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The Discovery of Reli
The two young woman walked across the field. Both were
fourteen and within a month of each other. One wa
s seldom seen without the other, and today they had
been set forth on an errand of digging shells out of
the sand of one of the smallest islands in the chain.
Deciding it was silly to walk all the way around the
island from one beach to the other, the two girls
cut straight through the island, which wasn't a very
far distance. A field or two and a few outcroppings
of trees, and that was it.
"Hurry up, Inkali!" Niamh raced across the field, her
basket held high in the air above her head with
both hands. Her small feet sped across the uneven ground
as quickly as they could find a steady footing.
"I'm coming! Slow down!" Inkali scowled at her friend who was
a few yards in front of her. Niamh had been taller than
her for as long as she could remember, but she was
slowly but surely catching up. The other girl could
still out run her, though.
"I'm not going to! You're just gonna have to run harder!"
Niamh laughed loudly, turning her head back to grin
at her friend. As she did so, she felt her foot fly
out from under her and she went tumbling forward.
Inkali yelped and ran to catch up to her fallen friend.
As she slowed to a jog, she kicked the offending
rock that had tripped her friend. "Are you alright, Ni?"
Niamh rolled over off the ground and stood up
with a groan. "I'm alright. I think I just- AUGH!"
She let out a yell as she looked down at herself.
Inkali, startled by her friend's sudden yell, stumbled
backwards with a yell of her own. She turned to look
at her friend... and burst out laughing when she did so.
"It's not funny, Inka!" Niamh pouted, holding her skirt
and shirt out in front of her. They were covered in
a dark brown substance. It was also on her skin, including
the tip of her nose. When she looked over at her friend,
the gesture sent Inkali into another gale of laughter.
"Inka!" Niamh scowled, the reached down and picked up
a handful of the plants she had fallen into and
threw them at Inkali, hitting her.
Inkali looked down at herself and scowled right back.
Picking up a handful of the plants, she lobbed them right
back at her friend. Soon they were throwing whatever
they could grab back and forth at eachother,
giggling hysterically.
~The next night...~
"Mum! You don't have tah scrub that hard!" Inkali
wrinkled her nose, which was still a dark brown color.
In fact, most of her was the dark brown color.
Niamh was much the same. "It don't hurt 'til ya scrub it!"
Kali frowned down at her daughter. "I can't believe
you two. Honestly! Running around and dying eachother
in a plant fight. This doesn't look like it's going to come
out for a week." She sighed, setting down the cloth she had
been using. It was now the same dark color the girls'
clothes had been when they'd returned home looking more
like walking brown piles of mud rather than the two children
they'd left as.
~Later on...~
"What'll we call it?" Niamh sat in front of Inkali, trying
to keep her head still. Inkali was sitting across from her
with a small brush and bowl of the dye they'd gotten from
the plants earlier that day.
"Something pretty, but simple." Inkali nodded in agreement
with herself, carefully painting a design on her friend's face.
The other children had laughed at them when they'd seen
them, and now that they're skin was lightening but not
going completely back to normal, they thought they might
as well make the best of it. It had been Inkali's idea to make
designs with the dye that would out-last it until it
went completely away.
"Rejou?" Niamh twitched her nose as the paint bursh passed
over it, giggling until she got poked in the shoulder
with the paint brush by Inkali.
The other girl shook her head. "No, it doesn't sound
right. Let's have it end with an 'ee' sound."
"Why?"
"Because it sounds better that way." Inkali continued
to paint, Niamh continued to twitch.
"Remi? No..." Both girls were quiet for a long moment,
Inkali trying to make the designs even and Niamh
searching her mind for a good name.
"I've got it!" Niamh jumped up, causing Inkali to pull
the brush away just before it would have made a large
jerky line on her friend's forehead.
"What?" Her dark eyes looked up at Niamh with interest.
"We'll call it Reli!" She smiled down at her friend.
Inkali only grinned.
~Reli soon became a big success
with the Islander children...
and then it became tradition.~
Inkali's weyr
Spirit: Learn more about her (stats)
Dance: Inkali's Search
Where Inkali Impressed Merrith
and
Where Ksarri was Impressed