Together, Begrudging

Together, Begrudging

The herders sent us out to the runerastle. Damn forest. Someone or some spirit or some thing told these herders there was a disturbance. Bug showed us images of three felled trees and large divots in the ground. Don’t intervene. Do observe.

Every week I felt my powers growing and I was getting angrier as a result. Or I was getting angrier and my powers were growing. Not sure. World’s stupid as hell though. We’ve got all this power and are still helpless to even fairly minor spirits. S’not like we’d be able to do anything if some spirit were out in the forest blowing off their own steam. And if it were some beasty fallin’ to the ol’ Gario tradition, raging and maddened, well, not sure what help we can be. Forest tends to tend itself like this though.

Keep saying we, well honestly, can’t imagine my partner will be much help like this. City knows to stay out of my way well enough, but damn Flaherty has to talk to everyone and their mother. All, ‘Ooh, yes, Lessa and I are off on a mission, very important business, herders need us to quell some trouble,’ to any nosey shopkeep we pass by.

Flaherty Dunjip has been a peer of mine for ages. I use peer quite judiciously here. She hasn’t been on my level of expression of powers since we were younglings. We’re told from first expression that there’ll only be a few powersborn any given generation, and that we should learn to rely on each other because we’re the only ones who’ll be able to really relate with each other and all that crap. Flaherty’s nice sure but she’s also awful at her efforts. Herders taught us that powers grow stronger the closer you are attuned with the land we’re in, that Gario’s land wants rage and anger. Only makes sense that the angrier you get the stronger your efforts are.

I’ve not heard Flaherty yell at a bee for stinging her. So, she falls behind. Her powers are weird - she can manipulate how heavy she is. But I’ve never really seen her do too much except make herself lighter to make athletics assessments easier. Me, on the other hand, I can grow vines. It’s kind of lame, but they can get pretty strong and I can grow thorns on them. If I had Flaherty’s powers I’d be punching shit to the moons. Or kicking some asshole down a cliff and into an early grave by making my feet insanely heavy.

I’ve even told her to do stuff like that but she just laughs it off. Which just makes me angrier.

“Lessa how’s your aunt doing?” Flaherty asked.

“What?” I said.

“Your aunt. How’s she—” She said.

“No I heard you just, why do you care about my aunt all of a sudden?” I said.

“Well we’ve got a couple hours walk ahead of us until we can begin our investigation, and you’ve just been quietly scowling as you’re plodding along. I figured I should get you out of your head so whatever it is we’re after doesn’t get alerted by your seismic steps.”

“Auntie’s good. She finished her newest… hope…weave…” I sighed, “so she’s taking one of her inspiration breaks.”

“That’s so cool! I love her weaves, they’re so cozy and always tell such interesting stories. I would have never thought about putting murals into quilts, so I admire her work immensely.”

“Yeah, I mean, well, yeah.”

“Did you pack yours incase we’re stuck overnight?”

“No!” But I knew the memorial weave Auntie Palma had made me was wrapped around the foods and supplies I kept in my pack. “Well, I didn’t pack it, but I’ve got it with me incase we need to have a meal on the ground or something.”

“A picnic. You, Lessa Palma, are suggesting you packed a blanket incase we need to have a picnic,” she was giggling at me, “you’re so funny. You can just be real: we don’t get to go out of the city often and a picnic sounded nice. I brought some hand pies from home we can share.”

Instinctively I felt my fist grip at my side while I asked, “Are they—”

“Yes there’s a few meat pies and a few fruit tartlets, and there is one of your favorite raspberry-ginger in there.”

“That wasn’t—,”

“Lessa.” Flaherty stopped and took me by the shoulders, “I have known you for over a decade now. The longest we have gone without talking to each other is about ten hours for ten years straight.” Then, shaking her head, “You don’t need to respect me, but can you at least accept that I know you well enough that you don’t need to pretend when it’s just us?”

We’d stopped walking like this, there wasn’t much room for me to look except at my chosen partner for this mission. She wasn’t the type of person who’d get into your face. Yet before I could respond she released me and kept on walking, “Spirits around us, you’re impossible.”

Did you know that when you walk directly from Gario to the runerastle, it generally takes about seven hours; however, when you have the ability to create your own vines to carry yourself across gaps, climb down cliffs, and you can make yourself intensely light and easy to carry or intensely heavy so your feet do not slip from rockholds, the trip only takes about two hours? It turns out much of the journey is navigating Royson’s Unbound and the winding, perilous paths that are necessary to take for most anyone else coming into the city due to the impossible-to-cross nature of some of the gaps. And, sure, Gario could make more bridges, but frankly, most of these gaps had bridges at one point or another and they were destroyed from rockfalls or monsters or monstrous rocks falling.

Did you also know that it can get awkward when you’re feeling vulnerable and seen by one of your closest and most annoying friends to carry them over your shoulders as you swing across canyons?

Yet, when we found ourselves in the foothills hiccuping the landscape between the forest and the mountains, like a needle that had been itching to poke a finger, I still found myself saying, “You know you could be so much stronger if you just tried.”

She responded, “Well that seems like an unnecessary and out-of-place judgment.”

