Partly inspired by my Sociology class.
Flint's response to being told to help Storm, Winter, and a handful of the others get water for the tribe's morning meal—which meant a half-hour walk in the icy pre-dawn gloom this morning—was less a complaint than one long, long growl as they trekked over the snowy landscape.
"You're the one who complained we were going easy on you," Dawn reminded him for the third time since she'd shaken him and Storm awake.
"I'm going to freeze to death," he muttered. Indeed, he was shivering and hugging his thick fur coat tightly around himself as he scuffed through the snow, leaving tracks just deep enough that anyone who wanted to follow them could do so.
"We'll miss you," said Storm.
Winter joined them at the front of the group. "This is where Raven would say 'Will we? ...Yeah, I guess so..."
Flint kicked a chunk of snow at her. "I can't believe Raven gets to sleep in."
"It's not his turn." Dawn shook her head at Storm as if wondering why she even tried anymore.
Flint gave a truly admirable eye roll.
"Oh, lighten up, grumpy," Storm chuckled. When Flint didn't reply, he lunged and caught him in a headlock.
"Hey!" Flint kicked at him, and within moments they were both tumbling into the snow. "Now look what you've done! ...AAIII! That's COLD!"
"Good." Storm stuffed another handful of snow down Flint's back for good measure, causing the others to laugh uproariously. "Now try to catch me." He bolted away, slipping and sliding on the snow. A glance told him Flint was coming for him and that if he was caught, he'd regret it greatly. He pushed himself to the limits of his speed, hoping his superior balance would save him as he reached the trees lining the river—
Flint tackled him from behind, knocking him onto the ice and into a slide that ended with Storm's face in the opposite bank. "Let's see how you like being soaked!"
"Mhmhmhm," Storm chortled into the snow bank, though he squirmed when multiple snowballs were forced down his shirt.
Through his unblocked ear, he heard the hissss of other elves sliding across the ice, then CRACK-CRACK-splash. "All right, you two, we have a job to do," Dawn said fondly.
Storm gasped for air as the pressure pushing his face into the snow vanished; Flint made a face as Storm got to his feet. "What? You're warm now, aren't you?"
Flint's eyebrows lifted incredulously. "Am I warm? Am I—you—you did that so I'd chase you and warm up!" His mouth fell open at Storm's audacity, but then he began to laugh. "Nice."
Storm thumped him on the shoulder and retrieved a wooden pole with a bucket on either end from one of the elves who'd brought them—Star's husband, a muscular elf who could apparently run full-tilt while carrying five pairs of good-sized wooden buckets, which was an impressive feat. He didn't talk much, but even Raven—who was "only" a head taller—and Flint—who was much stronger than even his humanlike muscle mass suggested—couldn't beat him in arm-wrestling. His build suggested he had some human blood in him, but Star said she was certain that wasn't the case. "Morning, Pine."
"Is it?" He considered the dim gray sky with polite interest.
Storm was never quite sure what to do with this elf, who seemed to float through life in a mildly perplexed state. It wasn't clear to Storm whether Pine was entirely right in the head or not, but he had the feeling bringing up the question with Star would get him in hot water, perhaps literally since she was boiling herbs so often. "Yeah. You doing all right?" They made their way together to the hole in the ice and waited their turn to dunk their buckets into the water.
"Am I?" He considered the question. "I think so. You?"
Storm hefted the pole with its filled buckets onto his shoulders with a grunt and considered his next half-hour: trudging through the darkness, trying to keep the buckets steady as his shoulders gradually began to ache, with Flint complaining loudly next to him. Such was an Avari's life; there were no fancy elite jobs to save you from your fair share of the work around here. He found himself smiling. "Yeah, I'm good."
. . . . . .
"Hey Storm, look."
