Legend of Ransera

Nnerka shielded her eyes with a hand, a scowl resting on her lips. The heat of Searing had lessened, but the shine of the sun remained. Maybe she ought to invest in getting a parasol. The lands of her home had been rife with foliage to block the sun’s rays from shining down on them too harshly. Lazy days with her siblings, crowded in their webs. The thought pulled a sigh from her.

While she had seen her kind in the city before, she had not seen her kind. It made her feel more alienated as the years drew on. Another sigh, a dip of her head to avoid a low awning. She glanced down, her scowl deepening. It had been a conscious decision to opt for two legs rather than the usual six she had. A means of getting accustomed to the practice. She wasn’t pleased with the decision, but if she were being honest there was a slight bit of convenience to having only two legs. It made walking around a lot easier in terms of space.

The downside, however, was an imbalance that didn’t sit right with her. On that note, she ought to sit down. Searching for the nearest spot to rest that would hold her comfortably, she used various objects around her for support. On occasion, a head or two. But there was little challenge to the action as she stumbled forward. Gods, why was walking on two legs so difficult?

She heaved another sigh as she paused, stared down at what she could see of her legs. Things would be a lot simpler if she just had...her usual set of legs. A hand on her hip, she leaned up against a wall. Slipping into an alley seemed like an appropriate means of escaping the sun, as well. Until she realized it was occupied.

“Oh, my. Didn’t see you there.”

A quirk of her brow, a glance to the fleeing shadows of rats. Once, they might have made a viable meal for her, but the spider had gotten too big for that. Not enough nutrition, and all that. They did make for good practice when she was slightly older. Nnerka cocked her head to the side. She couldn’t see any visible features and it wasn’t like her vantage point was much help with that.

“You were hunting?” There was just the slightest touch of skepticism to her voice. An interesting challenge this two-legged child had set for itself. At least, she assumed it was a child. It was much, much smaller than the adults she had encountered over the seasons. The little creature was perhaps no higher than her hip. A single hand, if she so chose, could probably encompass the entirety of his face. “My apologies for interrupting. It was merely that you are so small, little one.”

Perhaps the population was getting smaller with each passing year. Or there were more goblins mixing with the people. Either option would have made sense to her. But — so small.

“Why am I different?” She repeated the question as if it made no sense to her — which it didn’t. Aside from the obvious difference in height, there were many things that could differentiate her from the next person on the street. For one, the numerous eyes that were trained now on the child. The sharpened canines that peeked out as she smiled and spoke, her words musical.

She, with some effort, crouched down in front of the child. The act of balancing this low was something she still needed to get used to. One hand rested on the nearest wall to keep her steady. “Do you know what a predator is, child?”

Kill her? Him? “How adorable.” The shift of his body, movements meant to be small just a tad too big to go unnoticed, only seemed to add to that. She chuckled, low and brimming with amusement. “One day, you might be able to kill me. But that day is not today.” There was a more musical note to her voice as she spoke those last words.

“And if all predators acted the same way, the world would be filled with a lot more prey.” His words sounded as though, partly, he’d read them off the pages of a book. But his shift in stance, the guard in his voice; that spoke more of experience. Readiness to choose between fight or flight. Interesting. Children, from her experience, weren’t often so bright, but had a sort of intuition about things. Only when it seemed to matter least, but still.

But he was still on his guard, even as he shifted to some form of decorum fitting for the spheres of civilization. A wrinkle of her nose, a narrowing of eyes. “You’ve practically just threatened me and you think an apology — one not heartfelt, at that! — is going to win me over, little one?” She stood up a little more, hand still resting on the wall. “I may not be so steady, but I am still very much a predator, sweetling.”

A smile not wide enough to flash mandible, but teeth still on display. A menacing moment as the seams of her mouth split, the maw of a creature revealed beneath sandy skin. And then she shut her mouth and the moment passed with another giggle. “Fortunately, there are ‘laws’ that must be abided by in the city, so I won’t be eating you for your indiscretion against me, but you will need to make it up to me somehow, right?”

“You may call me Nnerka, little one.” She tipped her head to the side, considering. “This is the part where you give me your name and ask how you could ever get me to forgive you.” She blinked owlishly, lips poked out in a pout. “Because if you don’t, I fear you may find yourself...caught.”

“You’re not very bright, are you?” While it may have sounded like a question, it was meant more like a statement. A not-so-profound realization that seemed to take half the fun of the encounter out of it. “I hope beneath that mask you’re at least cute enough to be able to get away with things.”

They may not have been in Low City — she had few reasons to be there; her hunting grounds were elsewhere, after all — but surely there were people in this part of the city that would take advantage of anyone not...aware of how things worked. She wasn’t, still, but partly out of stubborn choice and partly because she had no reason to. People tended to steer clear of angering her when she wasn’t sporting only two legs.

She blinked as the child pulled back his hood and revealed two horns. A shock of white hair atop his head. But the mask remained. Curiosity did take hold of her to know what lay beyond the smooth material atop his face, but was overshadowed by how underwhelmed she was by the sight of a Lysanrin. They were not terribly rare in Kalsazi; a bunch tolerated, really. In the wilds she’d inhabited as a child, they’d sometimes been used for labor. A transient sort, but nothing she cared about much unless they provided her with food or stepped where they shouldn’t.

Nnerka cocked a brow, sighing once more. “Yshvold, sweetling. I don’t really care what you are. Meat is meat, darling.” As simply as he had stated his point, so too did she. “Nothing earth-shattering about lysanrin, dearest. Not to me.”

A finger traced the curve of his horns, considering. “I know what you could do. You could accompany on my walk. Be my — what’s the word? — little armrest for when I tire of walking on these two legs.” It was like she’d had a stroke of genius. “How does that sound?”

“Hate you? As far as I know, you’ve given me no reason to.” She shrugged, brows furrowing. “Has someone told you they hate you?” The spider had heard the words before herself, but never truly cared (and usually the speaker ended up being dinner). They were inconsequential words to the likes of her and her kin, used in dying breaths and tossed over fleeing shoulders. And at that, there wasn’t enough energy to be wasted on someone that would have the audacity to think she cared what they thought about her. Perhaps others were not afford that luxury, but — such was the nature of the world.

“These things might be so because the people you met have their differences from others.” Her eyes narrowed as she pondered how best to word this. She’d not quite encountered a problem like this before. “Wherever it is you came from, was a hierarchy. Predators and prey, with you, sweetling, being prey.” She blinked. The concept of being prey herself at one point had been a harrowing experience, but one that was short-lived. Very short-lived. She would not be revisiting any time soon, or at all, preferably. “Yes, I suppose they could have been competition, but you were prey to their — Gods, Common is a bastard — stress relief? Anyways, what I mean to say is that you were prey to their unease at a situation. You were bottom rung and they simply took advantage of that. But you are not where you were before.”

She rested her hands on her knees, preparing to stand to her full height once more. Whether or not the other would return from whence he came to see people who hated him — that would be none of her business. None at all, even if some part of her were bothered by it. “If anyone harasses us for you not wearing your mask, all we need do is scare them off.” She shrugged as she stood. As if it were that simple (and usually it was). “Not too hard to do.”