#zaibal sul

[azriah]

Prompt 22: Black Sheep

“What has your mind, Sovali-Ahnu? I can hear you brooding from here.” Zaibal-Sul glanced up from sharpening the kris to peer at his sister across the small camp.

The young ashlander cursed and brought her thumb to her mouth, lowering the bone needle in the other hand. “Nothing,” She grumbled and picked the jerkin back up, continuing her work sewing bands of guar-leather with kresh thread.

Sul grunted his disbelief at her, shaking his head minutely as he went back to his own chore.

A puff of a sigh escaped Sovali’s nostrils. “It would be long to detail,” She offered by way of explanation.

He looked at her for a moment and then gestured around the quiet encampment. What had once been a bustling site was now mostly comprised of vacant yurts standing firm against the soft Grazelands breeze. “It is not as if we are pressed for time.”

“I doubt you will derive any sense from it.” She gave her last warning.

“Enough hedging. Be out with it.”

Sovali summoned a deep breath and wiped her brow with a forearm. “Fine.” She yielded, then took a moment to consider how to frame her thoughts. “Have you ever felt that you were witness to a great decline?”

The question caught him off-guard, but he took a moment to consider it. “Sometimes,” He admitted.

“Truly?” She looked up at her brother with a flicker of hope in her eyes.

“If I have your meaning correct, I believe so. What has made you think of this now?”

“It is... difficult to explain. It’s a feeling that comes into my thoughts on an errant wind ... Those times I feel like an outlier, looking in. It is as if I have arrived in the waning years of some gilded age. Just present long enough to get a taste, and be left wanting.”

Sul furrowed his brows as he listened to her talk, wrapping his head around the vague concepts she posed there. After a few moments, he came to a conclusion.“That is why we maintain the tradition of this life, Sovali.” 

“But why? To what end?” She questioned.

“What do you mean ‘to what end’?”

The young mer shrugged. “I do not know,” She sighed. “If all will wither to dust anyway, why bother clinging to the remnants? Why not forge something new?”

He glanced quickly around the camp. “Mind yourself. Do not let the others overhear.”

But Sovali plowed on, yammering away. “I feel as an afterthought to this tribe. I do the work set out for me. I am good at many things. I avoid complaining. Yet I feel every goal I have is destined to ash behind Sunahi-Ahmat’s bright-flaming potential. Why? I might as well be a guar. I am tired of this. I want to know more. I want to see more--”

“Enough.” Sul held up his hand. “You are not an afterthought, Sovali. Not to me, not to our sister. You must not begrudge her the favor that is shown. You are part of this family; you belong with us and that is what matters. Do not let external tribal judgments cloud this truth.” Although his words were caring, his tone rang with the sort of tough admonishment that only older brothers could employ.

Sovali threw her work down and put her head in her hands, grumbling to herself.

Sul rubbed the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh, consciously softening his voice. He set the kris and sharpening stone aside, then stood up from the stump-seat and crossed over the tiny camp to her, kneeling to put himself in her frame of vision. “Look. You are fifteen. You are not the first mer to have an existential crisis. Even I had similar feelings at your age.” 

Sovali pushed her hands through her hair and raised her head, dragging her gaze to his. “How did you change from it?” She asked tentatively.

“I made a choice.” He said, “I decided to accept this life for what it is. I am Zainab. I am a son of Veloth. These truths cannot be scoured away. You will have to make this decision yourself when you are grown.”

She rested her chin in hand, staring out toward the eastern horizon. “What if the choice I make is not the same as yours?”

He clapped a hand to her shoulder. “Then we will cross that foyada when we get to it.”

“You would not disown me?”

“Not even if I wanted to.”

[azriah]

Prompt 2: Cuisine

RED MOUNTAIN grumbled its malcontent, billowing plumes of ash and smoke into the bright afternoon sky. The dark clouds obscured the sun, casting the sprawl of the Grazelands into a false twilight.

A young Sovaliah turned her head to peer through the ash-swept lenses of her breathing mask to look askance at her older brother, who carefully wrenched his arrow out of a fresh guar carcass.

“Take my bow while I carry this,” Zaibal-Sul commanded. He jutted out his jaw toward the bow and quiver on the ground nearby and stooped to heft the fresh kill over his shoulder. 

Sovaliah stood there for a moment as if rooted to the spot. Hunger raged in her abdomen, and here was a meal that could last their clan at least a fortnight. The Grazelands had been scarce of late, and they had hardly believed it when they spotted this fat guar munching on shreds of grass. Perhaps it had escaped from some Housemer’s pens, she pondered. It was a docile creature that had all but gazed stupidly at Sul when he shot it down. But they had to eat, and she wasn’t complaining. Better than the rations of roots and mushrooms they had been subsisting on. 

“Hey, scuttlebrains. Are you in there?” Sul’s voice pierced through her reverie, and she came through with a start. 

“Shut up. I was thinking about where to take it.” Sovaliah lied. Better to seem like something productive had been happening than admit she had simply gotten lost in thought contemplating how starving she was. She slung his quiver over her shoulder and picked up the bow.

“Certainly,” Sul replied wryly. He took off without further ado on a sure-footed stride to the northeast, heading toward two distinctly shaped volcanic boulders in the distance. Sovaliah hastened her step to keep up, moving easily through the environment in her chitin-and-hide armor. 

