Dated to October 14 500+

The blessing of having his old friend Sanuye come here from the Great Tribe had been erased in the past few days that had gone by. Asha had left, without a single word of goodbye to him. It wasn't as if they had been close since he had come here, and that had been bothering him, but now she was gone. Gone back to the Great Tribe. What had happened to them? They had been so close, best friends from their youngest days. She had been the main reason he had left the Great Tribe to come here, so he could be closer to her. Of course he had never voiced this to anyone, but it was the truth of the matter. Yet after he had arrived she had been constantly distant and it had made his heart ache. His feelings for her had grown from more than mere friendship to something else, but she had avoided him for so long and now was gone. She hadn't told him why, hadn't said farewell. Asha had always been impulsive, but he would have never expected this of her. It hurt Nayati deeply and now he didn't know what to feel about her, or himself.

Asha wasn't the only problem. Liliana, the one he had forged a fast and strong friendship with here, had been acting oddly around him lately too. It had gotten to the point where he felt that she, too, was avoiding him and now she hadn't been around for days. Was there something wrong with him? Did he get close to people to only have them realize some fatal flaw of his that he was blind to? That didn't seem correct, for there were many long and sustained friendships that he had. Yet, the ones that seemed to mean the most to him outside of family, they went wrong. Maybe it was something about this place. Had coming to this tribe changed him in some way he hadn't noticed? That might explain Asha's behavior, but not Liliana's. She had only known him here, and he did not think he had changed in any way since they had met. Whatever was going on though, it was bringing his spirit down and he could find little motivation to do anything. His chest was filled with heavy sighs and his head with troubling thoughts.

Today he had decided that he had to do something or go crazy. Maybe he had done something to upset Liliana and not realized it. If that were the case, he had to make amends. He had sent Onawa to find the hybrid fey and ask her if she would come and have supper with him tonight. Nayati never really asked Onawa to do such things, but he was worried that Liliana would hide from him or not want to see him, and his Guide understood how tormented he was about it all and so agreed. Onawa had returned with Lili's agreement, so the Utina had spent the rest of the day getting their dinner together. He caught some still fat rabbits for them and harvested some potatoes and tomatoes from the fields and cooked them all with some simple herbs. The Enagayahe Kanati set the food out for them on one of his thick woven blankets and sat, patiently waiting for his friend to arrive, hoping that whatever had gone wrong could be fixed.

<333 300+

Getting their little meal together had been good for his nerves and his mind. It had given the man something to do with his hands, something to focus on besides all the worrisome questions that had been assaulting him as of late. Now that everything was prepared though, all he had to do was to wait for his friend (at least he hoped they were still friends) to arrive and all the questions came to batter against his skull again. The more and more the thoughts filled his head, his large triangular ears began to droop and lay back against his head. Clearly he had done something to mess up, something to push the people he cared about away. Nayati didn't know what that was though. He had always pictured himself as a careful and caring man, one that took others feelings into consideration. The fact that he had messed up without even knowing it was unnerving to him. How could he fix a problem he couldn't even detect?

There were hoofbeats outside of his hut. Grey-tipped ears perked back up from their deflated position, straining forward. Was it Liliana? Had she come? He had to admit, there was a part of him that was worried that she wouldn't come, even though she had told Onawa she would. Slowly her scent drifted into his home though, and it was laced with tension. That didn't bode well, and he could feel his heart drop in his chest. There was a soft knocking against the wall of his hut and with some strength he managed to speak without his voice wavering. "Liliana? You can come in." Perhaps at another time he would have gone and held the flap open for her himself, but at the moment he didn't trust his legs to work without issue.

omg short D:

Nayati held out hope that once she came in, everything would be fine. That he would see the same old Liliana and things would be normal again. When she entered though, that was not the case at all. Her gaze was trained intently onto the floor. She wouldn't even look at him. Without being able to help it, his ears pulled back against his skull again. When she spoke, she spoke softly and to the point. She really didn't want to be here, did she? The Utina really hadn't thought that his spirits could sink any lower, but they were down below ground now.

He swallowed hard, trying not to give up hope and yet totally unsure as to how to handle this horrifically awkward situation. "Would...would you like to sit down? I cooked some dinner..." His voice tailed off and he was now unable to completely hide his sadness from his words. If he couldn't mend whatever it was that had broken between them, Nayati wasn't sure what he would do. Could he stand to stay here if he had lost his first true friend he had made?

The man kept hoping that the next minute would be better than the last, but they only seemed to get worse. Liliana was still doing all she could to avoid looking at him, only throwing him nervous glances. Another small answer was all he received and while she sat down she did not touch the food. Part of him wished to just starting eating himself. Maybe if he did she would follow suit and the tension would dissipate. That becoming more and more unlikely though. What had he done? Nayati tried his best to look back at every single moment of interaction they had had to pinpoint where it was he had gone so wrong, but he could fine nothing. He would have trusted that if there was something terribly wrong with him, some kind of corruption of his soul, that Onawa would have told him. Maybe he was so toxic that he had infected her as well though.

