Surniph's Story

In the midst of the market, a sudden bright, yellow flash erupted from a tangle of unkempt shrubs that decorated the marketplace. Merchants and visitors perusing wares alike whirled at the sound, the reaction a rising of chattering, mixing voices and various sounds of shock and dismay.

Where there were once bushes and violently tangling branches, there was now nothing but a blackened circle, in the middle of which lay a large, blackened lump. The marketgoers slowly approached, the spot, all haggling and purchasing coming to a close at the new spectacle. The most brave stepped closer towards the blackened spot, frowning down at it with curiosity.

From the lump, two green eyes suddenly appeared, and a very humanoid moan of pain sounded forth as the lump began to stretch out. Before the marketgoers’ eyes, a feline-esque creature, roughly six feet tall, was uncurled at their feet, panting in quick, desperate gulps of air. With its green eyes intent on the gathered crowd, it began to speak - the language foreign, falling on perplexed ears and dotted with gasps of pain - growing more and more frantic as it seemed to become more aware of where it was.

Those among the crowd who were more travelled than most began to murmur rapidly, whispering the name of the creature as it tried to rise to all fours, quivered, and fell back to its stomach.

“It’s bleeding!” someone blurted, pointing at gashes in the creature’s ribs and thigh, “It’s hurt! Someone get a doctor!”

“Looks like that other one, the one that’s staying with Kyo,” another muttered, as the marketgoers began to disperse in search of help, neighbours, or a way to document the evidence.

Not far from where the wounded Mira lay in the fishing village a woman was banging on the door of a small house that had been set aside for a visiting doctor from Tianshì City. He came every year around this time to see to the villagers and to distribute vaccinations to the children, and he was always recieved as an honored guest and given quarters of his own as a display of appreciation by the villagers.

"Mr. Nakashima, Mr. Nakashima!" the woman called out as she continued to knock on the door until the man answered.

"What's the matter?" he asked her.

"There's a torajin in the fish market, she's hurt," the woman said as she pointed off towards the market.

"Alright, just a moment, let me get my things," he told her as he went back inside.

---

A child of maybe ten years of age edged closer to the wounded woman, and one of the gathered crowd tried to grab the boy but he twisted away from the grasping hand as he approached the felinoid creature.

She was large for a torajin, like Meke.

He reached out to touch her shoulder but one of the bystanders swooped in and got an arm around his waist to pull him away. None of the villagers knew this woman, or where she had come from.

The man who had grabbed the lad deposited him back on the ground. "Someone get him out of here," he began but the boy had already turned and taken off in search of Meke.

There were people around her - strange smelling people who gaped and wondered over her prone form. Habit and instinct kicked in, and she grew agitated that they would see her like this, staring so openly over her in a weakened, crippled state. Again, she fought to gain her feet, black dust falling from her sleek, matted fur in clouds that dissipated into thin air.

She managed to get to her knees, her forearms quivering with the effort of keeping herself upright, a growl wrenching from her throat as she fought against her own weakness and gravity. She wouldn't let them know the agony that lanced through her right side, nor the weakness in her legs and arms from her flight through the Aeloran woods, outracing her attackers. There was shame in there too, festering with the pain and rage and weakness, but she'd have time for it later.

Compartmentalize. Assess. Be wary.

If they attacked her in this moment, she realized, straightening her spine and glaring at the crowd in defiance, they would not win unscathed. For now, she was content to intimidate, save her strength, and dare them to pity her.

The onlookers fell back as Surniph dragged herself to her feet, the growl more than enough to warn off the brunt of them. Several members of the village militia were arriving though as they pushed through the market to reach the wounded Mira. There were shouts and words of warning as a trio of armed men approached her - but the language they spoke was not one known within the lands of Aelora.

Their movements were guarded as they surrounded Surniph, and they were still barking foreign words at her while holding their blades at ready.

