.”
“Naqe…” Bhaia began, “…what are you doing he—”
“This one is ouurrrrs…” Ada whined. “I found i—”
“Don’t hurt—!”
But Naqenni had already snatched the beast up and turned, carting it to the nearest boulder. There, after placing it on the flat of the rock and in spite of the wail that rose behind her when she did, she lifted her own stone—and brought it down with a dull CRRNNNCH. One hit. The tintural ceased stirring. Miisa began to sob, and when Naqenni turned, Bhaia looked dark in the face.
“That,” Naqenni snapped, “is what you do to weak things. You don’t play with them. You don’t toy with them. It’s a waste of your time and mine. You put it out of its misery and be done with it.”
Bhaia’s nails dug into her palms.
Ada’s lip quivered.
Miisa simpered once. Twice.
“And stop crying.” Tossing her stone away, Naqenni strode back past the trio, none-too-gently jutting her shoulder against Miisa’s on the way and sending her tumbling. “You look and sound like a bunch of sniveling earthlings. It’s embarrassing.”
She made it three steps before Bhaia’s weight tackled her to the porous earth.
Hours later, as the sun slipped beneath the skyline leaving a smear of pink-purple to hang in the mists, Naqenni sat outside the tent she shared with her mothers. Before her, Izari tutted: cleaning cuts, and applying balm to bruises, her movements ginger, practiced, and precise. When her fingers brushed harder against one than the rest, Naqenni hissed.
“Careful. You’ll make it worse!”
Izari’s fingers twitched back. Then, she dipped her gaze, chin dropping a half-inch with it. “I am sorry, sweet flower. It’s seeing you hurt…I get so worried—”
“Why.” Naqenni stared until Izari looked up. “Why were you worried. Do you think I couldn’t handle them?”
“No, of course no—”
“Then you shouldn’t. They were stupid,” Naqenni said, antennae coiling. “You understand, and your sisters. But how am I to lead my sisters if they don’t listen or take anything seriou—sssss…”
Izari ran a damp cloth over a shallow scrape, cleaning the grit from it. “They had no place attacking you. I will inform their mothers—”
“Don’t.”
Naqenni and Izari glanced up simultaneously. Red-yellow firelight backlit Kasama’s shape in the tent’s entryway. As she stepped through, her attention focussed on Naqenni, black eyes unreadable.
“Naqenni is a growing girl, and a first daughter of Aisha’s sister…I am sure she held herself back with the younger ones, or she would not have been hurt so, hm?”
Naqenni’s shoulders stiffened. But she said nothing. Something passed between Izari and Kasama then, and afterward, Izari rose, kissing her mate before slipping inside. In the twilight, Kasama stood tall over Naqenni’s small frame.
“Your sisters are young and undisciplined. Special, like you, and family…” Kasama settled into a crouch at Naqenni’s side, her gaze intense. Unfaltering. “But not quite so precious or intuitive, by no fault of their own. The task set before you is heavy for one so young…but you have time—”
“I don’t want to wait.” Naqenni bristled, then breathed sharply out. “I want to learn now, and fight now—I will lead them, and show everyone, and by the time we’re grown, northern traitors and their hybrid fester spawn and all the earthlings—no one will know what to do with us, and I will avenge you and Mother Iza, and—”
It might have been the light, but Kasama’s dark eyes seemed to twinkle, then, warming with a private satisfaction. “I have no doubt you will, precious child…you will be what this world needs.”
“You are what this world needs.” Izari’s voice came from the tent as she stepped out, carrying a platter topped with ceramic cups and fire-warmed tea.
‘I am what this world needs.’ For many long minutes, Naqenni sat with her adoptive mothers as the sky darkened, the night winds blowing the fog away in gusts to reveal over-bright stars above as they drank in quiet company. When she spoke, it was with sharp, exuberant contrast to the silence. “So tomorrow, you’ll teach me to shoot.”
Kasama’s laugh rolled loud and full into the open night. “Soon, sweet flower child,” she promised. “Soon, I will.”
Word Count: 1,063 |
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:06 pm
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❋ Soldiers Unasked For ❋
Fifty-seven.
Fifty-eight.
Fifty-nine.
Sixy.
After Naqenni’s chin hooked up over the branch she clung to for the sixtieth time, she let herself down to hang loose for a moment, body weight dangling beneath her and fingers crimped to the limb as she relaxed, before dropping entirely, bare feet landing to the forest floor. She shook her arms, rolled her neck, and then moved over to her small pile of belongings at the tree’s base — a soft, leather lined water bag in particular — and snatched it up to take a quick sip. In doing so, she glanced up, squinting towards the horizon. Almost dawn. She curled her toes, the pads of them burrowing at the soft earth, and then stretched them. After finishing with her drink, she capped the bag again and set it aside.
