Need (Sister Lashan) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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lukeoutbelow2022-06-10 02:56 pm
hasapoint) wrote in lukeoutbelow2022-06-10 02:56 pm
Do not be afraid of light
They smelled the battlefield long before they saw it. The apprentices and little Sisters who hadn't been on this kind of excursion before covered their noses and exclaimed. Vena didn't. As the child of a camp follower she would know to expect this, but her tread slowed and she looked repeatedly at Sister Lashan, especially as the sound of incredible numbers of crows cawing grew louder.
"Nasty, isn't it? Decay is part of death which is part of life," Lashan said firmly, if not totally without sympathy. How young had she been, the last time she was upset by the aftermath of battle? "There's armies that immediately turn around and sort the living from the dying from the dead and take care of that then and there. Not here, they're leaving it for the locals to handle or not and we're local enough. If you fight, you may well fight for people who'll leave you if you fall and move on. Make sure you at least have friends who'll look for you." They pressed on with their wagon. The donkey put its ears back but did not balk.
It wasn't as bad as it would get over the next few days. The bodies - it was now academic who had belonged to which side of whichever meaningless conflict this was - were not much bloated and decayed yet. Flies were not yet overwhelming. Right now the field of bodies was mostly attended by carrion birds, and various other birds that were willing to take advantage of the bounty before them. Finches among them, tiny beaks dipped red. A few other people could be seen picking their way across what had been a perfectly useable pasture. They kept clear. Lashan tasked girls to keep watch for them anyway, pretended not to see the ones who were being sick, and oversaw as dead men were loaded onto the donkeycart. They'd take them away a distance, say the rites, strip them of useful things, get them buried, and come back.
She paused. Something... like a sound. Not a sound. Lashan was hearing something with her mind, closer than the pickers. A threat? She stood like a sentinel and paid attention.
"Nasty, isn't it? Decay is part of death which is part of life," Lashan said firmly, if not totally without sympathy. How young had she been, the last time she was upset by the aftermath of battle? "There's armies that immediately turn around and sort the living from the dying from the dead and take care of that then and there. Not here, they're leaving it for the locals to handle or not and we're local enough. If you fight, you may well fight for people who'll leave you if you fall and move on. Make sure you at least have friends who'll look for you." They pressed on with their wagon. The donkey put its ears back but did not balk.
It wasn't as bad as it would get over the next few days. The bodies - it was now academic who had belonged to which side of whichever meaningless conflict this was - were not much bloated and decayed yet. Flies were not yet overwhelming. Right now the field of bodies was mostly attended by carrion birds, and various other birds that were willing to take advantage of the bounty before them. Finches among them, tiny beaks dipped red. A few other people could be seen picking their way across what had been a perfectly useable pasture. They kept clear. Lashan tasked girls to keep watch for them anyway, pretended not to see the ones who were being sick, and oversaw as dead men were loaded onto the donkeycart. They'd take them away a distance, say the rites, strip them of useful things, get them buried, and come back.
She paused. Something... like a sound. Not a sound. Lashan was hearing something with her mind, closer than the pickers. A threat? She stood like a sentinel and paid attention.
no subject
Fifteen would make them more or less the same age! And he most certainly doesn't see himself as a kid. How'd she end up so tiny? It's not like they didn't have plenty of food in the village, it seems. Maybe she was born as a really tiny baby?
The question seems to trouble him as half a peach sits unsliced in his hand, swallowing the fruit with morbidly curious deliberation.
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She believes in elves these days, and all kinds of other things too. Not every bit of strangeness is magic, though.
"She gets frustrated by people assuming she's about ten. Honestly, I think she'd like to leave to join a regiment or something otherwise." She's frowning now, and makes a deliberate effort to stop. "You know how nobles will sometimes make armor for their children just to show off? She'd have to steal some of that."
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"Why the hell would she want to do that?" he snorts at the idea. "What a lousy dream. She'd be better off with some performers or a band of thieves. At least that kind of crowd would take her seriously."
Guts understood the wandering allure of the battlefield, but it was the only place and purpose he'd ever known. Nerine had people here that cared for her. She had this cozy, sleepy little village in a hidden, peaceful forest. She didn't have to throw her life away for no reason. She could go find excitement some other way.
