crossroads
Feb. 26th, 2022 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Crossroads
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: The Riders Series (Tara Chang)
Wordcount: 1,060
Summary: There's a choice to be made, but Tara's not sure she's ready to make it.
Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Post-Canon, Grief
Remarks: I had a devil of a time settling on the conclusion to this one, and in a way that struggle became the conclusion. Call it the wordy version of a sketch - rough in places but holding enough character on its own to get the ol' one-two-yeet.
◘◘◘
She'd come to Tarmin lean and wary, more meat in her pack than laid over her ribs. Fresh from Darwin and the ridge, and what she'd thought amounted to hell in all youthful ignorance - Tara Chang had come sniffing at the fat of Tarmin town as cautiously as any skulk-footed scavenger, and found it fit her hungry wanting. Shelter, work that paid enough to eat, and company. Good company. Enough to stay.
The places are exchanged now. Months of warm meals and winter lazing sit comfortably under her belt, a comfort alien to the timbered skeletons sticking out of a lush carpet grown up through cobblestone, fountaining seedheads topping posts and rails. Ash, bone and blood has fed the fresh promise of spring into a ferocious early bloom throughout the lay of the town, tickling the back of the throat on every inhale.
"Keep the gate closed and stay clear of the creepers," she tells the Evergreen surveyors - glint-eyed with a familiar greed - and strides away before they can irritate her by asking why. Or irritate by staying quiet. She's not so unreasonable she doesn't know her own traps.
The Evergreeners test every edge of her patience, though, and the silence of a dead town is perverse respite after a day in their company. Not altogether why she'd stated herself the accompaniment on this first pass through Tarmin, of course. Not why Guil hadn't argued her on it.
But her horse had been getting antsy in the thick of bickering villagers, the crowding at the midway camp. Didn't need much more justification than that.
Flicker's quiet at her side now, at least, not holding a wealth of sentiment towards overgrown roads and registering only the vague awareness of known territory in the surrounding forests, the pleasing sensation of striking out through fresh grass in the lone company of her rider. No horses allowed in the main gates of Tarmin, once upon a time; it's only Tara who remembers <tanner's, rich and stinking> where Flicker idly observes <wood triangles, mossy door>. The smells are all but gone. Winter has had its length to worry at what remained.
She follows her own advice as she goes, stepping aside from anywhere crimson and lignous coils push out of hollowing timber, already budding. They'll lose some of what's left, the eager soon-to-be settlers from Evergreen. More than hoped, probably. Not much to be done once creepers set in.
The shape of the town holds true, though. She marks it on the slow walk up the shadow of the main street, hands tucked in pockets, damp earth and hard stone by turns underfoot. Marks what the surveyors will make their notes on, as best she can for one who's never known a town trade: plenty of buildings needing patchwork, but only a few crying out to be pulled down altogether. That's what will make it worthwhile. There's rust on machines, damp in living quarters, enough <scratching, wriggling> at the edges of her awareness to be sure of nests under floorboards and in ceilings - but it can be cleared. It can be mended. The venture will come good, more likely than not, a link in the High Loop reclaimed.
Maybe they'll even keep the name.
It sits in her belly like bad milk. Queasy and calling for violence, a convulsive rejection.
<Sun.> It's not for the horse. Horse is fine; horse has found a sprig of young inchweed to nose at, paying small attention to her rider slowing to a standstill. Tara thinks it anyhow, for her own sake. <Sun through branches.> And then, dry dark humour: <Sun through cracked rooftops. Light glinting off rusted pans, broken glass, tarnished jewelery.>
Vadim would approve. Beauty in any place, any circumstance; just a matter of perspective.
<Tara upset.>
She reaches - for her own sake again, she can admit - to find Flicker's sleek neck, runs soothing pressure over the strong pulse under the jaw; shifts her hand down over the curve of her ribs, starting to round. A belly full of something far more precious than bad memories.
She'd come to Tarmin hungry and wanting; looking for what could be taken, not owed. That hasn't altogether changed. Flicker will need a safe place to foal - animal needs, now and then.
The emptiness of Tarmin holds its own hunger. People and stock, trade and labour - lifeblood to revive this great corpse. The very centre of a great shifting bearing down hard on the Loop, knowing and unknowing alike; a whole lot of movement and change camped uphill, surveying the streets, straining at the thin leash of law. And a need for riders. As ever.
But oh, the very thought of it, of taking up in that camp and den again; it curdles. Of a room still holding whatever of her own gear the vermin haven't chewed straight through, <Mina sitting catty-cornered with mending in her lap, scowling at Vadim holding the palette knife overhead between two teasing fingers->
Tara hadn't grieved long when her mother passed. No damn time to waste on it for one thing; and her mother hadn't been the kind who encouraged grieving. She doesn't know how long she's meant to carry this. Not near fool enough to think she won't carry it regardless.
In an Evergreen cabin, a thick covering of blankets over their heads to fill the space between them with their own warm musk, she and Guil had talked on the subject. On and off.
"No one'll blame you," he'd said.
He hadn't said, if you stay. Hadn't said, if you don't.
(Good man. Good partner, no doubt. Not a town man. So there's that.)
There were only two people left in the world who might say we blame you for running, and so far neither of the boys had given sign it had even been a passing thought. Any debt - well, it's her own scrip to write.
She hadn't come to Tarmin looking to owe. Hadn't come looking to stay, either. Hadn't come looking to trust, or feel anything close to belonging.
Tara Chang - fresh from the Fall of Tarmin, and the Slaughter at Evergreen, and what she knows in grim surety to be closer to hell than anything the preachers conjure at the altar - leans her weight to the damp heat of her horse's shoulder and allows that the need for a decision is one that can go unfulfilled, today.
