Side Role-Play

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Lassar grabbed hold of the riding-bear's fur and, feeling the tension, the bear heaved itself up onto its four trunk-like legs once again and began to slide forwards, one paw after the other, through the ashy sea.  Lassar continued to clamber up, scaling the side of the beast to eventually reach the top, where he put one leg over the beast's back, settling into the riding position.  He felt comfort again.  Safety.  Laying himself flat to the bear's back, he clung yet tighter to the fur as their steed gained speed.  Soon enough, the wind was whistling through their manes as it had been before.  

Lassar had felt the weight on his back become a little heavier and assumed the boy had slipped into unconsciousness.  He wasn't sure if that was the best way for him to be or not, though even if he did know, there would be nothing he could do.  Lassar brought his thoughts back around to concentrate on the ride - although there was little left that could go wrong in this leg of the journey, he wasn't risking it.

Honestly, Lassar had always had a sneaking suspicion the creatures his elders had told him were stories to scare small children into staying away from the wastes.  There were no current stories.  No one alive in his clan for the past few generations had experienced anything of the six-hundred thousand scales that coated Ular, the snake behemoth, or the screeching maw of Tikus, the mole which created the very dunes that pocked the otherwise smooth landscapes.  He'd have to see something with his own eyes before truly heeding what were otherwise mere legends.

The thud of the bear's feet changed, and Lassar recognised it as the sound of earth.  Solid, practical earth.  It would be minutes before they were back.  They'd survived.

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He couldn’t breathe. The dust that had caught in his throat was all that he could focus on, and Torbjen was shaking with the effort of holding in a coughing fit. He could feel his heart beating a frantic pulse against his silently heaving ribcage and tears streamed from his eyes. This was hell. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of letting go, of collapsing into the dust and ending the pain flaring through his lungs. It would at least be quick, if the tales of the ash-beasts were anything to go by.

But as soon as he imagined such a death, he thought of his mentor and the fate that would surely befall him if Torbjen were to wake the slumbering horrors. They would come for him, kill him in an instant, and however far Lassar had gotten since the fall they would hunt him and end him. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let his stupidity end another life.

With a quake of terror, he felt a tremor in the ash near to him. Ever so slight, and accompanied by a gentle swish of shifting ground. Was this what the victims of the wastes felt in their final moments? The distant stirrings of timeless terrors, as they ascended from the depths to feast. It got close so fast, and he let out an involuntary squeak of absolute fear. They were coming to get him, to grip him in their ghastly limbs and rip into him with teeth made of-

Abruptly, Torbjen felt warm, strong hands grip him from behind, and felt an overwhelming rush of relief and gratitude that against all odds, he was rescued. Lassar had risked his life for the boy’s, disregarding his own rules and showing a respect for life that astounded him. He felt the hands pull cloth tightly over his face and neck, and relaxed ever so slightly as the ash stopped assaulting his nose, mouth and eyes. Breathing now, through nostrils still clogged with slag, he felt the world turn as the older male gripped him under the arms and began to lift.

As Lassar heaved the cub onto his back and lashed him there, Torbjen instinctively wrapped his arms around his elder. He could feel powerful muscles corded under the skin he was bound to, and the way that they tensed to lift the extra weight. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Lassar began to shuffle, steady as a mountain, back towards their ursine mount.

He could sense the slow and silent movements they made, slipping through the top layer of ash as quiet as a whisper. He would survive. The hope reignited inside of him and, completely drained, he felt his surroundings grow dark. The sound of his saviour taking a ragged breath through his head cloth was the last thing Torbjen heard before falling into unconsciousness. 

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The boy was alive.  Dusty and grey with ash all over, eyes clogged with grit, body shaken and scratched, but alive.

Lassar watched as the boy's body began to lurch and he realised that he was holding back coughs - one sound and they could be dead.

It took him a few moments of careful but swift consideration.  Leave now, save himself...it was the safer option...

He pulled his mask up over his mouth as the winds began to pick up, bringing swift, soft tornadoes of ash skittering across the delicate Waste surface.  He could feel in his bones that they didn't have long.  Taking a lower stance, Lassar rolled forwards to close the few feet between him and the boy, positioning himself behind the cub in one quick movement.  Grabbing the cloths that hung over his shoulder, he brought his arms around the cub and pulled the cloth tight over his face, restricting his breathing and eradicating sight.

He couldn't tell the boy the purpose of this action right now; it was detail he'd never taught him in hope that it would never have to be known: Lassar felt a bubble of apprehension form in his throat.  If the boy panicked, didn't trust his mentor, it would be the death of both of them.  

