A refugee from the mainland

[katriell]

"What do you mean by 'taken'?" Maethros asked calmly, his primary emotion at that moment being curiosity. Perhaps a little aggravation somewhere, that his eagerly-anticipated entrance to Silan was being stalled.

"There was already a refugee registered under the name 'Maethros,'" the Tryker official replied, blinking her huge, shining eyes.

Must be my namesake. "Ah...okay, can I change my name?"

"Sure."

Maethros folded his arms over his narrow chest thoughtfully. "Could I just change the spelling of my name? Like, add a silent letter to the end?"

The Tryker glanced down at the list she had in hand. "Nope. Names like that are taken too."

He made a brief fft sound between his lips, glancing around with a trace of impatience. "Ok...how about Maethro? No ss?"

Again, she glanced down at the list, then nodded chipperly. "Right-o. Off with ya."

Maethros, now to be known as Maethro, nearly cheered in excitement as he dashed over to the teleporter and slipped some dapper to its guardian. Within moments, he was taken by the teleport, and soon stood on a hill well-covered with moss and grass. Slowly, he raised his eyes, absorbing the scent of the air, the sounds of busy homins all around, and the sight of a Zoraï with an axe perched across his shoulder. Maethro stepped up toward the Zoraï, who glanced at him while conversing with another homin dressed in typical refugee clothing.

When the man with the axe finished his conversation with the other homin, he turned to Maethro and greeted him, introducing himself as Chiang, and the island as an outpost of the Rangers and a place where all of the races had united to teach the incoming refugees. This appealed greatly to the boy who had been taught to respect the Order of the Rangers of Atys, and that homins should unite towards common, virtuous causes.

After Chiang moved on to another newly-arrived homin, Maethro started to wander the rest of the camp. He noted the section occupied by Karavan, with their distinct cold materials of dark and light, and the Kami section, all of white and amber glow. The homin areas, seemingly divided into crafting, harvesting, fighting, and magic sections with merchants interspersed, were mostly of plain wood and cloth.

Naturally, the first area Maethro actually stopped in was that of melee fighting. Two homins stood beside signs with weapon symbols on them, and he guessed they were merchants. So he approached a desk behind which stood a toughened-looking Fyros woman. When she gave him a task to kill ten yubos, he was dismayed. For most of his childhood, he had had a pet yubo, named simply Yuba, who had died only of old age a few cycles ago. But, knowing he needed to assure the fighter commander of his ability before he could move on to further training, he hid his aversion and accepted the task.