Then, she began her morning run.
Naqenni was not yet fourteen years old, but almost so, and life around her had changed much in the years of her growing and coming of age. At first, she had been among the only children in the tribe. One of three. Blessed and precious pioneers of a new race with a grand destiny—or so her mothers, and most of her alkidike tribeswomen cousins assured her. Over the years, however, Elzira had grown ever stronger, rooting herself deep in the native soil, breathing life into the alien landscape, and with that: answering prayers.
The longer they remained rooted on Yaeli’s soil, the more robust and capable the new mother tree became. And with the comfort that came with acclimating themselves to their new home, the alkidikes settled to asking for daughters of their own. Naqenni was still not especially fond of them.
Like a spoiled, single child who initially go all the attention, the blooms that followed her felt at first like most unwelcome competition. They were her sisters, though, her mothers — particularly Izari — insisted. Her family. Her support.
Her army.
These girls, her mothers reminded her, would be the warriors of the new generation. Her soldiers, in the new battles that would one day need her leadership. This idea, appealing on its face, was enough to at least soften her jealous distaste for the new blooms, and by her thirteenth year, she was fairly accustomed to them, at least. But like many an older sibling, it still did not mean she wanted them directly underfoot—and least of all in her way. Thus, when she returned from her morning run, swim, and bow work, damp still with the ocean as she stepped over the threshold into the hut she shared with her mothers, she stalled immediately, blinking and then staring disbelievingly at the first thing posed to her.
“What.” She narrowed her eyes, holding herself as though daring the same thing to be repeated again.
“One of the women with a growing bloom approached us the other day. She was hoping her daughter could be taken under the wing of one of the three to be guided in her training,” Izari said. “I told her we thought you would be perfect.”
“A good experience…” Kasama added from the side, her tone cooler, but more direct. “An opportunity for you to get to know one of them personally and form that bond of trust and exercise leadership…”
Naqenni stiffened, and then shook her head rapidly, huffing. “No one spoke to me. I didn’t agree to it. I’m not doing it. Tell her that much. I don’t have time.” As she strut past her mothers, though, to grab up one of the fresh fruits out for convenient between-meals sustenance, Kasama spoke again.
“If that’s your choice, very well, but you should inform her yourself.”
Naqenni shot her a squint mid-bite.
“The girl is expecting to meet with you this morning.”
“Hnnnnnnnh?” Naqenni ‘responded’, scowling with a full mouth. “Whymf yow tll er’tha?” Kasama waited. Naqenni swallowed, but looked no less dissatisfied. “Why did you tell her that? I never heard anything about it ‘til now.”
“Well, you may tell her that,” Kasama said. “Or whatever else you like. She’ll be in the east training field soon to meet with you.”
Naqenni stared. Opened her mouth. Shut it. Huffed. And turned on her heel to start off towards said training field.
Word Count: 737 |
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 11:48 am
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❋ She Who Made Me ❋
Dark water rose and broke against the rocks below, like the lashing tongue of an angry demon, and far out, beyond the cliffs and shore, over the open, blackened sea lit only by the fog-dimmed glimmer of moonlight, storm winds howled. There was no rain, yet. But Naqenni thought she could taste it just the same, feel it in her antennae down to the tips of her toes. It was in the air, churning in the dark and perpetual clouds.
Night made every storm look angrier, and she burrowed a toe shallowly into the earth before leaning back onto her palms and shutting her eyes. As the winds dusted her cheek with dampness — indiscernible as between mist rain or faint spray from the salt sea — she thought about her caretaker mothers. And about her maker mother. The collective mother tree of her and all her sisters that followed her. Elzira.
As an infant and a young, growing girl, her caretaker mothers Izari and Kasama — Izari in particular — had always emphasized her uniqueness, her future, the history of her cousins, and the destiny that that laid out before her. She had no foremothers in the sense that they did. She was among the first in a three-prong bloomed to spearhead things to come. Things to come. Always things to come.
But never anything that was, in the moment.
While she could appreciate anticipation for the future to a certain extent, Naqenni’s innate nature lived in the present. She focused well on what was, day to day. What the moment brought, and the details and specifics of what she could see before her and work with. She appreciated surety, drive, gripping and holding something, and then going forward with what she knew from experience would work.
Waiting wore at her.
