Month 2 – Week 1

Dara – Horde Territory

This area was supposed to be relatively safe since the primary entrance to the Hive was on the far side of the mountain. And Matriarch would not have encouraged her to use all of the property if it were dangerous. The woman might have banished the girl to punish Dara for the sake of politics, her great-grandmother wouldn’t have sentenced her to death for a crime she didn’t commit. Plus, the orcs didn’t spend much time on this side of their mountains. In theory, Dara could clear-cut half ‘her’ property and they would never notice.

With a smile, she straightened her tunic and finished her rough copy of the map. The copy would come with her, and the original would stay here where it wouldn’t get lost or damaged. Her schedule she tacked up on the wall with a calendar. Though she was fairly certain that being farther north as she was that timetable would be off by a few weeks if the Almanac of the Northern Territories Was anything to judge by.

Testing out her theory about planting was one of the things she intended to do as soon as she got a hold of some seed. Not with the primary crops though. Testing would be carried out in the nice little plots outside of the kitchen for her personal garden. That was for another day. Today was a very different adventure.

Finding the forest daunting, Dara almost turned away and headed back up to her cozy farmhouse. There was a warm fire and a big bed near it she could be moping in right now. Or if she wanted to be reasonably adventurous, she could head into town and hire a farmhand to ‘help her move some furniture’. Those would be the normal ways most Matriarch women in her situation would deal with their emotions. Not running off into danger.

She was about to do just that, run back to safety, until she noticed the well-worn trail which ran along the back of her property. The trail skirted the bog which was the end of her fields before disappearing into the woods along the stream. It was the exact route she had intended to take to get to the stream on her map, and Dara brilliantly deduced that the builders and surveyors before her had made this trail. No one in their right mind could resist a little adventure, or perhaps they were merely collecting drinking water.

Setting out at a brisk pace Dara bounced up the trail in the frosty morning air. The smells clamored for recognition which she couldn’t give. Dirty, musty, green, and moist; but that was all she knew of them. What scent went with which object she had no idea. So, she added that to her mission; learning to identify each and every smell she could.

Of course, it wouldn’t happen all in one day, but she made a start of it. Moss, tree bark, rotting leaves, green leaves, berries, dirt; everything had its own unique smell. Different kinds of dirt had different kinds of smells. She’d had no idea. Despite her enthusiasm though Dara decided she could do without the bugs.

It was a good thing that she was all alone out here. Anyone watching would have thought her a crazy person as skipped from tree to tree pressing her cheeks into the soft mossy trunks. Or, when she bent over, her nose inches from the ground to see if the deep dark sticky black mud of the forest had a different scent than the loose reddish sandy clumps outside her kitchen door. It did.

And the weird little dirt pebbles she’d picked up and squashed in her fingers so as to get a better whiff? She choked and gagged a little as a tiny crumb made its way up a nostril. That was not dirt. Very, very, not dirt.

“Eww ww ww !” Dara gaspingly stuttered as she frantically brushed the tips of her fingers together to remove the stinky remains of some woodland creature’s feces. “Gross, gross, gross, gross. It’s in my nose.” Each word a higher pitch than the first and raised a hand to help her blow the crumb out of her nose only to shake her hands in exasperation as she remembered that her hands were the source of the contamination.

Instead, she began taking deep breaths in through her mouth and then blowing quick puffs out through her nostrils. All while holding her hands as far in front of her body as possible and stumbling knee-deep into the not-as-frigid-as-she-was-expecting stream. Thrusting her hands into the water, she scrubbed vigorously as she continued trying to puff the scent out of her nose.

Eventually, her hands were as clean as she thought she could get them and she used one finger to hold her clean nostril closed and blow out the dirty one. A glob of snot bubbled out and down her face, dripping down her chin and into her, sadly, open mouth.

“Nah. Unh uh.” She spit and grabbed handfuls of clean water to wash her face with. “Ohhhh….so gross.” Now wet, and thoroughly over sniffing random things, Dara trudged back to solid ground.

Glancing up-stream and down-stream as she went, debating whether to go home and dry off, or finish her wander through the cold winter forest. On the one hand, she wasn’t terribly cold. On the other hand, maybe she was colder than she thought and just couldn’t tell because hypothermia had already set in?

Common sense did not win out. Dara continued her journey along the path, curious to see how far it went regardless of the fact that it was taking her closer and closer to the orc hive.

Inheritance

An Important Lesson in Sniffing Strange Objects