Brina couldn't seem to find anything to eat. She wandered through the imposing trees and investigated every bush she could find, looked for any hints of color or even just thorns. Several attempts only got her feet pricked and her hands and hair caught in the plants. There was a lot more brush on this side of the river than at home, but this late in the day meant that even if she could find any berry bushes, the ripe ones would have been eaten by birds already.
Even Brina was surprised at how little she was scared, right now. For as terrified as she had been off and on, just wandering right now wasn't so bad. She kind of knew what she was looking for at least. The wolves weren't close. She was still pretty sure that Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro were already watching her and waiting for her to learn her lesson.
Assholes.
But walking through the forest, even an unfamiliar one, wasn't that strange to her, she'd grown up in a forest, she knew these places. She could do this.
I really can.
She eventually decided to try to find the river again. She was sure it was in this direction, but she could have gotten turned around? It really only took a little bit of a wrong turn and a long enough walk, Brina knew that. She'd been kinda lost in her woods before. But she also didn't want to try and find the river or food anymore if she was lost like that on this side. The more she walked, the less sure she was about where she was going. She wasn't even sure she wanted to go to the river at all. The wolves might still be there.
The hollow feeling in her upper belly suddenly ached so much worse than before. She'd never been this hungry! And she was so far from food!
Maybe instead of trying to find berries, Brina could look for some bugs? She actually liked crickets, but Daddy said he didn't like it when he knew she was eating them. Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa would help her catch them under rocks. Ro-Ro liked worms, but Aunt Eupa wouldn't eat either one, saying she didn't like living food. Instead, Aunt Eupa taught Brina how to gut and skewer things for fires. Brina didn't like the gutting, but she did like deboning. Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro secretly taught Brina how to use the right knives properly. She was good at it, too. Aunt Eupa taught her how to hold the knife firm and gentle both so you could feel which way it was going and guide it with your grip. Aunt Eupa even had a trick with her claws where she could retract them and squeeze and twist her razor sharp knife so precisely that she could cut a hair longwise as it fell.
Brina didn't have a knife right now. Or anything like one. Which didn't really matter because she wasn't likely to catch anything to need one anyway. She looked around to see if she could see any sort of fallen trees to look for bugs under. Brina remembered that there were leaves you could eat, but not what kind. She couldn't remember any mushrooms, either. She hadn't seen any berries at all, and she couldn't remember if there were any this time of year or not, and she only remembered two kinds she could eat and one she couldn't. The ones on thorny bushes were okay, but another kind looked just like it and didn't have thorns..
Brina kept walking, slowing her pace but keeping it even like Daddy taught her. Just keep going, little by little. That's all you really have to do. That's what she did in the river. Of course, that's why she got in the river, too.
Brina felt silly for that. She was embarrassed and no one was even there to laugh at her. She briefly considered living in the woods forever just so she wouldn't have to admit what she did.
Okay. Under logs and rocks…. But there weren't any rocks here, only logs, if she could find them. Only leaves and trees. Not even any animals, but that might have been Brina's fault.
Brina missed her father again. He wouldn't let the wolves get her. Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa might let them chew on her a bit, but Daddy wouldn't even let anything near her. She wished he could be like them and know so much and see so much, but he said those were his limits. They all had their jobs, and they all did their jobs. They wouldn't tell her what Aunt Eupa did, she said she never did anything, she was too lazy, she just helped clean up the messes afterwards. She had a lot of scars to indicate otherwise, but she kept her secrets. Ro-Ro knew things and used the world around her to hunt and catch prey. Daddy held things and crushed things and threw things. And people, sometimes, he said he did it to people, too. Brina couldn't imagine it being anything more than the play he'd--well, no. No, Brina saw him do it before.
'Cos Aunt Eupa scared him one night. It was terrifying. Brina felt so bad about it for so long, even though they all told her over and over that it wasn't her fault and she didn't do anything wrong. She just scared Aunt Eupa, and scaring Aunt Eupa was a mistake.
That was another one of those things Brina had to learn the hard way. Never touch Aunt Eupa while she's asleep.
Brina continued shuffling through the forest, one foot in front of the other now. The trees in this part of the wood were like the ones at home, about the same size and same close together. She could probably run through this part. She was trying to find boughs big enough to leave wet dirt underneath, that was how it worked, right?
