Panicked Little Lykos Who: Tabrika and Kierban Where: The Main Hall When: Anesus 2, just after the meeting
By the time the meeting was over, Tabrika had managed to wedge herself into the corner as tightly as he could, eyes wide open and hands pressed over her ears. The only reason she hadn't wound up bolting was some mix of the certainty that if she did, she'd be ridiculed and dumped to the bottom of the compound hierarchy, and the plain fact that she'd have to get through that horrible, noisy crowd to do it. And with how hard it was to see, she'd make a commotion doing it.
So though the meeting was over-- and she hadn't heard much of it, to be honest, the intelligible talk drowned out by the sea of background noise-- she hadn't budged. There were still too many people, too many sounds, too many scents, and she was sure she'd trip over people en route because she simply didn't know where they were.
As much as he would have liked to help with the post-meeting necessities, there was simply no way Kierban would have been able to. He couldn’t offer himself to a horde. The thought of trying to avail himself to that many people at once filled his stomach with lead and tied his tongue into knots. It was too many to gauge, to adapt to, to properly present himself to. And the things he might’ve been able to assist—the taking of names for the illiterate, the handing out of colored cloths, and such—Tayne, Joliane, and Gochin seemed to have well under control.
So he lurked to see if any of the newcomers would peel away from the crowd still looking confused, because then he could possibly be of aid: if it was only one or two at a time. That was when he remembered the little female that had caught his eye before, and he looked to the corner where she had last been.
Not only was she still there, but she looked even worse than she had when things had just been starting. That settled him, at least as much as he ever managed to settle about anything. He still had to take a nervous breath before he started her way again, absently smoothing his many layers of secondhand clothes. In a room this crowded, she’d undoubtedly see him before she smelled him, but Lykos scent on human cloth only ever confused other Lykos meeting him for the first time, anyway.
But he still spoke as he always did, in careful body language, as he approached her corner for a second time—making sure not to challenge, making sure she would know she was his better even though he was male. She might run him off just for that—it had happened plenty—but that was how he always started. In consideration of the hands pressed tight over her ears, he began with the best imitation of the furred-forms’ language a human shape could manage, too. Excuse me?
Tabrika noticed Keirban approaching. How could she not? Footsteps on stone floor, heartbeat and breathing getting louder and more defined with each step. She looked up sharply, but that didn't help anything. All she could see was a big blur with something sandy on top of it, and the place was still too full of smells to get anything decent off him. At least he was moving slowly and with that kind of hunched subservience of a lower-ranked tribe member. That, she could handle. Sort of.
But she still couldn't see more than a blur and the most obvious of body language, blind as she was. Since there was a definite physical component to the Lykos speech, that meant she was only going to catch about half of what he said, like that.
"T-talk out loud," she ordered, trying to sound tough but coming out plaintive instead. Stupid, stupid, stupid, shaking like a stupid rabbit. "I can't see you well enough to t-tell what you're saying." If he was this close, he'd be audible, hands over her ears to try and filter things for her or no hands.
“Um, s-sorry,” he murmured, hurriedly reshuffling his means for dealing with the smaller female. It made him feel even antsier than he’d already been. He was such a horrible speaker, even worse than Tayne—and now he couldn’t fill the gaps with the Lykos language that had been drilled into him?
This…might not go well at all. Maybe he just needed to stay away from the newcomers of his second species. Worry more about getting back to his human roots…if he could.
He dropped into a crouch as he reorganized his thoughts, hands between his feet in Lykos manner, making his lanky body small instead. He would keep his explanation brief and as to-the-point as he could make it. “I’m, um…I’m K-Kierban, one of the th-third y-years here,” he began, though as always it felt as if his stuttering wanted to contradict that statement. He didn’t sound like a more experienced resident. “I s-saw you here b-before the m-meeting began and w-was w-wuh-wondering if there’s any-th-thing I c-can do to help you?”