The aim was to stop the boy's face from moving.  If he blinked too much, the grit caking his lids would scratch his eyes, and render him blind.  Breathing through the thick cloth, although difficult, lessened extra ash entering the airway and also dampened the sound of coughing.  Lassar could only pray that the boy had not swallowed too much ash, or he could drown before they made it back.  Elbowing the useless weight of the cub onto his back, Lassar took a second bolt of cloth and tied it in a cross shape around himself and the boy, knotting it at his chest, tying the boy tight to himself.  He began the careful journey back to the riding-bear, feet sliding through the ash, mimicking the sound of shifting dunes, legs aching under the weight of an additional body.  

The bear had laid itself flat against the ash, minimising its height.  It had more intelligence than this naive cub, it seemed.

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As Torbjen fell, the world was a spinning blur of ash and sky. Fear took hold of his insides and twisted them hard into a knot and he reflexively rolled into a ball. His second mistake. He hit the ash hard, throwing up a cloud of grey dust and sending a jarring pain through his back and shoulders. All of the air left his lungs and he involuntarily gasped as his body fought to breathe again. 

Through the pain of being winded, he cursed himself for forgetting Lassar's teachings:  "If you fall from the bear, you are almost certainly dead. You must spread yourself out enough that by the time you hit the ash-wastes, you have as little impact as possible; only in this way will you have a chance of remaining undetected." He began to panic. He had been so stupid and now he was going to die because of it.

Memories came back to him in an adrenaline rush, memories of fireside tales told by the elders on the darkest nights of winter. They would gather all of the youngsters close to the flames, and throw dried bark into them to make sparks accompany the distant thunder. Then, when the mood was right, they would speak of the beasts that lay beneath the ash. "No two beasts look alike" they would say "but all are as terrible as the next. Scaled and long like an armoured worm, or fat and clad in thorns like a skewered seal, all they desire is to take the flesh from your bones."

Torbjen's lapse into hysteria was interrupted by a cloud of ash getting sucked into his lungs. He needed to cough, now. His body convulsed with the urge to expel this foreign body from his chest but he knew that if he started coughing now he would not stop. He had to be still and breathe as little as possible, no matter how much it hurt. Expecting some kind of horror to emerge from the dust at any moment, Torbjen pulled his cloak over his head and prayed to Mator and Pitr for life. 

He said the words like a mantra in his mind, over and over to keep his breathing steady:

"Pitr, keep me safe For I have little to give, Should Lewat take me"

Maybe, despite his ignorance, the universe would see fit to give him a chance.

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Lassar felt the cub begin to slip from under him, his stupidity the cause of what potentially may be his death.  He untangled his hand from the safety of the rope and grabbed at the boy as quickly as he could, his clothes, his fur, his hair, but to no avail - he slipped off onto the ash below, falling three metres or so to land with a mighty 'whump', a cloud of ash billowing up around him.  Lassar growled as they rode away, the figure of the boy in the ash becoming more and more distant.

Lassar pulled back on the rope, causing the bear to halt, massive paws sliding through the ash as they slowed to a stop.  Pulling the protective cloths back over him and grabbing spares, wrapping them about his shoulders, Lassar rolled off the bear's back and landed crouched, keeping his balance perfectly.  One had to move slowly in the Wastes: rolling from the bear's back meant one fell with less speed than jumping, resulting in a lighter landing.  Everything counted.  

Lassar reached up for his spear and unhooked it from the bear's side, where the Nita's feet had rested as they rode.  Multi-purpose, like everything the Kodiak tribe made.  Wrapping the rope rein of the bear around his forearm, Lassar began to step quietly towards the boy's shape in the ash, wind pulling at his face mask.  The riding bear itself knew the rules and slid its feet through the ash instead of stepping.  Monsters slept below the ash, deep in slumber, only awakening when sufficient prey disturbed their bed.  Lassar had soon reached the boy.  He turned his spear so the blunt end was forwards, and poked him with it from a distance.  If he was dead, they could leave.  Have a ceremony back at camp - taking the body back wasn't worth the risk. 

If he was alive then he needed to wear his ash-cloths as soon as possible.  One could drown in the Wastes just by breathing.  If the cub woke and was loud, he could awaken the beasts underneath.  Lassar prayed silently that the cub would remember his mentor's words, the conversation they had shared before leaving detailing just how quiet one had to be when travelling slow.  Travelling fast was only allowed in the Wastes near the border: the point of the fast travel at the edge of the Wastes was to reach safety sooner, the idea that anything awoken by the sound of running would not follow them out the desert.  Usually.

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At Lassar's words, Torbjen felt a tremor of excitement run through him. This was his favourite part. That morning, when they had strapped the empty snow-casks to the Kodiak and his mentor had boosted him up and onto the broad back of the beast, he had been terrified. He would have given anything to stay away from the uncomfortably large animal, and all of the responsibility it symbolised. Now though…now he saw it as freedom.

