Questions and Answers
Pela dreamed in strange flurries as she floated somewhere just under the surface of consciousness. She felt a tugging on her dead weight, which translated itself into a fearful nightmare scene of the wolves she had previously evaded catching up to her, pulling at her limbs with their strong jaws. Thankfully, after some amount of time she was unable to discern, the dreams and the faint tuggings of her senses fell away, and she was left with quiet. A blissful quiet in which she finally slept instead of being dropped into unconsciousness harshly.
It would be a few hours, then, until she finally opened one eye, allowing in a slit of afternoon sunlight. Only the glare of the sun seemed to be absent, and instead her bleary vision was met with the interior of a shady room. A room, she noted silently, that was made entirely out of cloth pulled taut, the decor of which was adorned with more colors than she had seen among *all* the possessions of her Clan's people. "I must still be dreaming.." she murmured softly to herself.
A wizened, wrinkled face shifted slowly into Pela's line of vision, smiling in the same sort of way one might smile at a wounded wild creature in order to prevent it from bolting. She was holding a damp cloth in her hand, which she raised toward Pela.
"Let me just put this on your forehead, dear, don't be afraid..."
Another voice interrupted, a brown, wind-chapped hand gripping the elderly woman's shoulder from behind.
"Sidra, she's -my- sky devil, -I'm- going to question her."
Pela blinked, the slits of her murky-green eyes open into their usual wide circles.
"Wh.. I'm not a Sky-Devil!" she protested weakly, any indignance she may have had washed away under the pounding headache that started hammering behind her eyes. The old woman's offering of a cool cloth was drawn out of reach so quickly, she had to force herself not to flinch in disappointment in front of these dark-skinned strangers.
The elderly woman sighed, moving past Shasa to place the cloth against Pela's forehead, though she capitulated to the other woman's right of questioning. The other woman was nodding slowly at Pela's denial, as though she knew something no one else knew.
"So you say... then what were you doing in the middle of the desert, far from any other settlement?" She answered her own question, gleefully. "You must have fallen from the sky!"
Pelagia looked up from her rather vulnerable position into the face of a girl somewhere near her own age, her face tanned so deeply by the daystar that it looked to Pela as though someone had brushed her skin with that staining dye used to work leather. Her eyes, though, were shockingly blue-white, just as much as her hair was shockingly white-blond, both stood out boldly against her skin so that the whole sight of her pulled the cliff girl's attention and held it so she could not look away. She hoped she hadn't stared too long, and that her mouth hadn't been agape.
"I.. ah.. that's not true, I was walking! I just got lost and couldn't find the path again.." she smoothed over her story a bit, since she might very well lose even more credibility by admitting to being balked by forest wildlife.
The pale-haired girl raised an eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest, then turned toward the older woman.
"Sidra, -are- there any paths in that area?" The older woman shrugged, having no more idea than her companion what lay beyond the desert. The younger woman shrugged, turning back to Pelagia. "That could be true. We saw footprints. They looked as though you had been running. Why were you running, if you were lost? Any sensible person knows that one should stand still when one is lost, especially since you weren't even in the desert."
"That's.. new to me, I'm sorry," Pela admitted, eyes still fixed on the suspicious looking desert girl. "I'm not used to travelling around like this, I only just left my village for the first time." She started to sit up now that her headache had subsided, and inquired meekly of her rescuer-turned-captor, "..Where am I, could you please tell me?"
There was another raised eyebrow from the dark-skinned girl.
"I'm asking the questions here, I'm the one that found you." She tapped her foot against the ground, agitated. "I can't tell you where you are until I know you aren't here to eat our babies. My mother told me Sky Devils eat babies. You're as pale as the underbelly of a snake, you're taller than most trees I've seen... you have weird hair... what are you, if you aren't a Sky Devil? Tell me that."
Finally, a relatively easy question, Pela thought.
"I live in the caves that are carved out of a cliff by the sea.. it must be about two days' walk from.. well, from wherever I was last." She rubbed the back of her neck, eyeing the insistant desert girl before declaring at last, "I've never seen someone as dark by the sun as you."
The dark girl seemed to accept this answer, although she murmured something at the back of her throat. She was loathe to admit her ignorance of the term, but she supposed there was nothing for it, if she was to learn anything about the strange, new girl.
"It is always dark, then, this 'sea?'"
Pelagia blinked a few times in silent disbelief. "It's... the sea. You know, the ocean. And our village is right up next to it, only we're always sheltered inside the caverns." Slowly realization came over her. "...you have never seen the sea?"
The other girl crossed her arms over her chest again.
"Of course I have! I just... don't... remember, that's all. We stay in the desert most of the time... not like you weakling Sky Devils... because it makes us tough! And hardy! .... but if could refresh my memory about this... the sea... I would appreciate it."
Pelagia couldn't help it, her carefully guarded expression split into a smile. "It's the place where all of the water meets the edge of the land. Though it's salty instead of fresh, like the rivers..." Looking down, she tried to regain her unreadable face, even clearing her throat to stifle a chuckle at the girl's display of confidence. "But.. I must tell you now that if you insist on calling me Sky Devil, I'll have to whip you in a fight - I've had to do so to men much bigger than you." Raising her eyes again, she met the small - but admittedly fiery - girl, unable to withhold the glimmer of amusement in her eyes.
The dark girl's eyes lit up like the daystar itself, despite their pale appearance. "Oh-ho, snake-hair, is that so? When the great star has set for the evening, we will see!" Apparently, the challenge was enough to relax her considerably toward Pelagia, as she took one of the girl's arms in one hand, slapped it with the other, and released it in a gesture not unlike a handshake. "I am Shasa, of the Desert Nomads. You are at the oasis with my tribe."
Pelagia stood up, and accepted the greeting gesture with a smile, nodding to Shasa. "Pelagia. And I thank you and your people for bringing me here." Looking down at the diminuitive nomad, Pela's inward nervousness about her mangled quest eased some, though she couldn't exactly say why. All she did know at that moment was that she'd better get her strength up a little before sundown.
The afternoon passed rather enjoyably, as Pela found herself amidst a whole town population's worth of people who interacted as what was a very large extended family, in her eyes. The middle-aged woman Shasa had referred to as Sidra came to her tent again to call her to dinner as the sun was casting long shadows, though she had to shoo away a cluster of small children who had been hovering around Pelagia curiously - of course, the pale outsider hadn't really been helpful in keeping them away, she enjoyed their company.
Dinner, it turned out, consisted of anything and everything that could be scrounged out of the desert. She was just picking the last bites of roast off a jackal bone, when Shasa thrust a plate of sliced-open cactus in front of her with a grin. "Picked fresh last night. Hateya said we ought to offer you some first since you're a guest." She balked at the sight of the alien vegetables, which looked very tough and stringy and unpleasant. But Shasa seemed oblivious to any hesitation, and in fact treated the offered food as a bit of a delicacy. And so Pela found her way chewing through a rough piece of gods-only-knew, the moisture trapped inside making it go down a bit easier, if not taste a little stranger.
Dusk finally settled over the nomad camp, and Shasa rose from her seat, nudging Pelagia with her elbow. "Unless you want an audience, follow me out to the clearing just past the three biggest cacti by the oasis. I'll be waiting for you, miss snake-hair." She grinned, eyes still glittering with bemusement, before turning to leave the tent that served as the main hall.
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