He twisted around to see the blanket Winter was making out of material gathered from plants last summer; he himself was working on a camouflaged cloak, and they were sitting back-to-back on a boulder to keep their projects away from the mud and melting snow. "Flowers? I like it." She'd sewn blossom patterns into it with a dark blue yarn she must've saved. "Did you make that last year?"
She looked at him funny. "No, earlier this year."
He frowned at the bare landscape. "In the winter?"
She groaned. "How many times do I have to tell you the new year starts in the spring?"
Oh, yeah... "Not where I come from."
"How does that work? Do flowers start sprouting in midwinter?"
"No," he admitted.
"Are animals born, then?"
"Bear cubs are," he muttered.
"Only bear cubs. Honestly, Storm, what do they teach elflings over there? Everything starts in spring."
"Yeah, yeah, okay."
. . . . . .
"Left."
"Okay."
"Now pull it taut."
"Right..."
"A little lower."
"Uh-huh."
"Perfect! Now walk forward."
Sploosh... sploosh... sploosh...
"Now stop—" Sploosh... sploosh... sploosh... "Turn—" Sploosh... sploosh... "Forward two steps, here's the bank. Watch—er, mind the bottom of the net—" Sploosh... sploosh... "Ready, flip! And there we go, we got something."
"I feel it," said Fox, gripping his end of the wriggling net tightly as the two of them climbed up the bank. The world was green now, though still wet, and Storm was sorry his friend couldn't appreciate the beauty of it. "I bet it's a catfish."
"Let's hope so." They reached flat ground and set the net down, and Storm readied his knife to clean their catch as Fox untangled the pondweed-filled net. "Look at that—not just a catfish, but a big one. And a couple of crayfish; we don't usually catch those with nets."
Fox found a crayfish and held it up. "We could keep these, y'know. One each."
"Tempting, but what if someone else found something better and they don't share?"
"Better? What's better than crayfish this time of year?"
"I don't know, is it too early for honey?"
"Way too early." Fox wiped his muddy hands on the grass. "I think I'll give mine to Moon, how about you?"
"I don't know, maybe Winter—or Dawn, she likes them a lot. Or keep it for myself. Or... we do have a whole basket to fill, you know, and it's just barely warm enough for them to be out, so they'll be slow."
"You mean we have an excuse to get even muddier?"
"I think we do."
. . . . . .
"Y'know, of all our work, this is my favorite," Storm remarked one warm spring morning.
"It's the best," Raven agreed.
"I think the thrill's my favorite part."
"Me? I like the novelty."
"It's different every time," Storm agreed.
"Yeah. Like this time, my shirt has a stain from when you threw than partridge leg at me, remember?" Raven held out his shirt for inspection, then dunked it underwater again.
"Oh yeah. See? You never know what you'll find."
"You two are idiots," Winter remarked from across the stream, neatly folding a pair of pants.
"Thanks, you too," returned Storm.
. . . . . .
"I'm making a new rule," Star announced. "Five berries have to go into your basket for every one you eat."
"Thamph's mo fum," Storm complained, stuffing another handful of sweet red berries in his mouth.
"These are for the tribe, not you. What are you, twenty?"
He swallowed. "The more berries I eat, the less food I'll need later; it all balances out. Look, your husband's not even picking any, you should give him rules too." Pine, for some reason only he knew, was gazing up at the sky with a peaceful smile.
Star clicked twice to get his attention, then pointed at the bushes, and he obediently returned to work. "Five berries, Storm."
"Sheesh." He went back to work, still popping another berry in his mouth as often as the rules allowed, and soon found himself next to Pine. "Hey, what were you looking at a minute ago?"
"Me?"
"No, the invisible elf behind you."
Pine double-checked behind him before apparently concluding Storm was joking. "Was I looking at something?" He looked upward again before Storm could sarcastically remark that, well, he wasn't Fox, was he? "Hmm," he mused after a moment. "I don't know. When did those clouds get here?" He shrugged and resumed berry-picking.
Weird.
. . . . . .
"It's hottttt," Winter whined.