Until it comes insistently mouthing again, tomorrow.
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: The Riders Series (Tara Chang)
Wordcount: 1,060
Summary: There's a choice to be made, but Tara's not sure she's ready to make it.
Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Post-Canon, Grief
Remarks: I had a devil of a time settling on the conclusion to this one, and in a way that struggle became the conclusion. Call it the wordy version of a sketch - rough in places but holding enough character on its own to get the ol' one-two-yeet.
◘◘◘
She'd come to Tarmin lean and wary, more meat in her pack than laid over her ribs. Fresh from Darwin and the ridge, and what she'd thought amounted to hell in all youthful ignorance - Tara Chang had come sniffing at the fat of Tarmin town as cautiously as any skulk-footed scavenger, and found it fit her hungry wanting. Shelter, work that paid enough to eat, and company. Good company. Enough to stay.
The places are exchanged now. Months of warm meals and winter lazing sit comfortably under her belt, a comfort alien to the timbered skeletons sticking out of a lush carpet grown up through cobblestone, fountaining seedheads topping posts and rails. Ash, bone and blood has fed the fresh promise of spring into a ferocious early bloom throughout the lay of the town, tickling the back of the throat on every inhale.
"Keep the gate closed and stay clear of the creepers," she tells the Evergreen surveyors - glint-eyed with a familiar greed - and strides away before they can irritate her by asking why. Or irritate by staying quiet. She's not so unreasonable she doesn't know her own traps.
The Evergreeners test every edge of her patience, though, and the silence of a dead town is perverse respite after a day in their company. Not altogether why she'd stated herself the accompaniment on this first pass through Tarmin, of course. Not why Guil hadn't argued her on it.
But her horse had been getting antsy in the thick of bickering villagers, the crowding at the midway camp. Didn't need much more justification than that.
Flicker's quiet at her side now, at least, not holding a wealth of sentiment towards overgrown roads and registering only the vague awareness of known territory in the surrounding forests, the pleasing sensation of striking out through fresh grass in the lone company of her rider. No horses allowed in the main gates of Tarmin, once upon a time; it's only Tara who remembers <tanner's, rich and stinking> where Flicker idly observes <wood triangles, mossy door>. The smells are all but gone. Winter has had its length to worry at what remained.
She follows her own advice as she goes, stepping aside from anywhere crimson and lignous coils push out of hollowing timber, already budding. They'll lose some of what's left, the eager soon-to-be settlers from Evergreen. More than hoped, probably. Not much to be done once creepers set in.
The shape of the town holds true, though. She marks it on the slow walk up the shadow of the main street, hands tucked in pockets, damp earth and hard stone by turns underfoot. Marks what the surveyors will make their notes on, as best she can for one who's never known a town trade: plenty of buildings needing patchwork, but only a few crying out to be pulled down altogether. That's what will make it worthwhile. There's rust on machines, damp in living quarters, enough <scratching, wriggling> at the edges of her awareness to be sure of nests under floorboards and in ceilings - but it can be cleared. It can be mended. The venture will come good, more likely than not, a link in the High Loop reclaimed.
Maybe they'll even keep the name.
It sits in her belly like bad milk. Queasy and calling for violence, a convulsive rejection.
<Sun.> It's not for the horse. Horse is fine; horse has found a sprig of young inchweed to nose at, paying small attention to her rider slowing to a standstill. Tara thinks it anyhow, for her own sake. <Sun through branches.> And then, dry dark humour: <Sun through cracked rooftops. Light glinting off rusted pans, broken glass, tarnished jewelery.>
Vadim would approve. Beauty in any place, any circumstance; just a matter of perspective.
<Tara upset.>
She reaches - for her own sake again, she can admit - to find Flicker's sleek neck, runs soothing pressure over the strong pulse under the jaw; shifts her hand down over the curve of her ribs, starting to round. A belly full of something far more precious than bad memories.
She'd come to Tarmin hungry and wanting; looking for what could be taken, not owed. That hasn't altogether changed. Flicker will need a safe place to foal - animal needs, now and then.
The emptiness of Tarmin holds its own hunger. People and stock, trade and labour - lifeblood to revive this great corpse. The very centre of a great shifting bearing down hard on the Loop, knowing and unknowing alike; a whole lot of movement and change camped uphill, surveying the streets, straining at the thin leash of law. And a need for riders. As ever.
But oh, the very thought of it, of taking up in that camp and den again; it curdles. Of a room still holding whatever of her own gear the vermin haven't chewed straight through, <Mina sitting catty-cornered with mending in her lap, scowling at Vadim holding the palette knife overhead between two teasing fingers->
Tara hadn't grieved long when her mother passed. No damn time to waste on it for one thing; and her mother hadn't been the kind who encouraged grieving. She doesn't know how long she's meant to carry this. Not near fool enough to think she won't carry it regardless.
In an Evergreen cabin, a thick covering of blankets over their heads to fill the space between them with their own warm musk, she and Guil had talked on the subject. On and off.
"No one'll blame you," he'd said.
He hadn't said, if you stay. Hadn't said, if you don't.
(Good man. Good partner, no doubt. Not a town man. So there's that.)
There were only two people left in the world who might say we blame you for running, and so far neither of the boys had given sign it had even been a passing thought. Any debt - well, it's her own scrip to write.
She hadn't come to Tarmin looking to owe. Hadn't come looking to stay, either. Hadn't come looking to trust, or feel anything close to belonging.
Tara Chang - fresh from the Fall of Tarmin, and the Slaughter at Evergreen, and what she knows in grim surety to be closer to hell than anything the preachers conjure at the altar - leans her weight to the damp heat of her horse's shoulder and allows that the need for a decision is one that can go unfulfilled, today.
Until it comes insistently mouthing again, tomorrow.