Ro-Ro was going to be mad at Brina for everything she forgot. Ro-Ro was always grumpy about how much Brina forgot, she forgot a lot of stuff all the time, and Ro-Ro said it was really important to remember and she still just couldn't. Daddy wouldn't let Ro-Ro take her to teach her the hard way, but she threatened to all the time. "I'll take you hunting with me until you can't remember what it's like to sleep in a real bed."
'Cos Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro were always about learning the hard way. Daddy tried not to let her, but Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro insisted on letting her and keeping her from ending up really badly hurt and that was it. Aunt Eupa had let her fall out of many a tree. Daddy would always catch her, and he'd always be mad at Aunt Eupa for letting her fall.
But touching Aunt Eupa when she was asleep was a lesson they all learned the hard way. Daddy broke Aunt Eupa's arm that night, though. That morning. He'd been coming home from the tavern. He woke Brina up being silly in the garden, Ro-Ro had said, and Brina went to get Aunt Eupa. And Brina couldn't remember what happened, exactly, but Aunt Eupa tackled her and Daddy grabbed Aunt Eupa and… That was bad. That was so bad.
Brina didn't want to see Daddy be that mean ever again, but she wanted that kind of protection again, she wanted someone to be that fierce for her right now. He scared her then, but she knew he was on her side forever.
The trees were getting closer together, and Brina still hadn't found any logs, so she turned back to the big ones. Maybe one of the really big ones had fallen down or something? She wished she could remember the kinds of mushrooms she could eat, that would be great 'cos she kept seeing little bitty patches of them and she wasn't sure if they'd be good or not.
Ro-Ro taught her so many things, why were all of them so hard to remember right now!? Aunt Eupa always said it was because she went to school and learned to read--she didn't have room for all the important stuff.
Ugh. The memories of school floated back. Brina only went for a few years before her magic came in, and she felt so bad about having to leave that she almost forgot she didn't like it there. Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa celebrated when it was decided she had to stop going, it made Brina feel better. They never liked school, they never liked the idea of school. Said it was teaching all the wrong things.
But Daddy said it was important for Brina to learn to read and said there were things she wouldn't learn at home that would be good to know with other people, and she needed to meet other kids her age. He and Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro had gone all their lives without reading, and they had needed it. "This whole dungeon, this one time, had writing all on the walls. And of course, we didn't know what it said, didn't even know it was words, we just decided it was pretty and went on. And got me killed. Four times in one day. We finally left without getting anything out of there."
Brina still didn't like school, though. She didn't really fit in, especially not at the beginning when she had only ever known her family and dressed and acted like them. Her first outfit for school had been all animal fur and leather that Ro-Ro had given them and they'd made. Daddy was the one that could sew, but Aunt Eupa would cut it for him to sew. He wasn't bad at it, but since he taught Brina, it was determined that he was also not good at it, and she was better even now. It was 'cos his hands were too big.
Brina was fairly charming at school, she was good at dealing with people, and she liked most everyone in at least one way or another, but she was just kinda… odd. She didn't know why, but she couldn't stop. She blamed her eye, most of the time, but Ro-Ro said that she was odd, too, and sometimes people just were. Aunt Eupa and Daddy didn't say they were odd, but neither of them would talk about when they were little. Aunt Eupa would just say no one liked her and she was an asshole, and Daddy would tell her he'd tell her later.
Finally! Brina found a fallen log!
The limb was broken off on one end and broken into several pieces, dug into several layers of leaves on either side of it. Brina dashed toward it and started to push it over, and she was lucky to see the edges of the snake. She lunged backward before it struck at her. She was already moving or it would have gotten her. She fell onto her butt and scrambled backward away from it, trying to keep from losing sight of it. Never lose sight of the monsters. Aunt Eupa had told her that, too.
Was this a poisonous one? How can you tell again? Something about triangles or colors…? This one had a big head and a long body, was three different kinds of brown and blended in too well with the leaves. It was getting into the s-shape again, and Brina backed up then dashed away. Well that was silly, too. Brina wanted to hide for shame. Aunt Eupa would laugh so much she'd choke, and then she'd kill the snake and eat it for lunch.
Okay. When I find another place to look, I'm not gonna run up like that. That was silly. Brina brushed herself off (it wasn't doing any good, she was still damp and her clothes were still clinging to the broken and crumbled leaves) and she kept going.
