Bite-sized Backstory 7: The Go[o]d Worms
After leaving the Leviathan behind, Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro finally complete their journey towards Fundament’s core. They had done some pretty crazy things over the past few years. Exploring wrecks, eating food from the sea, sailing into stormy waters… and all while in exile and on the run for their lives. But what Aurash does next, almost certainly at the behest of Sathona’s familiar, is downright insane.
Aurash exits the needle ship! Deep within the crushing pressure and ferocious heat of the innermost core of a gas giant! But she is not crushed or vaporized. Instead she is somehow protected. And very quickly her protector comes into view. A giant jawed winged worm approaches past her. It speaks to her calling itself Yul and points out how powerful it is and how it is the only thing keeping her from harm. It then introduces her to more of its kind: Eir, Xol, Ur, and Akka. It must have been quite the sight for Aurash to see these giant creatures surviving in the harshest climate imaginable.
Yul explains that itself and the others have been trapped in the Deep of Fundament for millions of years and that they have been calling life to Fundament in order for it to evolve into suitable hosts that will allows the worms to escape. It tells Aurash that the Leviathan and the forces of the Sky are arrayed against her and her sisters, and that it was the Sky who rearranged Fundaments moon and caused the approaching God-Wave because they were afraid of the potential of Aurash’s race.
Fortunately for Aurash and her sisters, the worms want to help them in the struggles. Yul offers them a deal. If they ingest some of the worms’ newborn larva they will gain eternal life and enough power to right anything they find wrong with the world. There is one catch, Yul explains, but it seems to be a very minor one. From now on, each of the sisters will have to follow their true nature or their inner worm will consume them. And, as they grow in power, their inner worms will grow ever more hungry.
All the sisters of the Osmium Court every wanted to do was explore and seek knowledge, or strength, or cunning. Now, all they have to do is keeping doing what they would have done anyway in exchange for great power and eternal life? It seems like such a simple choice to the three brave exiled sisters! So simple, apparently, that none of them think to ask what Yul might have meant by calling life to Fundament or what their inner worms would actually hunger for.
Recall, that at some point, long ago, the homeworld of the short lived three-eyed race crashed into Fundament. Did the worms somehow bring it there? How could they have done that if they were trapped? And wouldn’t that have caused millions or billions of deaths? Unfortunately, instead of asking these questions, Aurash and her sisters take the deal offered by Yul and the other worms.
It’s at this point that each of the sisters finally well and truly makes the transition to adulthood. Aurash takes on the king morph just like his father. He renames himself Auryx which we learn means Long Thought. Similarly, Sathona at long last transitions from her childhood state to that of a mother and renames herself Savathûn and Xi Ro becomes a powerful knight and renames herself Xivu Arath.
From here on out, the worms take on the role of gods to the three siblings. And their first instructions to Auryx and his two sisters are to, essentially, plunge all of Fundament into a holy war!
Sources:
IX: The Bargin
X: Immortals
XI: Conquerors
Previous: 6: The Cryptic Leviathan
Next: 8: The Conquest of Fundament
Bite-sized Backstory 6: The Cryptic Leviathan
We aren’t told how long the three brave sisters’ initial dive towards the core of Fundament took, but given that it is a gas giant, we can probably assume that it took days or weeks. During that time, they passed through several layers far beneath their suspended ocean. They encountered vast creatures swimming through the increasingly solid layers of gas and liquid metal. Xi Ro even took some delight in piercing down through a few anemone-like creatures that reminded her of stormjoys from their surface.
They dove and dove until they broke through a layer of metal somewhere deep near Fundament’s core. Here, the needle ship could hear and detect everything. From the slow grinding of the drifting continents, to acid rains that could kill with little warning, to the struggles of creatures as large as cities far far away. It also detected the distant groans and distortions caused by Fundament’s moons lifting up a vast section of Fundament’s inner ocean. Here, perhaps for the first time, Sathona and Xi Ro finally had their own proof that Aurash’s God-Wave was real.
But there was something else down with them. A giant Leviathan that we are told was as large as all the continents they’d known in their childhood before their exile. This massive thing must have been spectacular. We’re told, for instance, that it is propelled by giant fins cracklings with lightning and energy. This Leviathan finds the sisters’ small needle ship and sends powerful bursts of microwave energy booming against its hull… not to attack them but instead to speak to them.
