Echo began climbing down slowly, just in case he was sent after his parents. "Jus' hold on tight ta the branch above and try ta move yer foot to a lower one." This reminded the boy of a story he'd been thinking up. "Maybe yer a tree charmer. Ya can make the branches move where ya wan' as ya go down. Jus' stretch reeeeaaaal far."

When Echo reached the lowest visible branch, he hopped to the ground with a small thud.

Calli wasn't listening anymore. It wasn't a purposeful thing. She just couldn't seem to hear a word anyone said over the wind in the trees or the sight of that little caterpillar that was inching his way across the branch before her.

She was very high up. Awesome.

"Hey Tristaaaannn!" Calli shouted down at him. "I found a bug!"

The caterpillar kept moving. Calli crouched down low.

"Hi, Mr Caterpillar." She whispered.

"Vrunta." The young passive muttered under his breath. He may have struggled with most Tek, but it didn't take long for him to pick up on the more negative words. He was starting up the tree as Echo landed next to him, "One of you two really should go get your folks."

Tristaan was not a tree climber. In fact, with the exception of a few tame, short, well-manicured trees on his family estate as a very young boy, he'd never really had any ambition to be so high off the ground. He wasn't entirely sure if he was exactly afraid of heights, but the knot in his stomach as he nervously hovered half-way between the roots of the trees and Calli's current position told him he must've been afraid of something.

"Calli, come on. Climb back down to me and we'll go together to the bottom." The passive's knuckles were white on the branches he clung to. He felt a little dizzy, and reminded himself not to look down.

"Ne, ne, Tristaan, come up here! Come and see my bug!" Calli waved at Tristaan, precariously perched with one arm holding onto a branch, legs braced against the trunk. "I'm thinking of naming him!"

Calli did not immediately seem to notice that Tristaan wasn't as confident at this as she was. She swung about, moving backwards and forwards using the one hand as a pivot.

"Hi Echo!" She screamed down at him, waving.

"Hey Calli!" he called back waving. Echo stared up the tree at Calli and Tristaan. He didn't want to leave and miss anything, but his eagerness to win Tristaan's approval finally won out. "I'll get Da!"

"Watcha gonna name 'im?!" he called back as he began to walk off. "Ya could name 'im Haggle! Da said he once saw a starfly that was bigger than a hingle! He named 'im Haggle. Haggle tried to chase a hingle outta the forest....bu' the hingle got 'er friends an'..." By this point Echo was far enough away that he couldn't be clearly heard, but continued telling the story to no one in particular. A few louder than necessary words continued to pop out as he disappeared into the distance. "...an'Da said .......stinger was enormous!"

Keiyra followed Tristaan as he approached the tree, shaking her head at the two other wicks. What a silly predicament. Watching Tristaan climb slightly, she felt a little fearful.

"Be careful Tristaan! Don't fall! Oh! Just wait for her da!" She shook a finger at Calli.

"This was silly of you, look now. Poor Tristaan is stuck up a tree!"

Tristaan looked down.

And immediately regretted it.

Gasping in a most undignified way, he looked back up to Calli, cautiously removing one hand to wave it in a come-hither fashion frustratedly, "N-ne, Calli. Come on. You can bring your little friend with you. Let's go back down."

The young passive wavered in sudden fear, feeling dizzy, returning both his hands to the tree trunk tightly. His legs felt weak, and he mumbled, daring a glance at the ground again, "Together. Now, please."

Calli frowned and shook her head, hair bouncing about violently.

"This is his kint, he lives up here." She said, earnestly.



Calli looked down again and then up at Tristaan. He looked a little pale now. She wanted to argue against it. Calli didn't know why he'd want to leave, it was great in the tree! Unless...

"Heeeyyy, Tristaan?" Calli asked, inquisitively. "Are you ascared of heights?"

"Ne. I ent." The young passive grunted forcefully, reaching for the next highest branch as if to prove his point to the young witch, despite the wobbly protest of his legs, "I'm just trying to give you a chance to climb down on your own, before I have to come up there and get you."

He lied. He was terrified, but he climbed further upward in the now-swaying branches. Tristaan felt compelled to dispel any assumption of weakness, though he knew his efforts would be lost on a child. Whatever he felt he had to prove, he refused to see it was pointless to Calli or Echo or even Keirya.

"See? I'm not scared."

The dark-haired boy's voice wavered as he ventured a grin back up at the blond, dizzy in the breeze, hands tightly grasping the branches to keep them from shaking.

"Here, I'll even come high—"

Tristaan felt the branch he set his foot on bend in protest before he heard the crack of breaking wood. He was small-framed and lithe, if not underweight, but he was still much larger than Calli. The higher eaves were not as supportive as those he'd left behind, and considering the young passive had never, ever, been this high in a tree before, he had no idea what to expect.

With a gasp of surprise, the boy slipped, hands grasping air where there had once been smooth bark.

"Errr!"

Unable to recover, the young passive fell straight down, arms flailing. He hit the ground with a dull thud and a sickening crunch, having twisted to the side during his freefall. Upon impact, his vision exploded in bright lights and sparkling trails before his ears began to ring. For a moment, he felt nothing, but then darkness filled everything and pain seared across his body, beginning in his legs and racing angrily to the base of his skull.

From Calli's vantage point, it was obvious Tristaan's left leg shouldn't have been at the angle it was.

He groaned, but made no effort to move.

Calli was in front of Tristaan's face quick as lying.

"Tristaan! Why did you go down that way?" She cried, tears on her soft, rounded cheeks. "You were right, you just climb up but backwards sorta!"