She swayed slightly on her knees, but eyed the men. Reaction was key, now. Proaction would get her killed as surely as if she were to have remained in the old lands, within Goliath's grasp. She would take her cues from these strangely tongued men.

But she wouldn't take them without giving in return.

Scoffing at the blades, she gripped the blackened grass at her knees, fisting it. "Come if you dare," she snarled, "for I've faced far more fearsome than the likes of you."

Meke appeared with such abruptness that it almost seemed as if he had simply risen before before Surniph. He planted himself squarely between her and the militiaman that approached her from the front and a low snarl ripped from his throat.

Meke was an imposing figure even for a Mira, and his muscled form rippled with the aggression that rolled off him. Even his breathing was deep and husky as he stared the female down.

The lad that had found Meke peered on from behind a wagon of vegetables, eyes wide as saucers at the volatile change in Meke's behavior.

"You are unwelcome in these lands, Surniph of the Ta'kra," Meke snarled lowly. "You should not have left Aelora."

The trio of militiamen seemed uncertain what to make of the situation. Meke was Kyo Takeuchi's guest, but for the moment he appeared as feral and dangerous as the wounded Mira that had appeared within the village.

The snarling ceased abruptly, Surniph's ears twitching backwards in quiet recognition of her former clan mate. Just as suddenly, however, a row of sharp white teeth appeared, a smile curling over her features as she took him in.

He had changed on her. Become bigger, harder looking. It had been too long since she had seen him last, and their parting hadn't been under the best of circumstances. But the aggression, the flat threat delivered from one of her own kind, was something she knew well. She latched onto it.

"It appears," she said, gesturing towards her wounds, "that I hadn't any choice. Not happy to see me, Meke? Is that how one treats an old friend in this land?"

"The Ta'kra are no friend to the Ra'shak," he growled back. "Or to me."

It was a peculiar thing, that he had identified himself apart from the rest of the tribe that had split from Aelora.

He grabbed a fist full of the front of her clothes and dragged the injured female to her feet as his fiery gaze locked on hers. His face was so close that she could feel his heated breath upon her fur, and make out the distinct shades of green within the irises of his eyes.

"What is your purpose in coming here," he growled.

If the grab had hurt the female Mira, she gave no sign of it; her sly grin hardening into a warrior's mask that revealed nothing but her yellow-green eyes. Goliath, her shief, had often spoke in disgust of their weak willed and weaker limbed brethren clan that lived on the other world, and how they had likely grown fat and lazy without the Forest to sharpen their instincts and their bodies as tools for the hunt.

If there was weakness in Meke, she didn't feel it. He was every bit as fierce as he had been when they had shared a shief.

"I knew not that you owned these lands, Meke," she said, frostily, her hands reaching to grip his own, tightening around his wrists, "and I do not owe you an explanation. You will release me, or we'll both risk the Right of Blood."

"And what meaning do the ancient rights hold to one of the Ta'kra," Meke snarled.

Surniph lifted her chin, bracing herself against him to gain distance, eyes narrowing even further.

"All the meaning in the world. As I recall, Meke, you abandoned us. You have little right to comment on the honor of a clan when you've fled like rats from the rightful shief. Now unhand me."

"A shahta'an has no right to name himself Shief," Meke growled lowly. "A shahta'an has no clan, nor title. Your Shief lost his claim to such things long ago when he betrayed your Shamana and the ancestors with her," he reminded her vehemently as he released his hold upon her clothes, leaving her to either stand or fall. "As did those who followed him."

The female Mira staggered backwards, keeping her balance by sheer determination and refusal to look weak in front of a potential combatant. Her right leg was almost entirely useless for standing, and so she leaned towards the left, gaze on his thoughtfully.

"Survival over all," she said, defiance lacing through her voice. The mantra that had persisted throughout her brutal tenure under Goliath's leadership, the one that had banded together her clan, came forth. Even as her vision blackened, adrenaline bled out of her quickly, her vision swimming, she managed to hold her chin high.