What follows is a conversation between the Leviathan and the three sisters that is split into three parts:
- In the first part, the Leviathan tells them that they live on the edge of a war between the Deep and the Sky. The Sky builds safe places for life to thrive in, it tells them. And it names Fundament, a place of refuge for trillions, as one of those places that the Sky treasures. But Aurash protests this. She argues that Fundament is no safe place to be treasured. It’s a place of darkness and fatal lightning storms and fiery seas and monsters that hunt her kind from the clouds above. She urges her sisters to continue deeper with her, where she is sure they can discover some greater power to avenge and protect them.
- Next, the Leviathan asks them what has called them down into the Deep. It tells them that it has been watching their race’s struggle to survive for eons and that their survival and advancement even in such harsh conditions were its proof against despair. It also begins to explain the philosophy of the Deep, but its words are cryptic and hard to understand. It calls the short lived three-eyed krill people its hope, but is telling them that their short lives and hard struggles are right and good…Xi Ro, of course, protests this. She declares that she will not accept a world where her people’s lives are short and desperate, or a world where a betrayer like Taox can win. She says that she will change the world by killing anything that get in her way.
- Finally, the Leviathan tries its best to warn the three sisters away from the path that they seem to be on. It admits that yes, the way of the Sky is often harder, but that even though there is suffering and hardship along the way, the Sky is constantly working to build new life and progress towards a gentle world. The Deep, it says, only embraces death. And that if they side with it they will become world killers and will live lives of death and devastation.Sathona protests this. After years of keeping her father’s familiar hidden, she now shows it to her sisters. She tells them how this plain honest worm speaks to her in easy to understand words and that it was the thing that helped her come up with all of her great ideas of the past few years, including helping her find the needle ship.
She then pits the Leviathan and its cryptic ideas against the worm’s plainly stated whispers of hope. Then, Sathona utters what may very well be one of the most frightening and far reaching phrases in all of Destiny. Almost certainly at the urging of her familiar, she says:
Let us dive, oh sisters mine.
We’ll see this type of phrase several more time and will come back to its vast importance a bit later. For now, the three brave exiled sisters start their final dive towards Fundament’s core and the creatures that have been calling to them for the better parts of their lives…
Sources:
VII: The Dive
VIII: Leviathan
Previous: 5: The Ancient Needle
Next: 7: The Go[o]d Worms
Bite-sized Backstory 5: The Ancient Needle
After an exhilarating year exploring Fundament’s seas, the three brave exiled sisters found the most extraordinary thing adrift in the turbulent waters of the Shvubi Malestrom: A long, slender, gray colored ship that was obviously built by a species with skills and technology far beyond that of the Osmium Court.
Sathona’s dead familiar whispers to her that it has been here since long before her people arrived on Fundament millions of years ago.
A small debate broke out among the sisters. Xi Ro, true to her nature, spoke up for immediate revenge. She wanted to tow the ship back to the multi-species trade center at Kaharn Atoll and use the money it would sell for to hire an army large enough to retake their homeland.
Aurash disagreed. Ever the explorer, she wanted to open the ship up and see what was inside. Sathona, who of course already knew what was inside since her father’s dead familiar had told her, sided with Aurash. With the votes two to one, the three sisters entered the alien ship.
Much of the Needle Ship’s interior is left to our imaginations. The only real physical description of it we get is that it had glistening halls. We do, however, learn some troubling things about the ship:
- This was not a starship, but was instead a ship meant to dive deep down through the gaseous and liquid layers of Fundament, all the way to the gas giant’s core.
- The ship had a room for growing flesh of some kind. We are told there are “flesh fans” so perhaps this was a series of vats stirring and cultivating some kind of biological growth? Regardless of what exactly this flesh growing room looked like, we also learn that it had gone unused for so long that the flesh had mummified.
- Finally, we learn of the ship’s birthing chamber. Somehow, either through studying logs and records, or perhaps through Sathona’s familiar the three sisters learned that the needle ship’s crew had gone deep into the center of Fundament and brought back some sort of chrysalis. And, with the birthing room’s advanced suite of surgical equipment, they had cut through and pealed back the layers of the thing they had recovered until it emerged… and killed them all! What was left of their corpses still sat on the birthing room’s floors!
