"You know this one?" Denai asked curiously.
Tarrin nodded. "He came about this close to getting killed," Tarrin said, holding his finger and thumb barely apart.
"He's of my clan, but not of my tribe," Denai said. "Who are you, stranger?"
"Will someone tell me what's going on?" Sarraya demanded. "What is Var doing all the way out here?"
"The stranger is a Scout for another tribe," Denai told her. "He lost his fire-pack fighting inu. He came here because of our fire."
"Oh. I know you speak the Western tongue, Var," Sarraya said sharply. "If you're going to talk around me, do it that way. I get cranky when I don't know what's going on."
Tarrin raised his ears at that, but then he remembered that quite a while ago, Var told him that Sarraya had told him some things. She couldn't do that if they didn't share a common language.
"My apologies, friend Sarraya," he said with a grin, in accented Sulasian. "He spoke to me in the True Tongue, and I responded in kind out of reflex."
That made Denai's eyebrow rise. "When did a Scout learn a trade language?" she asked him curiously.
"When his mother is obe," he replied with a shrug, standing up. "I know this is forward of me, Tarrin, but I need a fire this night. May I join yours? I'll do my part to keep it lit tonight, as is only proper."
Tarrin blew out his breath. Another stranger. But he wasn't about to send him back out to those hideous moans, though. Even he had limits on heartlessness. Those moans totally smothered even his curiosity to see one of these mysterious Sandmen. Tarrin knew Var, up to a point. He felt that he could trust his presence for a night. After all, Var already had an intimate understanding of how fast he would die if he did something stupid.
"Just tonight," Tarrin told him bluntly. "You already know how I feel about strangers."
"I know fully well. I'll stay on this side of the fire," he said, motioning towards Denai and Sarraya.
"Sounds like you just made it, Var. Literally," Sarraya grinned at him as Tarrin sat back down. Denai did the same, and Var moved over to their side of the fire. He dropped down in a cross-legged position beside the rock on which Sarraya was standing. "From the sound of those moaning sounds, I don't think I'd want one of them joining us."
"Sandmen are not to be taken lightly," Var said seriously. "Were it not for those inu, I'd be tending my own fire right now."
"Don't the inu have trouble with the Sandmen too?"
Both Var and Denai shook their heads. "Sandmen don't attack animals," Denai told her. "They only attack intelligent beings."
"But no animal will get anywhere near one," Var added. "They run from Sandmen. I've always wondered why, since the Sandmen won't bother them."
"Because they're unnatural," Sarraya told him. "Animals are sensitive to things like that. They won't approach unnatural things."
"I guess so," Var shrugged. "A Selani with half a brain runs too." He looked at Denai casually, then offered his hand to her, reaching over Sarraya's head. "I am Var Dellin'Sun, of Clan Dellinar," he introduced in Selani.
"I am Denai Shu'Dellin, of Clan Dellinar," she replied in kind. The two of them looked at one another steadily, then Denai took his hand and gripped it firmly. "Honor to the clan."
"Honor to the clan," he repeated, and then they let go of each other's hands. "How did she come to travel with you?" he asked Sarraya.
"Tarrin pulled her butt out of a pack of inu," Sarraya replied with a little laugh. "She's guiding us around some of the bigger obstacles in payment for that."
Var looked towards Tarrin, then looked at Denai, who looked a trifle embarassed at that revelation. "Surprising that you'd change your mind now, Tarrin. You told me that you wouldn't travel with strangers."
"Why do you think I'm over here, Var?" Tarrin asked sharply. "I didn't know that the desert was so hard to navigate in this region. Denai is saving me time, nothing more. When we're in the open again, I'll send her back to her tribe."
"It's not your choice when I leave," Denai flared. "I'll leave when honor is satisfied, and not a moment sooner."
Tarrin narrowed his eyes and stared at her in a manner that made her flinch away from him.
"Now now, let's not get into an argument," Sarraya said quickly. "At least with another pair of hands, we can keep the fire going without losing too much sleep. From the sound of it, we'll need it," she said after another of those hollow moans came over the fallen spire. "That gives me the shivers."
"Where did you meet them?" Denai asked Var.
"I challenged Tarrin because we thought he was an invader," Var told her. "It didn't last long," he said with a laugh. "I haven't been beaten down like that since I was a child. I decided to follow him after I was defeated and study him, maybe challenge him again. After he killed a kajat single-handedly, I decided challenging him again was not wise."
"He did that?" Denai said in surprise, looking at Sarraya.
"He cheated a little with magic, but he did," Sarraya told her with a wide smile.
Tarrin tuned them out as his eyes drifted back to the fire. The scents of Var and Denai were unsettling him a little, invoking instinctive feelings in him to chase off the interlopers, instincts he strove to control. He remembered Var very well from before, and his reaction to the male Selani was greatly different than it had been to Denai. Denai was like a child to him, but Var was definitely not a child. He was an adult, a dangerous adult well trained in the Selani fighting styles. It was because of that, he realized, that he wasn't quite as willing to accept Var's company as he had been Denai. Denai was also an adult, and probably well trained in the Dance, but he saw her as a child. No matter how old she really was, her manner and look and scent decried her youth to him, and that protected her from the brunt of his hostility. Var was another matter. He was a mature Selani, an adult well into his prime, and that caused Tarrin's hackles to raise up and stay up. His generosity to Var seemed misplaced now that he was stuck with the Selani male until morning. For that matter, he was surprised he went that far. Two rides ago, he would have thrown Var back out into the darkness without a thought as to whether he lived or died.
That struck him, in a strange way. That was true. Two rides ago, he would have thrown Var out. But now he would not. Had he truly begun to change? Had his feral nature softened in that time, as it had for Mist? He didn't feel any different. Truth be told, he felt even more edgy now than he did two rides ago, because of the damned face that haunted his dreams and his moments of reverie, and also his frustration at being unable to find his magic again. But all things aside, he had to admit that he was doing something that he wouldn't have done two rides ago. He wasn't about to accept Var into his company, but he felt he could tolerate him for one night. That was something. He hated being the way that he was, and before he always felt powerless to do anything to change it. Even when he tried to change, it came to naught. But, in his own defense, Jula's intrusion into his life and the chaos surrounding the Book of Ages had unravelled whatever progress he had made, and then the long time in cat form, forcing it to try to deal with emotions beyond its ability, undid the rest of it.
Maybe he could change. He knew that he could never be as trusting as he'd been before turning feral-there was no going back-but all he really wanted was to be able to look a stranger in the eyes and not feel so afraid, then feel angry at fearing a weaker being. Mist had changed. She had accepted Tarrin, accepted him completely and without reservation, something he never thought would happen. He still felt intensely relieved, and a little proud of that fact, that he had managed to ease the horrific pain the Were-cat had endured for so many years. He knew that he could never accept strangers as anything but strangers, but there were many kinds of strangers, just as there were many kinds of friends. He had already began to rationalize his feelings for people not his friends, as he had for Denai, to classify them in levels of threat based on his impressions of them and their ability to threaten him. He just had to take that a little further, reach a point where the fearful animal in him would listen to his rational mind when it told the animal that a stranger was no threat.