"Make all the noise go away?" Tabrika whimpered a little, but that wasn't something he could do, and it was so weak. She didn't sound like herself. If only she had her pack--
The little Lykos shook her head vigorously, daring to lift her hands for long enough to do so, then clamped them back down. "You c-can see fine, right? And you're not all lost. So you c-can." She sounded like him, and he sounded nervous. So she sounded nervous. Ugh! Tabrika steeled herself, trying to keep her voice steady and stern, and said, "You can lead me out of here so I d-don't run into anyone."
Spirits take it, she'd almost made it!
There were no words for how relieved Kierban was when the girl followed up her first “request” with something he could actually do. Those rhetorical queries always made him panic on the inside, trying to think up something that might approach solving the real problem. Thankfully she’d come up with an alternative on her own!
“Of c-course,” he agreed readily, standing again and looking around. With her in the back corner here and everyone mostly clustered around the tables, it would be easy to guide her along the wall to one of the main hall’s several doors. Oh, but which one would she want?
“Would you l-like me to help y-you back to your r-room? Or I can t-take you s-straight outdoors, if you n-need a b-breather.” He looked down at her expectantly, though he didn’t offer her a hand up. That was a gesture for human or Vrykola males, not Lykos, he’d reminded himself.
He didn't comment on her nerves. He just obeyed. Tabrika liked that, actually, it... helped, in a way. Something familiar, something craved, even if it was in a horrible situation: someone who didn't assume dominance without even a challenge, someone who didn't try to push himself, or herself, on her, someone Lykos and flatteringly subservient. Oh yes, was it soothing, though more to the ego than the nerves.
"Outside. Outside," she decided immediately, tentatively taking her hands away from her ears and wincing at the way the muffled sounds suddenly became sharp and nearly indistinguishable again, but she used them to walk herself up the wall, anyway. Still shaking. Spirits and ancestors, she was like a newborn pup, it was ridiculous and she hated it. "Just-- go. Someplace. I don't care where, as long as it isn't here." Biting herself off before she started sounding hysterical, she took a shuddering breath and finished, "I'll follow you."
Being commanded was, to Kierban, as welcome as it was for Tabrika to give the command. It was often so much easier when people just said what they wanted of him. Some days he was less sure than others how much of his place it was, but at least it was usually an easier place to fill.
“Th-this way,” he told the little female simply, tugging at his scarf and turning towards the nearest door. Direct and to the point, he could do that. Thankfully the nearest of the two outside doors was close at hand and path he took along the wall was clear of any other individuals to get in their way. Considering he’d seen that terrifying alpha, Svathe, lurking at the walls earlier on in the meeting, that was a great blessing indeed.
He reached the door in but a handful of strides and pushed it open with a simple, “Here.” Stepping through it into the moonlit night, he then held it open so the other Lykos could hurry through unimpeded.
Following along in the taller Lykos's shadow, half-relieved and half-miserable between her shame and her panic, Tabrika put her hands back over her ears, muting the noisy hall to almost bearable levels. When the door came open, she smelled the change immediately, saw the big swath of darkness ahead of him, and she could have howled with relief. She crowded after him, so close that she could have leaned forward an inch and bitten him-- or bitten all the clothes he had on; if she were any less anxious to get outside, she would have wondered, and she probably would once she was outside, but right then he could have been Vrykola and she would have been grateful.
Tabrika bounced outside all the way the instant she had room, and shut her eyes and inhaled deeply the (comparatively) clean air and relished the ability to actually pick out and identify most of the smells without having too even think too hard. There were plenty of old scents in the courtyard, from other inhabitants, but they didn't demand to be smelled quite as forcefully, so she could ignore them. She could think, spirits and ancestors be praised.
Then, once she was sure her panic was gone, she turned back to the Lykos who had helped her. She didn't thank him-- why would she? He was only doing his duty-- but she did grin, relieved, and said, "I'm Tabrika." He ought to know what that word translated to; maybe it'd help him understand why she was so freaked out in a crowded room if he put the pieces together. Maybe not. But she figured she did owe him that-- and she wanted his, back, so she could have a name to go with a scent she might want to track down again.
