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.
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There's a lot she could say about her names and her history and Lashan thinks about it as she nurses her little bowl. A lot of things that were very painful once have been worn small and smooth enough that they don't choke her to say, particularly with the mild, pleasing warmth of the airag in her. It still takes a level of sincerity that she has to be very careful about. For the moment she settles on, "I hunted a big old boar by myself to... 'become a man' isn't right but it's got a better ring to it. We had four paths out of childhood and the Hunter's looked the most impressive and achievable to me when I was growing out of all my clothes and had rocks for brains. Also, if you go for a boar in a Boar Clan, that just looks good."
A nod over Vena, towards the ancient pelt and yellowed tusk ornaments. The faded eyes of the tattoo across her chest show above the low collar of her shirt, as well.
She shakes the skin. With less liquid inside it sloshes more noisily and at a higher pitch than before she'd taken it inside. There are small curds in the remainder. "Two bowls if I don't fill them to the top, but it's thick. If I know I'm drinking with company I bring a bit of cow's milk to cut the last of it with." Cow's milk at this hour is quite sour, any that hasn't already been drank or used to make something else.
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"Is that how it worked?" he asks with a certain cavalier lightness than isn't there usually. Sometimes small talk was fine after enough airag and warmth in the belly.
"Dont know what I'd pick for a name if things were like that here. Feels weird not to just stick with what you've been goin' with this whole time."
That went for his name and his early-chosen profession, it seemed. Even if he lived life as a wanderer, he was far away from the customs of the Plainsfolk.
"Guess it'd be however 'bear' is pronounced in your country."
Following her example.
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She waves her hand, vaguely indicating something complicated that Guts wouldn't find interesting. It would be a terrible chore and ruin the mood, to have to actually explain lykeblades to an outclan boy. "The death and veneration of an elder. It happens about once every fifty years so it looks good, to have someone in your clan with that name. But if I hadn't liked it I could've tried my own anyway."
Lashan refills her little bowl, the liquid pouring less smoothly from the spout now, without draining it all the way first. Guts can have the last of the airag if he wants it.
"Heh. Might be. I've seen a lot of weird, impressive shit, but never anything like that. You might have named yourself 'Mishe' for the bear but we would've at least joked about calling you 'bloody burial'." Or something more flattering, honestly. She can't imagine the clan that wouldn't be proud to point to this boy as one of their own. "Do you know where 'Guts' is from? I've wondered. My firebug thinks she knows, but that doesn't mean she's right."
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"Dunno. The mercenary who raised me didn't really talk about that."
Speaking so openly and freely as they were didn't happen often either. It was the first time he'd mentioned Gambino to someone else, even indirectly. He didn't seem to mind cracking open that door a little, as long as the old witch didn't push any more than he wanted to.
He takes the last drops of airag in his bowl, simply because it doesn't make sense to leave the bottle unfinished.
"Whatever she guessed, it's probably right." he concedes easily. Names never held special significance to him like it did to the Plains clans, apparently. Some part of him always wonders about the curse of his birth that seemed to haunt him in childhood -
simple hearsay, he'd later decided. Soldiers' superstitions. It was an uncanny coincidence, all the same.
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There had been a presence - Lashan had rooted around pretty shamelessly before deciding she could take a boy who'd attacked her back to a place she'd dedicated herself to protecting - in Guts' life who had been warm and caring in a way that man hadn't been. Long gone and hazy though she was, she must be the reason he'd survived infancy and learned to walk and talk and is actually capable of acting like a human being at all.
That does not mean, if she was the one to name him, she necessarily had much in mind but that's fine. Some names are just syllables or combinations of syllables that pleased the ear, even if it doesn't please Lashan's. Guts being named 'guts' even if it is literally just 'entrails' is the most neutral thing about his upbringing.
This is a nice moment. She has a sense of this half-feral boy extending a fragile degree of trust towards her. Some of that's alcohol, some is... Lashan ruthlessly controls her feelings so they don't ruin it, and glances back towards her girl, who's more deeply asleep now. That cat's eyes are slitted, too wary to fully close. "Vena's mother, if she had anything really in mind, didn't tell her. At best, it's from an old empire word that means 'hunter'." Which would be a good name and probably what Vena would say if asked. "At worst, I've heard a dialect where her name sounds a lot like their word for 'vein', plus 'a' to make it feminine."
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"August is pretty nice. That's when all the leaves start changing color."
It kindles warmer memories in him, the loose association with the word and the fair breeze and fiery orange leaves. Sometimes, they were red like arterial blood spilled from an enemy throat. It was when war campaigns began to consider their winter plans, pausing once the bite of cold became too harsh.
In the end, he never knew why it was picked. Perhaps it was appropriate in his own way, to want to cling to the last remnant of that warm embrace that kept him alive back then. If nothing else, then a name.
He looks back at Vena when Lashan does, listening to the apparent backstory to her name. The last sips of the airag leaves him with a small warmth to his cheeks, sinking comfortably in his spot. He seems to think this was nice, too.
"Vein, huh? Guess we'd be matching, then. Who could've guessed."
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The smile that doesn't seem like it really belongs on his face... he's not someone who's happy alone even if he prefers it to most company. She needs to not think about Guts too much, Lashan thinks, and then she has a sense that's come on more often as she's grown older. The bittersweet sense that this moment is unlikely and fleeting and will soon pass, never to be repeated. Flowing past as ceaselessly as wind.
She finishes the dregs of her airag, cheese-scented and salty, and sternly tells herself she's not going to wake up Vena just to take her in her arms or press their foreheads together or even just take her hand. If she indicated any desire to do any of that to Guts she'd spook this boy as badly as putting a halter on a feral horse. She has gotten so sentimental, it's awful.
"If you head in that direction, I know Midland will have work for you. Assuming things haven't changed radically in the past few months there's a particularly huge merc company there my contact-" she does something sarcastic with her eyebrows, indicating that 'contacts' is probably too strong a word -"likes. But I'm sure you can find something anywhere. You ever get brought on to guard a caravan?"
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Yet, for whatever reason, he finds himself lured over by the jobs with more pain and misery and insufferable rich men. Greater rewards, maybe. Or perhaps he gets easily bored of the idea of babysitting a wagon instead of fighting.
"Is your friend looking for guards?"
His smile is gone, but he seems content to talk shop if she wanted. Midland's old civil war was staring to flare up again, that's what he'd heard. There'd be plenty of work for him by the time he gets there, for one side or the other. It wouldn't hurt to take an quieter job in between them.
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Maybe it's also that caravan work requires more soft skills. Sharing fires with at least any of the others hired to guard it and usually others besides, having to spend more time in proximity with drivers and caravanmasters and whoever else. Travel with others, especially when wagons are involved, is a much slower affair than travel alone and that gets hard to bear when you don't get along with someone in the party. She imagines Guts cooling his heels as mules are wrangled back into their traces, or being astonished at how slowly oxen walk.
Besides that, the same money, goods, and sometimes animals and people people that make a caravan worth protecting from bandits can also tempt a guard. Some lone merc kid without references probably only gets a job like that from someone desperate or who's got a partial complement already that they feel they can trust. No, guarding caravans is a good way to transition from a life of fighting to some other kind of life but that doesn't mean it's achievable for just anyone.
"Might be. There's some grandchildren of a man I was in a company with, back in the day. Show one of them my mark on your sword and bring me up and if you don't completely fail at a first impression they could hire you."