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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Even as Guts is going away, part of her yearns to run after him. Not even to try and kiss him! Really. Mostly. When she's not freaking out and he's not too worked up it's kind of nice to be around him, in a regular and not weird way, even when neither of them is talking. They're friendly, she thinks, they could have been friends given more time. Maybe even the kind of friends where sometimes, now and then when no one's looking- "What is wrong with meee," she wails quietly, resting her forehead against the wood. He wouldn't want her coming with him, and besides. Those other Sisters found him under a heap of dismembered bodies with a broken executioner's sword, she can use a much smaller sword but has a completely different, incompatible skillset. Carnage is something she wants to avoid. Good sense things. Common sense things...
By the time the yearning's subsided to a dull ache and she can climb back to her post - coincidentally long enough that she won't have to watch Guts diminish into the distance - Vena is running pell-mell to the gate with her long hair straggling out of its sleep braid. "Wait! Is he gone already? Nooooo!"
"You slept 'till sunrise, that's late for you! He wanted to go quietly." Galli is usually pretty well put together, which is much of why having her heart do wild cartwheels is so distressing for her.
"He always gets up when the morning's like half over," Vena says, pouting as she wrings her hands together distractedly. "I was supposed to... that's mean, I just finished! I was gonna give him a knife!" She can conquer that disappointment - Vena tends to befriend most new people who'll let her and sometimes they do abruptly leave - but not yet.
Galli clears her throat and says what she'd been trying not to think about. "I bet he hasn't left the road. You could catch up to him if you were ahorse." They both look towards the stable and see Sister Lashan leading her gray Thistle towards them, fully saddled and equipped for a ride.
"You knew he was gonna sneak out?" Vena demands. This tack isn't as elaborate as battle gear, but it hasn't been long enough for the old woman to have found out when Vena did and then gone and got the gelding ready. She must have gone right from her bed to the stable and had the tack laid out already, maybe even got Radley to help put it on.
"Yep." Lashan clearly sees no reason to explain herself, heading unhurriedly towards the mounting block.
"...I'll open the gate," Galli decides.
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So, still deep in the wooded section of the east-facing road that would eventually wind southward in the days ahead, it wouldn't take too much time for Thistle to catch up. Caught in the dappled lighting, some of the rays of light caught the metal of his pauldrons, making it easier to spot him in the distance. If the large sword on his back wasn't giveaway enough.
Guts, upon hearing the hooves of a single horse behind him, feels the urge to keep his hand near the weapon's hilt now that its familiar comfort was close by again. But he knows full well that there's only one thing that could be coming up from that direction, so he ignores the instinct.
Stopping in his tracks, he turns to meet Lashan and the geldling with an annoyed look on his face - annoyed that he'd been caught so easily.
"Who told you? Was it that baker girl?"
He wouldn't be surprised. She looked like a chatter. Galli was better at keeping secrets than that. He'd be disappointed if it was her.
Guess he'd be forced into saying some sort of goodbye, after all.
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Vena does not contest this slander because she's clinging to the front of the saddle and trying to get down. It's tricky business without a stirrup and with Lashan there making it impossible to slide back. Thistle is also taller than the pony types she usually rides. She has to drop, and crumples a little when she hits the dirt path, knees bending almost up to her ribs in the landing. This does not hurt her, she's up again in an instant and smacking Guts in a spot not covered by armor.
It's not nothing, Vena is stronger than she looks, but Nerine hits a whole lot harder and with more purpose. Her small face is intent in a scowl that doesn't really fit it. "Jerk! You knew I was making something! You could've told me!"
Lashan herself is going, she's decided, to stay ahorse. Keep some remove. Thistle, now that he's not being signaled to hold still and wait, tosses his head and fidgets like a horse half his age, roused up by the ride and not happy that it's standing and talking time so soon. She lets him do that, pretending that the gelding has the greater share of her attention.
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In his head, he briefly lingers on the dull stinging sensation.
“Sorry. I’m bad at long goodbyes.”
This feeling was earnest, at least, even if his actions upset her. Strangely enough, he takes the brunt of the anger without protest or much reaction. Vena had every right to be upset.
He much prefer’s Lashan’s aloof disinterest, though he’d long picked up that half of it was feigned anyway.
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"It doesn't have to be long! Just not disappearing!" she huffs, her eyes overbright. "You don't even have anywhere important to be. Don't you care? Are you even gonna miss me?"
That's too sincere a question for Lashan, who winces from horseback. She starts, "Vena..."
"No, I want to know! I miss everyone who goes. They should... they should miss me back. A little. Sometimes." The girl's voice starts loud and passionate and trails off, smaller and more plaintive. "Or at least think of me."
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"I'll remember you."
How could he not? But that seems about the extent of what he felt comfortable promising. He couldn't promise to miss them once he buries himself back in his old, familiar life. He couldn't promise to return or cross paths again. It felt dishonest to do so.
