Please direct comments at the Otherforest thread! This is *very long*. I'll post it in chunks. It's lost a couple bits of formatting like italics but *shrug* that's okay. If you want to read it in its doc format please ask.
If I don't mention you by name it's because there are like 40 people. And, not everyone gets their name by the first couple pages of course. It actually takes almost a year for everyone to gain a real name. Mmmkay!
***
Snowdrift and her companions walked back to Startree Holt after almost a hand of years travel together. Far from exhausted, they’d been taking a long route around the coast, one which separately they’d have done anyway – but it was much more fun together. Wanderers to the core, they could hardly be found in one place for very long. Even now, though they were coming up on the huge forest where their friends and other races gathered, they knew they wouldn’t be there for very long.
Snowdrift, once just known as Snow – but now having fair success convincing her friends to call her by her new name – was the first elf on the world. The first human to cross over through a portal, and become something new. Her hair now tumbling almost to her knees, in white silver drifts gave her her name at first. Her habits of leaving one place only to find a new one, the recent name.
With her, a trio of people who somehow knew her in ‘real life’ outside of the Otherforest (though she hadn’t been gone! how is this possible? leading two lives?). One, a well balanced and mature woman with a mop of red hair – by the name RedHair… Another, an olive skinned and white haired sprite with a smirk on her lips, named Discovery. The last, wearing a loose soft suit of midnight blue, an elf that at first appears male, then female… And is both, Moondance the male, Quicksilver the female, both housing the same restless soul.
Near them walked one huge wolf, silver and grey, graphite and cream in color. While he might have been big enough to allow two of these elves to ride him, today they entered the woods around the Startree walking beside him. On second glance, other animals followed the elves and their wolf companion, one was flying around in the trees – apparently a winged cat. Another loped along in springy bounds, occasionally pausing to sniff under a bush or at a tree, an otter that rested near Quicksilver when they came to a stop. A tiny fox-like creature rounded out their collection. Eventually as the cover and canopy of the squat wide-boll trees grew together overhead and were joined slowly by the towering fog-catchers, the traveling companions noticed the sounds of laughter and talking, busy work being done.
The Startree Holt was home to many different kinds of people, not just elves. While not the only such place, it certainly has the only combination of these particular people! Elves, Avi, Ice Traders and Hive, along side Deer folk and the odd Urai… Quite a gathering indeed. While they spoke with a heavy accent, the Ice Traders have learned a kind of combination of elfin and Avi speech, while the Hive creatures, Urai and Deer folk were all intensely telepathic and could be understood by anyone. Each fit here with their own niche.
Snowdrift looked around and declared, “we’re here!” to the world. After half a moment, several voices from the trees called back, “you’re late!”
“That’s new,” Redhair laughed.
“No, not really,” Snow said with a smirk. “I told them I’d be here for the winter, but… well, you know how that goes.” Indeed, they had arrived
Several elves, Cameo and her lifemate Sumac in particular, welcomed the group. More shy or perhaps less interested folk waved from their work area or from the hollows of the trees they lived in, while others would greet them later on, back from hunting or awake from a nap.
The Ancient one, Hekef, stood gracefully and raised his six-fingered hands in welcome. “You are, late that is,” he said as they approached. “We’ve been… wondering if you could clear something up, my dear.” This, however, he said to Redhair.
“Maybe?” She said, shrugging.
“What is it?” Asked Discovery, “is it dangerous?”
“Perhaps,” the tall alien replied. “But we do not know yet. Come along. Rest. When you have eaten and bathed, we will show you what we know.”
That said, mysteriously everyone got back to work and someone led them into the Startree, where they indeed were able to rest and bathe, eat and catch up with their friends.
Moondance sighed, leaning against the back of his shaped-wood seat, “I wonder what it is, if it were really dangerous, they’d have sent word to someone before now, wouldn’t they?”
“I think Hekef is just being his usual vague self,” Snowdrift said. “And where’s Lady Greyhoof? Didn’t she say she would meet us here?”
