#yila

“I’ll eat after you,” Keith replied easily. One, he was still kinda disgusted with himself for the whole thing, honestly, and trying to eat his kill now would probably just make him throw it back up, and two, with the way Xara and Rinnow were fighting over ribs, Keith figured he was much safer waiting for everyone’s hunger to die down first.

Rinnow, the smaller twin – Keith was maybe assuming a lot, calling them twins, but both had the same short red fur and yellow eyes – clambered over to him, having lost her challenge to her sister. Her tail was bushed up unhappily, and Keith suppressed the urge to groom it back to tidiness.  “I’m bored.”

“We’ll head back soon,” Keith said, pulling the grass. It was a bit different from anything on Earth – despite being dry, and looking brittle, it had an almost elastic quality when bent. If Keith had more time, he’d consider weaving something more elaborate, but as it were, he really did have to start corralling the kits back to the burrow within the next few doboshes.

Pulling the top half of his Blade suit off over his head, he sliced through the stitching – seam – Keith wasn’t actually quite sure how they were made, but there was a line where the two fabrics met, and he cut it. It wasn’t going to be perfect, since he wasn’t exactly in the habit of carrying around a sewing kit, nor had he ever really bothered to know how to do much more than what he needed to repair old clothes, but it should hold together long enough that he could secure tomorrow’s meal.

Rinnow watched him, entranced, and plucked a few grass shoots of her own to weave, though hers seemed less… woven, more twisted around eachother in the hopes that it would become the same as Keith’s. It was – was stupidly endearing, and Keith almost missed the loop with his next movement. He tested the hold – eh, good enough. The grass gave it a kind of stretching quality, on top of the inherent give of the uniform’s material. All he had to do now was wait for the feeding frenzy to die down.

Lan winced. “Look, Yila,” she said. “You–you’ve done amazing research on the expression of spirit in those selected to the Hunters force, but people need to know why it matters. You need to gain their interest by showing yours!“

“Right.”

Yila said it with such resignation, Lan felt bad continuing the conversation.

“So, how’s your boyfriend?” she asked, changing the subject.

“What boyfriend?” Yila replied, completely denying it.  

The Hunters have been around for generations. They strictly police the island’s spirited population, and have been known to haul away persons too flamboyant with their abilities. Sometimes they’re seen again, and most times they’re not. (Their families like to imagine an island of exiles, all spirited and living in harmony; Yila knows the truth.)

Lan doesn’t know what Yila’s research will mean for the country. Lan is a foreign exchange student at Nali’s national university; she’s studying a year of island diplomacy and literature, and then she’ll go home to the safety of her Walled Cities, where the only danger comes from the exciting Border where adventures go to test themselves.

It’s Yila who risks, here; it’s Yila who must light a fire under her feet and then try to not to burn alive.

And Lan wants to know about Ma Li-an?

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Yila snorts. “He’s my inside source. Into the Hunters.”

“Oh,” says Lan faintly. Her cheeks flush.

“Were you jealous?” Yila asks in realization.

The red in Lan’s face deepens. “I wasn’t exactly trying to hide it,” she admits, almost shy.

It is Yila’s turn to flush. “Oh,” she says, and thinks back on all the jokes that Lan has made about them going on a date, or making a date out of a study break meal… which apparently have not been jokes. “Oh.”

“My research is important to our understanding of the forces we allow to police us.” Yila said coolly, standing straight and proud at the podium. “Our Council of Eight talks about the need to protect our society from the dangers of misused spirit, but my work will lay down the foundation for a new understanding: Hunters are inherently spirited too.”

A tenseness entered the room in the form of furtive glances and uncomfortable shifting. No one whispered, but there was no silence either.

“Obviously,” Yila said, still curt—but she was looking directly at Lan, and Lan saw the bright fierceness in her eyes. She was taking Lan’s advice far beyond what Lan could have expected. “We can all imagine the different implications of such findings. But I would like to be clear about my work: my research is *not* theoretical.”

At the podium, Yila rolled back the sleeves on her blouse, up past her elbows until the curling, seafoam-green tattoos of a Hunter were visible.

“I was a Hunter, once,”  she announced flatly. “And it is my spirit that has allowed me to… retire from the organization. Please allow me to share the research which is, unfortunately, common knowledge to some members of our kingdom.”

Lan nearly fell out of her seat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Yila says, her voice low and hesitant.  "But I need you to know, you’re the only reason why I was able to stand up there today. I couldn’t have done it without knowing you would still stand by me, no matter what I said.“

“Yila,” Lan say, so fondly that Yila can’t possibly mistake her. “Your story is yours to tell as you see fit. I don’t have more right to it than your people. Your work is going to do so much good for them.”

Lan holds her arms out to Yila, and Yila steps into the offered hug slowly.

“I am grateful to know you, Lan,” Yila whispers into the embrace.

Lan doesn’t have a chance to reply.

“I am terribly sorry to break this up,” Li-an’s crisp voice interrupts them. “But you need to get out of here. Now. My fellow Hunters are coming.”