Children of the First

Wow, I struggled to get this one done. I don't know whether it was a string of bad circumstances, this chapter in particular, or just that I was due for a rough patch with writing, but something was off. Oh well, it's written, and hopefully the next thing's easier.
On another note, we're only two dollars away from a bonus story—hopefully soon!

Thanks for reading (with incredible patience) and, as always, Rock On.
\m/
-Alex

Practice was brutal—Feral kicked our asses late into the evening (literally and figuratively.) I was completely exhausted and so drenched in sweat that even my kettle-deer skin uniform felt heavy, clinging to my skin like it was trying to pull me down into a sweaty puddle on the grass.

But, my uniform had dried out by the time we managed to drag ourselves off the field, which meant it was my skin weighing me down, not the wet clothes.

I made it back to the dorm just in time to get to my bed before passing out fully-clothed. I slept through dinner and woke up hungry and stinking the next morning.

That was pretty much our routine for the rest of the week: wake up, eat, go to class, eat, scramble, sleep, repeat. By the end of the week, we were beyond tired; we had gotten used to the constant ache of our muscles, and the numb weight of our arms no longer surprised us every time we tried to lift a book or open a door. Feral called it “conditioning.”

I was on autopilot by the time Friday rolled around, sleepily making my way to Fantastic Creatures when my psylink rang.

“Hello?” I answered groggily.

“Hello, Sha’anyr,” came my father’s voice from the other end. “How are you?”

“Oh, uh… Hi, Dad,” I said, waking up. “I’m okay, how are you?”

“Fine,” he replied gravely. “Your classes are going well?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Classes are good,” A few seconds of awkward silence went by before I realized he wanted more. “I mean, they’re okay,” I added. “Some are better than others. Intro to Magic Theory is a little dull and Verris is a pain, but—”

“Sha’anyr,” he chided me wearily, “we’ve talked about this. You are to pay Professor Verris all due respect for a Nedrak of his status, regardless of your personal opinion.”

“Oh,” I said bitterly, “don’t worry; I’m keeping my mouth shut and doing my work like a good little golem.”

“That’s enough, Sha’anyr,” he snapped. “I expect you to behave in a way befitting a Rohdae—soon to be a man in Nedraika. A NacRae’vyr man.”

“As an adult, your actions will reflect on our entire family,” he went on. “Or have you forgotten your Rohdai this weekend?”

“This weekend…” It took me a second to remember what day it was. “The Arlan equinox is this weekend?”

Apparently that wasn’t the right answer.

“For Gaia’s sake, Sha’anyr,” my father snarled through the link, “does your family mean nothing to you? We can’t afford to have your attitude put us under scrutiny.” He took a deep breath.
“We simply can’t take that risk,” he said calmly. “Everyone will be there to see you become a man, and you will act like one, do you understand?”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked. “It just slipped my mind for a minute, I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Then you are prepared for the feast tomorrow?”

“Of course.” I hesitated. “Well… mostly. I know the tenets of Nedraika and most of the mythology down cold, I just haven’t quite finished the story of Karloth’s Eternal Autumn.”

“Gai-damnit, Sha’anyr,” he said. “You have to take this seriously! You have to know the stories before your dinner tomorrow, or you could be denied your Rohdai.”

“I know that,” I shot back. “And I am taking it seriously, I’ve just been busy this week. I’ll finish it before I get home tonight.”

“See that you do. I’ve reserved a gate for you at seven o’clock. We’ll talk more about this then.”

“Oh, Dad,” I said before he could hang up. “By the way, I meant to tell you earlier—scram tryouts were last week…”

“Mm?”

“I made the team,” I said proudly. “So did Retis.”

“That’s nice,” he said.

How about a ‘Way to go,’ or ‘Congratulations, Sha’anyr, I know how hard you’ve worked for this,’ I thought.

“I have to go now,” he said. “I’ll see you at seven o’clock. Goodbye, Sha’anyr, Gaia’s blessings.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Hey sweetie,” Fallon said as I sat down in Fantastic Creatures. “Something the matter? You look all angsty today. I can’t be sure,” she said, studying my face, “but you might even be brooding a little.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said.

“Yep,” she decided. “Definitely brooding.”

For most of the next hour, all I could think about was my Rohdai and what I should have said to my dad on the phone; I barely heard a word Lenis said until the very end of class.

“Now that you’ve all finished playing with the Salt Fox…” Lenis shook his head at the three girls cooing and making baby faces at the tiny white fox. “Yes, he’s cute. Get over it.” Lenis looked at the fox. “Sorry, Sam,” he said, “but they can’t control themselves.” He jerked his head toward the door at the front of the room. “Time to go.”

The fox got up and half-trotted, half-bounced across the tile floor and slipped through the crack in the door.

“Now that we’re finished with the Salt Fox,” Lenis tried again, “it’s time to talk about your class projects.” He took a stack of papers out of his briefcase and started handing them out.

“I know I didn’t tell you about the project when we talked about your grades,” Lenis said. “That’s because I only do the project with classes I think can handle it on top of the normal coursework. As far as your grades are concerned, the project will be worth about as much as your final exam, but bear in mind that I’ll still be basing most of your grade on how you work in class—that is, how you work with the animals.”