Remembering the other 'odd' kids liked her made her feel a little better. Peony had been Brina's friend. She was older by a lot, she was thirteen when Brina was six, she was a pretty half-orc girl with green skin and little tusks and her dark blue hair in two braids down the sides. She taught Brina the names of clothes she liked so she could get her family to help her find them or make them. She liked being able to talk about her adventuring family to Brina, 'cos everyone else didn't believe her all the way.
Another friend was Ferrin, a halfling boy who was a year and a half older than Brina. He liked talking to Brina about his family, which had several moms and dads and lots of little brothers and sisters, four of whom would join him before Brina left three years later.
Brina appreciated Ferrin and Peony a lot, they were nice to her and they helped her deal with Mierta. Brina huffed at the thought of Mierta. Aunt Eupa called her Brina's nemesis. Brina regretted not learning to fight after an ink-stained dress and suspension from school. Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro taught her how to fight after that, how to wrestle to keep someone from hurting you. Aunt Eupa was no good at doing the holds, but since she was bendy like she was, Ro-Ro could show Brina how to do it without hurting anyone. They showed her lots of different pinning moves and how to get into the holes of someone's strength.
Another big tree branch! This time, Brina was not going to rush the log, and instead used a smaller branch to poke the bigger one, brushing at the leaves and scaring everything that might have been there. Brina rolled the fallen tree branch and found a bunch of ants and pillbugs. She didn't like eating ants, these ones because they were too small to chew. She did find a grasshopper. She wondered if maybe making a trap for something and using the bugs as bait was a good idea…?
But eating raw meat was bad for humans and she couldn't make a fire. Could she? She hadn't tried since she fell in. She forgot she had magic at all. Normally, it wouldn't let her forget it was there. Her flyfire was a mostly-decorative light she could make by breathing into her hands and concentrating on the air and heat long enough to feed it magic and spark. She was still working on making it move around on purpose or hot enough to cook, but she could reliably light the fireplace with it.
She blew into her hands, first softly and then harder, then softly again, before she gave up and plopped to the ground. "Oh, dammit!" Her legs were tired and her feet hurt. Her feet hurt a lot, actually, they were numb until she sat down and now they hurt! She looked at the poor little things on the ends of her legs, red and swollen. She hadn't managed to make them bleed any. Brina's feet were tough because Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro made Daddy let her go barefoot. She hoped she got the hot-cold again tomorrow, or managed to get warm or something. If her magic changed, she'd feel the cold and that would be bad.
Ro-Ro's words about keeping warm came back. It doesn't take cold to kill you. Just not-warm. Especially when you're little. Especially especially when you sleep at night.
Brina felt her pulse in her throat as her heart began to pound. Okay. So how do I keep warm, Ro-Ro?
If you can, you should move at night and sleep during the day when the sun will keep you warm. Find things that will be fur for you, find a way to make clothes with furs or bark. If you have to sleep at night, make a space for yourself, only just big enough to curl up in, and pad it with leaves. They'll itch, but they'll keep you warm if you bury yourself in enough of them.
Small spaces that she could heat with her body, she remembered that, 'cos she thought it was funny that being buried in dirt could make you cold but making a den in dirt would keep you warm.
Brina got to her feet and brushed herself off again, but the contact with the leaves on her dress made her hands start itching, and when she went to scratch, it got worse, and then she saw the bumps on her palms.
Oh, no.
She could almost hear Aunt Eupa's smart-ass voice. "That's whatcha get, kid. We tell you a thing, you ignore the thing, you find out the fun way. Sometimes you learn some good shit, but mostly you just end up sorry you didn't listen."
Never climb a tree with vines on it, she remembered resolutely. Even if you're sure. Not that Brina had been.
Brina found another log. This time, she kicked it over and scrambled away from it, then scooted close enough to search for snakes. She kicked the dirt to disturb any worms, finding a handful almost immediately, including one huge fat one as long as her hand. It wasn't very filling, but she did feel a little better just because it worked that time. She was learning. Her hands itched, and she used her teeth to scratch them. Maybe her magic would adapt to that, that counted as corruption, right? That's what Daemon called it, Aunt Eupa called it poison because it was on Daddy's alcohol. Mostly it just made milk spoil and eggs go bad. Her magic didn't adapt to much, it was usually stuck until it decided to move, but sometimes she'd get lucky.