‘You’re only fourteen, yet. Your body is not even fully grown,’ she would hear, and she would listen to an extent, but after fourteen years of nothing but the same promises for the future, the same cautions to wait, the same dark ocean and gray fog and deep jungle and looming monotony—she found herself restless. Unsatisfied. Anxious for things that might be, but were beginning to feel like shadowy promises without attainable form. She felt starved for some evidence that she could see with her own eyes, touch with her own hands, and experience with her own breath. Just one moment of here and now as opposed to ‘one day’ that supported all the things she’d been told.
Even the mysterious ‘other’ islanders spoken of, the Yaeli, were just a concept.
Never once yet in all her life had she seen them.
Naqenni pushed to a stand. Overhead, the roiling clouds had parted just enough that the gray-silver moon peeked from between them, a beacon amidst the storm, and below, its white light danced in flecks along the caps of the chopping waves. The wet sprinkling against her cheek was unmistakably rain, now. She turned from the shoreline, and headed inland, down familiar, oft-treaded paths from the island’s edge into her home tribe and from there, between the quiet huts to its center, and the great tree there. Elzira’s branches whispered with the storm winds, but looked eerily still as compared to the rest of the jungle foliage. Set apart from it as though, even in her physical rooted form, she was beyond the whims of the wind’s moods.
After eyeing her shape for some time — studying the path the pale moon’s light took through Elzira’s branches — Naqenni set a hand gently to the bark of her trunk, and then knelt. She shut her eyes. Elzira did not speak to her, of course. As she had learned growing up, that was a gift bestowed to mystics alone—as would be the task of serving as historian and speaker for her people—and while she might have wished for that option, were it available, she did not need it. With Elzira’s presence alone, there came a peaceful, familiar energy.
She was, first and foremost and before even her caretaker mothers, Naqenni’s maker, and the architect not only of her physical being, but also of her path forward—this ‘destiny’ that she was spoken to of. Fourteen year old that she was, Naqenni may not have been able to express it in so many words, but she felt it just the same. If anyone or anything was equipped to guide her forward, it was Elzira, sister goddess to Aisha of the far shore, maker-mother of her and her sisters, and overseer of all.
“I’m impatient,” she admitted aloud, at length, her words quiet — meant only for the tree — but stiff with the truth of them. “And frustrated. I’m doing everything I ought to, to become stronger.” Perhaps not everything she was told, but that was another matter altogether, and irrelevant. “I train every day, and I’m ready for a bow of my own. I can shoot now, and use a blade. I’m not a small child, but they treat me like one. I’m told all the things I will be or could or should be, but I haven’t gotten to see anything or anyone past the stretches of camp…”
‘They tell me about war, and traitors, and blood, and they tell me about ideals and earthlings, and sacrifices. They tell me all about other lands and earlier times, but I’ve never seen any of it, ever, in all my life.’
Naqenni released a breath, antennae pinching to a tighter curl as her toes curled beneath her and Yael’s rain trickled down from the canopy, through the branches of her mother tree, and onto her skin. “I want to do something,” she admitted beneath her breath, the pads of her fingers brushing bark and then tracing the lumps and curves of an upraised root. “If it’s bad of me to be impatient, then it’s bad of me, but I’m tired of waiting. No one even agrees about anything. The earthlings are vile and must be slaughtered. The earthlings are tolerable so long as they don’t interrupt us. Aisha is our mother before us. Aisha is the past and must be forgotten…”
‘You’re destined for greatness, Naqenni. You’re a petulant child, Naqenni. Have patience. Take what’s yours. Wait. Act. Be vigilant. Don’t waste time. Know the world around you. Don’t stray too far from home. Conquer. Never hesitate. Make friends with your sisters. Listen and mind your elders. Bow to no one. Believe only the truth you see. But believe us always. Win, unfalteringly. But get back up if you don’t.’
Naqenni shifted and twisted, back dropping to the trunk of her mother tree, and her tongue flicked out, skimming impatient over the curve of her lower lip. Finally opening her eyes, she skimmed the dark village, the trees beyond, and the shadows the laced through both and pooled in the crannies shielded from moonlight. Soon, maybe, she consoled herself. Soon something would happen.
Eventually, something had to give.
Word Count: 1,198 |
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 12:09 pm
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 6:02 pm
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Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:03 am
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2016 9:38 am
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❋ Flying Teeth ❋
“Children shouldn’t play with weapons.”
The speaker was old. One of the eldest in their village, her yellow skin loose on her bones so as to fold up in the patches under her eyes, at her elbows and wrists, and in all the areas around her body where weight pulled so that her breasts looked elongated and barely held in place by the thin strap of old brown leather holding them up. Kaggarah. With her rasping voice like sand scraped over stone, and low as a distant storm wind.