She had scrambled down like a cat after seeing him fall. If Tristaan had seen it he would have recognised both her future potential and her enduring penchant for seizing on less than necessary facets of a conversation.

"Does it hurt? Should I get my Ma?" Calli, even at this age, often refrained from using tek. She tended to pick up what she'd heard from towns and she tried to speak so she'd be understood, which often meant using estuan.

"I dunno, Calli." The young passive groaned, still unmoving, "Falling seemed like a good idea at the time ..." He turned his head a little with a hiss, narrowing his eyes at the little blond witch, practically growling, "Good to see you could've gotten down on your own ... without me."

Tristaan was pretty sure he was in shock, but had no idea what to do about it. Every time he closed his eyes, he could still see branches whizzing past his vision. Everything hurt, and yet he felt detached from his own aching as if he was swimming in water past the point where he could touch bottom. He thought about getting angry, or crying, but neither seemed to be as productive as he would've liked. He cried anyway, taking his cue that it was safe enough to do so from Calli's own tears.

"Oh, gods, yes it hurts. I'd rather your ma than Guaril." The boy said lamely, venturing to roll onto his back with a moan of pain, "It's not like I can go anywhere, thanks to you."

Keiyra screamed as Tristaan fell from the tree, standing with wide eyed shock. She followed shortly behind the blonde haired blur that beat her to the fallen boy.



The pink and brown haired girl looked sternly at Calli.

"Go and get your daoa! Now! Oh Tristaan, what did she do to you? Oh dear." She knelt beside him, trying to act confident without much success.

Echo was clearly still talking as he approached the tree once more, his father in tow. "An Tristaan went up after 'er...an Call found a bug..."

Edmund followed his son, only half listening to Echo's ramblings. The over-sized, four stringed instrument strapped to his back slowed his pace, but he still managed to move swiftly enough that his boy had to jog to keep up. Unlike Echo, Edmund's long hair was Jet black, aside from a few streaks of silver; his first real signs of aging. The middle aged Wick was still in good shaped, other than the beginnings of alcohol induced gut. It wasn't until Edmund saw that Tristan was lying on the ground that he broke into a run, quickly catching up.

Echo's eyes went wide and mouth suddenly stopped with the shock of seeing Tristaan sprawled across the ground, clearly injured.

"Go an get a healer! Dust boy!" The musician commanded in an unusually urgent voice until his son started off.

He turned back to Tristaan, adapting a softer tone. "Musta been some fall, eh? Ent a good idea to move ya. Jus' keep yer eyes open."

((Normally, mods go ahead and control PC's parents, but since this is past RP and I was looking for a bit of fleshing-out, historical fun, I'm okay with what just happened. If someone else wants to take over for Echo's dad or bring in another adult Red Crow, that's cool too.))

"I think I broke something. Or a few somethings. Calli had me halfway up that clocking tree." Tristaan muttered, still feeling like he was floating, but slowly coming to the understanding that his body was not responding the way he'd like it to. He closed his eyes briefly, only to force them open again and groan.

Gods, I hate it here. Why does anyone bother?

"Don't tell Guaril. I don't want him to know I fell."

The young passive pouted, fearing that if the older wick thought he had failed or been weak, he'd surely disapprove and make his life even more miserable. He was far from recognizing the genuine care he'd received.

Calli was now sobbing very, very loudly. Her hands were up by her cheeks again and she kept making that high pitched sound children made when they tried to talk through tears. Tristaan was angry at her! She'd made him fall out of a tree! She hadn't meant it.

She was ten. She wasn't going to make a run for her parents while she was so obviously in trouble and hoping for Tristaan to forgive her.

The boy turned his head to look at Calli, pathetically crying in adorably pitiful cuteness. It was torturous. He was torn between blaming her and feeling guilty he couldn't do more. Frustrating as it was to realize the girl had been perfectly capable of climbing down herself, Tristaan somehow knew she was far from putting all the logic together. Falling had, ultimately, been his fault, especially since climbing higher hadn't entirely been for her sake anyway.

He knew his arms mostly worked, even though is vision was currently a little blurry. He reached the hand he thought was closest out in Calli's general direction, unable to quite touch her, and weakly waved her closer.

"Oh, Calli, you don't need to cry." Tristaan tried to sound sincere through grit teeth, offering his hand,"It's not your fault. I was just mad. And it hurts."

"Oh, now what's going on here?" a very small voice said in tek. A tiny elderly woman with wrinkles more numerous than the ridges of bark on the tree from which they had just come came walking from the camp. She had seen the small gathering around the new boy Guaril had adopted and knew something was up. Daoa Idma was the tribe's healer, and as such she had a quick eye for when something wasn't quite right-- even if her eyes were failing these days.

She gave Echo's father a nod before turning to the children, "How did his leg get like that, now then?"

She leaned in and started giving the boy an examination.

Edmund nodded back at Daoa Idma. Her question was directed at the children and he kept quiet to let them answer, wondering if Tristaan would need to be moved once the old healer was done with him.

"Da! Da! Da!" Echo returned running and yelling just as before. "I couldn' find....." He stopped yelling when he got close enough to realize that Daoa Idma was already here. "Daoa Idma. I was lookin' for ya."

"Hush," Edmund scolded his son, gently pulling him to the ground.

Echo sat down obediently as his Da pulled him, but quickly knelt back up to try and watch Idma, only to be pulled right back down. His Da just didn't understand how hard it was to sit down and be quiet.