Aluel Deng

Aluel didn’t much like the feeling of digging around where others lived. It wasn’t only the fact that there were people out here, though there were not many. And she didn’t care much for what the animals thought, admittedly. She was more concerned about anything supernatural that might be accompanying the wildlife. Though her family was decidedly Christian, local folklore of her home country always taught her to be wary of wayward and trickster spirits. This became an even more justifiable warning when she became an exorcist.

In a way, Aluel felt lucky. She hadn’t needed to deal with anything like that coming forth from anywhere in the Omphalos. She was just a security trainee, and though she wanted to use her skills reliably, she’d prefer if she didn’t have to engage in combat at all. She’d sooner deal with things in a stern but professional manner of diplomacy, rather than going in swinging.

She also felt lucky about the large hunk of quartz she uncovered from the snow, still stuck to a hefty-sized rock. It was large enough to rest in her hand comfortably, glimmering with a blue sheen. It was until she’d made a noise of wonder that Yanfeng turned to see her prize.

“Do you think this will do?” she asked her search partner. She marveled at the stone, but still seemed on edge if this was ‘good enough.’

“That looks great! I’m proud of you.” Though Yanfeng’s words were genuine, he watched Aluel for a bit, with her staring back. Abruptly, his hand extended to gesture towards her satchel. “Why so shy? Take it, it’s your prize.”

Aluel followed his loosely-given instructions, pocketing the crystal and fastening her leather satchel shut. When she turned back to him, she saw he’d soon gone back to searching. It was then she had noticed the flush in her own cheeks. Quickly realizing it was spawned of his own praise, she turned away, using her trowel to dig at the empty hole in the earth, where it had bore its crystalline gift to Aluel.

Her lips parted, but no words initially followed. What did was some stuttering.

“Hey. . . I was wondering, did you want to-“

A yelp that grew into hollering rung out from Yanfeng as he reeled back. Aluel swiveled to see something clamped down onto his wrist - the mouth of something reddish-brown and furry. An animal; a wolverine. Having abandoned his trowel, he was fighting with the strong jaws of the creature to release the end of his dense sleeve. It had pulled up enough of his glove to have drawn blood, and Aluel saw red.

She scruffed it, trying to pry thick claws off of his arm. This only succeeded in it redirecting its aggression, where it let go of Yanfeng to snap at Aluel. She narrowly avoided large canines sinking into her palm herself, stumbling backwards as she tried to give it space.

Understanding how a wild animal reacted to this situation, Yanfeng and Aluel slowly moved backwards. They kicked up snow as they shuffled, sometimes nearly skipping to get away when it lashed out. Unfortunately, this chase lasted for a long time until they had separated themselves from the wolverine’s den – and their tools.

---

“Ow. . .”

Aluel’s cupped palm scooped up water from the stream to toss over Yanfeng’s wound as he complained softly. Once fully irrigated and treated with a pocket antiseptic, it was bandaged.

“You should get that looked at,” Aluel nagged him. She hoped he knew it was out of care. “Puncture wounds are no laughing matter.”

“I don’t think it’s funny. . .” Yanfeng grumbled as he leaned his backside onto the stone bank, his knees then splayed as he sat cross-legged. “. . . It’s peaceful here though.”

Aluel gazed out to the stream. Clear waters glided down the rocks with a musical trickle. A prime spot to go hunting for quartz, but an even better spot to spend with a teammate.

“For now,” she decided to reply. Just as soon as she turned her head, Yanfeng was fussing through the gravel of the bank. “What are you doing?”

“I am going to beat you.”

“You just got injured!?” Aluel’s protest came louder than she had anticipated. In response, she rolled her lips inward.

Yanfeng shrugged it off. “Big deal. I’ve dealt with worse and you know it. You just worry too much.”

“Oh, is that what I do?”

Yanfeng did not reply. Aluel had to admit on some front, she was a chronic worrier. Perhaps it was in part that all things came back to bite her eventually. Maybe that was also in part because she fretted so much.

Opting not to become ironic in her thoughts, Aluel squared her shoulders and gazed downwards. The ground was compressed soil and gravel, moistened by the water. It would be good to look here, but the idea of messing around for too long in one spot did not sit well with her still. Relenting, she dug through the gravel with her fingers, keeping an eye out for a glint anywhere.

---

“Are you sure just kicking around the trees is going to get us anything?”

Aluel overturned some snow with the side of her boot, seeking out the same glowstones in Switchback Forest that everyone else was during the festival. That included Yanfeng, who dove into it in earnest. However, Aluel suspected Yanfeng might have held more of an interest in how the animals interacted with the glowstones than the glowstones themselves.

It was funny to her. Yanfeng initially didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be too interested in the mechanisms of science. Perhaps it was because magic was a kind of science in and of itself, as he excelled in two different kinds of Arts and dabbled in a third. But this was a thought she brushed aside, lest she start comparing her own abilities.

Yanfeng’s voice cut to her anyway. He was crouching at the base of a hill, sifting through some of the brush. A rock bed had formed there, holding together loose soil.

“There’s more leading up to the mountain,” he explained. He used his Teller over the Key Gauntlet to translate his native language to his teammates. It produced a more familiar, telepathic sound. “It’s just safer to start small, I think. Besides, this way, we can find more before we get there.”

Languidly, Aluel meandered over to Yanfeng’s side. She leaned forward subtly, a long braid falling over her shoulder as her lips flattened.

“Are we even sure we’re doing this correctly?” she asked. “I feel like there’s a way we can do this more efficiently.”

“Like with an Earth Art?” A single glance was tossed over Yanfeng’s shoulder before he returned to sifting through dirt.

Aluel had already noted the fact they were armed mostly with sifting pans, trowels, and gloves. She’d taken her own to kneel down and assist him with the task. Both of them had studied on the fact that they should have been searching for flat-sided rocks – they made excellent host rocks for the quartz that would make glowstones.

“Had we the ability,” she remarked. “Not that I am that keen on fetching others more familiar with it to do it for us.”

“That’s so you.”

Aluel turned, her lips parted somewhat at Yanfeng declaration. Her brow furrowed a bit, though she didn’t seem genuinely offended. Her voice was even tinted with amusement.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you work both smarter and harder.”

“Is that combination bad or something?”

“Not inherently,” Yanfeng answered, “especially when not everyone has it in them to do both.”

Aluel granted him a pensive hum as she rested her trowel. He wasn’t wrong in her own observations of herself. She just wished being both was less frustrating sometimes.

After a moment, she stood, now raising her trowel-bearing hand to gaze into the distance. Behind a single lens of a pair of sunglasses, her lone eye squinted against the snow. It was later in the afternoon, so the sun was setting much sooner than it had been earlier in the year. It was also a more suitable time for Yanfeng and Aluel to go out, since it meant some relief for the latter’s skin and eyes. It also meant it was easier for her to make out a stream on the horizon, to which she gestured towards with an utterance of Yanfeng’s name.

“Let’s go there next,” she suggested, then huddling next to him again. In part to continue their search at the hill’s base, in part because he was a familiar bundle of warmth. “Quartz likes to form around water, from what I’ve read.”

“You’ve done your research, I see,” Yanfeng said, a brow raised only in a good-natured manner.

“Well, I had to if I intend on beating you.”

Perhaps only a minor bit of preening followed when Aluel said that, but however reluctant, it was smugness nonetheless.

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