Dragon

Land of Karchan

Catch and Release


DATE: 6/5/17
PLACE: The Galila Dunes

Casimira - On the journey to Tiros, a certain pooka has managed to make quite a mess of the Tirosites that had captured her. Being innately lucky, she may have...given her captors some very bad luck on the long trek through the dunes. They never quite made it to Tiros with her, as it was figured out that Sass was the reason for it. Those that survived the sudden onslaught of misfortune decided to abandon her...but not before beating the tar out of her. She's been dumped in the dunes, sunburned, dry, and bloody. Both legs have been smashed at the knees, making it impossible for the pooka to walk.
Nibal is moving quickly through the dunes. The nomad has bow in hand, and walks sideways like a down the slope of a particularly large sand hill. She is crouched and staying low while still scuttling sideways. The bowyer is clad in black, though the desert sands have buffeted her clothing to a reddish-gold hue. Hood, cloak and shemagh all work together to obscure the bowman's true form, as well as protect her from sun and sand. The sun-damaged, red-haired fae is a mass of misplaced in the bistre and brick landscape, and almost immediately earns the fletcher's attention. She sweeps in like a storm, grains kicked up by her feet soon quelled by the trailings of her cloak. Before too long, the bowyer is standing over Casimira, the circle of the exceeding light yet curiously light-blocking garment tented over the prone female's head. The nomad clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and peers down through the slight gap of an opening at the front of her mantle. "Bhad ic dhic," the thick, heady voice rolls out from beneath the enclosing scarf.
Casimira has no idea what is being said, but the slight absence of light finally causes her to crack her eyes open to a small slit. Have the Tirosites come back to finish her off? She gives a groan of pain and tries to crawl away, but the desert sun has sapped most of her strength as well as the pain of her broken knee caps. After a moment's hesitation, the pooka speaks to Nibal in the common tongue, since it is all that she knows. "Friend or foe?" She croaks out, her usual glasses gone, which means there is nothing to glamour her strikingly golden gaze in this intense amount of light. Her eyes usually look pitch black except for a golden glow in certain lights, but they are no match for the Haavian sun. When she speaks, her lips crack and weep blood, the pooka's antlers visible due to the lack of a proper hood. Hers went missing two days ago upon capture.
Nibal again clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Ah," the nomad says in slow, soothing tones, "One from the outside lands." The fletcher's gold-veined, malachite gaze sweeps over Casimira's gilded sights and antlers, and a familiarity flickers to life in the petite archer's eyes. "Friend," the woman replies, with copous, thick consontants rolled off her tongue and rounded vowels. "Nomad," Nibal continues on, "Protect these lands, see?" As she speaks, the so-named Nomad reaches up and under the deluge of her cloak. She kneels at the pooka's head before easing an intricately painted, tanned hide waterskin toward the female's lips. The cork is partially unseated by two of the fletcher's fingers and she warns, "Slowly, now. Too much make you sick."
Casimira has nothing to lose, so she opens her mouth and tries to drink slowly, though her first instinct is to guzzle all she can get in case this is a trick. Still, the pooka proves she can listen to instruction, eventually pulling her mouth away and staring up at Nibal. "I was taken by Tirosites, but they abandoned me." She doesn't go into details, though she does weakly motion to her knees. "I've been here since Saturday, bakin' in the sun." Her voice doesn't sound as choked now that she's had some water. "My knees are busted. I do nae know how badly." If Nibal took a closer look, she'd see that from the knee down, the pooka appears to have...deer legs? Her knee is all humanoid though, and both are immensely swollen and bloody. "To be honest, I do nae even know if'n I'm hallucinatin' or not right now. I feel swimmy, like this is all a bad dream and I'm about ta wake up." Her voice sounds strained again, and the pooka shudders some, closing her eyes. "My skin feels like it is on fire..."
Nibal smiles through her shemagh, though it would be undetectable to the pooka. "It's okay," the fletcher soothes, stowing her bow and the waterskin away. "I'm not healer," the robust, encompassing accent states flatly, "But will take you to one." The wiry woman flexes her hands a few times before gesturing to the pooka's legs. "Going to lift you now; it will hurt." The warning is given just a fraction of a second before the bowyer plunges her hands into the sand and scoops Casimira up into her arms.
Casimira cries out, not expecting such strength from another woman, but the pooka herself is pretty much light as a feather, just tallish. "You sound familiar," she whispers, coughing a little with the effort. "I cannae really place yer voice though." it is hard for her to speak through the pain, but she manages somehow through grit teeth. Any skin she has exposed is horribly sunburned, and the pooka is obviously in a great deal of misery. "I live in Gyllene, an island, but I go ta mainland Karchan here and there. What's yer name, lass? I'm Cas, or ta some, I'm known as Sass." At this point, she is rambling to have something to keep her mind off of the pain, though an occasional whimper does come out involuntarily from time to time.
