savage

previous part: https://jordynsaelor.com/2026/04/23/moon-wave/

all parts: https://jordynsaelor.com/cant-catch-me-now/

***

The village stranger

loses her curiosity

after a year or so,

the adventurer

learns the names of the log cabin dwellers

after a year or so,

and learns to make new clothes

prettier than Percy’s

and walk

on scaly feet

but never learns to fly

like Runabon thinks she should,

and learns

that the moon

only appears every eight nights

so that’s how they measure their weeks

but wait

go back

to a half week

after she arrives,

when the moon speaker

calls her a savage who started the fire:

no one believes

she’s capable of such things

until she admits it

by making a fire rune

because

she doesn’t want to lie to Runabon

now that the dracan’s taken her home

and let her sleep under her wing–

Ola’s punishment for desolating the moon garden

is to take the exile path

out of the village

and brave the rocky wastes

until the moon tells the moon speaker

she’s atoned,

but the path was meant for creatures much taller than her

so she hides in the rocks

half a day’s walk/crawl away

and eats lizards

and thinks up apologies to Runabon

who’s mad at her,

not for setting the garden on fire,

but because Ola didn’t tell her

she could do magic runes.

Then

one day

under the fire sky

she sneaks back

with an old jawbone from a lizard-thing

and draws a healing rune

on Pobba’s broken wing

that fixes it

so then

the moon speaker

and deity

and Runabon

forgive her

but then

make her

do healing runes

for everyone

as her job,

then in her spare time

she and Runabon explore

the rocky wastes

outside the village

for iron

and she makes mechanical arms

to draw better with

and teaches Runabon

runes too

and she asks for ink

for her invisibility runes

so her dad

sort of teaches Ola to fish

for her own ink

but she doesn’t have a giant mouth

so xhe does most of the catching

and

time passes

like

a fever dream

like

nightmares

like

weird skin rashes

like

swims she gets so exhausted in the middle of she just lies on her back in the shallows

like

sometimes shadows loom larger than demon wings

like

new clothes turn old and she can no longer squeeze inside them

and Ola’s body

feels less like Ola’s body

and more like a savage captor

but

Ola knows runes

and has good fish ink

to call on magic

so one day

she prepares herself

to break free

from this physical warden

even if she can’t escape

the things haunting her mind.

***

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