THE NEXT EVENT - by Kolyaaa!
CHAPTER THREE: THE YEDEENOROG
A/N: Ha ha ha ha! I bask in the glow of your feedback! It feeds me like food! Give me more!
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"Somehow I expected the festival to be a bit more...festive," McKay muttered, peering down the deserted streets of the Satedan settlement.
Sheppard cocked a disapproving eyebrow at the physicist, but privately had to agree. The refugee encampment was located far from the larger cities of the planet's native population. The houses here had a flimsy, temporary feel to them, as if they'd been thrown together by people who never expected to live in them this long.
Here and there, the drab shelters were livened up with garlands of flowers around the door lintels. Bright scraps of fabric fluttered from streamers that had been strung between buildings. Colorful flags snapped in the breeze.
But any cheer they might have brought to the scene was offset by the fact that the village - Set, Ronon had called it - was completely, eerily empty.
"Hellooo?" McKay called through an open window. He scowled back at his teammates. "Where is everybody? What is this? Brigadoon?" he asked. "What say we ditch the festival of the damned and head back before Simpson completely botches-?"
Sheppard and Teyla exchanged an eye-roll and kept walking, following Dex as he marched purposefully down the empty streets of Set, heading for the hillside beyond. McKay trundled after them, keeping up the running commentary of complaints the team had come to expect whenever they dragged the Canadian cross-country.
As they crested the hill, Dex pulled to a sudden halt. McKay, who had turned to complain because all the trees on this planet had purple leaves, collided with his shoulder.
"Would you watch where you're...Oh." McKay edged around the Satedan and stared at the sight below. "Oh my. That's...that looks..."
"Cool," Sheppard breathed, a loopy grin plastered on his face.
Below them, Yedeenorog was in full swing. The broad grassy valley was dotted with colorful striped tents, interspersed with smaller booths, crackling bonfires and the marked-off squares of playing fields where several competitions seemed to be underway. Laughter, music and the distant cheer of crowds floated up to their ears. Looking down on the festival, Sheppard half-expected to hear calliope music or see a Ferris wheel spinning slowly over the scene. He glanced over and saw McKay and Teyla grinning down at the festival, looking more relaxed than he'd seen them in weeks.
This, he decided, had been a great idea.
"This was a bad idea," Dex muttered softly.
Slowly, the others pivoted to stare at the Satedan.
Dex took a hesitant step back, looking very young and lost all of a sudden. "It's been a long time. I don't know these people anymore. I don't belong here."
Teyla caught his arm. "These are your people," she insisted. "You will always have a place among them."
But there was an odd note in her voice; one that Sheppard probably would have tried to analyze in more depth if he hadn't been distracted by a group of children on the hillside, shrieking and cheering at a cluster of bright shapes that were swooping and diving over their heads. Kites. He leaned forward longingly. Weird-shaped kites of alien construction, but kites nonetheless. He loved kites.
Dex was still trying to talk himself out of it. "Maybe we should just go back-"
This time, it was McKay who cut him off. "Whoa-whoa-whoa," he said, flapping a hand to silence the debate. He took a step closer to the festivities, sniffing the air like bloodhound. "What's that I smell?"
Intriguing scents were wafting to them on the breeze - sweet, salty, deep-fried smells familiar to anyone who spent any amount of time at carnivals or county fairs. And John Sheppard, connoisseur of Ferris wheels, had spent a lot of time at a lot of carnivals.
"Colonel?" Teyla's amused voice penetrated the haze of memory and snapped Sheppard back to the present.
He clapped Dex on the shoulder and gave him an encouraging shove downhill. "I don't suppose you people have gotten around to inventing Ferris wheels?"
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"So how does this work?" McKay asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he eyed a concession stand larded with gooey pastries that gave off an intoxicating chocolaty aroma. "How much do those cost? What sort of currency do you people use? Didn't anybody think to bring some glass beads or trinkets to barter with the natives?"
Dex shrugged. "This is a warriors' festival," he said, as if that explained everything. He nodded to the pastry vendor, who was waving encouraging at them, a sweet cake in each hand. "I suppose the items have a price, but I've never had to pay. The vendors fall over themselves to offer their wares to the warriors. It's their way of honoring those who protect the weak and defenseless."
McKay's face fell.
Sheppard, however, was looking around at the crowd with new appreciation. There must be thousands of people here - far more than the few hundred who survived the culling of Sateda. Now that he was looking for them, the off-world warriors were easy to spot, strutting through the crowd, bristling with weapons and armor - and all but staggering under the gifts that had been pressed upon them.
"They just give stuff away?" Sheppard asked.
"To the warriors," Dex confirmed.
"And how do your people recognize a true warrior?" Teyla asked, watching as a group of young men swaggered up to the pastry vendor, then meekly handed over payment when the chef snatched back the treats they were reaching for.
"They know."
McKay crossed his arms and huffed in disgust. "Well that's just great. Meanwhile, what am I supposed to do? Wait for the Science Fair before I get something to eat?" He shot an annoyed glance at a snickering Sheppard.
"Here." Dex held something out to him. McKay blinked, recognizing the Wraith-bone charm the former Runner always wore.
"What? Why?" The scientist was obviously confused, not understanding the meaning.
When McKay made no move to put it on, Dex dropped the necklace over his head. "You wear that, you won't starve."
McKay stared down at the finger-bone dangling around his neck - clearly torn between disgust with the trophy and the lure of free food. He poked at it with a finger. "Please! It's going to take more than ugly jewelry to fool anyone into believing I'm a great warrior."
