A beginning....

It was overcast.  Again.

The landscape, generally grey and dismal in full daylight was even more bleak today, shrouded in fog and flat light.  The atmosphere seemed perpetually on the verge of rain, Kora was wet even though she'd not felt any actual drops.  She tugged at her tunic, a shapeless shroud of heavy burlap which clung to her uncomfortably.  The makeshift garb was so caked with dirt and grime it likely would have held it's shape were she to take it off, though that was unlikely given that she hadn't removed it in the several months since she'd first pulled it on.  The moisture in the air settled into the fibers of the tunic until it became more supple and further clung to her body.  Small rivulets of grimy water began to trickle down her leg, zig-zagging between the coarse, black hairs that today were not succeeding in providing her any insulating warmth. 

He wasn't going to return.

After having sat on this hill at the base of a jagged, dead oak tree for an indeterminate length of time Kora realized that she was on her own.  She sat for another half hour, unmoving, as she pondered her situation and options.  Darek had promised to return, and in the short time she'd known the orc he'd always done what he said he'd do - that's the main reason she'd left the village to travel with him.  That, and to escape the frequent beatings that the orcs of Bagronk had laid on her when they could find any flimsy reason to do so.  Darek was different from the rest of them, he didn't beat her unless she really deserved it.  And he was smarter than the rest of them too - they looked down on her for being ogrillon and assumed that she didn't understand what was going on, but she knew more than they ever gave her credit for, and Darek had realized that.  He didn't want to work in Bagronk, managing the waste efflux of the great Orc City.  He was an orc with goals, and brains, and he had a Plan.

Squinting her eyes Kora scratched at her tunic again, pulling it away where it clung to her hulking body.  The Plan.  He'd not told her the whole Plan, and she hadn't really cared all that much.  She didn't like the smell in the waste pits, or the beatings, and his Plan meant that she could get away from both.  All she had to do was carry stuff for him, and smash the occasional head.  He'd told her which heads to smash and which things to carry, and the first step of the Plan had gone really well.  They were now days from Bagronk with miles between them and that fetid place, even more miles between them and the Orc City.  They seemed to be heading north and west, skirting along the edge of the mountains.  All had been going well except that now Darek was gone, and she didn't know what the next step of the Plan was.  Did the Plan even matter without Darek?

She shook her head to dislodge the moderate amount of water that had coalesced on her face and coarse, black hair.  A shower of water droplets flew away from her and a nearby crow fluttered and cawed his annoyance at the sudden movement.  Darek was gone and she could not sit here forever in the damp and the cold.  Kora used her unfailing strategy for making decisions, all options could always be narrowed down to two; right now her choices were 'go' or 'stay'.  She chose 'go'.

It took only moments to load the huge pack on her back as she'd not removed much from it when Darek left, stating he'd return in a few hours.  Only the hare carcasses, and that only because she was so hungry and he'd told her not to move from that spot.  He never beat her for eating things, that was one of the reasons she liked him so much.  He said she had to eat to be strong, and had to be strong to be able to carry things for him.  He was very wise.  So she'd eaten the hares with only a little bit of anxiety.  Now the pack was six hares lighter, but still heavy enough.  It creaked and groaned and where the straps lay across her shoulders more muddy water was squeezed from her tunic.  Her massive feet sunk in the soft ground with each step, but the soles of them were thickened and calloused enough to give her some traction.  She made her way from the dead oak tree, down a greasy, ashen hillside toward the cart trail that Darek had followed when he left her.  The walking was easier on the trail, it was even and easy to tell what direction to go - since there were only two options.  She had no idea were Darek had headed, but she did know they were going roughly in the direction of sun-down, with the mountains to the right of them, and so she continued that way. 

She'd walked for two hours or more, seeing no other living thing besides the crows that occasionally flew overhead.  Her belly was starting to grumble and she realized that she'd have to shake off the pleasant monotony of walking and think about the new problems before her; her growing hunger, and the fact that night was falling.  It would be cold, especially being as wet as she was.  She didn't like that.  With her mind more awake she started to pay close attention to everything around her, that's the only reason she spotted, after a bit more trekking, a dark shape off the trail to her right.

She slowly walked toward the shape, spotting another not far away.  They were bodies, one larger than the other.  When she was close enough she recognized the larger of the two - it was Darek.  Easing the heavy pack off her shoulders she walked over to Darek.  He wasn't moving. She knew of only one thing to do - she rummaged through the pack until she found a small chest with numerous glass vials inside.  Carefully she pulled the cork from a vial, tongue between her yellowed teeth as she concentrated on the delicate task.  Once opened she strode over to Darek, unceremoniously rolled him over with her foot and poured the liquid from the vial into his gaping mouth.  She didn't really expect it to work, he looked pretty dead, but he'd instructed her to try if she ever found him this way.  She squatted down next to him and watched for several minutes.  Nothing. 

With a sigh she strode over to the smaller body.  This one wasn't an orc, it was likely a human or maybe an elf, she could never be sure.  There were many kinds of creatures to the west that all had different names but they looked the same to Kora - they were small, with soft, naked skin, they wore layers and layers of cloth and leather and metal over their bodies and some could make fire spring from their hands.  They were fast and really vicious, she knew to stay away from them generally - though the orcs seemed to love seeking them out to try to kill them and take their shiny things.  Kora sniffed the unmoving lump and shrugged, again she was faced with a decision, so many decisions for one day!  This one was tougher though - 'eat it' or 'heal it'.  She pondered the options for awhile then for reasons even she could likely not have named she pulled another vial from the chest and dumped it down the creatures throat.  This one was still warm so she thought it might work, but it looked pretty injured so if it attacked her she probably could fight it off, or at least run away from it.  And if it didn't attack her maybe it would make fire from it's hands on some of the dry tinder in the pack, then she could be warm.  It was worth a shot. 

Sitting on her haunches she watched and waited.  Her placid patience was rewarded with a flutter of the thing's eyelids and eventually some movement.  She got a second vial and poured it down the creature's gullet - easily fending off its weak blows.  She understood that it was afraid but she really couldn't do anything to help that.  As the second dose of healing fluid did it's job she settled back and watched again.  She could see the panic in its eyes, but also something of intelligence as it became more conscious and alert.  It had lost a lot of blood fighting with Darek.  She knew what it was like to be unconscious from your wounds, and how disorienting those first moments were when you came to again.  Her stomach growled and the creature visibly twitched.  Kora held up her hands in a gesture she knew to mean 'peace' and spoke, the first words that had left her throat in several days, he voice was gravelly and deep.

"You.. make fyre?"

She wasn't sure if the creature understood her.  Her stomach growled again and she once more was faced with a choice, this one was easy though as she was hungry and the creature didn't seem like it was really understanding her.  She ignored its flinch as she strode toward and past it, hunkering down next to Darek's body a few feet beyond.  She kept one eye on the creature, she certainly wasn't about to trust that it wouldn't stab her or lob a fireball at her turned back, and carefully peeled Darek's tunic off then yanked his arm free from his torso with one good tug.  He hadn't been dead terribly long, and so the meat at the deepest part of the arm was still a bit warm.  'Sorry Darek' she thought to herself.  She knew it wasn't honorable for an orc to be eaten by an ogrillon after he was dead, but she was hungry and the other creature seemed like it had decided to be alive and so wasn't really just meat anymore.  In fact, it was probably hungry - the other thing Kora remembered from being injured is that one needed nutrition to recover quickly.  Darek had been a big orc with a lot of muscle, and she had no idea how to prepare meat so that it kept fresh for travel.  So with a shrug she reached over and ripped off his other arm and turned to offer it to the creature.

(Pb)