Though he let it shut behind him once the female had passed through, Kierban lingered by the door while the other Lykos bounded into the courtyard. Her immediate and obvious relief at being out of the crowded hall dared the smallest, faintest smile to brush over his features. Little thing though it was, it made him feel good to have brought that relief about.
His expression faltered a little when she turned back to him, lest it be inappropriate or she take it the wrong way, but the broad grin she had on dared it to linger at least a little longer. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see him well enough to even read body language when he was only two paces away—habits kept at all times were behaviors that couldn’t be forgotten at an inopportune moment and leave him in trouble.
Tabrika. His memory provided the translation immediately: “Little Bat”. Named such because she was practically blind? Perhaps. Though he’d already given her his name, her expectant look made it obvious she sought his in turn. As overwhelmed as she’d clearly been inside, it wasn’t horribly surprising that she’d forgotten his introduction.
“M-my name’s Kierban,” he supplied, absently fingering the length of scarf that hung over his chest. He wondered if she’d been able to pay attention to any of the meeting at all, tucked in her corner and muffling her ears. And of course she hadn’t put in an opinion on the chores list—she’d still have to do that, unless she wanted to find out later that Tayne would assign her a set despite any preferences she might have. “Is there any-th-thing else I can d-do for you? Anything f-from the m-meeting you need explained?”
Blind as a bat she was, so she might have been able to make out his general body language, but to see him smile she'd have had to get right up in his face, so that, at least, he was safe in, whether he knew it or not. Not that Tabrika really had a problem with people smiling at her, lower-ranked or not, not smiling like that. And given her panic inside, she had quite forgotten he'd introduced himself with a name-- which she realized to her irritated embarrassment when he said it again. At least he didn't comment on it. Good boy. She was starting to like him a little.
"Kierban," she repeated, trying it out. Not her tribe, or she'd have heard about him by now. Weird and subservient and wearing a lot of clothes. He'd be hard to forget.
His next question, while it puzzled her-- why was he asking again? Did he not have anything else to do? Where was his pack, and why were they not putting him to work that he had to find someone else to do it?-- her much bigger reaction was unhappy, irritated chagrin. She groaned. "I don't think I heard a cursed thing in there. Did they say anything important?"
Kierban took a moment to sift the mental chaff of the pointless or useless-to-Lykos questions he’d heard asked from those that a newcomer really ought to know about. Unfortunately it was all things most Lykos probably wouldn’t look on too happily, and his smile went away as he organized those thoughts. His morning’s encounter with Raven was far from the first time someone had been irritated by what he had to tell them.
“Well, you sh-should know that the human who w-was talking, Tayne, is the h-head of compound this y-year, and the one to t-talk to if you have some big p-problem with the way th-things work around here. He’s, um, not c-compound alpha or anything like th-that—it’s just his j-job to keep things running as s-smoothly as possible.
“The other big th-thing,” he added after another moment to let Tabrika absorb that, glad she’d given him an opening rather than being left feeling like he had to somehow “force” the information on her so she wouldn’t lose out later, “would be the chores l-list. That’s why everyone w-was clustered around the tables. Everyone h-has to pitch in t-to help the compound, but Tayne will t-try to give everyone chores th-they don’t mind doing as much as others.”
The idea of a human telling them what to do wasn't quite as bad for Tabrika as it had been for Raven. She merely wrinkled her nose a bit. Human or not, there was no way even dominance-obsessed Tabrika was going to take on leading a "pack" like this, if anyone would even let her. So she took Tayne's "job" in stride, whether it was like an alpha or not, nodding so Kierban knew she understood.
The latter, though, had her looking dismayed. "Chores list? What kind of chores? D-do I have to go back in there?" The thought was almost enough to make her panic all over again-- not quite, she managed to rein in her fear of the enclosed, noisy, smell-washed place, but it hovered under the surface and threatened.