For the next two years, Aurash, Xi Ro, and Sathona worked to repair the needle ship and to understand what it was meant for and how to operate it. They were five years old by the time they finally finished. Half of their short lifespan was already spent and by now they’d lived more of their lives in exile than they had as heirs to their father’s throne.
Once again, the three sisters had to decide what to do with the needle ship and what to do with the remainder of their lives. Retaking their home might still have been possible, but Aurash still could not shake free of the idea that their strange new ship might hold the key stopping the God-Wave that would soon destroy everything and everyone.
Xi Ro, who had done the bulk of the work to clear the needle ship’s birthing chamber of what remained of its crew, warned against the idea. Whatever had killed the crew had been found beneath Fundament’s inner metallic layers. Going there themselves would only serve to get them killed as well.
Sathona, who had again spent time alone listening to her familiar’s helpful whispers in secret, once again sided with Aurash. The only way they would be able to fulfill their oaths now, she argued, was to use the ship for its intended purpose and dive deep towards Fundament’s core.
And so, together, the three brave sisters dove their needle ship towards the innermost depths of Fundament…just as the things waiting for them in the dark, hot, crushing spaces below had planned…
Sources:
V: Needle and Worm
VI: Sisters
Previous: 4: Familiar Ideas
Next: 6: The Cryptic Leviathan
Bite-sized Backstory 4: Familiar Ideas
Some weeks before her father was overthrown, and she and her two sisters escaped into exile, Aurash, the eldest of the three heirs to the Osmium Court, was sent on an expedition by her father, the king, to a distant site called the Tungsten Monoliths.
The Osmium King had certainly been acting strangely of late, pouring over ancient texts and locking himself in the royal orrery, a room-sized mechanical model of Fundament and its moons. Sometimes he would emerge and quietly wander the halls of his palace talking only to his familiar, a dead white worm from deep beneath the sea that he’d encased in glass. Other times, he would emerge to rant and rave about the orbits of the moons to anyone and everyone who would listen.
His argument amounted to the idea that Fundament’s moons had been shifted out of their natural orbits. That now their paths would cross near each other and their combined gravities would tug on a section of Fundament’s vast inner ocean. As the moons continued along their new paths they would separate, and the massive bulge they had created would be released resulting in a “God-Wave” that would sweep over all the continents spread across the gas giant’s sea. All the civilizations of Fundament, amounting to trillions of lives, would be destroyed.
Some, like Taox, thought the king had gone mad. She arranged his overthrow for just that reason. But Aurash must have still believed her father. Though we are not told exactly what the Tungsten Monoliths were, we can guess they were located at a place of meeting, or a place of learning, or a place of science, since it was there that Aurash somehow confirmed her father’s theories about the moons and the God-Wave. Before she returned from her trip she sent her sister Sathona a message to tell their father that he had been right!
For several months following their exile, Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro sailed and explored far from home. It would seem likely that Aurash, the sailor and navigator, would have been leading her younger siblings, but oddly, more and more often it was Sathona’s crazy ideas that saw the three sisters through their troubles. She would hide herself away from the other two insisting that she needed to be alone to think and would come back with insane, risky plans that worked time and time again.
Curiously, she never told her sisters that one of the last things she did as she fled with them into exile was steal their father’s familiar right out of his hands…
In her journal at sea, Aurash wrote that it seemed like Sathona manufactured good luck by sheer force of will. That is probably why after a year in exile, Aurash and Xi Ro followed their sister’s crazy advice and sailed blindly into a violent maelstrom.
Except, Sathona wasn’t crazy and wasn’t blind. Somehow, she knew what they would find inside!
Sources:
Calcified Fragments: Curiosity
II: The Hateful Verse
III: The Oath
IV: Syzygy
V: Needle and Worm
(Yes… I just referenced most everything up to this point… what of it?)
Previous: 3: The Hesitant Oath
Next: 5: The Ancient Needle
Bite-sized Backstory 3: The Hesitant Oath
Shortly after the three sisters escaped their overthrown kingdom, but long before they found something incredible in a far away maelstrom, Aurash suggested that each of them take an oath in response to what had happened to them. They each, in turn, stabbed themselves through a fleshy part of their left hands with their knifes and carved a short, blood-soaked line down the sides of the mast of Aurash’s ship as they swore their oaths. The damage to their hands would not be debilitating or permanent, but it would be painful and it would leave a lasting reminder in the form of a scar.
