[IRP] From over the Eastern Horizon...

[Bahar_Vahra]

In the eastern steppes.. a land of endless grassy flatlands and deserts.. a land of nomadic tribes constantly on the move, we would follow the migrations of that which we hunted for food; Stubborn hairy bison, the proud and noble reindeer, anything that the men of our tribes could kill with their spears and arrows. Yet that was not all that we, the people of the Unamiza Steppe, hunted... Unlike the lands to the west; Bravia, Fenia and Kiene, we of the Unamiza did not tolerate the non-humans, nor spellcastors. We of the Unamiza were pure... or so we told ourselves. Our Hunters hunted them as well... those who were deemed impure.

Once in a while, even the Unamiza would have a child born to them, with the powers of magic. When those children grew up, and their powers began to manifest, the Unamiza had an even worse fate for them than death by blade...

Bit even more rare... sometimes one of those magic touched of the Unamiza would escape...

~ words from the Bahar Vahra, undated


November 1653 - The Kienei Forests, Kiene

Quickly, as fast as she could run... her bare feet pat pat pat across the forest floor, all cut and bloody from her long trek from the Unamiza Steppes of the far east to this new land. If she had time to think upon it, she might have thought it humorous, to have started her journey running for her life. Running from the Unamiza Hunters. Those who called her í ba'har vah'ra or in the common tongue the demon witch. She had managed to allude those hunters... Yet here she was again, running from a new pack of hunters, running for her life... and these ones were much faster.

She could hear them... the dire wolves... baying and whining hungrily some ways behind her, hungry for her warm flesh. She forced herself not to think about them, to keep her focus on what lay ahead.. focused on staying alive. The wolves may be faster than she, but they were also much larger and heavier, giving her a slight advantage in this forest of thick, tightly packed trees.

As agile and graceful as a deer, she wove herself through the lines of tall poplars.. hoping over the rotting hulk a fallen ash tree, her long bronze hair dancing in the air behind her. She could hear the howling of one of the dire wolves, likely the large female with the spotted chest, their leader... Was she howling because they were getting close? Or because they were falling behind? There was no way to be certain, aside from looking back, and she could not risk it. She wanted to live... she deserved it...

[Qyanna]

The snow crunched softly under the pads of her paws as she raced across the forest floor. The hunt was on, and the wolf within her craved blood. Her long tongue licked the fur of her snout hungrily as she pushed onward, driving the pack toward their prize. She loved the camaraderie of the pack, especially when the hunt was in full swing. They plowed through the forest as one, their minds and mouths all set on a single target. It was moments like this that made Qyanna forget her humanity. She felt as if she had been born a wolf, a huntress. A long howl escaped her mouth as she caught the prey's scent once more. Their foe was scared and desperate, running on its last breaths of life.

Something in the scent gave Qyanna pause. Her pace slowed, and the other wolves moaned in confusion and despair. It's getting away! they screamed in her mind as one. The united pack-thought convinced her to continue, but as she ran she forced herself to think of why the scent had so upset her. She sniffed the trail, picking up odors of sweat and panic. There was something so familiar to that smell, and yet so foreign. It was not a deer, nor any other typical forest creature, but it was something very personal to Qyanna.

There! A flash of golden fur flicked behind a tree. They were closing in. Qyanna pushed her legs to the maximum, running for all she had. The creature looked back just in time to see the giant, white wolf leap at her...

Mid-jump and time froze. Qyanna saw her whole life flash before her in the barest instant. It was a human. A woman. She was a human, a woman. She was not a wolf, not really. Had she really forgotten for all these years? Living on her own in the forest, raised by the dire wolves and the mountain lions, Qyanna had not seen a human face for many years. She had been used to see them as the hunters. Now this one was hunted. By her.

Remembering her true form, Qyanna transformed in midair and landed before the strange woman as a human, crouched down and naked as the day she was born. Her long dark locks fell forward over her face and chest, hiding her bare, olive skin. She glanced up at the woman with brown eyes full of wonder.

The other wolves circled around the pair, growling in frustration and confusion. Why have you stopped our hunt? Why have you taken this form? they demanded loudly. Her skull throbbed with the noise and she cringed and held her head to make it stop. It was always much harder to understand them when she took her native form. "Stop! No!" she cried, shaking her head as she tried to sort out all the noises. One of the friskier wolves trotted forward, snapping eagerly at the strange woman. Qyanna put out a hand and glared at him. "Quit it, Blackpaw!" she said. He scuffed a paw in the snow, but then backed off, grumbling unkind things in her mind.

