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“Pretty as you are when you’re sleeping,” a voice murmured, intruding on a dream about nothing in particular, “I have a meeting to not be late to, sweetheart.”
“Uhm?” was Aretta’s profound reply, as she blinked herself out of sleep.
She had just been leaving the dance floor for a glass of water; she’d spent enough time in the hot, just-this-side-of-crowded club for her shirt to sport a damp shadow below her breasts, and a few stray strands of brightly colored hair were plastered against her forehead. It was pure chance that she’d notice the odd halfbreed at the bar, easily identifiable as a mix of wyvern and raev, but once she’d taken note of him, her eyes wandered. It wasn’t something she did often, but she could quite easily see herself picking that one up.
The hunter lay back on his furs, eyes shut and breath slow, feeling the almost giddy weariness in his limbs that came from the hard day’s work. He enjoyed the sensation; if he was tired, it meant he was alive, and there were not enough hours in the day to truly exhaust him. Once he’d finished taking care of the meat from their kills, and dealt with the rest of the camp duties, his partner had sent him to get himself cleaned up and lie down, saying he’d be along shortly.
That had been a while ago; he had to admit he was getting worried. With the extra work the jaguarundi had had cut out for him, was it possible the tanner-mage had fallen asleep while washing up in the nearby stream?
Eyra woke with a start, sitting upright and looking around him before he’d quite managed to identify what had disturbed his sleep. His ears twitched, panned around, looking for some kind of sound, while he looked around his small camp. Under normal circumstances he’d have made camp up off the ground in a small tree or similar, but he’d been exhausted when he was finally ready to sleep the previous night.
The meat from his kill was still there. The pile of dirt near the fire, where he’d buried what was going to be his breakfast, was still there. His small pack of supplies was still there, and didn’t look as though anything had touched it. Everything seemed to be in order, then, except…
A very long time ago, when the sunrise burned brighter and the grasses waved taller and the world was still young, the zebra lived on the savannah just like they do today and will do tomorrow and many days after. But the zebra that lived in clay huts and lived off the land just like us looked rather different from the People of today. No, back then, the People wore pure white coats which shone brightly when hit by the soft light of the moon.