The sun was coming off its high peak position in the sky but that did little to help its effects on his skin. The sun did not bother the others of the tribe he ruled over as they were natural reflections of its warm grace. He on the other palm had skin almost as dark as the mud his daughter was using to scribble all over the stone. The sun gave him too much energy.
His annoyance reached another notch as it climbed up his back, his daughters defiant face was not what he was looking for when he set out to search for her this Sun-high. It was however, what he expected.
‘Why are you here with the children and not in the nursery hut?’ Chief Suh-Rah said in a tone that commanded an answer, and one that had better be good. He set his spear in the sandy dirt with a thud closing Ahmi in, confining her to the stone wall at her back.
‘I am not good with children and you know it.’ Ahmi scowled, crossing her arms, ‘The bahbs wanted to go outside and who could blame them, closed inside that stuffy hut?’
Ahmi’s older sister Naihm, had now successfully separated the two youngest children from their wrestling match. One perched on each hip she looked the picture of motherhood, luckily the image lasted no more than a few moments before the children began pulling at her hair and she gave a threatening growl to each.
‘Unacceptable.’ The Chief thudded his spear into the ground a second time, ‘You do not shirk your duties just because of a little discomfort.’ The answer his daughter gave was not the one he was looking for, but it was the one he expected, as it always was from Ahmi. She was the likeness of her mother, but with all the attitude of crackling fire. The fondness he still held for his late wife was enough to only ever give Ahmi the minimal of punishments.
With a sigh, Chief Suh-Rah pushed down the climbing annoyance and told his youngest daughter, ‘Collect your things and take Tahn back to his brother.’ At the look of argument in her eyes he expressed in a warning tone, ‘Do not disobey me on this, you are lucky nothing bad came from this excursion outside the village wall.’
He turned to the small boy still sitting in the dirt and gave him a nod of acknowledgment, then he marched over to his eldest daughter and took Sahra from Naihm. He smiled as now with her free hand, his least troublesome daughter could battle the bahb who was trying to become one with her long curly hair.
The defiant Ahmi and slightly bewildered Tahn watched them stride back in the direction of the village. Each a child in arm and both with skin the colour almost like her charcoal pigment with a dash of ochre mixed in. Ahmi felt that sometimes she did not really fit in with her family as her father and older sister had similar ideals and were much alike in personality.
They both strived hard to please people and from what Ahmi could tell at the eye-opening age sixteen cycles brings to a young adult, the people of her tribe were very pleased. Her father and sister were anomalies; where most tribe members had skin tones ranging from sun-warmed honey to rusty-iron earth, they stood out like the blackened burial tree on is barren sandy bank. The same went for their hair, the striking gold was so much more vibrant than the light, warm browns and gentle blonds of Ahmi and the rest her people. Both were sought after marriage partners, for their beauty and for their positions of power.
Seeing them leave, Ahmi was delighted with a vision of two black and gold banded sand-wasps buzzing away from her and out of sight.
She gathered up her little paint pots and put them into her small grass woven bag. Slinging it over her shoulder as she stood up Ahmi held out a palm to Tahn.
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