Kierban’s narrow hands almost twitched up into a placating gesture, a human mannerism getting confused in his worry of getting Tabrika wound up again, but he aborted it at the last moment.
“I can p-put your name down if you want t-to tell me what wuh-work you’d prefer,” he told her hurriedly, ducking his head slightly. It was a pretty forward offer, he thought, since it would involve her putting trust in a strange not to screw her over (certainly he never would, but she had no reason to be assured of that) but it was the first thing that leapt to voice in his hurry to calm her again.
“There’s all s-sorts of things you could p-pick from,” he continued carefully. “Most are inside d-duties, but you could l-look after the orchards or f-fields, or the h-horses or cattle. The rest is th-things like mending, or c-cooking, or cleaning. Everyone h-has some chores they l-look after, so there’s d-days you have to work and days y-you have off.”
Unless you were him, anyhow, and found something that needed to be done every single day. But she didn’t need to know that.
Anything would be better than going back in there. And Tabrika, for one, was used to the subservient actually doing what they were told-- add to that the fact that she couldn't read, much less write, and she'd have to make someone write it down for her anyway... trust was not a problem here. "Could you?" Her voice lost some of its assertiveness and sounded plaintive again. Spirits, she needed to stop that. It was so horrible and weak....
Swallowing heavily and trying to force her voice back into something even halfway-form, she added, "Outside stuff, horses or cattle and orchards and things. I could do that." Those kinds of things probably weren't packed with Vrykolas trying to do them. And she wouldn't be cooped up indoors.
Kierban nodded, expecting as much. Pretty much every Lykos wanted those chores first. And though he noted the way she wavered between confidence and concern, the last thing he was going to do was acknowledge it. Oh, there were plenty in the compound who leapt on signs of weakness, but he would never be one of them. At least in that, he knew his place. Usually.
“S-certainly,” he agreed, half-turning and putting a hand on the door. “Will you, um, b-be out here for a while? I’ll n-need to bring you your cloth m-marker that indicates wh-what your chore day is. Or I c-could, ah, bring it b-by your room later?”
"I'll be out--" Not here. She wanted a clean nose, a really clean nose, and despite the relief of being out of the boxed-in-scents room, she could still hear the noise from inside and smell them from the courtyard. She needed to be farther away. "--in the orchard," she finished after some quick thinking. "You can find me out there, right?" He was a Lykos. Even if he was a weird one. Surely his nose was good enough to track a single person out into the trees.
“I can,” he agreed simply, nodding again. “Th-this might take a while, b-but I’ll meet y-you out there.”
Leaving Tabrika to escape to the trees, then, and returned inside to make his way back to the crowd around Tayne and the tables. The scents and sounds of the crowded room were no less to him than any other ordinary Lykos, since he of course shared their senses now, but masses of people did not trouble or confuse him as they did his second species. He’d been used to crowds in his human life and now he was more acutely aware of them. The louder sounds and deeper scents were just more information for his mind to absorb and process.
He settled himself at the back of the crowd, carefully not intruding on any of the newcomers’ space even though he was older, taller, and stood out like a sore thumb in all his layers. His patience was eternal, but knowing that Tabrika was waiting on him made him keenly aware of how long it took the group to thin, one by one, until finally Kierban could step up to the table and sheepishly explain his presence to Tayne. At last, Kierban put Tabrika’s name down in the places she wanted in his own fine script (a human learning, of course), received a cloth marker for her, and hurried back out into the night.
The little female’s scent was easily trailed as Kierban’s long stride ate up the ground between courtyard and orchard. He glanced at the sky and the handful of moons visible in their varied phases, picking out the waxing green face of Parnsehi and unhappily reflecting that he had less than a week before he’d have to suffer another moon-mad night in his room. Then the trees were upon him and he hoped Tabrika was not horribly irritated by the wait as he stepped among their carefully-cultured rows after her scent.