Discovery nodded, the shapeshifter deer folk emisary to the elves was usually found around civilization – theirs – and loved being around elves. She was a focal point for many talented with sending, as her own sending mind was perhaps one of the single strongest in the whole world. “Well, there was that weird blizzard the other hand of days, maybe it made it farther south than we thought it would.”
They decided she’d been held up by the snows, which were hardly unusual that far north. The Startree wasn’t all that equitorial. In fact it was – if memory served the elves at all, and it often didn’t – rather near the northern Canadian area if this were earth. But the land was rich, hardly the frozen wasteland that other folk had chosen to settle, with the occasional blizzard but more likely hot sticky summers and brilliantly colored springs.
Eventually, later in the night, Hekef and some others approached the group. “We would like your opinion on something,” he said, and took Redhair’s hand in his own. Between them they had ten digits…
He led her into the comfortably cluttered den of Portal. “Nice to see you again,” Redhair said with a smirk, “with clothes on,” and they both laughed. “Now what is this?”
She tilted her head, and as the others arrived and looked in from the outside, Red furrowed her eyebrows. “Portal, what is that?”
She referred to the circular portal that hung in the air above his work bench. Normally portals like this, his small ones, were unobtrusive and went away after a few moments use. This one apparently had other designs. Within the circle hanging there like a mirror could be seen some blocky items and a sort of humming brick.
“It’s a computer,” he said. The large oversized elf shrugged. “You know I like to keep up…”
“Yes, but… I know it shouldn’t really be glowing like that, should it?” She said. She honestly had no idea what a ‘computer’ was anyway, but for the sake of an argument, Red played along.
He shook his head, pale brown locks dancing around his face. “No, and it wasn’t doing it until a few days ago.”
“Can you bring it outside? I mean,” she corrected herself, “out of your home, so we can have some space to see it?”
Portal lived up to his name. While he himself had come to the world via some bizarre twist of magics inherent to Redhair and her own powers, he had the unique ability to create openings back to Earth – and use them, like a window or even a kind of vending machine. He was a master of convienences.
“Is Red going to make us something new?” Called a woman, “not that we didn’t like the last thing,” she laughed and everyone pointedly looked at Portal, “but that was a long time ago!”
“Well …” Redhair looked at her friends. “Do you think it’s safe?”
Moondance and Discovery approached it, looked at the device beyond the strange glowing edge of the round portal, and both shrugged. “Do you want to wait until morning at least?”
“Yeah,” Snowdrift said, “rest up. That way we can have more people join in.”
So they did. In preparation of Redhair’s next ‘creation’ party, those who could send were asked to arrive. Some of the Hive and even an Avi expressed interest, and as usual the Ice Traders were curious – but could hardly help out. They had no magic powers to offer this ‘remix’.
Come dawn of the next day, everyone rested and happy, bone-tired and exuberant to be here at all, the gather was announced. By noon, a huge assortment of people had come. Those with strong sending, and far-sending, deep sensing, and protection magic. Some with metal shaping, and some with bonding powers. All stuck themselves in a clumpy circle in the middle of the small glen where Portal moved his little airborne ‘computer desk’.
Redhair beckoned several of the nearby elves closer and they placed their hands on her shoulders. Reaching out to others, they spread as a living web until everyone was touching at least two other people. The two Deer folk who came were near the edges, a couple Ice Traders scattered in between, and a fair few Hive folk – where someone else would touch a gigantic spider-bug…
While beginning her magic, Redhair tapped into her memories of earth. The computer screen came to life, suddenly, and then…
When everyone started using their powers, to activate the ‘remix’, a brilliant light almost the same eerie color of a greeny-yellow CRT screen bathed everyone from above.
Because the portal was widening. Growing huge, overhead! More quickly than anyone thought possible, it had risen to a height over two elves tall, but also had floated up a bit into the air. Rather like the portal from earth near the First holt, which hangs in the air over the small dancing glen there, this one stuck itself up into the gap between the branches of the wide-bolls.
