The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus

The boy awoke as the first rays of light from the dreamer’s heart illuminated the walls of his family’s hide tent, bruised and sore from the previous evening’s combat training. Rising gingerly and wincing with every step, he pushed the tent flap aside and stepped out into the morning air, still chilly from the frozen night yet warming rapidly as the sun slowly rose. He collected a round lump of dense bread and a mouthful of water from the ring of large glass vats at the center of the nae, and then headed to the woman standing over an enormous woven basket heaped with flat-pressed yarkroots. She handed him a sack with his allotted weight, and he went to join the other children of his age among the sentinel rocks encircling the encampment.

Though their perches on the rocks were only two to three paces off the ground, the children still were able to watch for signs of danger from every direction; aside from the occasional stone outcropping, there was little more than flat, barren wasteland as far as the eye could see beyond the borders of their nae. While they watched, the youths diced the roots up using their small training daggers. Then, flipping the weapons around to use their heavy spherical pommels, they slowly pulverized the bits in the smooth hollows ground into the rock by centuries of use, and collected the resulting flour in their yarkroot bag for the following day’s batch of bread.

The boy positioned himself away from the others in his usual location, a lone rock just close enough to camp that the adults wouldn’t call him back for wandering too far. The mortar ground into this rock was shallow and new by relative terms. Perhaps only one or two others had ever used his rock in the past. He worked on their legacy, whittling down the sharp edges of stone, grain by grain, imperceptibly enlarging the recess on the stone surface. He imagined they were just like him, his unnamed spiritual ancestors—secluded from their peers, with their emotions and desires held close to their hearts. Waiting impatiently for the day soon to come when they would move on to greater deeds.

Though he always carried his mother’s two full size daggers, their pommels were spiked instead of round; the boy also kept a training dagger for its pestle base. Grinding down his allotment of yarkroot one by one, he surveyed both the surrounding desert beyond him and the camp behind. A flatdragon scampered sinuously across the scorched expanse between two far outcroppings and disappeared into the shadows behind the rock. He made note of the spot—extra meat was a boon to the nae, and he and his siblings could use the boost in rations from the spotter’s fee. Within the encampment he saw his sister playing Seeker, searching blindfolded throughout the tents with the fire-sense for her playmates. His infant brother was likely still asleep in their tent, outside of which his father sat, grim and regal as he worked hot flames over his daggers to maintain their edges.

Another man approached on the path through the tents, and his father’s eyes went cold under his knitted brow. Three months ago, during the raid that had taken his mother’s life, this young man had been sent to guard the east perimeter of their encampment. Somehow, the spawn had gotten past him. Skirting wide around the older hunter, the younger man nodded very slightly in his direction. The boy’s father, without looking up, spat into the sand between them. 

The boy leapt from his rock and landed running. There was no greater insult among the Sædjin than to show that you would rather give your water to the sands than acknowledge another’s presence. 

Heads turned as the young hunter replied angrily to the insult. The boy’s father stood, and turned his back without a word. The boy came to a stop ten paces away as the young man barked out the Mortal Oath.

His father spun around, daggers glinting in the sun as he rushed towards his challenger. They met in the middle and commenced their dance.

Daggers flashed, painting red sprays across the surrounding sand and dirt, and the combat concluded almost as quickly as it had begun. The boy’s father was older and more experienced, but his adversary was younger and much faster. The two men collapsed opposite each other, the elder dropping limply onto his back, the younger falling to his knees and then flopping over sideways. The boy’s sister rushed in and dropped to the ground next to the bleeding old man, grasping at his hand. The other hunter’s wife and son, younger than the boy’s sister, came to his side, fighting back tears.

The boy stepped forward and stood over his father, unmoving yet still alive, and felt wholly empty. He turned and left the circle of naenfolk surrounding the bloody ring, and walked back to his rock. Climbing smoothly back up to his perch, he sat down cross-legged and produced his training dagger, eyes on the far horizon as he reduced the rest of his day’s roots into powder.

The naenfolk moved the fallen hunters to the invalid tents, where the nae healer dressed their wounds with flameberry paste and then waited for the fevers to set in. After two days, the boy’s father had walked the Celestial Path with Endrek Mær. The day after that the young man’s fever broke, and he began his long recovery.

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