The young mer tried to be conscious of where she stepped, literally following in her brother’s footsteps lest any Erabenimsun lurked amongst the rocks and fungi. They were still in the territory commonly roamed by the Zainab, but she had heard enough of Alma’s stories about the Erabenimsun to know that the tribe ventured here from time to time, and she wasn’t particularly inclined to find out which aspects of those violent tales were true.

“I can make the fire when we make camp.” Sovaliah piped up, eager to seem useful to her big brother on their first solo expedition.

He merely grunted in reply. But she took that as a good sign and marched onwards, thoughts wheeling as she hypothesized some scenario where they returned to the Zainab camp and Sul regaled Alma with tales of her successes. Gave substance to her worth as a warrior-to-be. Praise from him would go far with the clan elders. Perhaps then they would allow her to accompany the next relic preservation mission. 

Occupying her mind with daydreams was the best way to ignore the ever-present hunger.

The air had turned thicker with volcanic ash in the time they had spent walking, and Sul stopped suddenly in his tracks, shifting his posture with the guar on his shoulders to block his sister’s path. “Wait.” He hissed, voice dropped to a whisper. He jutted his chin out, where a betty netch and her two calves floated idly beneath a low-lying mushroom, blocking the only path between the crags. “Turn back.”

Sovaliah heeded him without protest, turning about face and walking exactly back where she came from. 

After a few minutes and distance established between them and the netch, Sul spoke up again. “We’re stopping here. Air is getting bad, that netch looked malevolent, and I have no particular desire to lose the kill this far out.” His voice was slightly muffled through the chitin helm and kresh-fiber mask he wore, but she understood him plainly enough.

Sovaliah paused and looked around, taking measured breaths through the filtration mask as she studied what she could see of the environment. Tall chanterelle and spongecaps formed dark shapes in the growing ash-haze. “There!” She exclaimed, waving toward a rock wall where she noticed the grass stalks at its base stood still. “It’s out of the wind.”

Sul followed her gesture with his gaze and adjusted the carcass on his shoulders, setting out toward the spot. He performed a preliminary check, ensuring that no other mer or creatures had similar ideas. At last, finding it safe, he carefully set down the carcass and waved Sovaliah over. “Good eye.” He remarked offhandedly, and Sovaliah swelled up with pride. 

Brother and sister both set to work, where Sul arranged a haphazard shelter against the rock face and Sovaliah took advantage of the wind block to try to create a fire. She was thankful for his distraction so that he didn’t notice her struggle with getting the sparks to catch on the clumps of grass, growing increasingly stressed out as every second passed without the telltale fwoom of ignition. Here in the wildlands, eating meant effort. There were any number of steps where things could go wrong.

At last, the grass clump ignited and Sovaliah fed the flame with branches that Sul brought over. He started placing small pieces of igneous rock beneath the fire, seemingly heedless of the flame. “These will retain the heat when the branches have gone. Helps with cooking.” 

“Didn’t the Gulakhan say to bring any kill directly back to camp?” She questioned, watching her brother nurture the fire. 

“The meat will spoil before we make it back unless I butcher it now. Usually make a stew from the offal-- I’ll show you how.” Sul gave the fire one last poke before turning to the guar carcass with a blade in hand. True to his word, he set to work carefully sawing through the animal’s abdomen so he could reach inside to remove the viscera.

Sovaliah went to her pack to retrieve a small carapace cooking bowl, setting it up above the fire. She pulled out a cutting board and her own knife and sat down nearby, waiting for her brother. In short time, he passed her the guar’s bloody heart, two small kidneys, and the liver. 

“Start chopping that up,” Sul directed, and Sovaliah quickly followed suit.  While she was busy, he grabbed a skin out of his pack and removed the cork, upending it over the bowl.  “Bone broth,” He explained. “Normally I’d like to add a little shein for flavor, but it’s been some time since we’ve had that around...” 

“Vos hasn’t exactly been a bustling trading hub lately.” Sovaliah mused. 

“No, it hasn’t.” Sul agreed. “Shand scouted the area and said the town’s riddled with disease. Couldn’t shower me in all the metal I could ask for to get me to go there.”

“Corprus?”

“Only Mephala knows. The n’wah likely brought it.”

“Hmm.” Sovaliah grunted, then held up the cutting board with all the chopped organ meat. “When do I add this?”

“Do it now, the broth is boiling.” Sul directed. 

Sovaliah followed his instruction and dumped the meat in the broth, watching with ravenous eyes. “Anything else? Other ingredients?”

Sul gave a harsh laugh, “Does it look like we have other ingredients to throw in there?” He shook his head. “Ground trama root would give it a nice kick. Perhaps a few sprigs of bittergreen...” 

It was the closest Sovaliah had ever seen her brother to being outright wistful, and she understood it keenly. She let out a sigh and peeled her helm off, pulling down her filtration mask so she could take a great big huff of the steam rolling off the stew. “Smells good anyway.”

“Kwama dung would smell good to me right about now.” Sul jested.

A tiny smirk gave life to Sovaliah’s gaunt, tired face. “Then thank Azura that we have this.”