“How weird,” Redhair commented. “It’s never done that before. Not even when we summoned your volkswagen, Snow…”
Snow rolled her eyes, and sighed. She’d never live that one down…
But eventually, as the portal moved and expanded, powers were sapped and people actually passed out from the effort. It was worth it, though.
For from the portal, came a strange tapping sound. The sound of keys being struck? Humming as though from a computer fan?
Only a small number of the elves present even knew what a computer was any more. Most had lost their earthly memories in some quantity, only remembering their past lives in fits and starts, dreams and brief recollections. Portal was hardly among those – he thoroughly enjoyed living two lives. Others never knew what a computer was because they were completely alien to the concept, no technology existed here such as this, not even in Hekef’s time – he used magic mixed with ancient arcane ways.
As the group split up, the magic worked all through and finished, Hekef strode into the circle again. He was humanoid, slender and long limbed with six digits on hands and feet, along with wide, almond shaped eyes glimmering over a tiny nose and delicate mouth. He looked like a ‘grey alien’ only with a rich amber skin tone and pale white-silver hair. “Well that is odd, isn’t it?”
He looked up into the portal, and squinted. “There seems to be … writing… It is in that odd language of yours, Portal, I cannot read that angular scribbling.”
“It says you’ve got mail,” giggled Moondance, who then scampered out of the way for Portal to click the “read” button.
Then their world just about exploded.
Portal stood taller than most elves, chest and shoulders above in fact. He could reach if he stood on his toes, and stretched. He fiddled with something at the nearest part he could reach, and then had to duck and swore lightly as something literally fell from the portal onto his head!
“Ow!” He exclaimed, looking down at the object. It had formed halfway while it was within the portal’s ‘aura’, and solidified quickly by the time it hit him. It was ovoid, almost spherical, and a pale creamy color. “That’s the biggest egg I’ve ever seen!”
And it was not alone. Portal watched with a squint as the next started to come through, and narrowly avoided getting pummeled by several more. As they dropped down to the soft ground, people began scampering around to catch them, and deposit them safely around the small clearing. They didn’t need to be hitting each other – they were hard enough to survive the fall onto soft ground and thick grass, but no one wanted to see whatever was inside them exposed before they actually hatched!
Soon, more than four hands of eggs lay scattered in small piles around the clearing. (That’s sixteen, and then some, by the way. Have to count in fours, what with those missing pinkies elves seem to have.) They were the size of Portal’s head, too big for one hand to hold (unless that hand was Hekef’s, and his were quite weird anyway), and rather heavy.
Snowdrift looked at them, “they’re warm, I wonder what’s going to hatch out of them.” She walked down to the area where Portal stood, and looked up. Since she had a bit of flight magic she floated up (she hadn’t been using her levitation for quite some time, prefering to walk) and then scowled.
“Portal. Eric.” She stated his earth name, though how she recalled it was impossibly beyond everyone there. “This is my email.”
Redhair laughed loudly, “well you could hardly stop it from being opened, now could you? It’s not his fault!”
“But… How do you even have an email address, if you’re here?” Asked Portal. Snowdrift swatted him. “Oh, there’s something more coming through. Doesn’t look like another egg though.”
Indeed. By this time, the day was wearing into the early afternoon. The ritual of Redhair’s magic ‘remix’ usually took half an hour or more, this had been a bit longer, and then the egg procession took almost two. The sun was glinting down through the tall trees, illuminating the portal quite oddly.
Everyone gave the portal a wide berth now. It did glow, the way that, if anyone had seen it happening at the First holt or in the Hall of Portals, magical energy spun itself wildly from its edges. Almost as though it were weaving a shape out of light.
That shape began as a mere green-glowing blob of energy. But soon enough it began to solidify into an elfin shape. A girl, as far as anyone could tell when she drifted down the little distance to the soft ground, lay there breathing deeply and obviously in slumber.
