Brina remembered her earliest lessons on scavenging. Those stuck because she liked crickets and Daddy had a fit. Ro-Ro insisted that Brina know how to find food if she couldn't hunt her own. Daddy would only occasionally yell at her when he found out what Brina was eating. He was okay with berries and tree fruits, he didn't appreciate hearing about roots or leaves, and he hated when he found out about the bugs. Daddy thought eating bugs was so gross that people that liked it shouldn't do it either.
Brina thought it was funny when she was little, then she could kind of understand, and now she understood and thought it was funny.
Most of the berry plants were picked clean already, the nuts were down to shells, and so bugs was the answer. Logs or sticks big enough for things to burrow under were less common than she expected. Food things were everywhere at home compared to here.
That might have been because it was Ro-Ro's. Brina felt silly for not thinking it before.
The search felt kind of normal after a while. She wasn't scared right now. She knew she should be, but she felt like she had a plan and knew what to do. The wolves were long gone. Or at least not close. She was still not sure Aunt Eupa or Ro-Ro weren't following her to teach her a lesson.
It was just a forest. She had a forest, she learned from Ro-Ro, she could do this.
Maybe the river would be a better place to wait?
Just find food and go back to the shelter. Follow your own tracks back.
Brina could almost swear the voice was real. It was Ro-Ro's, and she sounded so impatient.
Big logs or rocks. Pick them up and pick out the familiar ones. Brina liked worms and crickets, but ants tasted bad.
Brina scanned the woods again and found a lump in the distance. Maybe that was worth looking at.
Biiiiiig rock. No chance of lifting by herself. Daddy could pick it up in one hand.
She thought about how he would react if she really asked him to pick up a rock so she could eat the bugs under it and giggled. Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa picked on him for it, Ro-Ro said it was part of what was wrong with him (whatever that meant) and told Brina that it was great hunting practice and if she liked it, then it was good. Daddy refused to ever look, and Aunt Eupa even got mean and started joking about how good they were and describing how they tasted while he covered his ears and yelled at her.
She remembered the day they fought about it, even though she was really little. It was the spring before she started school, and Ro-Ro was visiting, and they were looking under the extra floor stones next to the bath house. Daddy caught them and yelled at them both, but Ro-Ro told her that she was fine and, "I'll handle your Daddy."
Brina still laughed to remember, Ro-Ro met him chest to chest, even though she was half his size and half a head shorter than him. Aunt Eupa didn't face him like that, and Brina had never seen anyone else do it, either.
Brina couldn't recall exact words, but she remembered the tones and the way they moved. She did remember Ro-Ro arguing that she needed to know. Daddy argued that she didn't, and Ro-Ro and Daddy went back and forth until they were shoving each other across the yard and Aunt Eupa scooped Brina up and took her to the other side of the house.
"Daddy thinks it's so gross that he should get to tell other people not to do it," Aunt Eupa explained. Brina couldn't stand watching gross stuff, but she wouldn't tell anyone they couldn't, she'd just look away. Aunt Eupa was an asshole and would chase her around with raw liver in her teeth, blood pouring down her chin and neck when they were cleaning the beast for dinner, so Brina understood, but he was still the asshole, that time.
Of course, it was the opposite with school. Daddy wanted Brina to go to school and Ro-Ro said it wasn't necessary. They went back and forth, but it was slower and quieter than the bug fight. Aunt Eupa asked Brina what she wanted. She remembered that, too.
"Alright, kiddo," which was how Aunt Eupa always started talks like this.
And then Aunt Eupa told Daddy and Ro-Ro to shut up several times while she told Brina what going to school would mean.
Daddy wanted her to learn to read and Aunt Eupa, it turned out, didn't want Brina to go either, but she said she wanted Brina to learn as much as possible from as many people and places as she could. Brina didn't like being away from her family, and lessons could get pretty boring, but it wasn't that bad.
She really wanted to go so she could meet other kids. Brina had never been lonely, but she never talked much with other kids, only having chances when their parents were in the same part of the market.
Brina made fast friends with the other adventurer kid and the halflings, of which there were several, and she got along with the other kids, even if she didn't make friends.
Except Mierta. Mierta was an asshole. She was the first one Brina encountered that wasn't her aunt.
According to everyone, Mierta was jealous of Brina's eye and family– even Mierta's parents said so. Her family was goldsmiths going back two hundred years in Tinian, and she hated it. Everyone said that Mierta didn't like the adventurer kids or the magicians because she wanted what they had and she was mad that they had it. It didn't make any sense to Brina, not even now that she was older. It upset her back then, but now it made her angry. Brina didn't even choose her magic, and Mierta could well grow up and be an adventurer if she wanted. Or just a caster, there were whole towers and schools for it! Brina was still angry.
Brina was embarrassed to remember how she must have looked back then. She was always cute, but the leather smock dress and wool stockings and boots reflected more Ro-Ro than anyone else. Daddy was braiding her hair by then, before she picked out the half-braids she liked in rows to the back of her head.
Ooh, a log! Brina sprinted to it and leapt back just in time for the snake's fangs to close on nothing. Too scared to do anything else, Brina scrambled away, automatically crying, "Sorry!" as she ran.
She did remember not to run far. Snakes don't chase threats that run, she knew that. Ro-Ro taught her often that most creatures didn't want to fight unless they had to, for food or territory, and Brina was more likely to be seen as a threat than food. It gave her a sense of safety in the forest. Or at least in her forest. This forest had wolves.
Remembering school reminded her of when she started caring about what she looked like. Up until then, she never compared herself to anyone, and her family was all so different from one another, and Brina never really liked anything but Aunt Eupa's circle dresses that did the thing when she spun.
