|
There will be another, and without the other, you will never be as strong as two together could be. Kuiper turned in his blankets, his face drifting into the patch of sunlight that filtered through the leaves above. Again, as he had done so many mornings before, he sat up, shook his head, and dismissed the voice in his dream. Dreams were no more than the idle mind creating stories - that is what his parents had said. The truth was in the land, in the forest, and in the living things that walked it. The dreamworld could only confuse those who didn't actively seek to master it. Kneeling, and then pushing himself to his feet, he shuffled a few feet to the west until he was standing at the edge of the waterfall outside the guild. He enjoyed sleeping next to it's peacefull sound, but it's real benefits came in the morning. Stripping off his tunic, cloak, and boots, he plunged into the cold water, and came up with a yell that stirred the birds in the trees. If he was going to wake up this way (and it was a good way to wake up), why not wake up some of the forest with him? There will be another, and without the other, you will ne - "AAAAAAAAAAAH!" Kublai shot up into consciousness at the sound of a yell, reaching for his bow and readying an arrow almost instantly. His reflexes had been well honed by his years of training, and even before training they had been the envy of most of the guild. Now, he stopped, and listened. His fear melted away at the sound of splashing below him in the guild's pool, and then turned to anger. He didn't appreciate being awakened in the middle of a dream, even if he already knew what it was going to tell him. He'd had the same dream many many times, and he knew it meant something. His mother had told him so a hundred times - "Dreams aren't always true, but a single dream again and again holds truth." Staring downwards off his platform towards the pool, he caught sight of a young Ranger - no older than he was, without a doubt - and gave a growl. He might as well wake up now, there wasn't much hope of getting back to sleep. He splashed some cool water from a clay basin upon his face, pulled on a tunic, breeches, and a cloak, slung his bow upon his back and walked out towards the main guild platforms. "Still insisting upon being the guild's own personal rooster, I see?" Kuiper turned in the water with a grin. He recognized the voice almost immediately. "Well, Quith, there really isn't a whole lot of anything else I get to do for the Guild until you kick the bucket. Not that you should, of course." "Touche." Quithenne grinned at him. "Ready to begin your lesson for the day, then? You're up early enough, and you've given me a headache. Unless you can heal it, I think we'll make today a class in gathering herbs in difficult, dirty, places. Like mud fields. Up to it?" "The Headache I think I can handle." Kuiper pulled himself out of the water and dried off with his cloak, then strode over to Quithenne. "Kuiper, put your tunic back on, you're not impressing anyone." "Sorry, mom." Kuiper grinned at her. She was old enough to maybe be her older sister, but she knew she was acting like an Elder. He slid his tunic on. "Now, how do I go about this again?" He put his hand on her head. "Just like a physical injury, only you can't see it. So you have to first visualize the injury that is there - don't visualize anything too grotesque or you may end up giving me a worse headache - and then close your eyes and heal it as you would any normal one." Kuiper closed his eyes and envisioned the injury... she'd been hit over the head with a club by Jelana in one of their ridiculous arguments, he thought with a grin... then healed the injury as he would heal it were it physical. "How's it feel?" "Better, luckily for you. What should we learn today?" Quithenne smiled down at him now. She was taller than he was. She was taller than most of the Rangers in the tree, actually, and looked every inch a warrior. She had frankly scared in the first time he had met her, until she had smiled. Strange for her to be a healer, he thought, but then again, most people didn't see him as one either. "How about poison? You haven't taught me a thing about it yet." "Alright then, today's lesson is poison. How to make it, administer it, identify it, and *heal* it." She grinned at him. She would never teach him how to heal anything until he knew almost everything about it. It was part of being a true healer, she said, knowing exactly what you were dealing with. He nodded, and then they walked south towards the edge of the darker part of Dirimloth. Quithenne noticed the other figure walking south several hundred yards to the east of them, but Kuiper didn't. Kublai danced through the shadows as if he owned them. He had always loved his ability to do that, he had an affinity with that part of nature - the shadows and light, the things you couldn't really touch. He did his best to stay in shadows all the way to the edge of the darker forest, watching the pair that strode side by side in the sunlight far to his west. He couldn't tell if the boy was short or if the woman was exceptionally tall from this point, but given that they were unarmed, he assumed that the woman was Quithenne and therefore the latter was true. She had several apprentices, but this one must have been rather far along or else she wouldn't be taking him south to the dark forest. He'd stay near them - they weren't well armed and without a doubt they'd need protecting. Who better to do it than himself? He was the best archer in the tree, nevermind that Jelana and Seth both thought they were still teaching him. They were as accurate as he was, but neither of them could put an arrow to a string with his speed. They had gone as far as they could, but he was still gaining speed and accuracy each day that he practiced. He would be something incredible soon. The targets near the tree already had holes wearing through at their center because he never missed. Quithenne and Kuiper stood in the edge between the two forests, where the light still filtered through but the trees had already become gnarled and twisted by the evil to the south. "The trolls don't wander here, they don't know where we are but they know that they have a habit of dying if they wander too far into the light." Quithenne pulled a small dagger out of her pack. "The spiders, though, are another matter entirely. They're too stupid to know what's safe and what's not." Almost as she