Summer Event 2017: Registration | With My Blessing

Yejidei returned the wave from the currier as he and his tokota made their way to the road down the mountain. He had come to the Xineng Center with the spring but was forced to stay for the last four days as a stray winter storm snowed them in. During that time the seasoned trainer had considered the summons he brought from the Tokota Cultural Association with some conflict. She removed the brown envelope from her leather shoulder pouch now and stared at the TCA’s seal with pursed lips. Then she pulled just the rumpled invitation out, leaving in the folder and spiral notebook.

Perhaps in her younger days she would have leapt at the chance to finally learn what lay in the Tartok Mountains in person – and had in the past with her co-founder – but her human partner was long gone. Besides, Yejidei would never admit it but frequent active heroic antics in her youth had paid her back with a long bill of aches and arthritis in her old age. Few could tell especially when she was astride a tokota or training in the rings with her subordinates but she was reminded acutely on long travels. 

“I’ll get plenty of use out of these limbs yet,” she muttered to herself, “I’m not old, just an old gal.” She looked up at the cotton clouds, sailing readily on the wind. She closed her eyes as a breeze came down to caress her cheeks and sighed.

The Xineng Center’s head trainer tucked the sheet into the envelope and passed her fingers over the signatures of Professor Mitchell and Chief Thunderfeather. “No, it’s not time for me to leave this place yet, old friends, but I will send you someone of promise – someone who wouldn’t be on your books to summon in the first place.”

A whine drew her attention and a smile warmed her usually stern features as she recognized the greying tawny piebald who skid to a halt before her, spraying her with snow before he licked her cheek.

“Bé, you silly boy! Where is your human?”

 The pangare male laid back his ears. “Trying to join up with Rakhera again.”

Yejidei narrowed her eyes and began marching back the way Béchamel had come, packing the envelop away. “By herself?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The large tokota trotted to keep up with the trainer’s pace. “At first Rakhera was despondent as usual but–”

The shout with a responding snarl reached them and both broke into a run towards an outdoor training ring. The snow from inside it was beginning to swirl in an unnatural wind. A young, greying tundra dire was at the gate, pacing and whining, his head and tail held low. He turned at their approach and backed out of the way.

“Hurry,” the dire whined. “She’s never done this before.”

“Stay back, boys.” Yejidei fumbled with the latch, cursing as she had not yet warmed up her fingers for such activity. With one last yank she undid the latch and pulled open the gate to assess the scene.

Across the ring Zanrak was still holding the training rope but both hands were raised before her as she backed away from a white accented black tokota. Zanrak was half-crouched but glared back at Rakhera who was using her skull-like face markings to her advantage with a full on snarl for a terrifying advance. She limped from a long-healing injury on her only non-accented leg.

Yejidei approached from downwind and eavesdropped as best she could before she jumped into the fray. An agitated tokota was dangerous, more so with one who had been despondent, distant, and apathetic as Rakhera had been since arriving with Zanrak, Béchamel, and Voev at the beginning of winter.

“You think you’re helping me with what you’re doing now?” Rakhera asked. “You’ll ‘get me to a better state of mind,’ will you? This is the way of nature, human and I am exactly how I should to be!”

“Rak,” Zanrak started.

“Shut up! I’m tired of listening to you! I should have left you on that mountain!" 

Zanrak screamed, a sound that froze Yejidei in her tracks, and threw the rope at Rakhera. “Is that where you want to be? Buried in that avalanche like the rest of our pack?” The snow that had been swirling before now whirled around the edges of the training ring.

“My pack!”

“They were my family too, Rak!” She was no longer retreating, standing tall with her chin tilted down in anger. “You kept me when you found me four years ago because you knew instinctually I would be worth the effort to feed.”

Rakhera snorted and Zanrak raised her eyebrows. “Oh, is the great Rakhera who is never wrong admitting she made a mistake? Now? Where was that humility on the mountain?!”

Yejidei saw it coming and shouted a warning, pushing her body against the ring-isolated gusts; Rakhera snarled and leapt for the human; Béchamel and Voev reacted milliseconds behind her.

Zanrak’s arms would have been filleted but here she surprised Yejidei with her wilderness-trained reflexes and instinctual analysis of the situation: she dove towards the female tokota, grabbed her by her cheek fur, then twisted and rode Rakhera’s momentum to the ground. They hit in a tangle of snow, skidding to thump against the training ring wall, snow from the boards falling atop them only to be scattered in the fray. Yejidei was finally able to seize a handful of Rakhera’s fur but froze when the tokota stilled. Breathless, she turned towards Zanrak, fearing the other had lost to the tokota’s superior strength.

Rakhera lay panting, one side of her face pinned to the ground. Zanrak had one hand in the tokota’s cheek fluff and the other pinching a sensitive black ear. The gusts around them had ceased and the previously fallen snow was returning to the pull of gravity all around them.

Zanrak stood over Rakhera’s head and cried. 

“Let me help you, pack mother. Please.” Zanrak’s tears splashed onto the fur of Rakhera’s face but the tokota didn’t blink. It seemed as though Rakhera had slipped back into an apathetic and despondent trance.

Yejidei leaned forward, loosening her grip on the black tokota’s fur. Xineng Center’s co-founder had seen enough of this over winter to know that Rakhera’s fit was done. It was the human young woman she was concerned for now. “Zanrak?”