Naqenni touched her thumb to the butt of her arrow, nocked it, turned, and pulled to a shallow draw, aimed at the woman. “How far does it shoot?”
It was mid-morning, the jungle mists rolling low along the mossy ground and yellowed sunlight warming the island until it all looked more akin to steam than fog. Outside of the wood and leather structure that was its own small armory, morning critters chirruped, clicked, cooed, and cawed through the surrounding greens, their chatter echoing between the treetops. Naq tipped her head, expression somewhere between neutral and contemplative.
“Can it pierce an earthling skull?” she asked. The bow in question, she knew, had been crafted for her. She had seen it before. Touched it, in its early stages as it was being carved and fitted for her. After announcing her final choice of weapon to her caretaker mothers, they had seen to it that one was set for crafting. “I want one that can.”
“Children—”
Thhhwp.
The arrow, unfortunately, landed two finger widths shy of the beetle on the far wall, just behind the weaponsmith, when she loosed it, and upon impact, the critter alighted with a hum of its wings. Kaggarah, despite an arrow just having cut the air inches from her face, looked unimpressed, and clicked her tongue to her teeth, graying, buggish black eyes disapproving as she shook her head.
“You misse—”
“I’m not playing,” Naqenni snapped, trying and failing to ignore the frustrated burn in her face as she strode forward, past the weaponsmith, and to her arrow. She snatched it free with a jerk. “I’m taking this.”
“First daughter of Elzira or not, your mothers must approve before—”
Naqenni stepped outside, and kept walking, bow still clasped firm in her grip. If walking out on the woman had consequences, they would be minor and suffered at a later date. In the moment, she had no interest in taking any longer there than necessary. Her caretaker mother Kasama had said they would pick the bow up when she was ready. Waiting, however, had become a frequent and pervasive chore to the point where she wondered if that were in itself a test.
Wait to be strong enough for this. Wait for it to be a proper time to venture out from the village. Wait to go anywhere near the earthlings. Wait to hunt. If she were so chosen as they suggested, bloomed as the first of her kind for a reason, why should so much of her life involve the waiting and dictations of others? Why should she have to wait until some outside perspective ‘decided’ she was ready?
Her feet followed familiar paths on instinct now.
The jungles surrounding Zinris were as familiar to her as Yael’s sunrises, as the first breath upon waking, or the feel of the salt sea under her palms. Fourteen years — nearly fifteen, now — her feet had tread the earth there, explored the jungle trunks and tunnels, the nooks, rocks, and caverns. She knew it all and could have navigated it in blackness. And there was a comfort in that familiarity—but also a restlessness. All her life, her mothers promised her she was destined for great things. All her life, she had grown knowing she was among the first of a new wave. The eldest of her race, and a spearhead for what would one day be a new coming.
But there was little opportunity in one small village — governed by the same aging women of a past age who spoke of a war she had never witnessed and lands and peoples she had never seen — to exercise the strength they promised she had and make real the destiny they assured was before her. She needed more in her own hands, and the longer she waited, the more she felt confident that the time to shape such a future was upon her and the task lay at her feet, not by the orders or rules of her elders.
They had all already lost one war, after all.
And she had been designed anew at the hands of a goddess, young, fresh, and unsullied by past mistakes and failures. Why ought she be held back by their hesitance and stubbornness born from age and defeat?
As she encroached upon a familiar space, old vines and the new green leaves that sprouted on them hanging low over a cavern mouth to make a curtain of green, Naqenni reached, ushering the flora away and stepping inside. Bare feet made for soft footfalls, and her toes curled against cool stone as her buggish teal eyes blinked and her antennae flicked. Nothing about. Just as she preferred it. There, she got to work.
She had practiced before with other bows, of course, including her mother Kasama’s large one, though it was weighty and rebellious in her hands. This, though, would be her own going forward, and as such seemed to deserve its own warm up that she might familiarize herself with it: the grip, the weight of the draw, and its range. An internal cavern, of course, provided some limits to her options, but inside it, she had set herself up markers and targets in the past for practice, and they made do to start. An hour, two, or three, she couldn’t have said from inside as she worked her weapon, but once she felt confident she’d exhausted what could be gained from still targets for the moment, she left again, and the sun suggested just under two had passed since her entrance.
After stretching and giving her arms a moment to relax, she turned her attention upward. Next: moving targets. And what better than a colored island bird that could double as a meal and an accessory for her neck between its beak and feathers?
She would have to find something suitably fine to be the first beast to die under an arrow shot from her bow.
Word Count: 1,104 |
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 10:17 am
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