In the past, I know I have mentioned that the spark that grows into a story, gaming idea, or even just a component of either, can be as simple as a quick glimpse of something that strikes me, a phrase that resonates, or even just a name that comes to me.
It grabbed my attention the moment I first heard it (thank s to my wife!) and I found myself listening to it a handful of times as I drove to the office, the next day. When I finally arrived, the entire story hung in my memory, envisioned as what might be a music video. No, I had not yet researched the lyrics to it, so the imagery came to me from the tone, the pulse, the feel of it.
Interesting how vivid the story can be, from the power of music…
For those wishing to read the entire story, beginning to end, I offer THIS link to the page where it is now housed.
She awoke in the bed she had known all her life as her mother’s. The small hut that had been given over to that woman long ago, out of respect for her as the Firstmother, the shaman of their clan, now stood, cleaned and empty of anything her mother had collected over the years.
The small crystal glowed gently as it rested on the side table next to her. Beside it, the smoldering stub of a thick bundle of incense struggled to keep the scent of cedar and jasmine hanging in the room. These, the only reminders of the powerful charm that had started her journey into world of shadows. The place of visions that welcomed her into the rite of passage on her twentieth birthday.
Her mind slipped gently back into the world of the living.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, with her flowing mane of copper-red hair framing her in a ray of sunlight from the distant window, her mother smiled.
“My heart sings, this day, for you have returned not as my daughter but to take your rightful place, among the clan. You return not as a child, but as the mother to all,” she said, with a voice soft and comforting.
Her mother pointed to the pouch that still rested upon Vedara’s chest.
“Open it, dear one.”
With fingers still weary, she pulled the small knot open and loosened the neck of the pouch. Reaching in, she withdrew a couple of the objects it contained.
Small figures, carved of bone, that were so clear and detailed that she knew who, within the village, each represented. The pouch, she realized, contained one for every person that lived around them.
“I saw them…” Vedara began.
“Yes,” her mother placed a warm hand upon Vedara’s shoulder. “The wolves come for us all, when we dare the rite of passage, seeking the dream world to move from child to adult. If we do not learn to control or deny our weaknesses, they will consume us, in our own time. Each one taken leaves a shadow of themself where their own spirit first fails them in that place. Some give way to despair or fear before they even step away from their homes. Some, like your father and brother, fight, struggle, and resist. A few travel far before they give in…but almost all do.”
Her mother leaned forward, kissed Vedara gently on the forehead.
“Only one in a generation reaches the sea. From there, they must earn their place on the ship.”
Her mother drew back and brushed Vedara’s hair back from the sides of her face, then touched one finger to the worn pouch.
“Keep them, protect them, and love them, for you are mother to them all, as of the rising of this sun. Keep the clan in your heart above all else. All will look to you for the light in the mist. Let not even the love of our family come between you and this sacred duty, for all are your children, now.”
With that, her mother stood and warmly smiled. For a moment, she wavered in Vedara’s sight, seeming to almost pass into dim light or shadow despite the bright morning sun that shone through the window. Then, slowly, she faded into a shimmering, golden mist that drifted in all directions.
When Vedara was strong enough, she arose and came out of the hut. At the far side of the village, she saw the funeral pyre upon which her mother’s body rested. As she walked toward it, the villagers bowed to her in reverence as she passed. To each, she offered a gesture of blessing, as was their custom.
Standing before the final resting place of her mother, the clan’s Firstmother before her, she was joined by her father and brother.
“She gave herself to it, after she said you were free of the village,” her father slowly, haltingly said, the loss of his wife tempered only by the knowledge that she had passed in the way she wished and embraced. “Once beyond that, she knew nothing could stop you.”
The smaller Wythrigin clans of the far north often live solitary lives for much of the year; each one with its own Firstmother who councils and tends to them, sharing leadership with a Chieftain in most cases. Firstmothers in the smaller, more peaceable communities, are typically followers of Tanen, the Goddess of Nature that is wild and untamed, although many seek the intervention and guidance of Sheildaga, one of the “Embraced” who dwells within the grace of Tanen. Now raised into a sort of immortality by her patron, she was once a Firstmother in her own right, although without a clan of her own. Living in the forbidding cold northlands, legend says she befriended and cared for an orphaned pair of polar bear cubs, who remained at her side and faithfully traveled with her as she moved from clan to clan. In one particularly harsh winter, she came upon Clan Nagatan in a small valley as starvation was closing in on them, their Firstmother lost to them in a landslide. Drawing upon her connection with Tanen, she brought about a thaw within that secluded place, with berries and other foods maturing before the eyes of the stranded clan.