spoke, an enormous spider strode by... at least two feet tall and with legs spanning four feet or more. It make a disconcerting sort of hissing, squeaking noise as it passed. Quithenne whispered 'What's one thing I've taught you about the world?" Kuiper whispered "If it ain't broke, don't heal it?" Quithenne stared at him a moment "No... killing is wasteful if it's not necessary, but making things unable to harm another is admirable. Watch..." Quithenne dove out from behind the tree where they stood and leaped upon the back of the spider. With a swift motion, she grabbed onto one of it's fangs, slashed with the dagger, and pulled it off. Another quick motion of the arm saw the spider's other fang detached as well. Quithenne pushed herself up off the spiders back as it frantically clawed the air with it's legs, and then brushed herself off. The spider hissed and whined pathetically, then scurried off into the forest. "Here..." she held up one of the fangs, "Is our poison study for the day." A twang sounded from yards away from them, and the spider let out a shriek and fell with an arrow in it's side. Kuiper and Quithenne stared at the young man who stood east of them, increduously. The spider, from his distance, would have been nearly impossible to hit. Quithenne's staring didn't last long however... "Kublai! What was the point of that? It was harmless!" The young man called back "It would have hurt you if it could, it wasn't harmless, just weak." He wandered off back towards the guild. Kublai wandered only as far as they could see, then he stormed. Those ungrateful... she yelled at him for killing something that she had just been fighting with. Hadn't she ever been taught that anything tainted with the evil of the southern forests needed to be destroyed lest it begin to infect their home? She should have thanked him for finishing something that she didn't have the strength to! Quithenne taught Kuiper about poisons, or at least tried to. Kuiper was too distracted by wondering who this Kublai was. He was the best shot that Kuiper had ever seen in the guild unless he had been incredibly lucky, but Quithenne had still spoken down to him as if he was a child. He was impulsive, and fiery, but the precision needed to hit a spider like that was... incredible. He ended the day knowing as little about poison as he ever had. That night the sunset was particularly beautiful. It would have had to be particularly beautiful to draw both Kuiper the healer and Kublai the archer to the western branches of the tree to stare at it in wonder. None of the elders ever did that anymore. Perhaps that happens with age - one forgets how to appreciate sunsets. Neither of these two young Rangers had, yet. "Kublai, isn't it?" Kuiper asked the silhouette who sat in the branches. His figure appeared black against the oranges and reds of the sunset. This other Ranger, so close to his own age, intrigued him. "Yes, it is. And you are?" The edge in Kublai's voice was no mistake - he had no desire to see the young healer again. "Kuiper. Sunsets are nice to watch eh? Peaceful, like the last yawn before everything goes to sleep, you know." "What's bloody peaceful about sunsets? The whole sky sets it's-bloody-self on fire." "That's true, but think about what it represents. Everything's falling asleep." "Everything's burning up, is what is is." "Like to think of things in the negative, don't you?" "Never said it was negative... just violent. It's primal. You can't always define the world in words we use to describe ourselves. We can live with nature, but we aren't it. We're not connected to the world the way everything else is. It's more violent and more powerful than we can imagine." "Maybe some parts of it, but it's also gentler and kinder than we can possibly imagine. It's just like us, parts violent, parts peaceful." "What do you know? You're a healer, you've never faced death." "A healer never faces death? You're wrong about that. It's the warrior who never truly faces death. A warrior simply unleashes it, he never looks it in the face, never understands what it really is until he has to live through it. I've sat by the side of dying animals, trying to put life back into them, and when I do I see everything they see, feel everything they feel. Don't tell me I don't know death." "Maybe you understand death then, but it's meaningless for you because you don't understand life. You don't understand what it means to fight for your life - to have your life be the only thing on your mind, the only thing you value. You don't understand the moments when you are so close to losing it that you can almost feel it inside you... as a tangible thing, life pumping through your veins like blood." "Kublai..." Kuiper tentatively began... "What?" Kublai glared at him... "We sound like a couple of elders giving philosophy lessons." Kublai stared at Kuiper for a moment, then the both of them erupted into laughter. He was right. They sounded exactly like Fennimore trying to tell the young Rangers what to appreciate in the world. When the laughter died down they spoke as themselves. They spoke of themselves. Kuiper told the story of the boy who used to wince everytime he stepped on an insect, and who cried whenever he couldn't sleep on the ground, connected to the nature who he saw almost as much as a mother as his mother herself. Kublai told the story of a boy only felt alive when he was hunting or fighting, for whom the greatest thrill was the sense that the next second might send him hurtling into oblivion. The two of them each discovered two things that night. Kublai discovered a friend, and the knowledge that to truly be a warrior you must understand the consequences of your actions, and that to be a Ranger you must accept those consequences and live with them honorably. Kuiper discovered a friend as well, and the knowledge that until he knew the power and the preciousness of what he sought to give others as a healer, he could never truly be a healer as Quithenne was. All that the elders had taught them through classes, they learned that night from one another. Two boys, the same age, opposite sides of the coin that is the Ranger. They understood in that night for the first time, that there are two sides to the life of a Ranger, healer and archer, life and death, and the one with the other is never as powerful as the two together can be. They carry that knowledge with them still. Perhaps if you ask one, they may share more of it with you. |