if a tree falls...

The Serpent and the Sun God

I lapped eagerly at the liquid, proffered to me by hands nearly as creased and contorted as my own. I could not recall his name. Perhaps I had known it once, but no longer. He was merely an apparition. A sombre face swirling across my consciousness as I drifted in and out. In and out.

"You know me," he whispered against the cruel wind beyond the stone walls. "Yacumama, I must tell you before you go."

My eyes flew open and I regarded his with sorrow. His deep, dark irises, shining with the same life as the soil beneath us.

His expression softened. "My dear mentor, I need to leave. You must understand. You have chosen, have you not?"

"Chosen..." I squeezed my eyes shut again as he took my hand in both of his.

And then I remembered. My mind was too aged, my speech too flawed to articulate it. The years. The lifetimes.

<Inti, this is your home,> I projected into his mind indignantly. <You belong here. Your people need you.>

He dropped my hand and it slipped away to rest upon the soil below. I felt the cool touch of life against the tip of my finger, the ardor of our planet caressing my skin as it always had. As it always would.

<I will return, Yacumama. Someday.>

He could not leave. Not yet. This was Inti's first life. There was still too much to learn. I would be there for him. The sun spirit was too headstrong, too arrogant to be left on his own. The power of the cosmos raged through his veins.

Inti smiled weakly. <I must see the world. My curiosity gets the best of me.>

What if I can't find him? What if I can't reach him? What if...I don't remember?

<Yacumama. I should not have told you. Rest. Don't worry about me.>

How could he? Leave us like this, when the Amazon needed our help? When his people needed him the most?

I had chosen. This body was too old to carry on. I had already combed through the myriad spirits on this side of the great forest for a new one. I would be reborn in the next months. I would grow up among the people of Urubamba. I would remember one day. And then we would find each other again, I and Inti. The serpent and the sun god. The mentor and the student.

But I had failed him.

He had become weak in mind and in spirit. He had become selfish. He would abandon his people.

And so, as the last drop of life slid away and I prepared to face the void as I had many times before, I focused upon the surroundings I had gleaned from his mind.

I prepared to leave behind all that I knew, all that I came to love.

I chose again. A new body, far from everything I had ever known.

And I prayed I would remember.

A/N: This short story is entered in the #idredo contest by GMTSchuilling. She's the talented author of the Erase and Rewind series, which is definitely worth checking out.

This story features characters from the Spirits' War Trilogy - the two are first introduced in Guardian and then further explored in Incarnate.

Thank you for reading!