Vedara had, as all the children of her village had done at some point, usually on an ill-advised dare, made the fall into open air facing the vertical rock face that followed the river on its plunge into the valley. Feet tightly together, hands on her face, forearms pressed against each other before her chest, she counted to three before gulping in the last breath before the pool she knew to be waiting, below.
Her body found the icy grip of the mountain river around her. At once, the stabbing cold water bit her to the core. It squeezed the breath from her and stole any strength she still had in her limbs.
When she came out of the pool into which the river crashes at the end of its descent, she was blue, stiff, and shivering.
But alive.
Not trusting her fingers to tell the truth, she pulled the leather cord at her neck until the pouch slid up and into her view.
Still there. Still safe.
Ice blue lips tried to smile, but relief was quickly stolen from her by a distant howl echoing across the valley only to be met by the rise of others.
Her legs warmed quickly as she forced them into motion. She had to resume the pace she had kept in the fog-shrouded forests above. She had to make it to the black rocks of the distant beach.
She found and kept to the beaten path, knowing now that no weapons crafted or used by the hands of men pursued her.
Before she had gone twenty paces, she saw the twisted bodies of two of the village elders in the foliage nearby. Wise men. Trusted men.
Again, the tempting voice of fear came to her, warning that perhaps those behind were not the only enemies within the valley.
Again, she ignored those fears. She knew for certain she was pursued form behind. She knew for certain, although she could not explain how, that safety awaited her on the shores of the sea, if only she could reach them.
As she ran, gaps in the canopy allowed the warm touch of the sun to join with her own efforts and her clothing began to leave trails of steam as she passed. The howling came sporadically, gaining on her a bit each time, but the speed of her descent allowed a lead that granted her some chance to stay just out of reach.
Some, small chance, she knew.
Her mind retreated into itself, afraid to acknowledge the exhaustion that was seeking to overtake her body as she pushed harder and harder to reach the end of the path, the edge of the valley’s forest.
She passed the broken bodies of still more of her clan. Men and woman of great skill and courage.
Men and women she had known and admired all her life.
Their bodies torn from behind, taken as they fled down the path she now followed.
It was as the sound of waves finally came distantly to her ears that she rounded a twisting bend and came crashing to the hard-packed ground, a shriek escaping her lips even before the pain of her fall had a chance to scream into her thoughts.
There, in the center of the path, the bodies of her father and brother lay. The ground around them was churned as only fierce battles could scar it. Her father’s broken body lay across the legs of her sibling, who had cradled the patriarch of the family against him in the last moments of his own life. At her father’s left hand, his ax lay with broken haft. At her brother’s right, the sword their grandfather had given him was scattered in shards.
Her brother’s left hand gripped her father’s right tightly to his chest. The older man’s eyes, open and glazed in death, stared up to the skies. Her brother’s were tightly closed in agony beyond the wounds that took his life.
Vedara’s eyes clouded with anguish at the sight of them. Her chest burned and tightened. Her legs went numb. She could not bring herself to rise, as waves of pain washed over her, and her body heaved with each gasping breath.
She would have stayed there, the passage of time lost to her, had the howl in the distance and the breeze through the trees not awoken her spirit.
For the savage call, her jaw tightened and her resolve hardened. Her hands again went to pouch and weapon.
Still there. Still safe.
In the breeze, though, lay something left behind for her. In that passing touch, the branches of the towering trees shifted and a lone ray of the low, golden light of the sun passed into the clearing around her beloved kin. There, in its glow, she saw the strength of the love that her brother had shown, keeping him at his father’s side.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the moment with absolute clarity. She saw her brother choose family over purpose and she loved him all the more for it.
But she knew, too, that this was not her path to follow.
Coming to her feet, then, she wiped her tears away with shaking, bloodied hands and bowed to them both with reverence.