The moment that they had cleared the village territories Lassar had urged the bear to a fast run, and Torbjen had been pressed back into the larger bear with the speed of the acceleration. After a few moments of disbelief he knew why bears like Lassar relished the chance to ride for water. The wind had whipped past his face in a cooling stream, ruffling the fur around his ears and making his eyes water with the force of it. The rumbling footsteps of the great beast they rode upon sounded like thunder in the distant clouds over the ancient Godhome, and Torbjen was filled with a sense of how much power the two possessed in that moment.

Now, their task completed and the snow-casks filled with hard-packed white, it was time to leave the ghastly ash wastes with the precious cargo and make with all speed for the village. Despite the massive weight of the burden the creature bore, when Lassar loosed the ash-cloaks and gave the command to run it burst into action like a fishing spear loosed from a throwing arm. Forgetting his mentor’s strict instructions regarding a firm handhold, he threw his arms up above his head and whooped into the oncoming wind. This…this was freedom. At least, until a sudden gust struck him. Arms flailing in panic, Torbjen lost his grip on the bear and, as if in horrific slow motion, began to slide off to the side.

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Lassar was 19, reaching the prime of his life for Nita living near the Kodiak Wastes, the great swathe of dusty grey land that cut across the centre of Kodiak Island, surrounding Novarupta - the Godhome of the island.  His tribe lived on the outskirts where the sea and coastal breezes had cleansed the grasses and sands but even there the ash picked up on the winds would settle and fade the vibrant colours that hid on leaves and flowers.  No fish swam in the currents and animals of the island were scarce but when encountered, strong.  The tribe chose to use the great bears their genetics hailed from - the two species had a natural affinity and co-operated well - to travel.  As dangerous as the Wastes were, it was necessary to venture through to reach the snowier climbs of the landscape, where differing varieties of herbs and plants grew, white animals climbed and clean water was readily available.

The bear they rode had four large clay jars slung about its neck which sloshed with clean, clear water.  The movements of the snow in the peaks meant that water there was often cleaner than any rivers that ran from the peaks, through the Wastes and to the coast: every week, two members of the tribe would venture through the Wastes to the peaks and pack the clay jars with snow and then bring them back.  This had been Lassar's and Torbjen's job today - Torbjen's first.

Lassar spoke in a low growl.

"You're lucky this trip has been uneventful.  It's the last stretch, hold on."

Lassar began to shift, leaning down against Torbjen's back, pushing him down flat against the bear with his chest and staying there.  He grabbed the cub's hands and thrust them into the carpet of their mount where the rope that held the clay jars was tied taut.  He did the same with his own hands, squeezing tight on the rope.  

"Ready...?"  

It was less a question and more a demand.

"Hold on."

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It was warm and the air under the ash cloaks was good enough for breathing, at least most of the time. The rhythmic shuffling of their mount constantly shifted the enormous swathes of cloth, making them whisper and sigh in a more comforting echo of the ashen hills around them. Everything felt safer inside the small mobile shelter the two figures occupied - sounds were muffled and light was tinted gold - and if Torbjen closed his eyes he could imagine he was a cub-child again, wrapped in his father's strong arms. 

Every once in a while, the illusion would be broken by the wind catching a stray strip of cloth and tearing a small hole in their billowing bubble of calm. Thrusting fingers of dirty ash and acrid air would fight for a foothold, a way to tear yet more of their shelter, but the bigger bear behind him would always catch and retie the cloth before the air was fouled. Nervous around Lassar though he was, Torbjen was glad that his elder was the one guiding them through the wastes. To come through the blighted lands this far was perilous without a leader to guide the way.

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Ash was drawn by the wind over ash.  It sounded like silk against skin, rushing but quiet.  There was another sound accompanying it, though...a soft thudding, akin to the beat of a drum.  There were paw-prints in the ash, soft dips, great dunes on a microscopic level.  A grunt sent whorls of airborne ash circling about the face of a huge, furred creature.  As the ash cleared, one could see the clouded white eyes of a stationary bear, ears twitching to-and-fro, the best sense it had left alongside its smell.  Its great body rumbled as it grunted again, responding to the squeeze of strong legs around its back.  It began to plod forwards as it had been before.

Two figures sat upon its back, one larger, one smaller, hidden beneath mounds of tied fabric which created twisting patterns as it came loose on occasion, pulled back by the oncoming wind.  A large arm would reach out and catch the rogue to pull it back and tuck it in.  The bear they rode did move slowly but assuredly, with strength behind its long stride.