Xi Ro, the up and coming warrior who was the youngest of the three royal sisters, swore to take back the Osmium Court and kill their former instructor Taxo who betrayed them and their kingdom.
Sathona, the clever thinker, pledged to become a mother and breed her spawn on the corpse of the king of the Helium Drinker mercenaries who Taxo had conspired with.
And Aurash, the sailor and explorer and who was oldest of the sisters… hesitated. It wasn’t until her sisters provided her their help that she was was able to stab her hand and swear her oath. But why? After all, it was Aurash who told her sisters they should all take oaths in the first place. And they hadn’t needed her help. It seems unlikely that Aurash feared the physical pain of making the oath, so what then? Let’s read her oath together and find out:
I am Aurash, first daughter of the dead king. I will chase my father’s last screamed warning. I will know what changed the motion of our moons. If the end of the world is coming, I will understand why.
On my center eye I swear it. I will understand.
There are two things here:
While Xi Ro and Sathona’s oaths are both centered on revenge, Aurash’s is not. I think, unlike her sisters, she isn’t one to turn so quickly to violence.
Though perhaps not as prone to violence as her two sisters, Aurash also seems far more concerned with something other than revenge. A large part of her oath talks about their father’s last warning which was about the motions of Fundament’s moons. A warning that Aurash claims is somehow linked to the end of the world?!
What is this? What is going on?
It turns out that the Osmium King might not have been as mad and as senile as he had seemed. Turns out, there was something he discovered and shared with his oldest daughter shortly before his death… something that would ultimately spur Aurash and her brave exiled sisters to become three of the worst monsters the galaxy had ever seen!
Sources:
III: The Oath
Previous: 2: The Brave Exiled Sisters
Next: 4: Familiar Ideas
Bite-sized Backstory 2: The Brave Exiled Sisters
The king of the Osmium Court, one of the nations of the short lived, three-eyed creatures adrift on the seas of Fundament, was old. He was senile. He was dying. His three daughters, Xi Ro a warrior, Sathona a leader and thinker, and Aurash an explorer, were skilled in their own fields, but it would have been difficult for any one of them to assume the throne.
Their teacher, the sterile mother Taox certainly thought this, which is why she made a deal with the Helium Drinkers, a nearby warlike nation of their own species, to overthrow the sickly king and kill his heirs.
Fortunately, the three sisters managed to escape. Xi Ro distracted the attackers with the bright glowing “bait stars” that her combat skills had previously allowed her to cut from the tentacles of the predators that inhabited the clouds above. Sathona’s tricks and cleverness allowed the sisters to evade their enemies, flee their home, and reach their nation’s coast. And once there, Aurash’s exceptional sailing skills allowed them to escape their enemies by fleeing their home and country on her personal sailing ship.
For over a year, a good tenth of their lives, the three sisters sailed away from home. They sailed passed many dozen foreign continents. They lived off the sea, catching and eating creatures they’d never seen before. They encountered and escaped powerful monsters through skilled sailing and risky maneuvers.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And what these brave seafaring sisters found out in the vast ocean in the heart of a powerful maelstrom would not only change their fates, it would change the fates of thousands of races and hundreds of trillions of lives spread across the spiral arms of our galaxy.
Sources:
II: The Hateful Verse
IV: Syzygy
Previous: 1: Fundament
Next: 3: The Hesitant Oath
Bite-sized Backstory 1: Fundament
Destiny’s history starts some fifty thousands years ago within the layers of a gas giant called Fundament. Unlike the gas giants in our solar system, Fundament is host to well over five hundred species.
Most of these species live in the dark beneath the outer gas layers of Fundament on a large number of continents all floating on a massive sea that is suspended between storms and gas clouds overhead and the gas giant’s increasingly thick oceans, liquid metals, and solid layers below.
We don’t learn much about the numerous inhabitants of Fundament. Only one of the five hundred plus species gets much detail.
This race of three eyed humanoids are described as the smallest, weakest things on the seas of Fundament. Living gas clouds with glowing balls at the end of long tentacles reach down from the storms above like flying anglerfish and try to eat them. Acidic rain and deadly lightning storms occur frequently and kill many of them. And even though they have cities and science and some level of seafaring technology, they sometimes wage war on each other and demand sacrifices and eat their own. Maybe worst of all, this smallest of races usually only live 8 – 10 years.