Qyanna looked back up at the woman from her crouched position in the snow. She had forgotten how vulnerable this form's skin was to cold, and she shivered and shifted her feet so they wouldn't freeze. "It's okay," she said, her teeth chattering. "They won't hurt you now."

[Bahar_Vahra]

Bahar Vahra sat huddled in from of a massive trunk of a grandmother oak, her animal skins held tightly closed against the chill of the forest air, her eyes wide and locked upon the naked form of the dire wolf turned human female that now stood before her. "It's okay," the strange woman said, her teeth chattering. "They won't hurt you now."

Bahar's eyes darted from the woman to the large beasts that toiled and stalked behind their seemingly leader. She was no novice to the magical world, but she had yet to see anything so drastic or difficult to cast as transmutation. Glancing around for an easy escape route, Bahar found non, and she was too tired to run by this point. Heavily rivulets of fear soaked sweat trinkled down her face and neck, soddening her hair, catching the chill.

One decent fact was that now the running had stopped, Bahar could now concentrate of weaving a defensive spell in her minds eye. The metaphysical prowess of her Unumiza blood did not allow for the quick cast spells so commonly available to other spellcasters. Her strengths lay in other areas. Though he wasn't comoletely helpless when the time called for a defensive measure. The silken strands of a blinding spell wove themselves in Bahar's mind. It woukd only work on one... maybe two... Perhaps it would be enough if need be...

"Who..." she asked, heavy breathed, "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

[Qyanna]

Qyanna cocked her head at the woman, a perplexed look in her eyes. "Want? Why would I want something from you?" She stood slowly, her human muscles straining from lack of practice. Humans did have the strangest notions, she thought as she continued to stare at the woman as if she had two heads. "I only stop them from hurting you, as I would any pack-mate. Isn't that what humans do? Protect each other?" She tilted her head to the side again, looking at the stranger questioningly. No matter what form she took, her pack-mates, herd-mates, flock-mates, or any other animal of the same species always defended her. Didn't humans do the same? It was so long since she had been with other humans that she couldn't remember.

Since her family had discovered her shapeshifting abilities and abandoned her in the woods, the only humans Qyanna had seen were hunters. They hunted her no matter what form she was in; even as a human they all claimed she was a possessed demon that must be put down for the safety of the villagers. But she had always assumed the hunters were in their own special class of human, the evil ones who did harm to others. It had never occurred to her that other humans might be violent or devious as well, and that the generally presumption of humans upon meeting a stranger might be that they had some malicious intentions. She simply saw a fellow human and instinctively moved to protect her, regardless of who that person might be or what she might be up to.

Qyanna's dark eyes examined the woman curiously, taking in all her features. The stranger was the exact opposite in looks to Qyanna; she had fair skin, pale eyes, and blonde hair, where Qyanna's were all dark. She had never seen anything like this woman, who seemed to have had all the color drained out of her by some wicked force. She raised a hand tentatively, reaching out to touch the woman's blonde locks. "Did the snows wash out all the color in your hair and eyes?" she asked.

[Bahar_Vahra]

The naked woman seemed perplexed by Bahar's simple questions. As though their minds were on foreign paths from on another. The dire wolves paced and whined behind their human appearing leader, whom clearly wasn't a wolf herself, at least not a true one. The woman stepped closer to her, slowly bringing a hand to touch a lock of Bahar's thick golden-bronze hair. "Did the snows wash out all the color in your hair and eyes?" the woman asked in a non-threatening inquisitive manner.

That was all the contact Bahar needed. She wove and let out sensing spell, traveling up the womans arm and to her mind....

Flashes of images flew before Bahar's minds eye.... Too many to see clearly... Wolf.... Eagle... Fox... Rabbit...Man .. Woman...blood ... Meat..

The spell had ran its course, leaving Bahar breathless and no nearer to any of the answers she desperately desire.

Inching away from the woman creature, she absent minded raised a hand to touch her hair like the woman had. "Snows?... no...no I have always looked like this...." She looked around aimlessly, no doubt she had gotten herself lost in this seemingly limitless forest, so much different from her vast and endless flat steppes, where one could see all the way to the horizon. A place she left so long ago.

Weaving the blinding spell once again in her mind, she set her eyes on the best woman and demanded, "...Who are you?"

[Qyanna]

From the moment she touched the woman's hair her head began to ache, as if someone were digging through it with giant claws. She winced, and pulled her hand away, staring dumbfounded at the strange curls that had seemingly caused the pain. The throbbing stopped as quickly as it had began. Sensing her discomfort, the wolves began to paw at the snow and whine nervously. The woman looked around, clearly uneasy at her surroundings. When she answered Qyanna's question it only confused her more. She blinked her narrow, black eyes at the woman, looking very much like a lost puppy. "So... there aren't snows where you come from?" she asked.