By the time Kierban made it back, Tabrika had given the orchard a good combing to make sure no one was in it, shifted into her full animal form, and leapt up into a tree, climbing around until she found someplace comfortable and sprawled herself across it. The orchard wasn't quite wild enough for her taste, but she wasn't going to brave the cold night much farther from the castle, not alone, and not with Kierban returning eventually, either.
She was far too wound up from the meeting to actually nap, but she did manage to clear her head and just listen and draw in scents in the chilly night air. That helped her relax some. She caught Kierban's scent and footsteps approaching above the wind and lifted her head. In the darkness, she really couldn't make out much more than the faint lightness of his skin against the dark of the ground, so she focused on the footsteps instead. It was so much easier not to worry about what she saw and focus on her other senses.
Once he sounded close enough, and she knew he wasn't actually right beneath her, Tabrika warned him with something that was half-howl and half-yowl and leapt down, tail waving and held high. So? she asked in the Lykos language, mostly in perked ears and a hopeful little whine.
Kierban couldn’t help but cringe a little as Tabrika dropped out of the tree, even though he already knew by her scent that she was near and rationally recognized the polite warning for what it was. There was still that moment of feeling startled and vulnerable when you realized a large predator was dropping down from above you—even if you were, arguably, one of that kind of predator as well.
But her hopeful noise and nonthreatening posture bid him to relax again, at least as much as he ever did. At least Tabrika still was, so far, the least intimidating of the several newcomer Lykos he had met.
He dropped into a Lykos crouch again, uncomfortable with standing his full height above her animal form. “I t-took care of it,” he was glad to say, offering her a strip of dark blue cloth. “I put your n-name under the outdoors chores, and you have S-Steldays off. You just need t-to hold onto this cloth as p-proof.”
Curious, Tabrika sniffed at the cloth, then made a noise halfway between a hiss and a cough. Too many scents, ugh. She took it, though, and bumped his hand with the end of her nose in a thank you. This time she was thanking him, because that'd been beyond the call of duty, to her mind.
Settling back and sitting down, dropping the cloth so she could "talk", she asked, So what year are you? You've been here a while? He seemed like it, going around asking random people-- all right, random terrified-looking people, but still-- if they needed help. Her ears pulled back a little, a nervous gesture, and her tail curled up a bit as she asked, Do you have pack here?
She’d thanked him? Thanked him? Oh, he got thanked by humans and Vrykolas, sure, but—Lykos, not so much. When it came to Lykos hierarchy, he was barely the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. Part of it, but only just. Oh, perhaps some of the older, more-compound-adjusted Lykos would thank him, or the younger would verbally “thank” him as sort of pittance or lip-service—but Tabrika’s little gesture almost seemed to mean it. Maybe she did.
He thought perhaps he would then be dismissed, and would depart after a third and final offer of assistance in the shape of his room number, should she ever need anything else, but then she instead settled and asked questions voluntarily. A little surprised, but not unwilling, he dropped from his crouch to sit as well, with his knees pulled up and hands between his feet.
“This year s-starts my third,” he answered the first part easily, but plucked sheepishly at his scarf as he provided his response to the second. “N-no pack, though.” He wasn’t a liar and his status was no secret, but little spelled it out so much as being two years into the place and packless. Possessing those who pitied him, certainly, like Tayne and a handful of others, but no pack. No one to punish the scapegoat for aiding an outsider; no one for Tabrika to be nervous about.
Her ears fell all the way back, at that. Not even someone as lowly and eager to please as Keirban had a pack? Is it that hard to get people to accept you? she asked, dismay and faint stirrings of fear in every line of her. She had to leave pack-- she wasn't ever going to forget them-- but with Jacta being friendly, and the vague knowledge that she could never go six years with no one, she'd briefly-- very briefly-- contemplated the hope for finding a new pack. Maybe.
But if even someone as helpful as Keirban didn't have any kind of leader, anyone who wanted to take that eagerness into their pack, what chance would she have? She, who was prickly and snappish and wanted to be at the top of the pack, right under her alpha, answering to no one but him? No chance whatsoever.
