Fading Into Grey

Chapter One | Boom, Crunch

The Ebran Tribe

He had been a fool to take her out that morning, and Ta'em Tsan'ten knew it forever afterward. 

   He had had awoken early as usual.  He stretched out on his bed and found the other side cold.  He had been sleeping alone again.  He heard his daughter, her breath rattled with sleep, in her own bed across the way, and then another breathing he wasn't familiar with.  He knew his home well and that was certainly foreign.  He slowly sat up from the fur covers, his ears twitching as he picked up the other breathing.  His eyes scanned the darkness, as easily as if you were looking about during the day, before they alighted upon the room divider.  As he paid closer attention, he came to the realisation that the breathing was laboured, not to mention intermingled with another's; he gave a silent sigh.  His brother had taken on another one.

   In a deft movement he slipped easily out of the bed, standing to his full height.  He was just over six and a half feet tall, of slender build with grey skin.  His face had a high forehead, long thin nose, high cheekbones.  He had thin eyebrows of a ginger colour, his of which were constantly knitted together so it was as if he had a permanent frown.  The coarse hair on top of his head, which he kept in a short crop style, was the same colour as his eyebrows.  His hands and feet, with fleshy pads on the palms and soles which extended to his fingers and toes, guaranteed a strong grip with any climbing he did, or any hunting, as he would later in the morning.  He wore simple clothes, a tight-fitting shirt and pants for ease of movement, and decided against taking out his winter cloak.  Not today. 

   His ice-blue eyes, differing from the rest of his kind only by the black spot in his right iris, keenly searched through the darkness.  He reached out to grab a long spear that was propped up against the wall; it had a wooden staff that joined to a sharp, metallic-like substance at the end.  Every tribe member decorated their own to make it unique, but Kyoki had begged him to let her decorate his new one he had made when she was six – he felt a warm happiness as he felt the shaky carvings she had gouged into it with his fingers, and the several white feathers of an eki she had entwined around the base of the stone.  It was a running jest between the clan members, especially his warriors, of who really ran the Tsan'ten household – the father or the daughter.

   Kyoki was sleeping soundly in her own bed, her small body curled up amongst her fur covers, as if she had made a nest on her mattress.  Keeping his spear in his dominant hand, he reached out with his other to lightly shake her; she groaned and merely adjusted her sleeping position, her incredibly long tail curling tightly around her curved form. 

   "Little snowflake," he rumbled in his throat gently, nudging her again.  "Come.  It's time to face the day."

    Kyoki slowly opened her left eye, and then her right, her brilliant blue orbs shining, before closing them again and rolling over onto her stomach.

   "Oh, come on now, my little snowflake," he encouraged, "I don't wish to go and greet the day alone," before beginning to pull away the parts of the mauve fur she had wrapped around her; she reached out and tried to pull them back.  He watched her with a mingled expression of exasperation and amusement.  He sat himself on the edge of her mattress, his weight making the fur covered by a cotton-like material sink ever so slightly.  He thought for a moment, before changing tack; he reached out and gently tugged at one of the feathers tied around his spear, and began to dance it on her face.  Her eyes were wide open now, and as he tickled her, he could see the slightest hint of a smile.  "Now if you do not like one of the boys in the tribe one bit, keep your face straight..."

   It didn't work; she gave a laugh as the feather ran under her sensitive nose.  "Da!" she complained, though she was still laughing.

   "Hush," he quickly told her.  He looked then to the room divider, blankets of material that hung from the rafters, and remembered why especially today he wanted to take Kyoki out of the house – there were some things an eleven year old just didn't need to know yet.  "Let's go.  We can get an early breakfast together, hmm?  Wouldn't you like that?"