“Wait,” Portal said, and was echoed by several other elves. “Wait, how’d she come through the computer?”
“Who knows,” Snowdrift said, eyes focused on the girl, “but there is another coming. This is going to be a busy day.”
And it was! For over the course of the next whole afternoon, a number of elves almost equitable to the eggs that had fallen, entered the Otherforest. Startree holt was playing host to a most intriguing arrival!
Eventually they would wake, these newcomers. They were softly treated, some lifted by magic into the shade, others groggily awakened on their own, but went back to slumber as their arrival seemed to have exhausted them.
“They’re all girls,” Portal laughed, and Snowdrift swatted him again. “Well mostly,” he commented. There were indeed a couple male elves, and … one or two whose gender even though they were unclothed was still in question. Very odd indeed. When one of those seemed slightly wakeful, she… he … was taken aside by Moondance, vanishing into a spare wide-boll den.
The new elves were unsurprised, but confounded as usual for newcomers to the world. Who they were, why they were here, and … what exactly they were? Those were questions that at least this time, could be easily answered by any given elf!
Very rarely in the whole history of the Otherforest elves, had an event like this – the group arrival of new comers and their viewing by already present ones – happened. Each of the newcomers was given a drape or a set of spare clothing if they had access, a sip of water or wine, dried berries.
They were gracefully welcomed into the world. Told what they were: elves. Yes, they were missing a finger on each hand, but who needed five? (Indeed, who needed six, in the case of Hekef?) Yes, those were ears! Long, pointed ears! Some of the older elves noticed that there were many who had much longer ears or ones pointing in a different direction than they’d seen. Some had colorful markings on their skin, while others had fiery hair or glowing eyes.
Since their next lesson would have to include information about their new lives, Snowdrift decided that they could be gathered in the evening. For now, she claimed, she wanted to check some other emails…
One thing that everyone noticed, while dealing with the newcomers, was that they almost uniformly would gaze south – as though a wistful feeling had come over each one and they were trying to recall a memory long lost.
Everyone knew what that meant. This group was not going to remain here in the Startree Holt. How could they? There were already quite a few people here, and they had no real reason to remain. The pull of a new land, experience, and their future, lay in the south.
Snowdrift had not been to the particular areas where they might reside, and early on considered going with them. It was a thought shared by Red, Discovery and most importantly by Moondance. He seemed quite eager to see the area where they’d live.
“Plus,” he commented, and Discovery almost slobbered at the thought, “obviously those eggs are theirs. There are more than enough, I wonder if there will be more on the way?”
“Very possibly,” Discovery said. She was fondling one of the eggs, but then put it down gently to go retrieve another which had fallen from the portal since the afternoon. “Well certainly there will be more.”
“There should be someone watching that portal for more newcomers then,” Snowdrift said. “But first, let’s see what they’re able to do. Shall we?”
She glanced around and sent to a few folks. Among them, it would appear, they covered a wide spectrum of elf magic powers. The newcomers did too – it was clear to most that some were ridiculously talented, while others had skills yet unguessed by their appearance.
Cameo and her mate Sumac, along with half a dozen others rounded up the newcomers. Some were already busy learning about their powers – they could hardly resist when they were strong, or had seen someone else doing something with their own. Here, many people used their powers to create items or weapons, art or jewlery. Homes too – someone was shaping a stone den, and a number of the newcomers stood and stared as they did so.
“It’s all right, you’ll all have something to do, I’m sure,” said Cameo. She was slightly older in appearance than many elves – perhaps she’d been more mature when she and her husband arrived. They both had smiles on their faces, and when they led the group to a wide circle of shaped seats (some were wood, some were stone, a few were a mixture of both oddly, and one was made apparently of bones), everyone got the chance to see some of the stronger magic users all together at once.
