Lan'keep

“…and so, the Lan’keep won the hearts of the people and they did away with all manner of superstitious nonsense having to do with-“

“Blood Appointing Blood to Rule / When the Blood has Thinned to Fool,” the class responds in a lifeless monotone. Taerah lets out a breath, dramatically showing her disinterest and is, as usual, completely ignored, save for the group of four girls laughing in her general direction. While she can’t remember doing anything to outright offend them through explicit insult or rudeness, she did the make the cardinal mistake of introducing herself in a casual setting without a formal invitation, making her the target of their derision since they met.

Today, they are making faces of mock-sadness, putting their fists in front of their eyes and twisting them while sticking out their bottom lips, using baby talk through fake sobs, flailing their arms like a helpless toddler finding themselves prone on the floor. Seems they heard her crying herself to sleep last night, as she often does when she feels like the quality of her life is never going to improve and her lot in life is set in stone - Spinster. Bastard.

Disqualified.

It’s her own damn fault, if she deigns to care what they think or who they make jokes denigrating.

Rolling her eyes, Taerah no longer pretends to be listening to the teacher droning on and on about the most remedial of her culture’s lore on a Taskday - and only The Second, at that. Turning her attention back to what lies beyond the portal on the Eastern-most wall, instead, she spends her energy willing the sun to move faster through the sky and laments how much longer she must wait before she can return to the wild, where her freedom resides - the first place she visits in the morning and the last place she goes before she returns to her room and falls asleep from pure exhaustion under the moon’s watchful gaze.

Involuntarily shuddering, the memories come flooding back to her all at once, causing another round of the chorus of hyenas’ guffawing. There was something different about the morning’s hunt – that Dire Boar.

Fresh, smooth white powder thickly covers the ground, a definite chill permeating the air, errant crystals drifting down from the bleak sky Keekee soars across with a stoic eye. Winter has always Taerah’s favorite time to go rabbit hunting, passing the tree she carved her sigil into when she first moved in, the same one where she rescued the hawk as a hatchling. Has it been seven years already? Tracing the indentations, the trembling hands of a defiant five-year-old appear before her mind’s eye.

Dressed in a soft grey wolves’ pelt cloak and fur-lined leather boots, she sits underneath, briefly preparing, and goes stone-still, listening for a giveaway, smelling the various fragrances caught by the wind by using her tongue, feeling the subtle changes in pressure in her bones, and religiously observing the movement of the hair on her vestments before making her decision. The slingshot is pristinely tucked in a pocket on her right boot, her knife in the left – she’s hunting much larger prey, today.

Taerah hears a rustle to her left, cocking her head to her right, pulling the string of the bow back, breathing out and releasing the death shot – straight to the heart, gone within seconds, virtually painless and about as humane as you’re going to get for a society still using leeches for medical treatments. With a bit of effort and stern breath, she dislodges herself from the steadfastness of the tree’s energy and approaches the stricken target.

Falling to her knees in front of her victim’s corpse, a lean, young ten point buck, she ignores the cold seeping through her frame from the ground up. Keekee descends from the sky to give his approval, as she bows her head and prays to the Light in gratitude, vowing to show humility in the face of such an awesome gift, like any good Lan’keep would do, offering to help the kitchen staff clean the animal and-

A gruff snort startles her with its volume and proximity to her person, given away by the intensity of the heat and pressure of the air blasting against her person, grabbing her attention away from the somber mood of the kill, and startling the hook-beaked bird at her feet to flight.

“A MASSIVE Red Boar!! When I say ‘red’, I don’t mean a shade similar to a brownish-red, or red as in ‘redhead’ with more blondish-orange locks, I mean he looked as if he’d been painted with rouge or fallen into a vat of dye – even the eyes were bright red!!” Taerah locks eyes with her first friend she made in this very room. “You believe he was as I say, don’t you?” Auren raises his eyebrows while the rest of the table bursts into disbelieving giggles.

“Maybe you got some deer blood on your eyeball or something.” Once again, the table erupts with laughter, and Taerah’s mouth hangs open in utter shock and embarrassment.

This is the first time such ire has been turned on her – not by the perfectly-made-up gossiping girl group, but by a male.

“Did you try maybe rubbing them to make it go away?” His perfect smile warms up the audience while excluding her at the same time - how?

“Are you trying to tell me when I see green grass and violet flowers, that’s also buck’s blood? Thick, bristly patch of apple red hair standing straight up on top, gargantuan tusks too big to wrap your hand-”

Honestly, at this point, she doesn’t know why she bothers to argue. Logic is never given its due value, in this venue.

“Forget about it, doesn’t matter anyway, didn’t even see which way he ended up running, I saw absolutely no prints that could have been anything that big - big enough to shake the ground beneath me, while it drank from the River.”

“Wait,“ the skinny blonde from the group of four from class, Jen, pipes up, dramatically guffawing in a lackluster imitation of Justine, the leader of the group, and catching her breath, “this boar is big enough for you to ride on a parade through a proper town, but you lose it in a matter of seconds?”

The rest of the girls begin to lean in, anticipating the pain on the face of the gorgeous orphan in Jen’s sights.

“You didn’t eat anything brightly-colored that you happened to pick up off of the ground, like the compost you are, did you?”

As the three underlings cackle amongst themselves, the genetically-superior Justine slides next to the easily-titillated Auren, making sure to nestle his arm in between her much-more-highly-developed bosoms.

“Did you decide who you’re going to ask to the festival?” At her mention of the biggest social event of the rest of the year, all three pairs of eyes from the not-as-early birds watch Auren’s face for any sign of mercy in their favor.

Not wanting to lose the attention of four of the most fertile – and most endowed, not just in the jiggly bits department – maidens this side of Stone Falls, he carefully decides to delay.

“Not that hallucinating half-man, that’s for sure,” continuing the tirade Taerah is convinced she completely brought onto herself by trying to get the attention of Meadow Valley’s most eligible young bachelor in the first place – just like her mother. “Even if she HAD a dowry, even if it was as big as an Emperor’s Daughter’s, even if she wasn’t the bastard of a lunatic and a criminal, thinking about her happy as a clam pulling the heads off of rabbits like a common kitchen wench, just so she can afford some lipstick, I wouldn’t be able to keep my lunch down long enough to kiss her at the altar.”

Seeing her chance, Jenna (NOT Jen) spoke, for the first time, “Maybe someone would ask her for her hand someday if she didn’t show up to eat smelling like she’d just disemboweled a carcass.”

“When would that be?” Jeneva (NOT Jen OR Jenna) adds. Another round of laughter rises in the dining hall, the surrounding boarders wanting to be included.

Now, Taerah has no expectations someone as used-to-be-nice, then-boobs-became-priority as the traditionally-handsome, parents-are-just-too-rich-to-raise-their-own-kid Auren would make it a point to be seen in public asking her, let alone showing up arm-in-arm, to what is essentially an excuse to be seen with your betrothed as you transitioned out of Boarding Life and into being a Boring Wife.

It isn’t only the blunt public rejection, it is the fact that he is being congratulated on his decision to insult her and commiserating with those ill-tempered harpies that makes Taerah decide to shovel the rest of her food in her mouth as quickly as humanly possible, tuning out of the conversation as much as her conscious mind will allow, before standing up, returning her plate and utensils to their proper place, and walking out of the eating room.

Hiding the streaks of tears and choking back audible blubbering, she hears, “Probably got drugged by the Twinkl'ies, sneaking out into the woods all these years. They’re sick of the disrespect.”