Another log! This must have been a bunch of branches that knocked each other down or something.
Brina looked for snakes, rolled the log back, then dove to grab the bugs she wanted to eat. She looked for any other limbs and found another piece of this one just a little ways off. No snakes, she made sure before approaching, then eased the wood back, this one was small enough to do that. Success!
Brina caught a handful of crickets, another handful of worms, and got even luckier when she spotted a patch of moss. This one, she knew how to do, too, she remembered, though she wasn't as strong as Ro-Ro and didn't get as much water out of it. She squeezed it between her hands right over her mouth. The taste was worse than she remembered, the cold felt sharp on her tongue. But she was so proud, she had found water and food by herself!
Her legs itched. Her feet could hardly feel the scratching, but they itched anyway. That wasn't fair. She thought about using her teeth on them, too, but her feet were even dirtier than her hands.
Brina sat on the ground to rest, panting for a moment, relieved so much it hurt. She felt better just because it happened, not even because she got food.
Maybe she'd be okay by herself. She could get herself back to the house. Or at least back to Tinian, there was a part of the city on this side of the water, she thought. A barge might let her hop across. Her family would be mad and proud and maybe she wouldn't get into too much trouble. Especially if she got it done today.
The young magician looked skyward, looked around again. She'd forgotten where she was actually trying to go. The wolves were still in the forest somewhere, they were at the river when she saw them, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it? It felt like a million years. The sun was halfway to evening, though, mid-afternoon. It would set fast this late in the year…
Her feet hurt…. Ugh. Maybe she should just find somewhere to stop now?
Well, no, the further she got from here the better. Right? Where was here? Maybe--
A sudden noise in the forest silenced Brina's thoughts. She stopped breathing, froze stiff where she sat. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She wished it wasn't so loud. Another sound. She was afraid to move and maybe alert them to where she was, but she had to look…
Her eyes searched the woods, but the trees were too thick to see anything, this was really thick woods with thin trees right here, Brina couldn't see very far at all….
The noises of things moving through the leaves, big things with rhythmic steps, got louder and steadier and closer. There were only a few, but that was more than Brina wanted to deal with. A loud thumping noise startled the child and she gasped--and immediately, the steps got faster and started coming closer. More of them became audible, and she could hear their steady panting and footsteps crunching through the leaves. They were coming for her.
Brina bolted through the forest, bruising her shoulder and collar when she dashed into a tree. Her feet tangled in themselves and she stumbled but she kept going, she had to keep going! She could feel the bites on her arms and legs, see herself being torn apart, being eaten as she struggled and screamed for help that wouldn't come. Where was Ro-Ro? They would help, right? If she screamed loud enough? Brina hurt so much, there was no way she could fight wolves! Would they eat her alive or would she be able to struggle enough that they'd kill her first?
The wolves slowed down, they weren't getting so close so fast anymore, but they were definitely nearby. They didn't lose her scent, there's no way, Ro-Ro said wolves were hunters like she was. Maybe they didn't want to eat her? Were they circling to head her off? Oh, no, they were, they were working to surround her, wolves worked like that!
Brina scrambled across the forest floor and tried to find somewhere to hide. She couldn't, there weren't, what could she do, she couldn't outrun wolves! But she couldn't think of anything else, she couldn't see any trees to climb even if her body wasn't so weak. She ran. And ran. Her legs felt like jelly, she would have run into the trees if she could get any speed, her feet staggered through the forest for her as she fought to keep herself upright.
Brina's legs got so tired that her ankles twisted from under her, and she sprawled over the ground. She couldn't move anymore, unable to get her body to cooperate with her as she tried to stand up.
She didn't see any wolves. She didn't hear any wolves. She looked into the forest behind her as she was flooded with the relief of having escaped again. She needed to get home! Gods, how does she get home from here? She was so lost, she didn't even know where to begin, she was so tired, her chest hurt and her head hurt now and she lost every bit of morale from finding the food….
Get up, she heard Ro-Ro's voice say. Come on, you can do it, it's just hard, not impossible. She said it all the time. Daemon said that this morning. She forgot Ro-Ro was where that came from. Actually, maybe Aunt Eupa. Maybe they got it from the same person. Maybe she should ask.