Mierta's dress was the first time Brina saw clothes she wanted. Her dress now was her own make, but she still pulled a lot from Mierta's on the first day of school. She liked the shoulders and collar, the sleeves were puffy with ribbons. It took her forever to get the puff right. And now the… the damn thing wouldn't hold on to a ribbon.
Mierta was pretty and her clothes were so cute and it was the first time Brina saw a dress like that with the soft cloth, puffy sleeves, and ruffles. Mierta herself was adorable, with a button nose, reddish yellow ringlet curls, blushing cheeks, and dimples; she looked like a living doll.
Except when she was angry. Mierta angry looked like an imp in a dress and a wig– her brow would get hard like Daddy's and her lips would turn up like Aunt Eupa's and she would do her shoulders so that it looked like she didn't have a head anymore, just a red face in a frilly pink bodice.
Her family finally taught her to fight after Mierta made her. Better to be able to and decide not to than unable to, Ro-Ro said. It hadn't occurred to Brina that she could choose not to. Plus, if you could hold them down, you didn't need to fight back as much. That was a bad day.
Brina was trying to be nice and "show interest" in Mierta and her family. It was hard, but it kind of worked until saying Ro-Ro's name upset Mierta so bad that she pushed Brina down to slap her and pull her hair. Brina didn't know what to do and was only able to grab Mierta's hands until Peony lifted her off. Daddy had to come to the school, and so did Mierta's parents, and Brina stayed home for a couple of days while they got the ink out of her hair. They did have to get the dress cleaned magically, Aunt Eupa couldn't do anything about ink.
She never did get to fight Mierta. They put her in a different class after that.
Brina found a good flat rock and propped it up to find a bunch of worms wriggling near the surface. Brina was so hungry that she didn't even care about the dirt, let alone the chewiness. It was only a handful, but it was a handful more than she had eaten all day!
The taste wasn't bad, but the dirt was all in her teeth. And she was still hungry. She wondered distantly what her family had for dinner, or if they even ate. They were looking for her, she knew it, but she wasn't sure they knew how to call Ro-Ro.
Brina set back off on her search and let her mind wander back to school. Not Mierta. She had friends at school. Ferrin and Peony were her first friends. Ferrin was a classmate, but Peony was doing something to prepare for a different, bigger school for older kids.
Peony was only there for a couple of years. She was another adventurer kid, with an "uncle" (the same way Aunt Eupa was Brina's aunt) that could turn into a bear. Peony was calm and spoke in Brina's defense when Mierta was being rude. She was smart and could explain stuff in class when Brina didn't understand.
Peony and her family would style her hair and she would let Brina look closer to see how it was done. Hers was straight, fine, and dry, which Brina sort of understood from conversations with her Daddy and Aunt Eupa, and it was a deep blue black, which contrasted her pale green skin. She could put it in all kinds of ties and ribbons, use props in her hair to make it loop pretty, and the Solstice events were special-special done. Winter even had a candle on top.
Ferrin was a halfling boy that liked the adventurer kids. He asked a lot of questions to the point Brina got annoyed with the ones about her eye. He would cheer her up when Mierta was being mean, and he was always good for a joke.
His family lived in Tinian, and were one of several in a special part of town where most everything was sized for halflings. He had three mothers and four fathers, and between all seven of his parents, he had thirteen siblings. Six were in the same school when Brina started, and eight when she left three and a half years later. He talked about how he had to share everything and how he never got to be alone, but Brina couldn't understand his hate for it. He also said he wouldn't want to be a single child, even though he complained so much.
Brina learned a lot more than reading from school, but it wasn't anything she could explain. She learned a lot from her family, but learning it from other people gave it new parts, like the difference between Mierta being an asshole and Aunt Eupa being an asshole. Aunt Eupa explained that it was because Aunt Eupa liked her and Mierta didn't– Mierta was being an asshole on purpose, to Brina, because she didn't like Brina.
The sharp wind on her face brought the young magician out of her thoughts. It was cold and getting colder. Her hands and feet were still red, but nothing hurt. She thought she could see some bumps rising on her fingers but she looked away and pretended not to notice. She'd get to that when she could.
The bugs weren't any harder to find, but Brina was gonna run out of daylight if she kept looking, she needed to get back to her shelter.
Her hands and feet began to itch right as she had the thought, and she moaned. "Dammit!" Never taking that chance again.
It was getting dark. Brina turned on her toes and started following her own deliberately placed tracks back to the shelter she made.
Even as she walked, she worried. Would the wolves find her? Would they want to mess with her in her shelter? Would they want to eat her? It wouldn't be hard, but Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro said humans tasted bad, and she was kinda small. But she was big compared to a lot of other things-- she saw wolves but not deer....
The sky shone bright orange and pink beyond the half-barren branches, and a few dark blue clouds dotted the little she could see. The blast of cold wind in her face ruined the view.
"Can't believe you're still asleep," she mumbled aloud to her magic, and she looked around again. For a moment, the woods were just trees and leaves, and Brina had to look harder to see the tracks. She could do this.
"I should've stayed in the tree," she then said to herself.
Following her own tracks was harder than she thought. Her legs hurt. It was the first time in Brina's life that she'd used her legs so much that they still hurt after a rest. She remembered doing it to her arms, learning to climb trees with Aunt Eupa, but her legs were so used to running by the time she could remember running, she couldn't remember ever making them hurt like this.
Whatever got her lost when she was running from the wolves didn't happen this time (probably her running into things and changing directions, that was silly, too), so she could follow her own stirred up leaves and find everywhere she looked for food earlier. She was relieved to see the path laid out ahead, even in the fading light. It would help her find the hiding place before dark. She could do this.