"Besides, she doesn't want some fancy noble's armor. That's a shiny target for any merc hoping for a big payday."
A hostage, or worse, when they realize they caught some other nobody like them.
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"Huh. I hadn't thought of that." Maybe she shouldn't be telling The Boy about another girl's idle, speculative half-plans half-daydreams. "She's from a gang of thieves originally, actually, that operated out of a city in Volkfeld. My hometown in fact."
Albion, not that she's going to say it was Albion. There are several other kingdoms between here and Volkfeld and it took quite some time to get from there to here, the Enclave of Irminsul, but there's no telling how far Guts has traveled and what, if anything, he's heard about any fires. It's been three years now. She thinks Volkfeld has been annexed in the mean time, but she wasn't and isn't clear on the distinction between a state and a country.
She pauses. Wait. Surely... "Oh, no, I never told you my name, did I? Agh... okay, it's Hestienne, but the little kids started calling me Hesri and that's stuck. Pleased to meet you."
no subject
Right. People tended to introduce each other when they were friendly. Was he pleased in turn? He supposes he didn't mind talking to her. For whatever reason, Hesri was quite easy to get along with.
He moves to another fruit, the last two, leaving them with an impressive plate of neatly sliced little orange pieces arranged to make... some sort of shape. At one point he had attempted a circle. His hunger had been sated by the first fruit, for now, so the rest remained unbothered.
"You're from Volkfeld, huh?"
He was quite traveled, apparently. The name appeared to sound familiar.
"Heard it got swallowed up between Midland and Tudor. Dunno which one of them claimed it lately."
The eternal spat between the two kingdoms seemed to have no end. He'd been considering going to that disputed border between them to find more work. Plenty of jobs for killers in a protracted war.
"How'd you find this place from over there?"
The only people had to hide that far were criminals, usually. Was Hesri more interesting than she first appeared?
no subject
"I was born there. I'm not surprised it got annexed by someone or other, that was always... people talked about it." She blinks sleepily, the medicine making her feel calm and placid and vaguely happy, and gets first one, then the other hand totally unwrapped. There's quite a lot of scar tissue in shiny keloid swellings there, and not a lot of meat. "Memento mori. 'As I am, so shall you be', all of us who are flesh will fail, in our various ways, and we will die," she says, distantly self conscious.
She puts them in the ewer of water and swishes them in an unfocused way. "Well, there was a fire... and you know, it was beautiful." Hesri sighs, an odd light coming into her eyes. "I know it was an evil thing to happen, I know that, but the fire itself was so pure. It didn't want anything but to exist and grow, like a living thing. There wasn't space to feel anything but how great it was, how terrible, and everything else was just... ugly. Meaningless."
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He misses a word or two, but starts to pick up again around the reminder of all their mortal fates. With a thunk from his head hitting the bottom of the table, he stands up straight with indignation. Too thick-skulled to be bothered by the wood, it seems.
“What the hell are you goin’ on about?” He sounds annoyed - partially at all the vague, flowery language and partly from not getting the whole story.
There is way too much admiration of the thing for it to seem like it happened by accident. The only people he heard talk like that were fanatics - either of the Holy See or some other cultish thing. He happened to be a fan of neither, and stayed well clear of them.
“It’s creepy.” he reminds her, emphatically.
no subject
Then Vena is here, scrubbed pink and still damp-haired, carrying a bowl of cream. "Sorry - they were so slow!" She thunks the bowl down next to the slaughtered peaches and dips a piece in the cream before stuffing it in her mouth. Then another. And a third, indistinctly telling Guts, "Try it!"
The rich savor and faint mellow sweet of the cream and the sharper sour-sweet of the peaches go really well together, if he does. Fruit and dairy are a good combination.
Vena chews ferociously, swallows, wipes her mouth, and then says, "Are you being crazy about fire again? What's it this time? Here." She's going to feed Hesri some more cream-dripping peach chunks, which Hesri dutifully takes, the dreamy look fading.
"You'll never let me live that down, will you?" the older girl asks, with something between wistfulness, awkward self-awareness, and amusement. She glances at Guts and says, "I was delirious when I was first brought here and... I may have told a few people I was going to burn the infirmary down."
