Chaliimriia will never completely adjust to the clinging heat of the flatlands. This afternoon sprawled in the heart of summer. The air here was full of soft, muzzy smells: Warm soil. Mature grass. The sweat of the day's steady walk. A thousand other layers that must mean everything to the Kwi'Sakdi, who are wise in such a place. It was all intriguing. Most of it, she would never have the leisure time to learn.
Did something smell wrong? Sound wrong?
How would she know?
Better to keep quiet. Better to find a useful place to occupy, one whose impact on Kwi'Sakdi practices will be mild until sharpness is needed.
While Kavi and the Lady of Silences did their work, Chaliimriia quietly moved past them -- swinging wide away from the marks in the ground, that she may not mar any clues. She stopped at a point on the road ahead, perhaps two yards forward from their area of interest.
Chaliimriia had spent hours thinking about the dispositions she saw the Company make of themselves in moments of varying danger.
She liked this one, with the flexible arc of three or four. They could attack and defend with equal ease, covering an ideal range of approaches for so many possible threats. They freed the one or two in the concave space to focus on detail work. They could act independently, or support one another, with equal ease. They could trace a wide, shallow crescent, or a tight semicircle, depending on the shape of the ground and the colors of the sky.
She liked the aesthetics of it. Any Samakarii would! Function and elegance.
With the SNAFU Guild, Chaliimriia would not have placed herself at the forward edge of a perimeter formation. This spot would have felt too much like the nocking point on a half-drawn bow, facing to the rear. In the SNAFU Guild, her proper halting position was near center: the mountain squall from which other spirits streamed, order within chaos within order, each according to their origins. Kwi'Sakdi Company carried a different energy flow. Chaliimriia thought they would stay a grassland, a wide plain in the sunlight, while she shaped the wind from one side as a mountain spirit ought to do. Let these people descend upon the fight with power behind them.
As the faint road dust settled around her, Chaliimriia lifted the heavy necklace chain over her head. She wrapped it over the leather arm-guard on her left forearm a few times, murmuring a prayer in
Fa'lain:
Protector, you are impervious;
guide our salvation.
Storm Mother, you are the swift-cutting air;
guide our strike.
Huntress, you are beyond limits;
guide our craftworks.
Good Matron, you are storm and mountain, protector and pursuer;
I have been wearing this armor for a day and a half, and more than half. I have no breeze. I muchly wish to discuss my waning tolerance with whatever begat the need to wear my armor as I travel. Guide our adversaries to the place where they shall receive your blessings.
The sword-shaped pendant dangled over the back of her left hand. Anyone facing the riser of her longbow would see the holy symbol of Zla Lngan Ma before they saw the tip of a nocked arrow.
For six seconds, a swirl of red hailstones reflected in Chaliimriia's hazel gray eyes.
In reaction to Kavi's warning of possible danger, Chaliimriia used her right hand to unsnap the straps for her backpack. She shrugged enough that it would thud dully to the ground behind her. She drew an arrow from the quiver at her hip and readied it, drawing the string only partway, bow still pointed downward.