Tabrika’s falling demeanor and “tone” immediately pointed his error out to him—she didn’t fear trespassing, but not having a place of her own. Of course, a foolish oversight on his part. For him, being packless was a twisted kind of normal. For a newcomer, it was torment.
“Oh, I’m, ah, uh-unusual,” he amended timidly. “There are s-several packs around the c-compound, you’ll f-find. B-But I, uh, w-was turned b-back in the w-war.”
He didn’t think that would need further explanation. He wasn’t an honored convert from the human species—he was cannon fodder that hadn’t been spent. And now Tabrika would probably be done with him, unless she had use for his service in the future. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. That was just how it went.
The expected reaction in Tabrika-- disgust that made her want to curl her lip and growl a little-- warred with the sense of wrong that was "packless" to her. Especially right then, especially when she felt the loss of her own pack so keenly, especially with the flood of relief that maybe she could have pack here-- putting into sharp relief the feeling of never having one. Not even a war-turned should be packless. No one should be packless. Nobody.
That's... not right, she ground out, despite the rumble she wanted to make in her chest. Somebody ought to take you in. Nobody should be packless. And you're so-- so helpful. Anybody ought to want that in their pack. Earth take it, she'd take him in her pack, war-turned or not, just to have someone in it.
Kierban had shifted his feet and hands in unhappy preparation to scramble away and out of Tabrika’s sight, mostly expecting the hostile reaction that he saw start to gather in the lines of her body language. It was another of those moments where he wondered if he should give up on Lykos interactions entirely and stick to the other species, but like its others, it was equally as fleeting as it was repeated.
But her comments, grudging though they clearly were, were still a step above what he usually got. Though his posture was bowed, still prepared to turn tail and retreat should Tabrika demand it of him, the girl’s words were pitifully touching. Maybe they were hollow, but maybe they were honest. Only someone like Kierban could expect the former while hoping for the latter in equal dichotomous measure.
“M-maybe someday s-someone will,” he answered plainly, in the careful tone of one not wanting to offend by misspeaking. He wasn’t trying to come across as pleading or dropping hints—it was just the statement that kept him going. “I k-keep trying.”
Tabrika looked him for a long minute before coming up with an answer, taking in his posture, his scent, the rabbity little beat of his heart. There was no way she'd take him in immediately. She didn't even have a pack, so of course she couldn't. And it wouldn't be her say, anyway-- she wouldn't be alpha. Ha, a girl, trying to lead a pack? What a stupid idea. So she couldn't take him in, even if that's what crossed her mind immediately.
But still. There was that certainty that no one should be packless. Not herself, and not him. Surely they'd be better off together than alone?
Her head hurt too much to think about it right then. She got up and shook herself vigorously, spearing her piece of fabric on one sharp claw. Come talk to me again sometime. You can find me, you know what chores I'm doing, you know my scent. Okay?
If Tabrika had stared at him any longer, his nerves might have jumped to trembling hands and knees and sheepishly crawling away even before it could be demanded. He’d helped her out and brought about some relief for her, but the moment had passed. As she rose, he winced and braced himself.
And blinked when all she did was speak. The muddle in his head, all his conflicting thoughts and expectations, for the moment could only qualify as confused. “Um…o-okay. I w-will.”
He scrambled for a moment for a possible farewell. His usual ‘let me know if I can help you’ didn’t quite fit an invitation to seek her out sometime. Finally he came up with, “B-be well.”
After cocking her head at him a moment, ears perked while she waited for him to come up with some kind of response. At least he'd agreed. Maybe by the time he got around to it, she'd feel more settled about the whole thing, and know whether she ought to chase him off or welcome him with a tail-wag.
You, too, she said, and turned to trot off into the darkness and cold of the orchard. Maybe she'd chase down another rabbit, or something. That might make her headache go away. She'd worry about Kierban later.