Dex shrugged and turned away. "From what these two have told me, you've killed more Wraith than half the soldiers here. That just makes sure everybody knows it." He started to walk away, tossing over his shoulder, "Just make sure you don't lose it."
He headed off into the crowd as McKay stared after him, dumbstruck. Teyla gave Sheppard a nod and McKay an encouraging smile, then strolled after him.
"Come on, mighty warrior," Sheppard clouted the scientist on the shoulder. "Let's get something to eat."
McKay followed, sneaking an occasional peek at the symbol of valor on his chest. He grimaced, strongly aware of just how "borrowed" it felt. Surely, the vendors were going to see right through it...
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"Yours is an interesting culture, Ronon," Teyla said, graciously waving off an elderly man who was trying to press a beaded bracelet into her hands.
Dex peered out at her from under two garlands of flowers that had been draped over his hair. "How so?" he asked, accepting a loaf of crusty, warm bread from a giggling young girl. He ripped off a hunk and offered the rest of the loaf to Teyla.
By mutual consent, they leaned against a rough fence to share the bread and watch the competition underway in a nearby field.
"Well, for instance..." Teyla waved to the field. "What test of skill and strength might this be?"
In the center of the field stood a massive old tree; its trunk split with age and disease, its purple leaves withered and sparse. A line of young warriors - boys, mostly, with a few young women here and there - waited impatiently in a line for a chance to get close to the tree. Up against the trunk, a young man stood pressed against the cracked bark, trying to wedge himself into the cleft and split the tree in half entirely.
Dex let out a bark of laughter - the first real laugh Teyla had ever heard from him.
"It's an object lesson," he snorted. "From an ancient legend - about a warrior by the name of Kroton who had more muscles than brains. He was walking through the woods one day and decided to test his strength against the oldest tree in the forest. He wedged himself into a crack in the trunk and did his best to tear the tree to pieces. But the wood just snapped back into place, trapping him half-in, half-out of the tree."
Teyla eyed the young warriors as they contorted themselves into the narrow cleft in the trunk, straining mightily. "What happened then?"
"Then," Dex said blandly. "Wild beasts of the forest came upon him, trapped and helpless, and devoured him."
Teyla blinked.
"Come," Dex tossed away the heel of the bread loaf and caught her arm, tugging her away from the crowd around the tree. "You must come see the next event."
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"That bone necklace really works, huh?" Sheppard grumbled, watching sourly as McKay collected another armload of treats from a smiling vendor.
The merchant turned to Sheppard, taking in his weapon and uniform but clearly undecided whether he fell into the category of warrior or wannabe. Sheppard made a face at him. "Never mind." He snagged a pastry out of McKay's fingers.
Rodney bit into the treat in his left hand instead. "For food like this? I'd wear that bone through my nose." Magnanimously, he offered another tidbit to the colonel - a savory meat pasty of some sort. Sheppard ate it in two bites and looked around for someplace new to wave McKay's miraculous bone necklace.
They walked in amiable silence for a while, pausing now and then to gape at the sights - a tall poll that shot out a continuous cascade of multicolored sparks, a livestock display crammed with a bizarre collection of creatures. And, to McKay's delight, a booth hawking an odd assortment of rubbish that included a few items of clearly Ancient origin.
Sheppard managed to drag Rodney away only after they both pawed every object to see if any would turn on. None did, although McKay did pocket a device that looked something like an Atlantis-issue data pad.
"Play with your toys later, Rodney," Sheppard chided, leading the way toward one of the competition fields. This one looked like an improvised racetrack. "What say we watch some of these feats of strength Ronon was talking ab-awk!" The sentence ended with a yelp as he finally caught sight of the athletes.
They stared with identical expressions of slack-jawed shock. McKay recovered first. "Why..." His voice came out as a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Why…are they naked?"
If Sheppard could have collected his scattered wits, he might have been able to answer that question. As it was, all his dazed brain could do was agree that yes, all the athletes on the field were indeed naked. "Quite naked," he mumbled. "Very nude."
"Naked...ladies," McKay croaked beside him, eyes bulging at the footrace before them. The runners were rounding the curve in the track and heading straight for them.
They moved closer to the edge of the track, jostling for the best view.
One runner was lengths ahead of the rest of the pack, running with an easy, loose-limbed stride that ate the ground. Head and shoulders taller than the other women, her tawny hair streamed over her golden shoulders as she sprinted forward effortlessly.
They drew closer, bare feet pounding the earth, each runner grinning fiercely at the crowd as she darted by. McKay felt his heart skip a beat as the lead runner whipped around the track and her dark blue gaze locked with his.
Suddenly, those flashing eyes narrowed.
The next thing McKay knew, he was flying backward.
He landed with a painful thump, with a furious naked woman kneeling on his chest.
"Ow," McKay wheezed, rolling his eyes toward Sheppard in silent appeal. But the colonel stood frozen, clearly not sure how to help, or even if McKay needed rescuing.
Was this what Dex had in mind when he mentioned that the young women had their own ways of "honoring" the warriors?
McKay glanced at his attacker again, then quickly screwed his eyes shut, blushing furiously. He felt a finger trace a line from his chin, down his chin and come to rest against his chest, where the bone necklace rested. Her long, strong fingers curled in a fist, twisting the hide cord until it tightened around his neck like a garrote
"Tell me," the young woman purred in a low, husky voice. "Where you stole this..." She flexed her knees and McKay felt his ribs creak. "Before I snap you in half."
TBC
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A/N: You liked this chapter, didn't you? Well, how could you not! There's a carnival and naked women! Leave me feedback and let me know how it changed your life. If you didn't like this chapter then there is something wrong with you. Now excuse me while I look for my lizard.