The Utina looked down to the ground in silence. His hands slowly balled into fists and pressed against the hard floor of his hut. "What did I do?" he asked softly, almost a whisper. He couldn't take it anymore, he needed to know.

The man waited in silence for her reply, his eyes never having the courage to raise to look up at her. He could feel her looking at him, but now he was the one that was unable to look her in the face. Nayati was afraid of what he might see there. Afraid that if he looked up everything he had done to make her act this way would at one be clear and he didn't know if he could take that. The nothingness seemed to stretch on for eternity and it was all the man could do to stay still. His muscles were tensed beneath the skin, just waiting for the axe to fall.

Finally Liliana spoke, but her words did nothing but confuse him. Nothing? He had done nothing? That didn't make sense. He had to have done something to make her pull away from him. He had to have done something to make his best childhood friend avoid him and leave. His pale eyes finally raised again, looking at her with utter confusion, his face full of conflict. "But...what has happened?" he asked as his mind raced inside his skull. "I feel like everyone I care about is pulling away from me." Nayati sighed, and placed his head in his hands. Something clearly had changed, and if he couldn't figure out what, then he was lost.

What he had said had been true, but he didn't realize how specific that statement actually was. It wasn't everyone he cared about, it was just Asha and Liliana. What he didn't consciously realize was that they were the two that he cared about the most. Nayati had been aware of his feelings for Asha, but he had yet to realize the true depth of his feelings for Lili. His mind had been trained on one woman, and didn't understand that his heart had begun to change without his knowledge. It was likely some blindness on his part, for while he valued and cared for his friends, he had never had such pain brought on him by just a friend before. He was too wrapped up in the worry and the pain and his own problems to see the truth of his emotions though.

When Liliana spoke again, he was surprised to hear the strain in her voice. Carefully he picked his head back up and looked at her, noting the wet streak down her face. She said it was her, and not him? But that didn't make any sense to him. For one, she wasn't the only friend of his that had become distant from him. Plus, how could it be a problem with her and not with him? She was staying away from him. It had to be his problem, didn't it? "I...I don't understand..." he said dumbly. The only thing he wasn't confused about was that he hated seeing her on the verge of tears. Nayati wanted to make everything better, he just didn't know how. He didn't even know what the problem was.

She was struggling with this, seemingly as much as he was. The one difference was that she had some sort of answer. There was something that she knew that she had not been able to tell him, and even now she was not able to do so. There was one, very small part of the man that was annoyed, maybe even angry about this. Here he had been losing his mind for the past few days and she was keeping something from him. Whatever of that notion was inside of him though was overwhelmed by seeing her so upset. Then she said she wasn't trying to hurt him. Nayati believed her when she said that, but of course the fact of the matter was that she had, even unintentionally. But she didn't know everything he was going through. She couldn't be blamed for that.

Until now Nayati had been conscious of leaving her space, assuming that she didn't want him near her. Even when she began to get more and more upset he had held himself in check, but now seeing her eyes clamped shut his caring and protective instincts won out over caution. Slowly, carefully, the man scooted towards her. Tentatively he put a hand out, lightly placing it on her shoulder. "What is it Liliana? Please, tell me. I don't care what it is, just please let me know." For the sake of their friendship she couldn't keep whatever this was from him anymore. It clearly was driving them apart, and it didn't seem that she wanted that any more than he did.

She covered her face. What could it be that was causing her, them, this much turmoil? He watched her carefully, not wanting to push her too far. He needed to hear whatever it was, but she could take her time putting the words together. Finally she looked back at him and spoke again, but her words only left him more confused. What could have happened to make her think that whatever this was would ruin their friendship? Nayati couldn't think of anything that the sweet woman could have possibly done to make him not want to be her friend anymore. After all, he had been upset that she had been avoiding him, hadn't he made that clear? The last thing he wanted was to not be her friend anymore. The man was trying to figure out what it could possibly be as she was silent once more, when the most unexpected thing of all happened.

He felt her delicate hands on his face and then a split second later, her soft lips were pressed to his. Nayati's eyes grew wide and all the buzzing that had been going on in his head all night stopped abruptly. For a moment he was simply stunned, but that quickly turned into something else, and just as he was about to lean into that contact it stopped. His eyes, which had begun to close, shot back open just in time to see Liliana run out of his house. If he hadn't been so shocked, he might have run after her, but at the moment all he could do was stare stupidly at the moving flap and think with wonder at what had just happened, and what it meant.