Rites of Ascension to Adulthood – Day 8

Day 8 – Battle, Blood, and Nudity

8th of Nymm, 989 YK

This night was not to go as smoothly. I can only guess that I didn’t wash off well enough because in the middle of the night something came crawling down the branch I was on. It was a big ole rat thing. Not sure why it was alone but thank goodness it was because my club was down on the ground. I had my stabbing stakes though, which was good because this thing wanted to fight. It went fairly quick, but I took some nasty bites and was bleeding all over before I managed to kill the thing and kick it out of my tree. Well, this ain’t good. Fresh blood and the night’s only half over. I took off the few rags I had left and did my best to staunch the bleeding. I then stayed up in complete paranoia the rest of the night. Had some bats fly by that wanted a bit of me, but just waving my arms about was enough to scare them off. Luckily that was it. Morning happened and I was still alive. Beat up and naked, but still alive.

I started back as soon as there was light in the sky. Honestly, I gotta thank the Cat Lord because I think the Traveler’s Curse worked with me that day (you know the Traveler is just the rest of the world’s representation of the Cat Lord, right? He/She/They are). I know I should have been almost two days away from Stormreach, but I could smell it coming up and I still had a couple of hours of daylight left. I was still feeling like crap, but I began to jog and made it to the gates just before sundown. Of course, the guards gave me a very strange look and that’s when I realized I had no clothes on. Something else you should know; Tabaxi like clothes cause they like fancy stuff and they do help in protecting more sensitive bits, but we also don’t really care about nudity the same way humans, dwarves, gnomes, and others do. Anyway, they were pretty cool about it after I explained things.

They gave me a small sarong to wrap around my waist and sent me on my way. As I approached the Clan’s shrine to the Cat Lord, I heard voices within. Of course, Brook’s was one of them. Although I was happy that she was safe, I really wanted to beat her back. Oh well. I listened outside a bit and it sounded like she had just returned through another gate about an hour ago. Good for her, I guess. I figure I really should get these rat bites looked at, so I walk through the door. Everyone stops talking and then Brook gets a big smile on her face, stands up, and comes over to give me a big hug. Admittedly, I flinch a bit because I’m more used to her giving me a slug in the arm but this works. After she steps away, they all look at what I am wearing, the stakes cinched into the waist of the modified skirt, and the seven-foot-long, beat-up snakeskin in my hand. Laughter erupts and then dies down as the sarong ‘s fabric raised up as I sat down. This exposed the dried-up blood that was all over my legs from the rat incident. The elders in the room quickly called for the healer and I finally relaxed a bit.