Demesne Patron EX SS 4 - The Mighty Hunter (Patreon)

Karina woke with a yawn, rubbing her eyes. Outside, the world was still dark, save for the light glowing from the old dining hall and Binder Lori's Dungeon, where it was bright as day all the time.

Growing up, she remembered waking to the Iridescence right outside their window, how it would cover a third of their little house, and they had to be careful to keep their heads out of it and to wash any parts that had colors grow on it as soon as they could. Mama was always careful about the colors. She used to tell Karina about what happened to people who let the colors grow on them, how they'd become living undead, trying to eat people like they were beasts.

Their new house was so much bigger than their old house, and itay didn't have to work in fields covered in colors, risking getting sick and tainted if he didn't get back inside in time, especially during hot days. Even though they still slept on the floor, they had room to stretch now if they wanted to. Itay said they'd have beds and furniture like a table and chairs soon, ones they didn't have to fold up so they'd have room to sleep. Karina wasn't sure why, since they already have big tables like that in the dining halls, but it sounded exciting.

Still, that was far in the future, like a week from now. Maybe even two weeks, which was so far away she would likely forget about it. Today, she had work to do. Carefully, she slid out of the worn, thin bedroll, trying not to disturb her little brothers Ciif and Jiiboy, and her sisters Malli and Siithia, letting them sleep a little longer. As their older sister, it was her job to let them do things like that. Itay and inay were still sleeping on their own bedroll, lying on their side with itay behind inay, their blanket over them. There was just enough light for Karina to put on her clothes, including her once-new shoes, grab her seeling rod, her spare, and her rope, and head outside.

Even though the world was dark and cool, the sky was starting to brighten, becoming blue and a little orange. They were safe colors, not like the bad colors that were too many to count and kept changing all the time and covered everything. Colors in the sky were safe… mostly. Weird colors were bad.

She found Lord Rian where he usually was in the morning. He was practicing with his sword this time, swinging it in a strange way, not at all like the big, wide swings Karina thought you did with a sword. She'd asked him about that once, and he'd told her that while those kinds of swing were strong and nice-looking, they were easy to dodge, so they weren't much good. Most of the time, he said, it was better to keep your sword close to you, between you and who you were fighting. That way if he tried to hit you, he was more likely to hit your sword first, and you'd be safe.

Karina thought that made sense, even though she didn't really understand. Still, she'd dutifully nodded and thanked him for telling her, giving him her best smile. Lord Rian worked really hard so other people could smile, so smiling for him was the least she could do to show him she was thankful.

He saw her, of course. He never just ignored people, not like Wiz Lori, even if they were doing nothing. He nodded to her as she passed, heading to the river to wash her face and get something to drink, and she gave him a smile, which made him smile in turn.

Now that she was washed, she headed for the seels. She wasn't supposed to be doing this without one of the older kuya or ateh to watch her, but they didn't really do anything anyway except hold the knives. Karina walked the familiar, now-worn path to her hunting grounds, no longer having to push aside any ropeweeds, since they'd all been cut. Yon, Ereng and Mallin were rope makers now, and seemed a lot happier than they'd been where they were only catching one or two seels a day, if any. Karina was glad they'd found something they were good at.

She, however, was going to stick to hunting. Karina was going to be the greatest hunter ever, and everyone would always have meat to eat and never have to go hungry again. She was only hunting seels now, but when she was bigger, she'd hunt beasts too. She'd join the hunting parties who go into the colors and come back with beasts for everyone to eat, so that people didn't have to go hungry.

Itay wanted her to stop so she could help him take care of the fields they were planting, but there were a lot of people who could do that. Only she and the other children knew how to catch seels at all except for Wiz Lori, and Karina thought she'd used magic to do that. Wiz Lori had been the only grown up she'd ever seen at least try. Only Lord Rian seemed to understand. He came over when they were seeling sometimes, thanking them for their hard working, telling them it was thanks to them Lorian could feed itself, and that what they were doing was important.

Karina heard the seels before she saw them. The big ones were still asleep, but many of the little ones were already active, eating slugs, squids, and waterbugs among the weeds and reeds. She kept her footsteps quiet, trying not to be heard. They used to be able to walk right up to the seels without them caring, but nowadays the smaller seels would avoid them if they got too close, and the big ones would make threatening sounds at them. Lord Rian said that was normal, because the seels were learning that people wanted to eat them, and they didn't want to be eaten.

For a moment, she stood there, assessing her targets. She looked longingly at the large, fat, long adults, as big around the middle as her itay and six, sometimes seven paces long. No one had yet managed to catch one. no one wanted to risk getting knocked into the water and having something horrible happen to them, and she was sure half the reason kuya Vov, ateh Krihs, ate Virry, ate Tanny and other older people kept an eye on them was to keep them from doing exactly that. But one day, she'd catch one of them. She'd be the first to catch one of the big seels. She just had to get a little bigger and stronger…

But for today, she'd catch a seel for breakfast, like she always did.

It wasn't that she actually ate the seel for actual breakfast. She hadn't needed to do that for a long time now, since Wiz Lori had made those cold rooms and they stored the seels they caught in the cold room's ice for eating later. But it was what she did. She always caught a seel before she went to breakfast. It was usually a small one, since she had to be back soon to sit with the other children, or else Wiz Lori wouldn't let anyone eat—Wiz Lori was like that—but she had to catch one before she let herself eat. It was… what had that word Lord Rian had used been? Symbolic. The seel was her right to have breakfast, by giving more food than she was eating.

Karina nodded and hefted her seeling rod. The tip was a bit worn, but still pointy enough for what she needed to do. She'd borrow kuya Vov's knife to make a new point later. If it broke before then… well, she had her spare rod.

