Naaghai Lowlands Slang

The features that mark her as a servant in a royal court are returned as a blessing in the lowlands. She had expected to parch like a flower set in sunlight beyond the cool palace walls, and she’d spent so much of their journey fretting over Toula’s comfort that her own pliancy was passed over. The soil scorches under paw but she is fleet-footed. Her hearing is attuned to awakening life at vast distances and her narrow snout fits flush to small animal burrows.

There’s a shift in the wind- does Tuna also feel it?

By dusk she slips from her post at the entrance to her Queen’s makeshift den with intention to drink from the banks of the thinning serpent. She casts into the south.

Here the great drama of wolven life is nowhere evident. This land belongs to the coyote.

*greedily steals*

tuna felt many things on this day, not just the wind.

with the assurance that toula remained in enough hands, the coyote comes to leave the post as well in search for the newest scents and delicacies this place has to offer. it certainly reminds her of home, though akashingo always held such familiarity to it with the sand and mesa. in many ways, tuna has remained loyal to her bloodline in remaining where the sun climbs high and burns the nonbelievers.

seeing eset before her, tuna comes to offer a little yip of greeting and a polite brush of the shoulder. these women have remained chained at the hip whilst serving the blossoming queen, though they never seem to outwardly tire of one another. at least, this is what tuna can hope for as she looks to follow the gaze of her companion.

"sh'ore's dif'frent out'ere, don't'chu thahnk?" there was much to discover in this land, and much to discover of the inhabitants too. and through all of it begs the question of toula's engagement to the princes that remain.

In Eset’s ears Tuna’s greeting is not a yip, but a song. She offers the same tune in turn, like it is an old hymn they both had memorized. She likes the shape of it on her lips and the way the notes float up in the still air.

She draws along the coyote’s side, stirring golden hackles with a fond sweep of chin as they stare out over the plains together. Tuna is like a great creature of the desert, as spirited and strong as the red rocks themselves. There is a ripple to the muscles in her legs and her snout narrows into a slender point. Her beauty is functional and she cannot look away. Had she failed to notice all this before, at the mesa?

“It is. But it is beautiful. You fit a place like this,” she compliments.

Somewhere out there, in the sprawling stretches of sand, the desert held secrets waiting to be unearthed. Her tail flicks.

“Where was home before Akashingo, Tuna?”

there is a shared tenderness between the underlings of toula, tuna quietly breathes in eset's comforting scent as she looks out to wherever her golden eyes have come to focus. and when she listens to her words, the humble texan offers a soft chuckle as it comfortably drawls itself to end with a sigh.

"ah grew'up in'na place like this, but home's'a'ways down south. almos' feels right bein' back'ere." for a moment, tuna feels herself wiggles her toes deeper into the ground below, as if checking that what she feels is truly there. "but here is'a lil prettier, ah'd say. more green'ry an' such, an' less scream'n pigs aht nau'ght."

a black lip comes to peel up as she runs a tongue against her sharp tooth at the thought. despite their annoyances, tuna would love the chance to find a wild hog out here. she comes to look to her counterpart softly, "how 'bout yew, eset? any big mys'tries ah should know'bout?" a long, questioning hum comes to follow with an arched brow before softening into a lighthearted giggle.

they had come a long way, both of them.

“Less screaming pigs. Are you certain of that?” A wicked implication is posed. The resonance of Tuna’s laughter causes her own to break and the night air fills with the sound of cackling girls.

“I’d like to see you take on a wild boar. Sounds dangerous though, Tuna.” She did not doubt the fellahin, however. Tuna is tough, and Eset liked imagining she knows the secrets to temper a beast like that.

“Would you ever go back?” Her eyes cut to the coyote with ragged breaths. She had never seen a palace so grand as Akashingo, nor anywhere so vast as this before, similar to Tuna’s homeland. They could look out unburdened for miles in every direction, no woodland holt nor ridgeline to block the endless stretches of desert. Here the trees sprout not even leaves, instead needles, arming themselves against those who would try to devour their hearts.

Her own home, that shame is still unbearable. Though after thought, it is a secret in the blooming loyalty between herself and Tuna she feels she no longer needs to veil, and so she speaks of it.

“There was a walled garden. Mother and I were indentured to that land and those who ruled it, with the other women. Coyotes.” She forces a breath into her lungs and there is the scent: sweet as a plum tastes, thick as smoke, wild and strange yet wholly familiar, like a memory she didn’t know her mind kept.

“I can smell them.”

