Protecting the Wall
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 3:24 am
14th Cylus 720
Vega was exhausted.
Not a little bit tired, just plain, old fashioned, absolutely exhausted. She had not slept for she didn't know how many trials, and she had finally started to understand the meaning of the word "power nap" - she caught a half-break here, or twenty bits there and that was enough. It had to be. What really annoyed her, though was that she was grubby. Now, Vega had never been bothered about being fashionable, or even particularly worried about how others thought of how she looked. She wore what she wanted, what she was comfortable in. But she loathed being dirty. "Clean dirt is different," she grumbled to Isobella and the Thunder Priestess who had initiated her smiled. "Why so, Eva?"
"You an' my Papa are the only two who call me that, you know," she shot back, and Isobella shook her head. "I don't think we are. I think you think of yourself that way. When you play, when you fight, when you are at peace. Eva Creede." Vega narrowed her eyes and wiped her forehead, smearing more dirt over it. "Now is not the time for navel-gazin', my nonny-nonny chum. Cop ahold o'that, would ya?" That said, she handed Isobella a bag with supplies in it for shoring up and strengthening the wall. "I reckon, if we stop thinkin' about this as a wall, that will help."
Isobella looked at Vega in some surprise, and pointed out what seemed to her to be the obvious thing. "But it is a wall, isn't it?"
"No," Vega said, stubbornly. "It's a perimeter. That's what it is. It is a wall, obviously, but it could be a fence or a piece o'string. The point is the purpose it serves. It keeps things out an' warns us when somethin' or someone tries to get in." Isobella nodded and Vega gave her a (gentle) companionable thump on the arm. "Except this don't do that. It just sits there. So we need to stop thinkin' of it as a wall an' start thinking of it like a perimeter in a camp." Isobella regarded the young mortalborn seriously and said, quietly. "You are a most peculiar person with an odd way of thinking of the world."
Vega considered that for a moment, and then nodded. "Yeah, and?" The pair of them laughed and Isobella gestured.
"So, how are we going to accomplish this, then?" the Thunder Priestess asked of her mentee and Vega looked at her with a grin.
"I already told you, didn't I?" She knew she hadn't. "We're gonna stop thinkin' about it as a wall an' start thinkin' about it as a tool - an' come to that, a weapon. It's not jus' sittin' there no more. Now, it's an early warnin' system an' a deterrent." Grabbing the bag back, she gestured for the group they were working with to gather around, shouting to any that didn't. "Or at least," she added to Isobella, "It will be."