There are a few other interesting things we learn about this three-eyed race:
– They all appear to be born female.
– At around four years of age they choose to morph into one of three forms: The king morph, the knight morph, and the mother morph. Notably, mothers live significantly longer than the others, but we are not told how long.
– This race, and many of the others, did not evolve on Fundament. Instead, they arrived on the gas giant’s hidden, suspended seas when each of their planets collided with Fundament long before anyone can remember.
Unfortunately, this weak, short-lived, three-eyed race is never given a name, but they eventually rise up above their lowly station and do much to shape the world of Destiny.
Something Shiny
Sparks Clearpath continued along the unfamiliar forest trail before her, not at all sure of where she was being lead this clear, chilly morning. Dressed in her soft, warm hunting gear with little more than a bow and a handful of arrows in a quiver across her back, she had, two hours ago, realized she was being hurried along off her usual paths to parts of her forest she did not know. Ordinarily, she might have preferred a slower pace, but that wasn’t an option, not with the Dymestl-aeron siblings encouraging her ever onward.
Somehow, her four Gnomish friends seemed to have no lack of energy, darting in and out of the foliage around her, even though they were half her height and very nearly had to remain on the run for their short legs to keep up with her brisk walk. They were laughing and fighting and playing little games that Sparks was sure she’d never fully understand, even having observed them for the better part of two decades.
At a little over fifty years of age, Sparks was a good ten years older than Tân, the oldest of the Dymestl-aerons, though one could hardly tell, what with the differences in the two races heights and manners of aging. It was the most unapparent of facts that the four Gnomish brothers and sisters were all nearly considered adults while Sparks herself was only a few short years into her long transition to maturity.
“How much farther?” Sparks asked in elvish, addressing the four gnomes scurrying around her. Even she was beginning to tire despite being as fit and at home among the trees of the forest as any of them.
<“Somewhat!”> the white haired Gwynt answered with unhelpful cheer in Gnomish as she, and her long, hair breezed by.
<“It’s too late to turn back now…”> Blue eyed Dŵr gushed.
<“You promised you’d help!”> Tân said, almost accusingly, so quick to anger, as he always was.
“Why do you ask?” Galon asked sincerely in return, the only one of the four to reply in elvish, even though they had all learned to speak it years ago.
“We’re getting pretty far out…” Sparks answered. <“And I will help, Tân, but I told my parents I would be back by nightfall.”>
<“They will understand you had to keep moving forward,”> Dŵr insisted.
“Will they?” Galon inquired of his sister, his tone ever kind. ”I would think they would worry, they lov…”
<“It doesn’t matter now, ’cause we’re here!”> Gwynt interrupted.
Here, it turned out, was a curious clearing that seemed to have no place so deep in the woods. There was no stream or river or solid, growth-impeding rock jutting out of the soil. It was only as she passed out of the tree line and into the bright sunlight that Sparks got her first hint as to the cause of the clearing. A dozen steps closer and she had her answer for sure. Though it was still a good twenty feet in front of her, she could now make out the rounded rocky lip of what had to be a large depression or some sort of sink hole. Slowing her movements to careful, creeping steps, Sparks edged closer, eager to know more.
“Whoa…” she exclaimed as she reached the edge. What lay before her was no depression or minor sinkhole! No, somehow the Dymestl-aerons had found a huge, ten foot wide shaft of a cave that dropped almost one hundred feet straight down. Along the way down were a multitude of outcroppings, divots, and patches of lose rock covered in moss or vines, but beyond a very good grip and a whole lot of rope, there was seemingly no safe way to descend… which is why Sparks was entirely unsurprised when she turned around to find her four smiling companions holding one of the longest lengths of sturdy rope she’d ever seen.
“No.” Sparks told them at once. “Very much no… and where… how did you keep that rope hidden all this time?”
<“Magic?”> Gwynt asked, as if she too were unaware of the true answer. Her brothers and sister all nodded in unison, each of their smiles flashing even larger than before.
“Fine, keep you secrets…” Sparks said, knowing she had no choice but to relent, at least on that point, “but there is still no way I’m going down there. Even with the rope. One false move and I’d be killed!”
“But look!” Dŵr replied, moving over to the cave’s mouth. “Can you see it? At the very bottom?!”
