Symmeran Wastes 4

Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 3 

Another part for you! Comments appreciated!

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Ayrsir rapped on the caravan’s metal door, and then stepped back. The window above slid open, and the giantess looked out, and then down to the ground. It was hard to see, as the interior of the domicile was clearly darker on the inside, but Falix’s ears perked in surprise.

“Ayrsir!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon!”

“Falix,” Ayrsir said, bowing. “I’ve come to talk with you about everything I know.”

Falix pondered this for a long moment, then looked left and right, but would have seen nothing other than Ayrsir’s pack lizard—the thing covered in more empty water vessels. “I’m not going to be ambushed by warriors with spears, am I?”

“I’m alone,” Ayrsir said. “I swear on the Edicts. I will explain when I am inside—if you would have me.”

“Of course, of course!” Falix said excitedly. A latch slid open on the other side, and the door tilted open. Falix peeked her strangely shaped head out and looked left and right once again to ensure to her satisfaction that there was no ambush awaiting her, and then pushed the door the rest of the way for Ayrsir to step inside.

Once again, as Ayrsir shook the dust off his fur and scraped sand from his ears onto the floor mat, it took several long moments for his eyes to adjust between the bright outdoors and the shady interior. The caravan was massive on the inside, but with unusual terrain. The “floor” down at which he’d entered was about as large as his and Rohomes’s tent space, so long as he walked underneath the ringel-height table in its center. But there was more besides, tall steps to the aft of the caravan, where the ringel’s large, raised bed laid, and another to the fore, where…

Ayrsir wasn’t sure what was at the fore of the caravan. As Falix busied herself collecting something from the cabinets, he climbed the two ringel-sized steps to get a better look, only to see something that he could not parse. A bench of some kind was set quite low down, covered in leather or a leather-like material, and it seemed to face a large window, like the one in behind Falix’s bed. But between that, there was this large panel of stuff, including a wheel, a screen… knobs, buttons… little features all over it that didn’t seem to have any clear purpose, but were nevertheless too numerous and deliberately placed to have none.

“Thirsty?” Falix asked, holding a small cup in her paws as she dispensed water from a spigot.

Ayrsir paused. Offering someone drinking water was rather special to his people, and for a moment he swore his heart fluttered at the offer. He blushed, but not wanting to completely fall apart at what seemed so common to Falix, he just sat down on the step and nodded.

Then he realized when Falix set the cup next to him, it was nearly as large as one of the water jugs. It took a great amount of effort to drink from it, but it was very cold and very refreshing—and four times the amount of water that anyone back at the Cleft would offer at any one time.

Falix sat down on the step below him, leaning over on her elbow. All the jewelry she was wearing jangled with every shake of her body. “So… what’s the deal? I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”

“Well, I may be coming back frequently,” Ayrsir said between gulps. “You see, the Elders wanted to know how Rohomes and I brought back such purified water. I told them there was a caravan here, which is true. They wanted to know more, and learned that you are female. Which is true. I told them you did not speak to us in the Trader tongue, but rather our own, which is true, and that you wished to know more about the Edicts, which is true.”

Falix bared her teeth, though her ears were splayed in a grin. “I notice that you’re qualifying all of your statements as truth.”

“I only wish to emphasize that at no point did I tell a lie,” Ayrsir said, a finger up. “As it turns out, since you are female, I should not have entered this caravan of yours at any point, and as such I am in transgression of the Edicts.”

Falix gasped, paws up to her mouth. “Oh! I am so sorry,I should have realized sooner!”

“No, no! This is perfect,” Ayrsir said. “You see, since you speak our tongue and are interested in the Edicts, the Elders have assumed that you are the daughter of two of our exiles!”

Falix paused, and dropped her paws from her muzzle. “…what does that imply?”

“Well, I am in transgression because I have violated your feminine sanctity. The remedy to this is that I become your mate!”

Falix stared at Ayrsir for a very, very long moment… until she finally burst into a fit of what could only be hoarse laughter. Ayrsir glared at her. “We don’t have to do it for real, you know! I just figured you wanted—“

“No, no, I’m not laughing at you!” Falix gasped between fits. “It’s just… ezeh kohe, you don’t know a thing about ringel!” She wheezed, removing the lenses from her face so she could wipe her eyes. “Violating… violating my feminine sanctity… oh, that’s a good one. Anhha kohe… I have got to tell the others about this!”

Ayrsir straightened up. There was that everyone again. The others in Falix’s group that she didn’t explain fully. But hopefully she didn’t keep it to herself for long, as Ayrsir wanted to know as much as he could. He just felt kinda hurt that she was taking this so lightly.

“Okay, okay,” Falix babbled, picking herself up, and resisting the urge to burst into fits again. “Okay. So, in order for you to spend time with me every day, we have to be ‘mated’?”

“That’s right.” Ayrsir huffed. “I don’t expect you to be flattered or anything, but…”

“No, no, that’s perfect! I mean, if you’re okay with this. You are kinda deceiving your people… are you sure this isn’t going to result in punishment?”

“Oh, I’m already deeply in trouble,” Ayrsir said, taking another gulp of water. “Being in trouble is the perpetual state of the children of Domour, I am certain.”

“Are you apostate?”

“I should hope not,” Ayrsir said. “I haven’t done anything that abominable… well, I have, but I have been forgiven. I’m just what they call a troublemaker.”

“And they trust you with this mission?” Falix asked. “To bring a mysa back into the fold?”