Nibal glances down at the pooka just long enough to wrap the redhead's head and face in her cloak. "Altan-Bataar Nibal," the woman says rather precisely, "But Nibal will do. We place our surnames first; they are important to our culture. Our family lines," she explains to the fae-woman as the two travel across the dunes, "It means double-gold. Four families started our tribe," the nomad decide to slip into story time, and hopefully lull the fae to sleep, "After the war of sun and shade. We would not pick, would not cast out one of our gods, you see. So we chose both, and left those who would make us choose between them," the richly voice bowyer continues on in almost monotone fashion, "And I am from two of them. A meeting of families many generations after the originals departed. There is only one other in the tribe that can claim such, and he's not been seen for many months." There's a pause, a silence in which only the wind whistles through the sands, creating eddies of red and gold that rise up, swirl like dancers at a festival, and then scatter across the more substantial dunes. "It is nice to meet you, Sass."
Casimira trembles suddenly, salivating. "I'm gunna be sick, methinks. Ev'rytime I git a pain, I jes'..." Her stomach lurches, and she empties the contents of her stomach - mostly water - directly onto the path they are walking. Luckily there is no breeze at the moment, so everything goes forward instead of coming back, but Sass heaves a few more times before she can get a handle on herself. "I'm sorry," she says under her breath, though she is quiet soon afterward, opting to let Nibal help her without endless prattle. "How much further? Yer so strong. It's nice ta meet ye too, Altan-Bataar Nibal," the whole name, because Nibal mentioned how important it was and she wants to be respectful to the woman that is saving her from a slow, agonizing death in the dunes.
Nibal again grins beneath the scarf that keeps the desert from her mouth. "We're nearly there," the nomad soothes, careful not to jostle or shift Casimira too much. She's steady when the pooka is ill, holding the other woman which just enough steadfastness to not let her drop, all while giving her the latitude to pitch and roll as she needs to with the sickness. Afterward, the fletcher simply steps around the puddle. "We should be there in time to meet the shaman," the bowyer assures her charge, "Just over the next rise."
Casimira nods, biting hard onto her bottom lip and trying to will herself out of pain. It is a battle she is losing, but she doesn't want to continuously lose her cool no matter how bad the pain. Nibal's reassurance that they are nearly to her shaman bring her a modicum of relief, though it is fleeting the next time the pain strikes. Despite Sass being usually chatty, it seems that this lull in speech is prolonged, the pooka closing her eyes again and just letting Nibal move her however necessary.
Nibal is greeted by a pair of flight arrows that burrow into the sand as soon as she's within sight-line of the camp's entrance. The Shri lifts her head, and places a shrill whistle into the air. It echoes, bouncing off of seemingly nothing. Several shouts are heard, barked through strong, male voices, and the sides of two dunes near them collapse as a pair of sentinel infantrymen rise from their covert lookout positions and run further off into the desert. Once the pair of females has breeched the camp's first circle, they are surrounded by a group of young women and men. Several hands begin to remove the pookah from Nibal's grasp, easing the redhead onto a cushioned cot. "Don't be scared," the Baatar says gently, "They're taking you to the healing tent. I'll come visit you soon, and stay with you for a while. You can send a letter, and the riders will take it wherever you need it to go."
Casimira feels the different hands on her and is momentarily stressed, though she eventually just submits to the attention bestowed on her by Nibal's people. When she is taken into the healing tent, it is ugly when they reset her knees and bind them, and the normally reserved pooka actually does scream and cry. She's been through so much the past few days, even before she was captured, and the gravity of her situation finally settles onto her shoulders, so heavy that she cannot stop crying. The pooka feels like the past few days have completely destroyed her world, from the situation with both of her boyfriends to being captured. After she is given some tea with a subtle sleep drought in it, she finds herself becoming weary, and it doesn't take long for the once-sobbing pooka to finally slumber for the first time in two days. It isn't a peaceful slumber, but it will do the trick for now. While she is asleep, she presumably taken out of her bloodied clothing and given new garb, her sunburn treated with a concoction of shamanic herbs and vinegar, the latter to take out the sting. Sass is in such a deep slumber that she is unaware that the nomads continue to work on her throughout the night.

Last modified on June 6, 2017, 00:25:53