Pokey Pines
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:35 am
42nd of Frost, 120
"Human clothes?" The village's tailor, a long-quilled porcupine of gray and black spoke with a furrow to her brow. Like with most other Rathor in the kinship, Arkash's gaze was scattered about her features. He seemed to measure her hands, the fingers she bore, and the length of her disproportionate limbs. The narrowing of her face to the tip of her nose left a truly feral impression; he believed her to be a Beastalt. "Why's he staring?" She asked with a turn of her head to the goose in his company. "Does this outsider not speak vithmi?"
"Wait," he spoke quickly with a shake of his head. "Sorry, no, I speak vithmi."
The porcupine scoffed, crossed her arms, and tapped her foot repeatedly. "Then what's your problem? Scared I'll poke ya?"
"No, it's not that, I just-"
"-He's from Mornoth, a kingdom called Lorien," Dorn explained with a gesture of his feathered arm. "Before yesterday, I believe he'd seen... You said... Five other Rath? Including your parents?"
"Six," he corrected. There was Alphonse, Vesta, Cynistre, and Podvrak among Cojack and Liu, his parents. "I'm sorry, this is all just really new to me," he pleaded with the beginnings of a frown. "What kind of animal do you take after? I've never seen anything so spikey before." He bared his teeth with a furrow to his brow and quickly added, "I'm sorry if that's rude; you don't have to say."
The porcupine raised a brow, then shook her head dismissively. "I see," she spoke briefly, "sorry for snapping at ya then, pup. Name's Corti, and I'm something called a porcupine beastalt," she explained with a turn of her small, nimble claws. "...he knows the difference between beastalt and neoalt, right?" She asked Dorn as though he wasn't there.
"I do," he replied in Dorn's stead. "I'm Arkash, a Komodo Dragon neoalt," he explained with an introduction of his own.
"Yeah, I can see that," Corti returned with a grin.
The rath furrowed his brow. She could tell he was a neoalt? "...How?"
"The shape of ya hands, ya body proportions, the fact that you're a nose-smeller, not a tongue-smeller. Despite ya scales, face, and tail, you've got a lot of human features there," she commented with a hum. "You'll learn to pick that stuff up as you go, don't worry." Arkash looked at his hands in turn. Five digits, remarkably human-like save for the scales and claws. he then brought his hands to rub at his arms as a hard gust of freezing air rolled by. "Ice-blood, too, eh?" Asked Corti with a curl of her brow.
"Aye," returned dorn. "He needs some real winter clothes. Furs, leathers, full shebang. Can you fix some up for him by the end of the day?"
She rose a brow at that. "I've got a lot of wood to chop, Chief," she explained with a furrow to her brow. "If 'e can pay for the materials, I can get it done in three days."
Dorn exhaled at that, then looked to Arkash. "Can you work an axe, kid?"
He briefly considered contesting the fact that he'd been called a kid, but knew his place without having undergone a ceremony. "I've been chopping wood since I was twelve," he answered the goose.
To that, the chief nodded. "Great, you can chop Corti's wood while she makes your clothes. Sound fair?"
Nothing in the world was free, he supposed. "Yeah, can do," he answered with a slight grin. Even if it wasn't free, he'd seen the clothes Sharok and Korr wore; he'd truly be warm in clothing so intense. It was well worth a day of manual labor. "Do you take dranari farthings?"
The porcupine laughed. "Everywhere does, love. It's the currency for all of Atharen."
With a nod, Arkash followed into the shelter of her workshop, where he found entire crates of furs and leathers of various quality. The tables were littered with Corti's quills of various sizes and widths, which he supposed she used for the job. While she took measurements and jotted them down, he thought of how fantastic it was that a rathor's traits could dictate what they were best at in trade. Corti with her quills for sewing needles, Arkash with his claws for picking locks and running. Something caught his train of thought then while the porcupine measured the space between his hip and armpit with a piece of string.
"How come you have to chop wood if you're the village's tailor?" he asked for both Dorn and Corti to hear.
"Kinship," she corrected. "And I'm not always making clothes, ya know? My stuff's sturdy; lasts a good time. I can't just sit around and do nothing while everyone else works," she explained as she took the measurement of his arm. "You're awful slight, kid. Don't they eat up in Lauren?"