“I mean but seriously. You should be able to blow my efforts out of the water. If I had your powers I’d be causing rockslides and like jumping real high then coming down on the heads of all the monsters around anytime I wanted.”

“So you’re jealous of my powers and you choose to acknowledge that jealousy by negging me into thinking I’m not doing enough?”

“Okay,” I kept walking then stopped, “well,” I looked back at her, “that’s not exactly—,”

“Some of us don’t have endless pools of rage to tap into, Lessa.” She said, “I’m not exactly living a tremendously hard life. I’m grateful for it, and I’m happy, but I’m not exactly fuming all the time.”

“S’not like it’s hard to get mad though.”

She scoffed, “For you maybe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, feeling my body clench.

A pause. Then, “You haven’t always been this way. Surely you can see that, right?”

“Riiight. Powers didn’t come on for some time,” I said.

“No, I mean how you are now. Angry. Always thinking about how to use your powers the strongest. Digging your nails into the dirt whether metaphorically or realistically.” She continued, “After Missus Palma passed away, you just stopped trying to do anything lighthearted, you stopped having fun. You’ve just been bottled up and angry and, I get that I can’t get it, I have both my parents still and you don’t, but surely you can see it at least, yeah?”

“Oh what, spirits around us, do you think I should be like?” I could feel the veins under my skin trying to erupt. This is what was wrong with Flaherty: she wanted everything to be good, kind, calm, and she didn’t understand why others wouldn’t want that. This is why despite spending nearly all of my waking time with her, I can’t stand her.

“You know damn well I’m not trying to make you be any type of way, I just want you to understand that you can’t keep this up. You’ve got to have more to live for than just being mad all the damn time,” she said, already deflating a bit in her argument.

“I’ve got plenty to live for: gettin’ strong so I can make sure no other stray beasties find it easy to snatch up and smash away anybody else.” I squared up, “Maybe that’s not enough for you, but that’s enough for me. I don’t need sophisticated shit, I don’t need everybody to even like each other, I just want them to know they’re safe. Clearly you don’t give a shit or you’d. be. trying. harder.”

Flaherty didn’t say a word as I watched what looked like the skin of her face and then the rest of her body go taut as if in attempt to restrain. She took exactly six steps, each one heavier than the last. By the third step I was bobbling from the force. By the fifth I heard branches falling from nearby trees. The sixth completely toppled me. She wrapped her dainty looking hand as far as it could go around the trunk of a tree and I watched as she pressed her fingers into the wood up to her second knuckle. Then, still in otherwise silence, she squared her hips and hefted the full-branched tree and all of its roots from the ground below up, holding it over her head like it were barely more than a feather. She spun around and locked her eyes on me. Her arm reared back, looking like she would launch the tree like a spear at me.

I responded too slowly, too late. My vines grew out of the ground trying to wrap around her arms, her shoulders, but she shrugged them off with ease. They tried to grab onto the tree as it was launching out of her hand, but the force just snapped the vines. Even holding onto the roots with all the effort I could muster barely knocked the tree off its course. No, I was too late, and I wasn’t strong enough. The tree struck my chest and barreled me some twenty, thirty feet backwards. I wove a net of vines behind me at the last moment which cushioned a lot of the force but even then, I knew I’d broken several ribs.

Not yelling, Flaherty was just talking casually to me, “Not trying hard enough. Not trying! Not trying hard enough to keep people safe?” She was giggling, laughter choking between the words, “Not! Trying!” As I watched her pick up two more trees, this time not controlled enough to completely uproot them and instead snapping their trunks jaggedly as she hefted each over her shoulders and launched them each in my direction.

They missed. Barely. But thank you spirits the trees missed. Between the vines behind me, holding me up and coaxing me into something like a stand, the mess of a full-bodied tree in front of me, and the two recently missed trees, I was nearly completely pinned into my spot.

But as the dust settled from the landings of the previous two trees, Flaherty was nowhere to be seen. The only trace of her in the distance were the marks where her feet bore into the dirt. Then, above me, “Thanks for the idea about coming down on monsters.”

Yes, above me, Flaherty maybe a hundred feet or more in the air, feet held together, heels pointed down as I watched what looked like the air literally scurrying out of her path. Yes, above me, I had finally talked my way into death. I closed my eyes and waited. I knew it would be over in seconds. “Sorry Auntie.”

She felt like a leaf. She balanced herself by just one array of toes on my forehead. I only knew she didn’t kill me by the sheer intensity of the wind that rushed down around us when she landed.

Some of the herders stressed to us that efforts, the exertion of our powers, because they were so closely tied to our emotions, would leave us feeling exhausted, vulnerable, or otherwise sensitive the more we used them. The tears streaming down my cheek as I was panting, uncharacteristically pale, supported this. So, too, did I feel Flaherty’s own tears falling down onto my face that when I squinted up at her, I could only see her beaming a smile down at me.

Wordlessly, she pulled me up out of the mess and tangle of branches, leaves, and vines and carried me over to the small, newly-formed clearing where there used to be three more trees. Then I heard her laughing once more. Instinctively, I tensed, but the softness of her palm on my shoulder as she said, “No, no, look,” and pointed at the pile.

Three felled trees and large divots in the ground.