She’d had no choice like what Queen Toula gave. No autonomy. The serfs were not allowed any dignity. She was a scared girl there. She was never going to be her again.

there is laughter shared between them, a chortling laugh replaces what once remained soft and tuna comes to bump her shoulder against eset's softly in a jest. there was quite the tongue on this one! "ah think these'ere princes 're gonna be juh'st like screamin' pigs when they don't get picked." there would certainly be imaginary bloodshed, or perhaps more if it came down to the wire with desperation.

"ah told toula about faught'in snakes in'tha past. ah think she'd be a'lil too worried about me dyin' an' all. but fer a good laugh an' feast? ah'd do it inna' heartbeat." in all truth, tuna was perhaps more talk than anything. she had reasonable experience with sneaks, but more so with hogs. she probably had a better chance fighting the damn pig!

when speaking of her past, tuna listens quietly at the mention of what seems like a darker chapter in eset's past. and she comes to reach a paw to gently lay atop of her companion, offering a little squeeze too. "sounds lah'ke hell, yew both escaped?" it was probably a more personal question than she was allowed to ask, but tuna couldn't stop the question before it came out. realizing what she asked, she shakes her head before apologizing.

"ah, that's not mah place to ask, yew don't gotta' answer that."

Uninterrupted silence stretched on and on. How could she possibly answer that?

“She’s the only reason I did.” Shame.

“All of this, it has to count for something.”

She must count on goodwill and live by her intention. She must take her little life and put it on fire. Eset could not afford to dream of what should happen if providence did not prevail. Something in all this had to live, so that her mother could, too.

“I think it is for Toula.”

Tuna offers a paw. Eset turns her hand over to take it into her own.

“Please… don’t fight snakes, Tuna. Maybe just the ones without fangs,” and she gave a returning squeeze, in it she hoped Tuna would feel her sentiment where words did not speak. That she was needed; that she was loved.

in this moment, tuna sees nothing but gold enshroud eset as she comes to look towards her. as if the sun itself lowered its light so that the girl may breathe another day and take her throne within the clouds itself and bring the morning dawn. they are nothing but fellahin, but perhaps to be a fellahin is to be everything. and to tuna, these girls are everything to her.

"ah got too much'ta lose here, huh?" she says quietly as she looks down at their paws, a small sigh of contentment. there was nothing else for her out in this world unless she had the desire to die trying to see what it held out for her. there are tales of the ocean, where the salt ice comes to last for many moons, and creatures breach from the cold depths. there are the forest of trees that may never sleep and teem with life itself, with hell cats and legendary elk whose antlers hold tales as old as time.

all of that was there for the taking, but none called to her heart as the desert did here.

"ah think yew bein here'as counted enough fer her." there is something to be said about a mother's undying love for her child. "she oughtta be proud awf yew. ah sh'ure know ah am." eset had come to the palace and took her place with ease, tuna was sure to keep an eye where it was needed during the first lost days.

The pain is loyal, like a raven over the dead it stays tethered even when she wills it go. For long she believed she could get ahead by casting a distance between herself and those around her. But sitting beside Tuna beneath a sky with the first glimmer of night’s stars, she resolves to adjust her steps. The journey can be paced. She can get ahead by getting closer, and by trusting. She’d not known how much she craved to hear the fellahin’s acclaim.

“Thank you, Tuna,” she turns, taking the coyote girl’s brown eyes with a grateful look, “and for your patience in teaching me.”

What a wonder it is how many will care about you, if only you would care for them- and even more remarkable how many will care about you anyway. Her eyes again find the darkening valley.

“Think there must be prickly pear out here somewhere,” her mouth quirks.

"may-bee" she drawls out, looking over to eset fondly.

for her, tuna would let herself get poked and prodded a thousand times if it meant eset would eat her pears, all prickle free. a tongue runs over her rugged tooth for a moment as she thinks.

"dew yew dream, eset? awf life tha's bigger than this?" what thoughts brewed between those large ears? did she aspire to be more than what the palace has made of her? what did her mother dream of?

Eset follows Tuna’s warm smile with her eyes, wondering. She did dream of so many things, ones that should not have tempted low-born handmaidens.

Yet; “I… cannot imagine a life bigger than this one,” she realizes, “working in a grand palace, and being here, now.” In the vastness of these wilds which stole from her long, fevered stares.

She could imagine her mother’s family in a desert like this. Until now she’d always felt some obligation to let it be lost into the part of herself inherited from her father.

“It is not defending our home or communing with the gods,” she continues, “but I like the work we do. For me, it is all things I suppose.” It was the prospect of designing a world- one that could be the vision of fellahin.

“Tell me of your dreams, Tuna,” she prompts, returning a look of intrigue.