"She didn't have hair and was all over maggots!" Vena says gleefully, having moved on to briskly washing and drying Hesri's hands.
no subject
He frowns, not seeing the connection. But before he can get into talking about swords any further, Vena bursts into the tent with her (now typical) bright cheer, plunking a big bowl of the cream in front of them. Is that what this was for?
Ever the wanderer, Guts was not very versed in sweets or dairy foods. No easy way to preserve milk in a camp or on a trail. Villages had such things on occasion, but he only ever passed through them. Stays too fleeting to properly enjoy all the delights offered. Most of his earned money went to his war tools, anyway.
So, bending over, he takes in the subtle, sweet scents of the bowl not unlike a wild animal suspicious of offered food. Milk was familiar enough, at least. Dipping a peach slice into the cream, he gets his first bite in, and going by the disappearance of the creases around his nose and brows, appears to be quite enjoying it. Tasty…
And, although Guts should have felt disgust at the story as Vena described it, he finds something a bit more conflicted rising in his chest. Something was clearly off about her in the head, and for whatever reason it annoyed him greatly but also drew out an unusual sympathy.
“The cream’s good.” He says, changing the topic awkwardly. He goes for another.
no subject
Vena shrugs carelessly when she's obliquely accused of theft. She could have gone on with worrying enthusiasm about festering wounds and the treatment of them but milk's a good topic too. "It's good on strawberries. And bread! And in soup. And it's good in eggs too, or sauce. Cows are great, I like to feed them carrot tops and stuff to say thanks. I never saw one up close before I got here - that was just before she did, because Master was with the women giving herbs to the camp followers and I tried to take her coinpurse and, wham! 'What do you think you're doing!' And then I bit her."
Compared to Nerine, Vena is about that same size and a similar shape, but isn't as dense and has vaguer, softer features. She's not clumsy exactly but there's much more of a rushing, thoughtless quality to how she moves. Less so at the moment, bending Hesri's fingers back, curling and stretching them in a practiced way.
Hesri herself has a little half suppressed frown through this, and sweat showing at her temples. Even with the medicine and a lot of experience it doesn't feel good or comfortable. With affection she snorts, "Vena, you're a hoyden."
no subject
He wonders how many of the girls were thieves and criminals. If they had to eke out a living on their own, on the outskirts, it would make sense for them to eventually wander here in the middle of nowhere.
The exercises… Weren’t entirely unfamiliar. Certain injuries that weren’t deadly, but were severe enough to take a man out of a campaign, often required quite a long recovery time. Sometimes they returned entirely healed, but most times they were never quite the same. Burns were always in the latter category.
“They got anything else out there aside from sweets?”
He could only ignore the complaints of his stomach for so long. Now that Hesri had someone else to keep her company, he takes it as opportunity to duck out for the moment being. Guts hopes that they had something more substantive waiting. Maybe a stew with real meat in it?
no subject
Some memory of that has her all tensed up, forgetting about the exercises. She's more worldly and resigned to certain things than Lashan but is after all still a child, still moved by the memory of pain and futile rage at how unfair something had been. Hesri leans forwards and bunts her forehead to Vena's in a light, affectionate gesture, and Vena relaxes a bit, enough to put her head down and resume what she was doing.
"It's early for dinner but they're into it enough to have something, I'm sure. I expect today there's black sausage again," the older girl says, and grimaces. City girl that she was, she did not grow up eating blood or so hungry that she can quickly adapt to it, and it seems appalling every time she considers the idea.
"Yeah, but it's dumplings too. They went and killed some cockerels and old mean hens for some of them," Vena grumbles, not in a mood now to defend sausages made with blood or gloat over a day with meat in it.
"Oh! Well, there you have it." Hesri smiles up at Guts, with just a hint of teasing. "Go on. If you show up without a shirt on especially, I'm sure they'll give you something good."
no subject
His eyes jerk away from them when Hesri suggests he leaves half-dressed. Girls! Why do they have to be weird about things that were just more comfortable.
“I should get going.” He blurts out sheepishly. “I can bring something back for you guys.”