“See what?” Sparks asked. She walked around the circular opening until the sun was at her back. She shielded her eyes from the still bright, cloudless sky, but even then the deep shadows that covered the lowest parts of the cave made discerning much of anything impossible. Except… Sparks squinted harder and angled her head and… yes, there was something there. Something… “Glowing?” she asked.
“It’s glowing fungus!” Galon explained.
<“It is a pool of moldy water.”> <“No! It is a firebug,”> <“A mirror!”> the other three Gnomes disagreed all at the same time.
“So none of you know what it is but want me to risk going to find out?” Sparks asked once their explanations ceased.
The four Gnomes looked to each other for a moment, then, again in unison, nodded and begged in their best Elven, saying: “Please? We just have to know!”
Sparks sighed. She turned back to the cave and began tracing a route from crag to outcropping to handhold. It looked…doable, and her friends had helped her with more and required far less… It was only fair that she try.
<“Okay, I’ll do it,”> she answered her friends in Gnomish, causing a small cheer to pass between them. “I want this tied around me double tight,” she indicated as the four Gnomes jumped into action. Tân and Galon helped her with the rope while Gwynt and Dŵr scouted around for the best place for their Elven friend to begin her descent.
<“There’s a smooth patch of ground over here for the rope to slide over!”> Dŵr called out a few moments later.
When everyone was ready, and her four small friends had taken their positions in a line holding the rope, Sparks carefully lowered herself over the edge and began her long climb down. It was a slow, tricky process, dealing with unyielding rock, crumbling dirt, and thin unhelpful plants. She’d spend minutes just testing her weight on the next ledge or next set of roots before proceeding. Halfway down she passed into shadow but fortunately the sky above was bright enough to continue to light her way after her eyes had a minute to adjust. She slipped twice, but each time only dropped a few inches as the uncharacteristically quiet Dymestl-aerons did their jobs holding the rope. After nearly an hour of slow, tense work, Sparks was finally a few feet from the bottom.
“Let go, give me slack!” she called up. A second later she felt the tension on her safety rope fall away and was free to hop down to the cave floor. “I made it!” she called.
Above her, four small heads poked out over the edge of the drop off, each casting a comically large shadow on the sunlit section of the cave wall far above.
<“Well? What is it?”> Tân’s voice echoed down in impatient irritation.
<“Fungus?”>
<“Water?”>
<“A mirror?”>
<“A fire bug??”>
“No, none of those…” Sparks called back as she stooped down to inspect the glowing object before her. “It’s… like a torch, alight… but not on fire…It seems about done for…” She smiled at the distant, excited chatter that filtered down from the Gnomes back up at the surface.
Taking a moment to really examine the dimly glowing torch, Sparks put it in her quiver along with her arrows then began her climb back up. In truth, she should have taken some time to rest, but the Dymestl-aerons’ joy was so infectious that she’d forgotten just how much her arms and legs had been aching just a few minutes before.
Some twenty feet up, Sparks stretched to reach the next obvious handhold, only to find her other fatigued hand unable to keep its grip. For a long, desperate moment, Sparks felt her fingers slipping and slipping and slipping free, and then she was falling. One of the Dymestl-aerons must have remember their job though, because a moment later the rope went tight, causing her head and body to slam painfully into the cave wall. Dizzy, and in pain, Sparks felt herself being lowered back onto the cave floor. She shifted to lay on her back and when she clutched at her forehead her hand came away wet with blood!
Sparks stared up at the circle of light coming down from the mouth of the cave, but she could hardly seem to do any more than that. Distantly, she was sure she could hear the cries of her friends, but answering them… it seemed… but she couldn’t… to get her thoughts… line up properly…
Then, far above, she saw a small shape, complete with hands, feet, and long blowing hair, jump out over the mouth of the cave. For a long moment, Sparks watched the in terror as Gwynt fell down the center of the shaft. The gnome fell closer and closer until Sparks had to force herself to look away, only to have a sudden gust of wind kick up along the cave floor. Sparks shielded her eyes from the dust thrown up by the sudden gust and a moment later… there Gwynt was, kneeling by her side.
“Sparks? We’re so sorry! Are you ok?”
“No… Not really,” Sparks answered. “How..?”
“Magic.” Gwynt replied with a shrug, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “Can you hang on to the rope? We are going to pull you up.”
Sparks nodded and, placing one hand above the other, weakly gripped the long length of rope that stretching upward before her.
<“Ok! Pull!”> Gwynt called up to her brothers and sister.