Bending down, she hoisted her skirt above her knees and began to gird her loins. When she finished tying her skirts in front of her, she took a few steps, then squatted down and stood a few times before nodding in satisfaction. Carefully, she tied her rope to a tree, then tied the other end around her waist. Most people tied their rod to them, but those were people who weren't as good as her, and needed to throw their rod a lot to hit anything. She only need one throw to catch one seel. No, she needed to tie herself in case she fell into the water. She didn't want to drown, after all.

Her rope was good—Yon had made it for her, in exchange for climbing a tree to get him some happyfruit, since he wasn't very good at climbing—and she held it looped loosely over her non-throwing elbow, in case she fell and had to grab it in a hurry, as she clambered over the rocks and towards her favorite spot for seeling. She'd been hoping for an adolescent still asleep, but no such luck. All those still resting were the large adults, too dangerous to try and spear even while asleep (but only for now, she swore in her heart).

Carefully, she examined the water around her spot, using the non-pointy end of her seeling rod to poke at the plants and weeds around it, in case there was a seel hiding there that might startle her and make her fall into the water. It had happened twice, and she was resolved it not happen a third time. Satisfied there was nothing hiding to surprise her, she stood on her spot and squatted down, watching the water.

This early in the morning, without the sun shining through the clear water, she could barely see more than dark shapes flitting about beneath the surface. Still, she sat patiently, her seeling rod across her knees as she let her eyes relax, letting them adapt to what she was seeing, letting them get used to the movements and not the shapes or colors. It was hard to do, since the moving water was very distracting, and she occasionally had to shift her balance so she didn't fall over. Eventually though, her eyes adjusted, and while she still couldn't see things through the water very well, she could see the movement of things.

Slowly, carefully, staring at the water, trying not to blink, Karina raised the seeling rod up over her shoulder, its point down towards the river's surface, and waited.

––––––––––––––––––

The seel she'd gotten was a large adolescent, almost as tall as her and it had been really hard to hit its head on the rocks so it would stop moving, but Karina managed to do it. Karina prided herself in being able to get the biggest seels out of everyone who hunted at the river. The days when she caught the small, arm-long seels was long past now. Every seel she caught was another step towards finally being the first to catch one of the big adult seels by herself!

She hurried to get it to kuya Vov or tito Ralii, someone who was allowed to use a knife to clean the seel's insides. It had taken some waiting for the right opportunity, but the struggle hadn't been long, and fortunately none of the adults had tried to go after her, as they sometimes did when they were more awake. She'd used her rope to tie the seel's head to her spare rod so it wouldn't bleed all over her when she carried it, a trick tito Ralii had taught her. There was nothing to be done for the water on her dress though, splashed on her during the seels struggles to escape.

Tito Ralli had a shed near the bone pit where he hung the skins for curing. It was one of the few structures in the demesne not made by Wiz Lori, and it showed. It was made of long branches for support, its walls made from mud and smaller branches woven and bundled together. Tito Ralii didn't actually live in it—he lived in a house with his sister and her family—it was just somewhere to keep the brain potion and things he used to cure hides, as well as where he and made the frames for holding the seel skin while it was being tanned. They always needed more frames, since she and the other always brought more seels every day, but tito Ralii never complained. In fact, he was always glad for the new skins.

"Mornin' Karina," Tito Ralii said, looking up from where she was examining one of the larger skins. It was definitely one Karina had caught. It was one of the biggest, after all. "Got something for me again?"

Karina nodded, carefully laying down the seel. It still twitched a little, but that was normal.

Tito Ralii nodded in approval. "You always bring me the big ones, girl. Go on, I'll take care of this," he said. "You better get to breakfast before Wiz Lori sends us people out to go looking for you. She won't care if I'm not there, but one of you young ones…"

Karina nodded. Wiz Lori could be very mean or very nice, and some people seemed to have trouble telling which it would be, so they mostly left dealing with her to Lord Rian. "Thanks tito Ralii," she said, taking a moment to untie her skirts. She waved at him as she ran for the Dungeon where all the children were required to eat so Wiz Lori would be able to tell they were there. She didn't seem to care about them much after that, but until every one of the children were there, no one was allowed to eat.

Fortunately, she wasn't the last one there, and she had time to give her little brothers and sisters and inay and itay a good morning hug before she sat done at the children's table to be counted. They were all there when Wiz Lori finally came down from her special wizard cave, walking past their table as if she didn't care, which meant everyone was present. If anyone had been missing, she'd have stopped, counted all the children, then gone straight to Lord Rian instead of sitting at her table and waiting for him.

The count done, all the children went back to sitting with their families, and Karina immediately found herself being scolded by her mother for getting her dress wet. Not the fact she'd obviously gone seeling, since she'd walked in and put her rods and rope on the until-then empty rack near the door, but for the dress. Karina kept her sigh inside and listened dutifully as her inay scolded her—and her siblings by extension, because if one of them got scolded, everyonegot scolded, even if no one had actually done anything—about being careful with her clothes, they couldn't just go to a store to buy a new dress anymore, she had to be careful, she was a growing girl and this dress was supposed to last for the next two years…

Karina nodded at all the right parts, saying yes and no with her siblings when their inay clearly wanted a spoken response rather than just a nod. Scoldings were the price she had to pay to keep her pride as Lorian's best seel hunter. One day though, when she finally brought in an adult seel all by herself, even her inay wouldn't be able to scold her for getting her dress wet. She was sure of it.

So she sat and took the scolding bravely as everyone waited for breakfast to finish cooking so they could all eat, wishing her inay would finish so she could go to one of her friends' tables to play a game as they ate…