“Well, none of the Elders are gonna do it,” Ayrsir said. “You’re way out here. And if you become my mate, I’m really the only one who can. So… that’s where we are.”

“Huh! Just one thing… if you didn’t bring any witnesses along, how is it that you prove that we are mated?”

“Oh, the female provides her witness,” Falix said. “You offer me a gift of your chief personal adornments, which…” Ayrsir tilted his head now. “You… aren’t wearing anything, are you?” It hadn’t really occurred to him that Falix had just been walking around naked, as her features were so different from the common mysa that he hadn’t even stopped to judge what he was seeing when he looked at her.

“I’m dressed!” Falix said. She tapped the hook-shaped loop attached to her nipple, and it swung. It hadn’t occurred to Ayrsir that nipples could be pierced, let alone that someone would want to do that. “Or do you not count jewelry?”

“I suppose jewelry could work, but it has to be something a mysa like me could wear.”

Falix tilted her ears this way and that. She stood up, and crossing the caravan to her bed, she opened up a drawer and pulled out a box and shuffled through it. After a moment, she drew out a long, delicate chain, and brought it over for inspection. “This work?”

Ayrsir tilted his head as he held the chain up. It was quite heavy, being plated with gold, and as long as he was tall. The links themselves were definitely not something his own people would have produced, with strange twists and bends, as was the anchor points at either end. But then again, Falix was supposed to have lived out in the lost world her entire life, so it was unlikely anyone would question it, except…

“A bit long, huh?” Falix asked.

“Yeah, even if it was wrapped around my neck, one of your necklaces is simply far more metal than I’ve seen any female wear. And you need to tie a ribbon on it, to show it’s a gift and not stolen.”

“Oh it’s not a necklace,” Falix said, taking it back, then turning to the table. She grabbed a spool of thread from the jewelry box. “Lemme shorten it up. This should only take a second.”

“Not a necklace? Then what—”

“Nipple chain.”

Ayrsir blinked. “…what?”

“Chain that links the nipples,” Falix said. “It’s a little impractical but sometimes I like looking fancy, you know?”

Ayrsir felt his eye twitch. He immediately dunked his paws into the cup of water and scrubbed them down on his cowl. By the time that Falix turned back around, the chain was a quarter its former size, with several strands of scarlet thread binding it together.

“Got it!” she said, offering it to Ayrsir. “Here, this should work.”

“Erm… just drop it in here,” Ayrsir said, opening his satchel. The chain fell in with a heavy plop, and Ayrsir tried not to think about it again.

“Okay, okay! That’s done. We’re mates now!” Falix giggled and bounced. “Oh, I have so muchI want to ask you about!”

“And I am willing to tell you,” Ayrsir said, shoving the bag behind himself. “But to be quite honest, I have a lot of questions myself…”

“Ooh, okay. How about this: I ask a question and then you can ask one, and so on. Is that fair?”

Ayrsir shrugged. “Sure.”

“Okay, first of all: where are you actually living? I know it’s somewhere near the jagged hills north of here. I tried to follow you with the range finder but the sandstorm kinda ruined that. It’s impossible to tell anything around here, it all looks the same!”

Ayrsir twitched. That was probably the worst thing she could have opened with. “Uh… erm…” he said.

“Oh? Are you not allowed to say?”

“That’s definitely one of those apostate-worthy offenses,” Ayrsir said.

“Oh, that’s okay!” Falix said. She pulled a slate of some kind from the table and scratched something on it. “That’s still data! You don’t have to tell me the exact location if it’s against the Edicts.”

“How did you know?” Ayrsir asked. He had a thousand burning questions on his lips, but this was the most important one that sprung forward first. “I mean… you know we’re here and all, did you learn of us from the Traders? Or…”

“Okay, this might be tricky to explain, just feel free to prod me for clarification. So… about two hundred-ish years ago, the children of Domour had a schism.”

“Yes, the Final Battle,” Ayrsir said. “The last time that Domour’s children would ever have such a divide in their ranks.”

Falix has a look on her lips that seemed like she wanted to comment, but continued instead. “Well, the separatists left because of the climate shift around these lands was causing the food sources to become scarcer, and they did not think that staying in the valley would allow for their survival.”

“Right, the Renouncing of Domour.”

“This is great stuff. Right! So they traveled out of here with the people you call the Traders back to Urim, the city on the coast, where they integrated into the outside world.”

“Oh.” Ayrsir didn’t know exactly how to feel about that. “The Edicts say that the Renouncers perished in the wasteland.”

“Well I’m sure some of them did, it’s a long walk,” Falix said. “Anyway, they eventually left this world…”

“Right, they perished.”

“I’ll explain later. They left, and one of them named Perzov, she wrote several books about the Edicts, including the text of the Edicts themselves, which is the basis for a lot of the original research.”

Ayrsir blinked. “…what?”

“Like, three books. It wasn’t in the original language, of course, for future study it was written in Lionese and has been translated since. Your language had to be reconstructed after-the-fact as it wasn’t preserved for at least a generation more and most of the separatists were already speaking other languages by then, but I think we got it mostly correct.”

“No wait, I mean…”

“And my xenoanthropology unit, as I mentioned before, posited a theory that the schism cutting your population in half could have saved your people from collapse over these centuries! So we filed for a grant to come out and learn about—“

“Wait!” Ayrsir nearly had to scream at her. “What do you mean she wrote down the Edicts!?”

Falix stared blankly as Ayrsir. “Um. It is… the best way of preserving textual information. Why? Is there something wrong with that?”