The young woman sniffed and looked at the head trainer. “Why won’t she let me help her?”

Yejidei pointed at the black tokota and Béchamel and Voev obediently seized Rakhera incase she did decide to resume her attack. Then she grabbed and hugged Zanrak, engulfing her head and torso. Yejidei absorbed the sobs and stroked the younger female’s head. Now she could see the white heart accent on Rakhera’s body fur behind her elbow and wondered, not for the first time, what had happened on the mountain before the group had been found on her doorstep.

“I know you want the old Rakhera back,” Yejidei said, “but she’s not coming back. We can never go backwards, young one.” 

Zanrak’s response was muffled behind Yejidei’s jacket sleeves.

Yejidei sighed. “Of course there is something I could do but she is your pack. Listen to me, girl. As much as I would like to keep you here to help you I cannot promise you my methods would work for you. You blew in on a storm and the mountain only sends me what it needs back in strength. If you want to help Rakhera you have to go.”

Zanrak lifted her head. “Go where? We only know this mountain range.”

Yejidei gazed into the girl’s deep brown eyes. There was so much age in there yet she was still so young. “Go to the Tartok Mountains.”

Zanrak frowned. “Where?”

Yejidei leaned back and retrieved the Tokota Cultural Association’s envelope from her bag. She hefted it then presented it to Zanrak. “The summons is for me,” she said, watching the younger human read the contents. “As much as I would leap at the chance to visit the Tartoks again with my old friend, Thunderfeather, I do not believe it is my turn to leave headquarters. Not yet. Go in my place with my blessing. Take your pack with you.”

Zanrak sniffed and wiped her face clumsily, squinting at the map. Her eyesight was not the best but not bad enough for glasses. “We’ve never been that far southwest.”

“Good. A change of location may help wake up what’s left of your pack leader.”

Zanrak eyed the hefty packet with some misgivings. “I don’t know.”

Yejidei patted her shoulder and took the packet back. “Look, you help this lot out and sleep on it. You’ll make it in plenty of time if you leave tomorrow morning.”

Zanrak nodded and Yejidei wiped the rest of the tears from her cheeks. Béchamel and Voev pulled Rakhera along behind Zanrak out of the ring. That night Yejidei penned in the required information for registration and the next morning she found Zanrak pacing in the main courtyard. What meager things she had fit in one rucksack and while Rakhera sat slumped Béchamel and Voev waited at attention and wagged their tails when Yejidei appeared with the resealed envelope.

Zanrak cleared her throat. “I ah, I don’t know what I’ll need…I’m used to travelling with no tack.”

Yejidei smiled. She handed Zanrak the envelope and beckoned for them to follow. “I think I have some things in your size.”

Only an hour later they were back in the main courtyard, the party of four outfitted. Zanrak fidgeted, patting the practically new outfit. She opened and closed her hands several times, itching to touch the new recurve bow strapped to Béchamel’s saddle again but settled for fingering the hilts of the hunting knives at her belt.

“Yejidei, this is too much.” She jumped when the older woman grasped her face and drew Zanrak into her black-iris gaze.

“Zanrak ev Raera, your handling of Rakhera’s fit yesterday was is the fastest and most effective bit of applied instinctual I’ve seen out of any handler – even the ones I train. That you consider yourself a pack member will win you Thunderfeather’s favor. You have a good head on your shoulders. Do not mind what anyone out there says from jealousy. You’ve too much greatness in you to let it be beaten down by those to small to see beyond their own egos.”

The young woman gulped. “What about…the thing that happens when I’m around? I can’t control it. I’ll be cast out as a monster when they discover it.”

“You will learn control. Remember, the strength of the wolf is in the pack and the strength of your pack is in the individual wolf. Lean on them for a boost, and love–”

Voev and Béchamel ambushed the old woman then with kisses and nuzzles and she laughed at the interruption. “And keep these two boys out of trouble, ey? Oof!”

Zanrak had seized her in a hug. “Thank you." 

Yejidei returned the hug and endured the wet tokota kisses a moment longer before pushing them all back. “Alright, alright. Get on with you now.” She stepped back for Zanrak to mount up and chuckled when the young woman dropped the reins around the saddle cantle and grabbed Béchamel’s mane instead. Yejidei waved them forward out of the Xineng Center entrance gate with one last pat for Voev.

Then she turned, whip fast, seized Rakhera’s cheek fluff, and pulled the tokota’s head down to where she could not ignore Yejidei. The black tokota woke from her trance with a snarl and her body tensed but she knew better than to challenge what was in the trainer’s gaze.

“I know you’re still in there, girly. Learn to let go of your past. Drowning in regret and remorse are feats best left to a handler. You will be in the heart of the TCA and none there will hesitate to put you down if you continue like this. The spirits of the mountain brought you that girl and saved you by grace this past winter for a reason. Start paying attention to your lessons. Don’t you let anything happen to that girl in the Tartoks or it will be me riding out for your hide in front of the spirits. Got it?”

Rakhera growled.

“Good. Now go.” She shoved the tokota’s face away and watched Rakhera exit through the gates. Yejidei rolled her eyes and kissed her teeth. Though Rakhera cast a glare over her shoulder she increased her pace to a trot to catch up with the group.

Wind circled Yejidei and she smiled up at the bare sky. “Spirits, watch over her. Don’t let your effort go to waste on this one.”

- TO BE CONTINUED -