Ro-Ro in Brina's head didn't seem to notice or care that Brina got distracted. If you want to stop, you still have to get somewhere safe, first. Stopping where it's dangerous is just going to kill you. Don't try and get home, try and find somewhere safe, or you'll be out where it's dangerous when you have to stop. Find somewhere protected, hard to reach, with two exits.
Brina remembered the two exits part real well. Ro-Ro taught her that one the hard way. Brina had found a safe spot to sleep, an old bear den, and Ro-Ro snuck up on her and poked into the entry with her spear butt, and Brina couldn't do anything to stop her as she climbed in and tickled Brina mercilessly for a minute.
So no bear dens, Brina reminded herself.
It was Daddy's voice when she told herself, You can do it. You're amazing, remember?
Brina didn't feel amazing. She hardly felt alive. Daddy always called her that one. And a bunch of other ones, but she didn't like all of them. He did have a word for her in his other language, Elskecho or something. She liked that one. It meant 'dearest one' or 'most loved' or something like that, it didn't translate into Nond very well.
Aunt Eupa would tell her to do the words. And the breathing. Come on, kid. Can't stop now.
Brina wept, even as she counted breaths and timed them badly until it got a little less impossible, and then only hard, and finally, Brina could stop crying at least. I'm Brinarini, and I'm magic and I'm loved and I'm fast and I'm strong and I'm tough and I'm good. Breath in for four, hold for seven, blow out for eight. I'm Brinarini, and I'm magic and I'm loved and I'm fast and I'm strong and I'm tough and I'm good.
She had been those, today. Well. Except for good. But she'd been fast and strong and tough. She had been those all to the end of her limits. She had been tough and now she was itchy and achy and she was afraid she was going to freeze if her magic stopped protecting her. She had been strong so much that she could hardly move her arms.
She really hadn't been good, though. She was being punished for being bad. Daddy always said that. The rules were set to keep her safe. If he didn't punish her when it didn't go wrong, she would do it until it did go wrong, and there were things he didn't want to go wrong. At least until she could deal with what happened. Brina insisted she could deal with it and was learning today that she could not. She was good at keeping things from going wrong was all.
She dragged herself to her feet again and stumbled for the pain in them, but she stayed up. She was never going to whine about her feet hurting again, this was the worst. She was gonna always eat all her food, too. Aunt Eupa and Daddy always said that she took the food for granted, which meant she didn't know how hard it was to get, and it made her ungrateful. She wasn't sure what ungrateful meant, but she did know how lucky she was now that she could always just go into the pantry and find something to eat just because she wanted it. Water, too, she was sorry she never thought anything about them always having clean water at the house, even with all three adults telling her that they didn't have it when they were kids.
Shelter. Safety. She needed those. She had been wrong to leave the tree (though she would have frozen, now that she thought about it) but she needed to find somewhere safe to wait. She found the food, and the tiniest bits of water, and now she needed shelter. If she could find the river, even better, but she needed….
The wolves were going to find her. They were going to eat her. Ro-Ro told her all the time that she had to be a pain in the butt to find and catch and eat, but she wasn't sure how to do that anymore.
Brina thought about all the animals that Ro-Ro had brought home, all the animal pieces. She promised that she was very careful with what creatures she hunted, and that was part of why she traveled everywhere to do it. She liked hunting by herself, she said, and she was good at it. Her and Aunt Eupa used to work together when they were kids, Ro-Ro would chase and cripple with her spear, and Aunt Eupa would pounce and kill it real fast with her knife. They started with little things like rats and songbirds and worked their ways up to badgers and foxes before they were as old as Brina. Brina couldn't imagine trying to kill a fox with a knife, let alone bare handed like they did. Ro-Ro made Aunt Eupa's nose go gray when she said they hunted a bear like that when they were seven. Brina didn't get the joke. Aunt Eupa had to go for a walk to calm down after that, too.
Brina couldn't hear the wolves anymore, but she knew they could track her without any problems. Ro-Ro said their noses were better than hers by far, and she had a really good nose. Brina's feet were dragging, now. She was so tired, her legs hurt so much, it was hard to think they'd ever stop.
Imagining the wolves eating her again, her brain took it funny in its exhaustion. She imagined a bunch of wolves sitting round the table like she did with her family while her skin was out hanging for cleaning outside and her hair was woven into a coin pouch on a belt like Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa had done with so many of Ro-Ro's kills…
Really, that made her feel a little better, but she still didn't want it to happen.
I need to find somewhere to sleep...
