Hamartia - the Singing Dagger | #NaNoWriMo2019

Chapter 2.2: Selahin Dawn

Mahani woke up with cold feet. Outside, she could see the grass flooding with water. It must have rained last night. Nonetheless, sunlight still pierced through the dusk fog.

She had overslept in the palace Music room, like she sometimes did when she just couldn't bear home.

Outside, a few old vendors were hawking through the city streets, selling cassava pies, grilled toads, bloating cures and clothes.

Clothes.

In her fatigue, she totally forgot the garments she left out in the riverbed to dry. And on the day of the Idols' Feast!

Rolling up her mat and standing it up on the wall, she quickly swept her bedroom floor and took off for the riverside.

Last night's downpour had turned the mostly firm, grassy riverside into a coherent sludge. Powering through the sludge that went halfway to her knees, Majani discerned a figure through the morning mist.

A consistent thudding echoed through the riverside, as Mahani saw big, muscular arms beat on something with gusto. With, what she did not doubt, was sheer brutality.

Majani found herself running towards the figure and unsheathing the wavy dagger strapped to her back.

"Stop that this instant! I don't know what you think you're doing but I know it's..."

Her proximity to the attacker had cleared the mist between them. It was the hissing stranger from yesterday. Beating his blankets.

" I'm sorry. I didn't realize..."

"That a potential human victim wouldn't take that long to kill, or that I could've also been beating a large animal. In both cases, animate beings usually create some secondary noise during the whole procedure. Now, may I please proceed to assault my sheets, lovely maiden?"

"Mahani. And no, I'm not a maiden. Just a plain old married-to-three-men Mahani."

Mahani saw that the young man had suddenly stopped beating on the covers and was staring back at her. She scrambled to throw the conversation back to him.

"Well, how about you? May I perchance know how you are called in your land? If it isn't confidential, of course." Bleh. Mahani hated talking like she did when she was a binukot.

The stranger raised one eyebrow up in amusement. "I am called by Caelem by my people, the Indramurims."

"So, you are from the north, Indramur Island? But isn't that only for female priestesses? As far as I know you're not an asug either."

Caelem laughed with playful honesty. "I get that a lot. Well, I am their warrior-slave."

"What?" She quickly recoiled backward, losing balance and falling into the mud. "What about your clothes? Where's your master?"

She tried scrambling backward in a feeble attempt to escape the man; surely an unescorted slave could be nothing but a fugitive, a runaway. A threat.

Caelem's laugh filled the foggy morning as he moved further away from his drying blankets. Closer to her. Bending menacingly, he stared into her eyes.

"No need to be rude, Mahani. Niece of the Selahin Malun."

How did he know that? Oh, dear battaras in the seven heavens, ancestors from before the Age of Doom, protect me.

Caelem's smile now receded as Mahani's face caved in with horror.

"Don't scream."

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The photograph above is a real place in the Philippines that I took in the morning mist. Just to give you the feels of the scenery 💕🌳