{"sf1_id":1787092,"sf2_id":"GnDy2B1r","title":"Quiet of the Night","author":"Apatapa","words":1035,"posted_at":"2021-11-19T12:23:00.000Z","tags":["Charr","Fantasy","Feline","Guild Wars 2","OC","Original Character","RP","Roleplaying","Warrior","guild wars","loneliness"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1787092-quiet-of-the-night","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/GnDy2B1r","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/40/0b/400b1182-2efc-4815-814d-76cf7a62b7e5","description":"Okus Forefog is confused and his tangled upbringing feels all too pressing on this quiet night.\n(This story is a brief exploration through the mind of a new charr warrior I may use for RP in the future.)","content":"Csshnk.\n\nI never knew what to do with myself on the quiet nights.\n\nCsshnk.\n\nThe orange coals of our campfire stained my vision.\n\nCsshnk.\n\nI turned my gaze to the stars.\n\nThud.\n\nMy sword fell to the grass.\n\nThud.\n\nAnd the whetstone beside it.\n\n  \n\nI sighed.\n\nNobody snored in my warband.\n\nNobody shirked curfew to drink or gamble.\n\nThey were awake though, some of them. Prowling around as only Ash scouts could. Silent. Scheming and seamless in the night.\n\nIt made my duty on watch feel all the more pointless.\n\nI frowned at the stars.\n\nQuiet nights like this awakened a sense of longing within me.\n\nTo hear it once again:\n\nCompany.\n\nRevelry even.\n\nRaucous calls of stupid games.\n\nViolence.\n\nSimple pleasures drilled into me by the comradery of the Blood fahrar where I was raised.\n\nSimple pleasures made all the more richer by the memories I had with my old warband, as brief as they were.\n\n  \n\nStarlight twinkled.\n\nI might've cracked at the thought, years ago. Had I known.\n\nI hated them, I think.\n\nAll their noise, their squabbles. It's what drove me to the quiet. Where I felt I belonged.\n\nWhere the loneliness was crushing.\n\nWhere I longed to hear them again, from a distance.\u0026nbsp;\n\nI wanted them to want me as my new warband wanted me now.\n\nEffective, present and silent.\n\nI wanted to hear them fight.\n\nLaugh quietly over their strife, all the stress they caused each other.\n\n  \n\nI wanted them to slip me ale, glad to have me present and uneager for my contribution to their turmoil.\n\nInstead I had this quiet.\u0026nbsp;\n\nAsh was everything I knew it to be.\n\nThe subterfuge was beyond me, but it was my heritage.\u0026nbsp;\n\nI had thought it would make sense to me, in time.\n\nBut in the months I'd spent amongst their ranks, it had only grown more perplexing.\n\nI watched at first, so certain I would find something. That there'd be patterns. Mysteries to ponder and chase.\n\nInstead there was silence in the dark.\n\nAnd still I watched. Waiting and hopeful that one night I might catch the crack of a branch. That come morning I might see tracks from tent to tent.\n\nThat I might begin to unravel the nature of this warband and feel at peace within it. Find my home, like I realised all too late that I had once and rejected it.\n\nInstead there was nothing I was privy to.\n\n  \n\nBut I knew there was something. Amongst them. Their bonds were too tight, they were too familiar with each other to be all business. That the expecting dam in our ranks hadn't grown pregnant by some celibate miracle.\n\nAnd yet, all they were to me was silent.\n\nIt was maddening.\n\nI felt excluded once more, but this time it was like a challenge. A puzzle I couldn't solve. Some subtle trick, something that every Ash cub is taught in their youth that I missed entirely.\n\n  \n\nI snorted at the stars.\n\nAnger licked my thoughts.\n\nIf I missed anything, my parents were to blame.\n\nParents.\n\nI glowered.\n\nI shouldn't think of them as such.\n\nThey should have been nothing to me.\n\nJust soldiers I knew by coincidence.\n\nBut I remembered all too well the nights of my youth where my dam and sire would feed and coddle me.\n\nWhere they'd play with me to pass the days out on their reconnaissance mission.\u0026nbsp;\n\nWhere they'd deny me the social language of our legion, of Ash.\n\nWhere they eventually left me in a Blood fahrar out of convenience to themselves.\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd I'd never seen them again.\n\nAnd though I knew in the pits of my soul that that was good. That it was normal.\n\nIt was too late.\n\nAnd some wounded, childish fragment of my mind clung onto those memories.\n\n  \n\nI was five. Young, but late to join a fahrar.\n\nLate to the cohort.\n\nI didn't fit in. I was soft, quiet. Prime to be molded by an Ash primus.\n\nInstead it was Blood.\n\nWith their noise and violence.\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd it worked, they tempered me. Forged me into a soldier.\n\nOne who was unafraid, unfaltering. One who wouldn't back down.\n\nOne who could expect his warband to do the same.\n\nOne who now stood with Ash, those who vanished into smoke at the first signs of danger.\n\nBut I couldn't kid myself into thinking I could stand alone either.\n\nI tried that in the heart of my old warband.\n\nIt wounded them.\n\nThey were emotional.\n\nTightknit.\n\nThey were Blood.\n\nI never fit in, but I wasn't prepared for them to cast me out either.\n\nAnd I learned the misery of being gladium all too swiftly.\n\n  \n\nI wandered.\n\nAway from Grothmar, away from Blood.\n\nI sought Ash, feeling it in my bones that it was where I belonged.\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd I found them, somehow.\n\nBy chance.\n\nIt felt certain. That this was fate's hand, or some dormant instinct.\n\n  \n\nI now felt naive in perpetuity.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nI knew how they saw me.\n\nI was a weapon to them.\n\nA sword where they wanted one.\n\nA shield when they needed one.\n\nBut a tool nonetheless.\n\nI was a dullard.\n\n'Blunt like only Blood could be.'\n\nBut I wasn't Blood.\n\nNot really.\n\nWasn't Ash either, no matter what I wanted.\n\n  \n\nWorse still, we were stationed on the west border of Grothmar and the Shiverpeaks. Not far from the keep where I was raised.\n\nWhere I'd forged and shattered bonds that were meant to last a lifetime.\n\nInstead I was caught in a snare.\n\nTrapped with Ash.\n\nTempted by Blood.\n\nSo close and yet so far.\n\n  \n\nIt was confusing.\n\nInfuriating.\n\nI clenched fists.\n\nMy claws dug into my wrists.\n\nI trembled in rage and snarled into the darkness.\n\nThe sound carried.\n\nAnd I know they heard me, no matter how much I failed to hear them.\n\nI know they heard me.\n\nI know they saw me too, though they'd never find me watching back.\n\nI couldn't.\n\nSo I hung my head.\n\nThe coals of the campfire had died.\n\nThe comforts of a soldier called to me.\n\nI picked up my whetstone.\n\nI picked up my sword.\n\nCsshnk.\n\nAnd ever more, I hated the quiet of the night.\n\nCsshnk.\n\n  \n  \n\n"}