"It's wonderful," disagreed Flint, who seemed to handle high temperatures much better than low ones, possibly due to his Easterling ancestry but more likely from pure chance, and who also thrived on Winter's suffering.
"We'll live," Storm compromised. "Here, is this one straight enough?"
Winter took the fallen branch and considered it. "We could do better, I think."
"Let me see." Flint took his bone knife and began scraping at the wood, smoothing it out. "It'll work fine."
Storm wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a gulp from his waterskin. "Why do elves always break their legs so far from trees? We never had trouble finding splint-sticks in Greenwood."
"I bet when elves fell there, they broke a lot more than their legs," Winter replied dryly.
He winced, remembering some of Felrion's patients. "Fair point."
. . . . . .
"The sheer... uh, portion of our lives that's centered around food is amazing to me," Storm remarked, folding a piece of flatbread hot from the fire around some honey-drizzled meat and handing it to one of the waiting elves. He'd almost said, "The sheer percentage", but then he'd realized there was no such word in the Avari tongue; math beyond basic fractions wasn't really a thing here; it wasn't needed. He made a mental note to try teaching Flint or Winter some more advanced math sometime to see if it stuck.
"Well," Dawn replied after a few moments, similarly preparing someone's dinner on the other side of the fire, "we could really cut down on that side of things if we lived entirely on meat, but I don't think anyone wants that."
"And then what would we do with our day?" Raven added. It was a valid question; the time they had left for games and socialization was already just right.
Storm shrugged and folded another piece of bread, this time tossing it to one of the female half-humans. "I wasn't complaining. It's just that in Greenwood, other elves grew most of the food, so it seems odd. I mean, I hunted and gathered wild plants, but only when I felt like it."
"And with your spare time, you played pranks?" Dawn guessed.
"And hunted orcs," he reminded her.
"Until other elves did that job, too. You still had a role in it, but not enough to feel rewarding, yes?"
She wasn't wrong.
. . . . . .
A chestnut bounced of Storm's head. "Hey Storm, guess what?"
He chuckled at he tossed the nut in his basket with the others. "Yeah, Moon?"
"Remember when we met up with the Penni?"
Of course he did; the two tribes had stayed together for a fortnight, and the two male healers—Clover and Starling—had jumped him and Winter outside the camp, which eventually ended in a brawl involving the better part of both tribes. It was the highlight of his decade. "Sure, why?"
"I heard Catnip's daughter is thinking about going through the tribes."
"Spending some time with each tribe, you mean." Storm scooped up a few more chestnuts and lobbed one back at her.
"Or at least some of them." She shrugged. "The Cuind are so secretive, you know. But, do you know what this means? We could steal her."
"D'you think—" A chestnut hit him right smack on the nose. "—nice shot—d'you think she's actually interested in changing tribes?"
"My sources say she is." Moon winked conspiratorially. "Don't tell."
Knowing her, Storm was pretty sure the majority of the tribe didn't need to be told.
. . . . . .
"Hmm," said Storm. "Fire."
Flint gave him a suspicious look.
"What? Just contemplating."
"Contemplating burning the camp to ashes?"
"Nah. Contemplating marshmallows. They're wonderful things, you know—like honey, but puffed up and squishy." The Avari didn't have sugar, but there were plenty of bee hives in the wilds.
"Don't make me hungry." Flint prodded the coals with his stick, then dropped in another log from the stack next to him; he liked this job in the colder months, since it kept him warm.
Storm yawned widely. "Want to wake me up when it's my turn? I'm tired." Normally they wouldn't keep a fire going all night, but they were keeping some soup warm for a scouting group which would get back late, according to their howls which had come into range a few minutes ago.
"Fine, but you have to promise me you'll make Raven take the next turn after you."
"Deal." Storm moved to a distance where he probably wouldn't catch on fire and rolled up in his cloak. "Good night."
"Good night, Silvan."