Another howl, closer still, and she launched herself down the path. Her tears slowed as her pace quickened. Her breath deeper and her body forgetting all that had come before, she raced toward the rocky shore that lay ahead. She drove on with everything she had, determined to reach the ocean, even if it was simply to die there, on something of her own terms.
When she cleared the wall of trees, the sight of a gold and white sail fluttering in the breeze met her, a longship moored to a small dock holding her gaze for a moment, with the golden light of the dawn seeming to shine from upon its deck.
The thought fluttered through her mind that it was lower than when first she left the village, but her thoughts didn’t grasp the meaning of this.
She stumbled toward the longship, her feet starting to drag as weariness rushed back over her in waves. She clutched the pouch, again, and willed her legs to move. Forcing each step across the black stones, then the old planks of the dock.
When her hand touched the smooth, warm wood of the ship, she heard growls from behind.
Pulling herself up to as tall as she could, she turned to face them. Her body screamed in protest, but her will refused to hear it.
There, between the trees and the ship that her heart told her would carry her to safety, a line of wolves stood still and staring at her. Their eyes bored into her, as they had before. Their teeth shone in the sunlight, lips curled back in savage hunger. Each one unique. Each one looking at her with a subtly different hunger.
She stared back. Her hand dropped to the hilt of her sword, but she had barely the strength to grasp it. She knew she had no chance to win this fight but refused to give up without honoring her family in battle.
A howl met her resolve, long and drawn out. As it echoed from the trees around them, it shifted into a deep and rolling voice.
“If you but drop your blade, we will take pity upon you. You cannot hope to defeat us.”
As the one who spoke uttered those words, it shifted back on its haunches then came to standing on its hind legs. When the wolf pelt fell to the ground, there stood a tall and powerful man.
His eyes still feral. His teeth still sharp and anxious.
She smiled, then, as she began, finally, to understand and her mother’s oft-repeated words issued forth from broken lips.
“There is not one among us that fails to hear the voice of fear. But the cowards are those who choose to heed it.”
Rising to their feet, the others howled at this. The sound of it beat at Vedara’s ears. Each, in turn, shedding the pelt of a great wolf and revealing the bodies of other men and women. For a moment, she allowed her eyes to close, and heard their voices, separate and clear.
Each one called to her with a voice distinct and powerful. Each one’s message different from the others.
“I have nothing for you, as you have nothing for me,” she heard herself say to them, her body filling with energy and power as she spoke.
Turning aside, she climbed over the side of the longship and found, to her wonder, that the glow and warmth of the sun now seemed to come from just before the mast at the middle of the craft. Trying to squint through the glare and fury of that light, she thought for a passing moment that she saw the trailing cloth of a golden dress splayed upon the wood.
Avoiding the glow, she turned to face the shore.
The men and woman called to her, some angry, some imploring, some seeking to tempt her. Threats, promises, pleading, lies, and memories were flowing into a stream that rushed toward her only to be broken apart and cast aside in shards, as if they were a flow ice shattered upon a great stone that held strong against the onslaught.
As their calls remained unanswered, they trailed off and eventually faded.
“Enough!” The sun, behind her, called at last. The voice low and terrible, like thunder rolling across the skies. “She has made her will known and you must abide by it!”
Vedara felt the warmth of that sun descending to her, then hands upon her head, pressing gently against her copper-red hair. At once, the flow of energy into her mind and body was terrifying and exhilarating. She felt the light of it shining in her soul and knew that she, too, would bring it forth as had her mother.
The woman whose hands had come to rest upon her head.
Finally, she opened her eyes again and saw only wolves before her. No teeth shone in the bright sun. All eyes were downcast, looking at the small, smooth stones that lined the shore of the sea. Heads bowed in what may have been respect.
She knew for certain, then, that they could only set their teeth upon her if she allowed it.
She saw that the light of the sun shone from her own eyes, bathing all before her with the glow and warmth that followed her own vision. The wolves cast long shadows into the trees behind them, the began to fade from view, their bodies giving way to a haze or mist that quickly dissipated.
Turning away from land, she found herself alone in the cupped body of the great ship as it slid from the dock.
Her mother was long gone.
Sitting upon the warm wood, with the smell of the sea and the gentle rocking of the longship, she peacefully drifted into sleep.