Though, he's pretty sure he will miss the bath house and the plentiful food and play fights with no money or skin on the line. The quiet leisure with the strange women that found themselves settling down at the far end of the world.
It was certainly memorable, if nothing else.
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:That's about as good as you're going to get, little one,: Lashan sends when Guts finally replies. Trying to hold on to someone who wants to leave never works the way the heart wants it to and she dearly doesn't want her girl to press further. There's only so much anyone can expect from someone else, particularly someone dragged lashing out from off of a battlefield not much more than a month ago.
Vena swipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand and tries to take refuge in the quick-fading anger that swells up in her so readily. "I know. You better not be laughing at me or saying I'm a baby. Here. You probably don't deserve this, but you should take it anyway."
She pulls out a knife in a primitive leather sheath and holds it up. The handle is dark-stained wood and decorated with a single, somewhat shaky calligraphic letter carved in and stained black with walnut juice, and with a short, knotted loop of cord holding one very small, lemon-shaped eye bead in blue and white.
Her knife is made from someone else's shattered sword and it does have the look and feel of a glorified shard rather than something folded and reshaped. The point is sharply angular and most of the metal is dark, still bearing the marks of the hammer though she'd tried to file it smooth. Only one side has an edge, and that's very sharp but scalloped and uneven. This is a knife rather than a dagger, and pretty petite for someone like Guts.
Now Lashan's looking rather intently at the boy, because she sees a lot of flaws in her apprentice's work. She hadn't corrected them as they appeared, Vena needs to build confidence and willingness to make mistakes instead of copying one 'right' way by route, and she also doesn't want him pointing out those same flaws.
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So, he simply responds by taking the knife in his hand and examining the gift. He was afraid the gesture would make him feel regret for leaving, hence wanting to avoid it. Well. It was too late for that now. Looking at it, he can't fight back the warmth in his chest he had no particular words for. Affection wasn't a sentiment freely given or explained to him.
In truth, he probably wouldn't have picked it up if he'd seen the crudely made blade on a market. It was easy enough to get something a little better crafted. But Vena going out of her way to make it for him gave it a weight of a different sort, somehow. He was crude himself, mismatched armor and all, so perhaps it was fitting in some other way.
He tilts the knife, watching the beams of light catch the edge of the semi-polished metal. His hand fit around the handle well enough for now, lightly touching the cutting edge with his thumb. Based on its size, it would be best paring or peeling. Would probably be good for eating, too.
"You picked a nice rock for it," he says, sheathing the gift and pocketing it in one of the traveling pouches strapped to his belt.
"Thank you."
He says this staring at the trees to avoid looking at Vena's sniffly face, though he catches Lashan out of the corner of his eye.
"For everything.
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"It's more that they don't like touching them." Lashan is not interested in getting into skystones or, in fact, litigating the existence of demons right now, but it would bother her to let that statement go uncorrected. "That one's a beesting, at best. But it's a bit of pretty." 'At worst', more like, but he's unlikely to encounter a demon. They're more common on the Plains, or at least, news from there includes updates on them and monstrous spirits and so on. Even before she settled to spend her last few decades in a quiet backwater, Lashan hears less about such goings on in these cold, forested countries.
She reaches down - Thistle has obediently settled and stands steady - and with a grunt of effort and a definite twang in her much-abused shoulder pulls Vena up so she can sit in front. The girl gets her leg over the saddle and leans back trustingly against her chest, still sniffling a bit. Lashan puts her arms around her on the way to taking up the reins. "I took a chance on you because it's good to get a sense that other people with strange ways aren't so strange. Not all the way incomprehensible. You can find yourself in some of them." Which is also a lesson to herself, probably. You can still learn, or be reminded, at her age and older. Ugh, she's going to become sentimental. Time to wrap this up.
Once again Lashan turns, however briefly, into her mother, a thought that always brings a fond sort of sadness. "We've dawdled enough. Long goodbyes give the enemy time to aim."
"Bye," Vena adds, raising her hand and curling her fingers in a sad little wave.
Lashan turns Thistle and finally signals the horse that he can stretch his legs. The gelding whickers, shakes his mane out, and heads back towards enclave lands at a trot. Lashan doesn't look back. If Vena wants to, well, she's in the way.
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He doesn't stop Vena from lightly squeezing him in the hug, though between metal plates, straps, and rivets, he wasn't particularly comfortable at the moment. Guts has gotten a little better at accepting the gestures of physical affection, having shed some of the discomfort around her from before. Maybe it was the layer of armor that helped.
For Lashan, he doesn't quite get what she means yet. But maybe he will someday. All he knows is that kindness is a rare thing in his world, and that the old lady had an awful lot of it. He'll remember that for a long time yet.
"Bye."
No wave, the boy turns around as they do and keeps walking. His trick to not looking back is to keep focus on the horizon ahead.