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--- campaigns:taika-daagru:2023-04-09 [2023-07-29 23:14] – pinkgothic
+++ campaigns:taika-daagru:2023-04-09 [2023-07-30 01:49] (current) – pinkgothic
@@ Line 123: / Line 123: @@
 Ten minutes later, she'd done so, sitting with her weight mostly carried by her right leg, testing the integrity of her left. "I can walk," she promised, finally, giving Giya her verdict, her tone one of grim self-admonishment. The knee was in pain from the torsion, but not broken or dislocated - and its pain would be a good lesson to her not to think so much of the future as to forget the present.
+**Concavenator**:
+After so many attempts to ignore it, Kukri's body had reasserted itself in the bluntest, least deniable way. Or perhaps 'Au'a the Watchful had decided to chastise the unworthy servant who had forgotten to be watchful for too long. Either way, at least the culprit had been merciful enough to wait until they were in reach of 'ikrakind.
+There was little to do but force herself back to Yakak'ratu; they could not afford to sit down and wait for improvement. Kukri pulled a tentpole out of the baggage and improvised a cane, both to help support her weight and to probe the softer snow, something that she should have done with much greater caution all along. This, if nothing else, would take her mind away from her usual reverie of numbers; hard to focus on anything else, when lances of pain shot through her legs at nearly every step. What a marvellous invention was pain, and how dull her ancestors must have been if this was necessary to prevent them from destroying themselves.
+Perhaps this could have been an opportunity for teaching too, but in truth at this moment she felt far too foolish to teach anything to anyone, save perhaps herself. Giya was delicate enough not to offer advice that would only have been useful before the fact, and merely offered to take some of Kukri's baggage to make the burden on her feet lighter. When the mist cleared, the lights of Yakak'ratu were already visible in the distance; they could pull through yet.
+**pinkgothic**:
+The embarrassment of the fall was quite manageable. It wasn't Kukri's first expedition into treacherous territory and she knew fine well that it was the end of the journey that was the most dangerous for such things, when one's mind considered the dangers already overcome. She should have known better, yes, but it soothed her, in between the barbs of pain, that it had happened when it could, rather than when it would have consigned her to certain death. Now it was merely an inconvenience and a bruise to her pride.
+"Thank you for your guidance," Kukri said, when she was sure that the pause between spikes of pain would last long enough to say it. "I might not have made it on my own."
+Technically, she had not yet made it. Even if they crossed the final steps to Yakak'ratu, it was still not Grikaa. The world could offer her no guarantees that she would make it there, only a generous probability. But it was enough.
+**Concavenator**:
+In the end, Kukri did have to walk leaning somewhat onto Giya, if for no other reason than to avoid listing on one side and spilling her baggage on the ground. But step by painful step, the lights, then the sounds, then the scents took them back. The snow became trampled to mush, scraped to its gravelly bed, and littered with all sorts of rubbish chips of wood, animal dung, frayed rags, gnawed fish bones. How beautiful, how tender, how comforting that rubbish was, a promise of soft beds, warm meals, standing walls, and fires to thaw frozen feathers and drive away roving //yachakri//.
+The weary travellers took the last wavering steps that brought them within the borders of Yakak'ratu, last sentinel among the cities of the deepest south. Wind from the glaciers still lapped at their back; but now it was reduced to the strength of a breath. Wooden shacks rose to greet them, creaking and smoking, glowing a warm yellow through crevices and boarded windows. People, real living people, the last stragglers of the early spring feast, paced all way on the greyish sleet of the alleys. There was civilization, finally, to a degree.