The stranger turned back to her, and Qyanna could feel a power pulsing through the air around her. She took a slight step back to escape the strength of the magic growing around the woman, still examining her with open curiosity.

"Who are you?" the woman demanded, looking at Qyanna sharply, as if she could see through to her soul.

Qyanna smiled brightly at her, finally understanding something in this strange interaction. "I'm called Qyanna," she said cheerfully. "Or, when I'm with them, Silverstreak," she added, indicating the wolves around them. She heard a cawing overhead and looked up to see her friends the ravens circling above them. "Or with them, Navan!" she laughed gleefully. "I have many names, you see. As many names as I have forms. Well, perhaps not quite as many, as I haven't tried all forms yet, I'm sure. But someday I will, and then my brethren will find a new name for me!" She grinned innocently, assuming the stranger just asked out of simple friendship. Feeling the need to reciprocate, though she was totally unaware of any normal human social protocol, she asked, "And who are you?" with a bright and sunny smile. The feisty dire wolf who had tested her authority earlier snuck forward to stand at Qyanna's side. She dropped to her knees to put her arm around the wolf, scratching him absently behind his ear as she continued to gaze up at the strange woman with amiable naiveté.

[Bahar_Vahra]

"Qyanna?..." Bahar said aloud, as though practicing a foreign word, for it was not a name she had ever heard before.

Then remembering the strange woman's previous question, replied "What?... Snow? No... not like this... Sometimes in the depth of the winter months, snow flakes may twirl from the heavens above, but they turn to water the moment they touch the ground."

Qyanna then asked for her name in return...

"I am... well.. I was born as Irtuk of the Battu, one of the smaller clan of the Unamiza Steppe, far over the eastern horizon. That child is no more.... I now go by the title my people bestowed upon me. The ba'har vah'ra..." Looking to what she assumed was the east she tried to remember that little girl she used to be so long ago... The girl was long dead now. Destryoed by the world she was born into....

Turning back to stare into the black eyes of this strange woman named Qyanna, she said, "You may call me Bahar... Pleasure to meet you..."

[Qyanna]

Qyanna made a face and tried to mouth out the foreign-sounding names. None of the things the woman had said made any sense to her at all. "Bahar," she said at last, and then smiled, happy that it was something she could pronounce.

A cacophony of howling erupted from the wolves around them, who began to prance and fidget uncomfortably. "Hunters!" Qyanna whispered, her dark eyes suddenly wide and bright with fear. She crouched down again instinctively, about to transform into her wolf form when she remembered Bahar's presence. The woman would clearly not be able to keep up with the wolves as she was, and she certainly wasn't safe here with hunters about. Looking up at the woman she said urgently, "We must get out of here, quickly. Can you change into a faster form?"

[Bahar_Vahra]

The strange shape shifting woman looked around nervously as her wolf companions began to pace and whine. At the mention of hunters Bahar's eyes widened, uncertain of what manner of hunters she was referring to, and fearing the worst. The hunters of the Unamiza were people to be feared indeed. Were the hunters of this land just as dangerous?

"We must get out of here, quickly. Can you change into a faster form?" Qyanna asked hurriedly.

Bahar shook her head. She was aware of some spellcasters ability to perform transmutation spells, but that was not within her own particular skill set.

BAAAROOOOOOOMMMMMM!!.......

A deep reverberating sounds of some strange horn echoed throughout the forest, sending chills through Bahar's body, her eyes darting off into the distance but unable to see any signs of the source.

Getting to her feet Bahar raced off in what she hoped was the opposite direction of hunters, leaving Qyanna and her wolves momentarily behind..

[Qyanna]

Qyanna was pondering how best to transport Bahar to safety when the hunters' horn sounded through the forest. The deep, echoing tune pounded in Qyanna's ears and bones, and she felt her whole body tense up and her eyes grow even wider with fear. She spun around wildly, checking the surrounding trees for signs of movement. The horn meant the hunters had heard the wolves and were heading toward them...

When she turned back to Bahar, opening her mouth to speak, she found that the woman had disappeared. "Is she insane?!" she cried, throwing her hands up in the air and shaking her head. "You can't escape them that way!" she called out, as loudly as she dared. The crunching of snow to the south told her which direction Bahar had fled, and Qyanna didn't waste any more time waiting to see how close the hunters were. She sprinted forward on all fours, shifting into a horse as she ran. Galloping easily between the trees, she caught up to Bahar in a few seconds, the wolves streaming along behind her. She leapt into Bahar's view and then knelt down in the snow to allow the woman to climb on her bare back.