"Lorien," he corrected. "Sometimes, more if you're a citizen," he answered with a dismissive wave of his free arm, only to be slapped on the wrist. With a wince, he straightened the limb out to the side again and held it while she measured it. "But like, you have wood to chop on top of your tailoring job," he commented inquisitively.
"Yeah; we've got a quota meet before the next shipment," she answered without meeting his misty eyes, then stepped around him and wrapped the tape around the base of his tail to draw an uncomfortable shiver from the rath. "Hopsfel's remote up in the mountains; 'needs our wood for fires and craft. In return, we get pay for luxuries like leathers and furs from hunting kinships. Medicine, spare food, spice..." She trailed on and shook her head. "We're a community. We do our part for all of us; no one slacks. Tailoring? It's a hobby. Most of the village has fur and doesn't need to worry about clothes for Frost. You met Garrel, right? The grizzly?" Arkash nodded as she rambled on, even if he was only listening with half an ear. "Classic example; bear-ly wears anything at all!"
She laughed at her own joke then, Arkash and Dorn shook their heads.
"I get you," Arkash nodded, then straightened his neck with a tinge of strain on the front as he corrected his slouch. It made sense, they all worked together to achieve a common goal; the preservation of their kinship. It sounded like a simple life, but simplicity sounded better than anything he'd ever had in Lorien.
"What's your trade, Arkash?" Dorn asked with a tilt of his small head. Arkash briefly looked at the goose with his misty eyes. "I hear you get in a lot of fights where you're from, is that true?" The goose was on to him; Dorn suspected his violent path. Was it not obvious with all his scars and the lean muscle of his build? He had the eyes of a predator, a trained killer.
"I'm a laborer," he returned with a hard swallow of the rousing venoms in his jaws. "Have been since I was little; it's really the only thing open for nameless in Lorien," he explained. "I get into fights 'cus I live in a ghetto," he explained.
"What's a ghetto?" Asked Corti from a kneeling position as she measured him from knee to hip.
"Uhh, it's like the poor part of the city. Everyone's broke, living in crappy, run-down homes. Crime's high, and in Lower Nivenhain's case, the law doesn't protect the people that live there. So crimes among one another fly so long as citizens don't get hurt in the crossfire." Brief silence filled the space proceeding his explanation.
Corti withdrew then and returned to a piece of paper she'd been scribbling on for measurements. "Dare I ask what happens if a citizen gets hurt?"
Arkash shrugged. "All involved parties, bar the citizen, are executed in all cases," he returned. Dorn held quiet through the explanation and eyed the younger rath.
"....Rough," the porcupine commented, then hummed as she tapped the paper with her quill, then put it back in the ink well. "Well, I sure hope you're not broke," she spoke with a sigh. "Full shebang;" she spoke as Arkash lowered his arms. "Thick leather for insulation, heavy fur trimming to capture the heat, all put on some high boots tailored for your feet, pants, tunic, and cloak... You're looking at a pricey twenty-five-thousand for the materials."
Arkash bowed his head in acceptance, then proceeded to his backpack in the corner of the room. Dorn and Corti exchanged a look as he kneeled to dig through its contents and produced a wad of bills tied in a string. "...Thought you said you're broke?" Corti asked with an obvious furrow to her brow.
One by one, Arkash peeled through the wad as he walked toward her and counted twenty-five before he handed the farthings to the porcupine. "Nah, it's just everyone in the ghetto is."
"...And how is it you're not?" Asked Dorn with a furrow to his brow. "You're a laborer, right?"
Arkash oh-so briefly hesitated as he tied the bundle of bills back together, then walked back to his bag. "...I'm good at my job," he explained briefly. "I had to save up a lot for this journey; figured I'd need to pay for lessons," he explained with a turn of his claws.
Corti looked a moment longer once she'd double-checked his counting, then shrugged. "Whatever the case, the bills are legit. I'll have it done by sundown, so have fun chopping 'til then."
Dorn then led him to the area he was to work at, nearby Garrel, the grizzly he'd met when he first arrived at the village. Pinewood laid in piles where it had been cut down the middle, and a pile of branch-stripped logs was left piled nearby. He cast a glance to Dorn once the instructions were given to him, and he bowed his head in acceptance before he got to work.