"We waste time dredging old wounds, warrior. I wish an audience with your Shief. I will go under whatever guard you deem necessary in order to pass along a simple message. Afterwards, I will accept whatever fate befall me."

"I have no Shief," Meke replied.

He turned from the female to walk away, pausing only briefly to look over his shoulder.

"These people. Harm them, and we will see one another again," he warned.

Surniph watched him, every barbed comment fleeing her as he stated his promise, heavy with threat. Unable to do more, she merely nodded her acknowledgement.

She had no ill will towards these people.

And with that, she let the darkening around her vision claim her, falling backwards towards the ground, slipping into sweet, comforting oblivion.

It had been a long time since Surniph had woken up to treated wounds - far longer than she could remember. Her leg and thigh were wrapped in a bandage that wound around her leg, some sort of cooling salve on her skin, soothing the burn that blistered there. Her torso was also wrapped in bandages, tight and professionally done, snug when she twisted but not debilitating. She was also given some sort of material to cover herself, though the modesty was discarded.

They had given her a bed, too, but that she had discarded as well. She instead perched on the windowsill, the room she was staying in having been upturned for possible weaponry the second she had been steady on her own feet, blind with panic over waking up in a strange room with strange smells, having been disrobed, exposed, cleaned and patched up.

Her fur was still patchy from being charred off, but her tan coat was now more evident, having been cleansed from soot and ash. She sat facing the door, the room in disarray around her, a leg of a chair having been ripped off and remaining clutched in her grasp.

She was alert and ready. And now she waited.

Eventually, the door to the room opened to admit not a threat, or anyone who would be easy to pin as anything approaching a captor, but rather a fragile-looking little old lady in a green flowered cardigan, carrying a tray of tea. She seemed to pay no mind to Surniph's stance with her chair-leg weapon, or the disarray the room was in.

She set the tray down on a chest of drawers that remained mostly upright, before slowly and carefully - all the while ignoring Surniph completely - pouring a measure of the tea from the decorative china teapot into a similarly dainty china cup.

Only then did she finally turn to the Mira, extending out the beverage.

She uttered a single word in Losenyu, tone both strict and warm at the same time, gesturing with the cup and nodding between it and Surniph.

The female Mira narrowed her yellow-green eyes into slits, the stern tone coming across well enough, even if the meaning was lost on her. Still, she was suspicious of this woman. Maybe she had poisoned the cup. Maybe she meant nothing but ill will toward her after all, and this had all been a ploy to gain her respect and her trust before spilling her blood.

She knew intellectually that the image of someone bandaging her wounds before killing her didn't quite add up, but she was in reaction mode after her flight across the Forest of the Fall, two days of running blindly while being pursued relentlessly.

And yet, she knew she was still weak.

Still tense, she walked towards the cup, her limbs wooden, eyes never leaving the woman. With a quick snap, as much to test her own reflexes as to snag the object quickly, she had the container in her unbandaged hand, cup to her lips. With one eye on the woman, she drained the contents, trying not to sneeze with the sudden repulsive flavour hitting her tongue.

The second she was finished, she resumed her glare at the woman. "Meke," she said, pointing out the window. "Where?"

The old woman shook her head sternly, pointing instead back at the bed. She spoke a few sentences in Losenyu, with one word emphasised above the others. She gestured at Surniph's injuries, and mimed them breaking open and worsening. It was apparent that the woman strongly disapproved of any intention the Mira had of leaving.

Eventually, she folded her arms, muttering something else in her own language and then mimed a hammer and nail, building. "Meke", she repeated as she mimed.

Surniph tensed at the nonverbal command, but acquiesced eventually, stiffly lying down in the bed, her fingers folded over her stomach. She kept her eye on the woman, the makeshift club still clutched in one furry hand as she made zero attempt to relax.

Meke was... building something? Here? What the hell was he doing helping outsiders - in their own villages? Had he been speaking true when he had said he had no clan here?

Surniph pointed outside again, then held her arms up in a shrug. "Where?"