Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 8:22 am
Lyov, Firsthome
Second Day of Harvestmoon, Year Twelve
Lyov saw images of the past running through his head.
His body bore the familiar marks of an aggravated boar. At first glance, he looked to be a lost cause - bruising covered his entire body, and blood seemed to seep from every pore. However, a keen eye would quickly notice that the beast had not gored him. Lyov saw it clearly.
Alone, without a tribe, his meals were a thing of convenience. He could not risk, nor did he have the ability to, take on the hunt of large beasts, and he wouldn't generally target boar. However, he had seen what he thought was a cornucopia - a nesting of piglets, seemingly abandoned by their mother. He knew it could happen; if the mother was taken by something larger, or if the litter was runtish. And this litter did look runtish. They ailed, seemed to be starved, and one could not even open its eyes. As he cautiously approached, it did not even respond to his presence.
But the mother did. The mother was likely too old or too malnourished to produce milk, and Lyov knew that she would not survive their fight, but she survived long enough. The female boar, of course, had no horns, but even feet weak from starvation could do visible damage to the outstretched, vulnerable body of Lyov, caught as he was reaching towards the smallest of her piglets. The fight was brutal, and Lyov fought with the only weapon that he had to hand, a sharp rock found only by convenience. It would be a death by a thousand cuts for the boar, and much of the blood that made Lyov a terrible sight was hers. He was not faint from blood loss, but rather, from the shock and adrenaline mixing with what had now become a full day without food and drink.
He cursed himself for not seeing the boar, and then, his memory stopped.
It reawoke at the terse voice of Ivan Nemtsov.
A faint, suspicious tone was all Lyov could follow, for now. He gathered that there was an inquiry as to his identity, and his voice was uncertain, wavering, and quiet.
"Lyov. Call me Lyov." He spoke slowly, his voice dry and cracking.
"I am A-Lone. A boar attacked me while I sought food. I am without spirit, but my body is unbroken."
He heard the voice of a little girl, speaking urgently with Ivan.
From there, he again lapsed into sleep, roused again by Maria.
Even now, his eyes glazed over, and his lips only recently moistened by drink and some rudimentary potage, he took a pointed interest in the process of bandaging. It was clear that he was not familiar with the technique, nor the material circumstance, but he had quickly surrendered himself to the care of Maria and Ivan. Although he followed only blindly, his fingers gently reviewed the work made on each of the finished wrappings, and he followed along the lines of his veins as they reacted to the pressure. As he regathered the senses beyond touch, his head instinctively turned towards the comforting glow of the fire. He was familiar with fire, of course, and had become accustomed to producing it, but he quickly deduced that a far larger group was responsible for making this one - there was much ash, and a good collection of firewood indicated to him that there was a definitive long-term orientation to his current hosts.
He chuckled to himself, almost as if at a hidden joke, when he realised the far more obvious evidence of a large settlement - his surrounds. He had not even thought to consider it as anything more than a natural formation, but it was so meticulous, so artificial, and so organized, that he started to suspect that there was no logical alternative to the fact that it was a manmade, permanent construction. He calculated that it could easily fit perhaps a dozen people, probably far more.
He turned to face his carers. Although now possessed more of his senses, he still spoke slowly, and quietly, his mind not yet comfortable with the concept of a group of people. Even when speaking to Ivan at a distance additionally, he simply directed his whispers past Maria. It gave him a deliberate, distant tone, even more so emphasized by the fact that he had not yet grasped a need for an identity, or names, nor had he inquired into theirs. "How many people did it take to build this stockade?" He struggled to put into terms the concept of a permanent settlement, which he understood only intuitively, eventually settling on characterizing residency in the present tense. "How many souls are here?"
Lyov's current agenda: Recuperation, memorizing as much as he can about everyone who comes into the stockade, and their relationships with each other.
Second Day of Harvestmoon, Year Twelve
Lyov saw images of the past running through his head.
His body bore the familiar marks of an aggravated boar. At first glance, he looked to be a lost cause - bruising covered his entire body, and blood seemed to seep from every pore. However, a keen eye would quickly notice that the beast had not gored him. Lyov saw it clearly.
Alone, without a tribe, his meals were a thing of convenience. He could not risk, nor did he have the ability to, take on the hunt of large beasts, and he wouldn't generally target boar. However, he had seen what he thought was a cornucopia - a nesting of piglets, seemingly abandoned by their mother. He knew it could happen; if the mother was taken by something larger, or if the litter was runtish. And this litter did look runtish. They ailed, seemed to be starved, and one could not even open its eyes. As he cautiously approached, it did not even respond to his presence.
But the mother did. The mother was likely too old or too malnourished to produce milk, and Lyov knew that she would not survive their fight, but she survived long enough. The female boar, of course, had no horns, but even feet weak from starvation could do visible damage to the outstretched, vulnerable body of Lyov, caught as he was reaching towards the smallest of her piglets. The fight was brutal, and Lyov fought with the only weapon that he had to hand, a sharp rock found only by convenience. It would be a death by a thousand cuts for the boar, and much of the blood that made Lyov a terrible sight was hers. He was not faint from blood loss, but rather, from the shock and adrenaline mixing with what had now become a full day without food and drink.
He cursed himself for not seeing the boar, and then, his memory stopped.
It reawoke at the terse voice of Ivan Nemtsov.
A faint, suspicious tone was all Lyov could follow, for now. He gathered that there was an inquiry as to his identity, and his voice was uncertain, wavering, and quiet.
"Lyov. Call me Lyov." He spoke slowly, his voice dry and cracking.
"I am A-Lone. A boar attacked me while I sought food. I am without spirit, but my body is unbroken."
He heard the voice of a little girl, speaking urgently with Ivan.
From there, he again lapsed into sleep, roused again by Maria.
Even now, his eyes glazed over, and his lips only recently moistened by drink and some rudimentary potage, he took a pointed interest in the process of bandaging. It was clear that he was not familiar with the technique, nor the material circumstance, but he had quickly surrendered himself to the care of Maria and Ivan. Although he followed only blindly, his fingers gently reviewed the work made on each of the finished wrappings, and he followed along the lines of his veins as they reacted to the pressure. As he regathered the senses beyond touch, his head instinctively turned towards the comforting glow of the fire. He was familiar with fire, of course, and had become accustomed to producing it, but he quickly deduced that a far larger group was responsible for making this one - there was much ash, and a good collection of firewood indicated to him that there was a definitive long-term orientation to his current hosts.
He chuckled to himself, almost as if at a hidden joke, when he realised the far more obvious evidence of a large settlement - his surrounds. He had not even thought to consider it as anything more than a natural formation, but it was so meticulous, so artificial, and so organized, that he started to suspect that there was no logical alternative to the fact that it was a manmade, permanent construction. He calculated that it could easily fit perhaps a dozen people, probably far more.
He turned to face his carers. Although now possessed more of his senses, he still spoke slowly, and quietly, his mind not yet comfortable with the concept of a group of people. Even when speaking to Ivan at a distance additionally, he simply directed his whispers past Maria. It gave him a deliberate, distant tone, even more so emphasized by the fact that he had not yet grasped a need for an identity, or names, nor had he inquired into theirs. "How many people did it take to build this stockade?" He struggled to put into terms the concept of a permanent settlement, which he understood only intuitively, eventually settling on characterizing residency in the present tense. "How many souls are here?"
Lyov's current agenda: Recuperation, memorizing as much as he can about everyone who comes into the stockade, and their relationships with each other.