Lenis walked back to the front of the room. “Your project will be to choose one animal from the menagerie to study in-depth for the rest of the semester. We will still have normal classes with other critters, but you’ll also have to spend time outside of class working with your creature one-on-one. Your reports will be due at the end of the semester; we’ll schedule individual appointments to discuss your findings and give you a chance to defend yourself. Any questions?”

A guy at the back of the class raised his hand. “Why would we need to defend ourselves?” he asked.

“Because you will invariably have things to defend,” Lenis said simply. “Why you didn’t do this, why you spent so much time doing that, et cetera. Trust me, when working with an animal closely, things start to make sense to you that wouldn’t to other people who hadn’t spent as much time with the creature.”

“I’m sorry,” said a Half-elf girl, “but I’m still a little confused.”

“About what?”

“I still don’t understand what the project is,” said the girl. “What about the animals are we studying? What exactly do we hand in to you?”

Lenis shrugged. “That’s up to you and your creature,” he said. “What works for one student or one creature won’t work for the next. That’s part of the project; you have to spend enough time getting to know your subject to know what you need to be learning from it.”

The girl still looked uneasy. “But what do we hand in?” she asked again. “An essay? A research paper?”

“That’s up to you,” Lenis repeated. “Whatever you think fits best. That could be a report on experiments or observations, a narrative essay, a visual presentation, or nothing at all—an oral report or demonstration of some kind. You don’t have to write a single word or ‘hand in’ anything as long as you think you’ve done your creature justice. If you can best explain what you were doing all semester by singing about it, go for it—just be prepared to defend yourself.

“That said, you have to have something. You can’t just play with the animal all semester and then come in and expect me to figure out your project for you. Don’t worry,” he said when he noticed the girl’s growing concern. “This will all make more sense as we go along. I’ll be checking in with each of you periodically to make sure you’re not completely lost, okay?”

“Okay…” The girl didn’t seem reassured.

“I’ll want you to have picked a creature and cleared it with me by the end of the month—that’s two weeks away, so start thinking about it now. Just so you know, you can choose any animal you want, whether we’ve covered it in class or not. I may discourage some students from choosing certain animals, but in the end it’s your decision.” Lenis looked at his watch. “That’s about all the time we’ve got for today,” he said. “So enjoy your weekends and I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Ooh, a project,” Fallon said as we left. “I think I might do Terrimutinems—try to figure out how to identify them or why they work the way they do or something like that.”

“What’s a Terrimutinem?”

“Oh man, Muties are crazy!” she exclaimed. "They take the DNA of whatever plants or animals are around while they’re growing up, weave it into their own genetic code, and end up looking completely different from their parents. Then they pass their mutant genes on to the next generation who do the same thing all over again. They never look the same, so they’re nearly impossible to identify in the wild. It’ll be tough,” she said, grinning, “but worth it. What’re you gonna do?”

“I have a couple ideas,” I said, “but I’m not sure yet. To tell you the truth, I’m not really thinking about it; I’ve got my Rohdai this weekend, so I’m a bit preoccupied.”

“Hey, congratulations!” she said, giving me a (relatively) light punch in the arm. “You’re going home then?”

“Yeah, my dad called before class. I have a gate at seven tonight.”

“Oh, so that’s what you were so pissed about earlier.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I have two more days of him and the rest of the family to look forward to.”

“Fuck it,” she shrugged, “dads suck. Oh shit,” she said, looking at her watch. "I’m sorry, sweetie—I’ve gotta run, I have to be at work in five minutes. Try to have fun this weekend and I’ll see you when you get back, okay?”

“Thanks,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

She stopped to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. “And smile for Gaia’s sake,” she said. “You’re a man, remember?”

I decided to skip Magic Theory and use the extra time to study Karloth’s Eternal Autumn before my gate.

I’d read through the story and was a few pages into the story’s Jein teachings, when I heard the door open behind me.

“Hey kin,” Retis said. He dropped his backpack on the floor and flopped down on his mattress. “Missed you in class today.”

“Aww,” I teased. “You missed me?”

“Every minute we’re apart, sweet-cheeks.” He winked. “So you just feel like skipping, or what?”

“Nah,” I said, sitting up. “I had to study for my Rohdai this weekend.”

“That’s a Nedrak ceremony thing, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “One of ‘em, anyhow. It’s a ‘coming of age’ thing that Nedraka have to do after they turn nineteen.”

“So you have to study how to get older?”

“I’ve pretty much got that part down,” I quipped. “I have to study Nedrak religion and mythology for the Rohdai feast tomorrow; the whole family gets together and eats, drinks, and quizzes us on scripture. And then, every hour, on the hour, one of us has to tell a different story about one of the Dragons. My cousin’s a Rohdae this year too, so we’ll trade off telling stories each hour, but it’s still a pain in the ass.”

“Sounds like it…” Retis was quiet a moment. “So, are you excited?”

I smiled.

“A little bit.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Chapters, CotF Main Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.