Ash 65, 122
It was nearing on evening in South Ecith, and Norani was slowly making her way down an animal path, humming to herself. She had spent nearly the entire day in the jungle, tracking and wandering and exploring. Today had been a good day, as indicated by the vine she held in one hand, dangling a trio of fat jungle birds over her shoulder, bouncing against her naked back as she walked. She had found them swimming through the soil of a small clearing with the ease that other birds might swim through water. When Norani had checked the soil herself, she found it quite firm.
Yet another creature with an elemental alignment in these jungles. Norani had spent some time watching them from her vantage point around a tree, sketching them in her journal in charcoal. They were brown and grey in hues, with little pebbles tipping their feathers. They appeared to hunt on insects and creatures that live in the soil, able to snatch them out without making a burrow themselves. It was fascinating, and Norani wondered if she could convince the earth element to allow her to do the same. She had spent sometime feeding a patch of dirt her aether, but hadn’t managed to do more than make the soil carve out a hole for her foot.
It wasn’t the same.
But she wasn’t dismayed, she knew it was possible, so she would find a way. One day. After she had watched the birds hunt and frolicking for a while, she had loosed her chakrams at them after they had resurfaced and fell three of them before the flock managed to disappear underground. Once she’d tied them up to take back to camp, she found herself excited to tell Yeva what she’d found. To show her the drawings. Yeva always enjoyed her drawings and the notes she wrote about the things she found. It had become part of their routine. Always be back at the beach before sundown and share their day. That is, at least, on days they didn’t spend together.
Days spent swimming in the bay together, finding new plants and fruits, following and drawing animals. Whenever Norani seemed to be getting to worked up on her hunting, Yeva would convince her, easily, to take a day to just rest on the sands, warmed by the sun, and then taking a dip into the bay to cool off. They shared more and more stories of the times from before they met, they recounted their experience with the Duck and her captain, trying to glean anymore information that might help them figure out this curse. On Norani’s bad days, the days when she couldn’t shake the anger and pain of her family’s lies, she would isolate herself somewhere. And every time Yeva would find her, and they would talk. Sometimes it would just be stories of Norani’s family, told tearfully, wondering if Juno was missing from them, wondering if there were lies told in them. Sometimes it was Norani trying to figure out where Juno and the others were. She had shared the entire experience with Yeva the night of the storm and had recounted it in pieces since then.
Norani made her way through the mangrove, having figured out the trick to easier water walking and was on the beach, following a familiar curve in the dunes to their shared hut at the tree line. The sun would disappear in a couple of hours, yet it seemed like it was getting darker. Now that she was free of the canopy, she cast her gaze to the sky, seeing an inky blackness wrapping itself around the sun. Her eyes grew wide in awe. She had heard of eclipses like this, but had never seen one herself. Smiling brightly, she turned and began running over the sands to the hut.
She came around a dune, seeing their hut, much larger now than the lean to she had originally built when they had first arrived. Comprised of bamboo, vines, and palm fronds, it was three rooms now. A common room, a sleeping room, and a room that was just for Yeva, Norani knew that Yeva truly valued her alone time and privacy, so when she had been planning a bigger home for them, she had taken it into account. Around their hut were stones and logs for seating, a cooking fire with bowls shaped from stone using Norrani’s elementalism. Within the core of the fire, to the close onlooker, was the fiery lotus flower that Norani had formed when she learned the element. She fed it more aether, to always keep their fire burning. There was a few racks nearby, stretching and drying some hides, a few wind chimes of shells and bones, and other small decor to make their hut into their home.
“Yeva! Are you here? There’s an eclipse!”
She looked around, checking the sands as she always did. Every night before they went to bed, Norani wiped the sands around their camp clean, hiding their own tracks and determining if any creatures, or people, came into their campsite. It was a security precaution but it had turned into an amusing morning past time for them, to see what trails had formed in the night. She could see Yeva’s footprints, leaving from the hut, moving to the fire, around the camp for a bit. Up to the tree line, then down to the water. Norani was smiling as she followed the trails, wondering how Yeva had spent her day. The trail came from the bay back to camp, to Yeva’s favourite seat, a log around a large stone, for reading her cards.
Norani could see where Yeva had stood up again from her seat, but then her gaze grew confused and curious. The footsteps didn’t continue. She could see where Yeva took about two steps from where she’d stood, but no more. Had she back tracked? Taken her own steps backwards for some reason? Norani wasn’t good enough at tracking to tell the exact difference between tracks used in such a way but she inspected the tracks all around the camp and felt confident that they were all the same. Surely if Yeva had backtracked, some of her tracks would be noticeably bigger.
Norani returned to where Yeva’s trail ended. She didn’t see any indication of flying away. No sands in small dunes from wings pushing off the air. And she was pretty sure Yeva would’ve told her if she could fly. A raptor slipped out of Norani’s shadow, stooping down to sniff at the tracks. He looked up at Norani and shook his head, and Norani could feel a pit of fear growing in her stomach. She whistled shrilly, the call for Ruvaf, likely hunting out over the bay. Then she called the local winds to her, and paid them her aether, to carry her voice as far and as wide as they could. And asked them to carry Yeva’s voice back to her.
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeevaaaaaaa!!!”
She called and she called but the winds carried nothing back to her. Her panic was growing as she saw Ruvaf swoop down toward her, landing softly in the sands. Norani ran over to him quickly, jumping onto his back, and they kicked off the ground together. He screed loudly as she guided him over the beach, flying low enough to see the details of the beach clearly. She could see the other inhabitants’s houses, some were going about their days, milling about. Norani was doing a checklist of everyone who was on this expedition. Aardwalden had disappeared without a trace, but it seemed everyone else was accounted for.
From her vantage, Norani looked back at the eclipse, noticing that it wasn’t disappearing. She’d been told that eclipses were always really short events. Mere minutes. Something was really wrong. Norani flew out over the water and the nearby jungle but didn’t push too deep. The canopy was too thick and dark to see through and flying too far from camp invited predators. Norani kept shouting Yeva’s name, her throat growing hoarse, tears starting to burn at her eyes.
She steered Ruvaf back to her camp, the sky very dark now, the eclipse holding strong. Norani dismounted and rushed into their hut, maybe she had missed something, wasn’t as good at tracking as she thought. Maybe Yeva was sleeping, she was prone to sleeping in in the mornings, was fond of naps. But all around the hut, Yeva was missing, But all of her belongings remained. The pack that Norani had made for her, the punch-chakram she gave so Yeva could defend herself, both were in their place. Yeva hadn’t left into the wilds, Norani was sure of it.
At least, not of Yeva’s own volition.
Maybe whatever happened to Aardwalden had happened to Yeva too. Maybe something else took them both? She didn’t speak much with the others, except for Keiko occasionally, but she was under the impression that no one knew what happened to the gnome. Her throat grew tight as she stumbled back out into camp.
Yeva was gone, she was sure of it.
Tears were blinding her way as she started toward the homes of the others. She would have to ask them if they had seen Yeva. She hoped, she prayed, that someone, anyone knew something of Yeva’s whereabouts. Could explain it, or just show Norani to where Yeva was, hopefully using her cards, reading a book maybe. Norani stumbled around the bend into the more communally shared area of the beach, looking for the first and closest person she could find, her face distraught, tears running down her cheeks, staining her hunting leathers.
