"BuMp."
The caravan made it's way towards its destination, the roots, rocks and occasional roadblock delaying progress to a crawl, a certain carriage in the rear of the pack bouncing more than the rest, its back axle having already broken from the terrain, having been refitted by the owner twice since the journey's doomed beginning.
Lagging --
-- Abandoned --
-- Lost.
"It's going to be okay," a mother told her daughter as she held her tight to her chest, wildlife calling earnestly in the night. A muaka strayed into the vicinity, following the sent of fear, and discovering a treasure chest of "sandwiches." In a pinch, the roof was thrown across the path, unveiling the cowering duo of protector and protected. A toa of Air jumped forwards from the foliage, his voice a battle cry of the desperately doomed, striking against the rahi's side with his spear, the blow glancing off as if a drop of water on a window in a heavy wind, sliding away without a trace. The Muaka's paw found the toa's face, and he was dead; brains splattered across the roadside, his decapitated body indented into a nearby tree. Returning to the original, now desperately scrambling, quarry, the muaka pounced, taking the mother in one stride, shredding her into the moonlit abyss of night. Fear still permeated the small roadside, blood dripped from the muaka's mouth, but the little toa of water was unfound. In rage the muaka shredded two trees, leaving a pile of branches and bark in the muddy swamp-side path. Leaving, the muaka made its mark of territory, the smell of its acid curling even the strongest of farmer's noses, and then sached into the jungle-brush, feeling sorely cheated of a tender desert.
Kriigata shifter on her branch, her eyes screwed up in an expression of dreamt pain.
-------
Kriigata is a toa of Water who grew up as part of a Nui-Rama swarm, eventually being sent out to act as "eyes" for the colony by seeing the developments around the island and then returning to Le-wahi to share what she might learn. On her journey, Kriigata fell in with a practicing Hau, and the two soon engaged in a battle of speed, as both toa wore Kakamas. Kriigata was severly wounded, but managed to hobble herself to the closest area of inhabitance: Ta-koro. In the city of flame, Kriigata was treated in Riaril's hospital and awoke to new armor, no memory and the inability to correctly speak matoran. In the hospital, Kriigata once again encountered Hau, but instead of treating him as a foe she became friends with the speedy lightning wielder and his older companion, Sucogu. The three then left the hospital as a "family" of sorts.
[more to come]