Gathan walked down the path, it was shrouded in fog but Gathan moved with sure steps. There was a fork in the path. Beside each side of the fork stood a figure. Gathan recognized both figures and stopped. Kayvon stood on the left hand path while Ismeth stood on the right hand path.
"Gathan, the time has come for you to see and understand. Choose a path and find your own answers." Kayvon said smiling. Gathan moved to go down the path that Kayvon indicated, but Ismeth called out and stopped him.
"Gathan, before you make your choice, realize that each path will bring you to the meaning of the other. If you choose Kayvon's path you will see our past and yet it will still bring us to the future that I will create for our people. If you choose my path you will see the future I create, yet you will still see the past that has brought us here. Each path is mother or child to the other. How will you choose?" Gathan thought for a moment. Ismeth's words sounded so reasonable, but Gathan still felt an inkling of distrust sway him to start down Kayvon's path.
As Gathan walked, the path swirled with more fog and for a moment he thought he would lose his way. Then suddenly the fog cleared and he found himself no longer standing on the path but in a sunlit clearing in the midst of a great forest. As he looked around he saw birds flying from tree to tree overhead. Their colors assaulted his eyes, strange and wonderful. Colors Gathan had never seen in the twilight-lit darkness of the shadowed lands. As he walked he heard Kayvon's voice although when he looked around, Kayvon was not there.
"This was our home before the Dark Lady rescued us and brought us to the Shadowed lands. We hunted the great Tatanka and slept in the giant Abakatha trees. We were happy." As Gathan continued to walk the fog again rose up around him. As it cleared again, Gathan saw he was in a small village with huts made out of woven blankets stretched over wooden frames. He remembered from Kayvon's stories, that these huts were made to be moved. Although they were sturdy, they could be disassembled as carried on a person's back. Kayvon's voice came back again on the wind.
"In the mating season we moved with the Tatanka, sleeping in our huts and hunting at dawn." As Gathan continued to walk, the fog rose up again and covered his vision when it cleared Gathan was standing on a high plateau overlooking the forest. As he watched, tendrils of sickly green mist threaded its way through the forest. Where it touched, the trees wilted and grew stunted. Gathan could not see any animals but he knew that wherever the green mist traveled, the forest and its inhabitants were changed, twisted, become simultaneously more and less than that they had been moments before. Kayvon's voice came again.
"We did not know what was happening when the green mist roamed our forest, just that whatever it touched was changed and our forests died. Our shamans cried out to the Shining ones for answers but they were silent. When all seemed to be lost and we had despaired of hope, she came. The skies grew dark and our shamans trembled before her. she was beautiful and terrifying. So great was their fear that the shamans covered their eyes so that they would not look upon her.
When she spoke, her voice was like midnight and rolling thunder and the people trembled and buried their heads beneath their hands. The Dark Lady spoke about a land that was safe from the rolling green mists and we pledged ourselves to her for the hope of safety. Although we knew we would never hunt the great Tatanka or sleep safe in our Abakatha trees again; we knew that this was our only hope.
The Dark Lady told us to gather all the people and to take only the things most precious to us. We gathered ourselves and the elders took the sacred bones of the ancestors and the seeds of the Abakatha tree in the hopes that one day we would return to the land and again sleep above the ground. The Dark Lady threw the cloak of night over the people and caused us all to sleep. When we woke, she was gone and we were left in our new home below the earth."
As Gathan continued to walk, the fog sprang up again but this time it was dark like smoke. When it cleared Gathan was in the Shadowed Land. He recognized the great chamber that the people used for gathering. He saw the people as they started to begin again and build the life that Gathan recognized as normal. He saw the people learn to discover how to live in their new land. How to grow the sacred mushrooms and to make the NightMist and to begin the ceremony of the Dreaming. He saw the people guided by their dreams build the great temple and make a life for themselves in this new twilight land. Gathan heard a new voice float on the wind.
"You have seen who we were and from where we came. Is it not time to see where we are going?" Ismeth's voice sounded in Gathan's ear sweet as honey.
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Night's Prophet
FantasyGathan had lived in the Shadowed Land all his life, but he longed to see the places and things that his grandfather had told him about in the stories. The tall trees and the green seas of grass on the plains, the purple blue skies and the far off m...