Inch by inch, Sparks felt herself being lifted out of the cave, even as Gwynt remained on the floor below. Sparks helped where she could, stretching out a hand or foot to push herself out away from the cave wall when it was necessary. At the cave’s mouth several pairs of small hands helped pull her back up over the edge, and then…
…she must have walked back home along with the Dymestl-aerons, but Sparks could remember very little of the return trip. It was almost as if one minute she was being helped back into the noonday sunlight and the next, it was night time and her mother’s worried arms were encircling her outside of their forest home.
“My child, you must not be so reckless! If you had hit your head any harder…” her mother scolded before trailing off. Not even she wanted to speak the dreadful words that would have finished that sentence. Instead, she placed a firm palm on her daughter’s gashed forehead and closed her eyes.
Sparks shuttered slightly as her mother’s powerful magic flowed into her. This time, when Sparks touched her hand to her own forehead she found the gash that had been there was now completely gone. She sobbed her apologies softly into her mother’s shoulder and then was sent to her room for bed without supper as a punishment for putting herself in so much danger.
It was only late into the night, when memories, good and bad, of the day’s events kept playing out in her mind, that Sparks realized one of the Gnomes had swiped her hard won magical torch!
She couldn’t help but smile. It was going to be a lot of fun getting it back.
Ddaear
The storm had come and stayed and stayed and when it had finally gone it left so much changed. To Mkali Moto Kipande Njia’yawzai's young eyes, each new downed tree, flooded lowland, and reshaped hill was an adventure that called, no that demanded, to be explored. The eleven child, appearing no more than eleven or twelve human years of age, seemed only to know how to laugh and run as she carved a curving path from her parents' small, sturdy home. Trailing far behind, the child's mother walked slowly, her long white hair hanging still in the quiet, her steps somehow regal, her face calm but for an occasional smile at the antics of her offspring, as she too surveyed the damage the swirling winds had done during the long dark day and even longer and darker night.
The two proceeded as such for some time with few words spoken between mother and child, excepting when Mkali Moto Kipande would come running back with some curiosity in hand, eager to show it off and win some small amount of rebuke or praise from her parent.
Then came the odd stillness.
"Where have you gone, my child?" U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika Njia’yawazi, called to the surrounding woods when the sounds of her little one’s quickly moving feet and awed giggles did not soon resume.
"Mother, it is awful..." came her child's reply so very soft and sad.
For the first time in their morning outing, U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika picked up her pace. Her slow, regal walk gave way to a speedier movement still far too elegant to be termed a mere run or dash. The worried mother soon slowed once more as she caught sight of her grief stricken child kneeling and crying on the now smooth, washed out slope of what had been a notable hillside the day before. Beyond Mkali Moto Kipande’s crouched form, bones and still decomposing flesh half emerged from the soft soaked soil.
U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele's right hand moved to cover her mouth as her child turned and looked up to her, teary eyes glistening with fear and despair.
"It is Ddaear," Mkali Moto Kipande informed her mother before she brought her own hand, shaking with grief, up to her face forming a miniature mirror image of her mother.
U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele knew the name well, better even than her daughter, though the gnomish boy had been one of her child's closest friends. U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele Malaika had counseled the Dodohyd'iaeron family to allow her to attempt to heal their sickened eldest son, but very little could be done to dissuade gnomes of their traditions once their minds had been made. Ddaear had passed not two months before and both elven mother and daughter had attended his burial just weeks earlier.
"Do you remember, my only and dearest child, what you asked me the day he was laid to his final rest?" U'tulivu Nyeupe-nywele questioned gently as she moved closer.
The tiniest shake of her daughter’s head was the only reply she received.
"You asked why we buried our departed. This is why,” the mother told her daughter. “Because the body rots once the soul has moved on. We respect the life that was but place the body out of sight so we can remember our friends as they were, not as their empty shells become.”
For a long while Mkali Moto Kipande sat and considered her mother’s words. Eventually her gaze returned to the remains of her friend only to be soon turned away once more by her mother’s gentle hand.
“I miss him,” she told her mother.
“I know. But it is not right for us to look upon him as he now is. Instead, we shall take a trip to the Dodohyd'iaerons and inform them of what has happened.”
Now, daughter and mother journeyed side by side, small fingers gripping tight to offered hand, in saddened silence.