The group of newcomers were so varied in appearance and powers, it was decided to simply give them an education all together and they could in fact sort themselves out. They’d be here for a while, long enough to get outfitted properly. If they were going to head south they would be needing proper clothing and shoes!
Plus, everyone really wanted them to stay just to see what was in those eggs… The new group hadn’t really seen the eggs – they were too busy noticing themselves, each other, and their surroundings first.
Last edited by Shard on Sat Sep 03, 2005 9:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Sitting near Snowdrift and her friends were the local elves. One by one, they stood, introduced themselves and demonstrated some of their magic.
It was Discovery, in her green-camo bodysuit and thigh-high boots, who stood first. “My name is Discovery, and… that’s what I do. I use almost any power – not really well, though.” She smirked and winked. “But what I have over some of my friends here is that I can detect magic’s use better – and Send better – too.” She took a look at the group, and projected her thoughts into their minds.
She had a warm, complicated feel to her mental voice. It combined a flavor of curry-spice, with the warm sensation of a snug bed, and at the same time felt light and airy. Such was her complicated magic!
** This,** she thought to them, **Is what we call ‘sending’. It’s telepathy. All elves, to an extent, can do it. You’ll all try it out – go ahead – it comes naturally to us. You shouldn’t have a hard time, really.**
Moments later the glade erupted with … silence. The air was still, no one was talking – but the many things they were saying to each other!
**I love your hair! I want hair like that!**
**Did you see that guy? He’s so hot!**
**We’re really talking to each other with our brains, isn’t that the weirdest thing?**
**I think it’s fun, let’s let her talk now.**
Discovery nodded toward the longer-eared female, and smiled. “Good, that’s out of the way. You’ll notice that some voices are louder than others. Some are good at hearing far away, or speaking to groups. Everyone will get their own feel for it.”
She turned and someone handed her a couple objects. “Now, I’m going to have you pass these around. Touch them, look at them, but more than that, feel them. Like you can now feel each other sitting there with your minds instead of just your hands – feel these items.”
Someone blurted out, “this … it’s like I can see a face when I touch it!”
“That’s right,” Discovery grinned. “Keep going, pass them all around.”
There was a shaped ball of bone, wood, metal, stone and a crystal. Each of them elicited some kind of response, some more than others, in the group.
“Excellent,” she said. “Now I’m going to hand you off to the next teacher.”
A yellow tan skinned woman, slender and well muscled, stood. She had hair that was so vibrantly black it looked violet, and her voice was raucously happy.
“I’m here to show you healing powers!” She announced. “I’m Nettle, by the way.” Her outfit of purple vest over white shirt, black pants and high black boots was nice enough that a couple of the newcomers wanted to ask about that too.
Nettle coughed and looked around, finding a suitable ‘victim’ for her arts. “See, we can manipulate things like plants and rocks, but we also can do it to flesh and blood. Injuries happen all the time… You think we just flit unharmed through our lives here?”
The group didn’t really know how to respond to that. “Well, we don’t. We have to hunt and kill for our food, and sometimes weather brings new surprises,” she was going to continue, but Cameo cleared her throat and widened her eyes, so Nettle wrapped it up. “Ah, there’s one.”
It was actually one of the Ice Traders she summoned. They were wide, humanoid but so much bigger around then elves! They were graceful in a way, but not in footwork: clearly their work was all in the hands. Tinkerers, builders.
This one, a sturdy male with a black beard and shining green eyes, had apparently stuck himself but good with a hammer while he worked. “ah’v bent muh thomb,” he said. His accent was queer, but everyone could understand.
“Well, good for you,” Nettle said. The Ice Trader looked at her with a little fear – it was very likely that her powers were perhaps known for other reasons, than being a kindly healer.
She showed off that the man’s thumb was a mess. It clearly hurt him, the bone wasn’t poking out but it might as well have been. “Now, a few of you are looking more closely – come on up. You’re probably the healers among your group.” A hand or so of newcomers came up, while the others looked on as they could. “You must know the body inside and out – there’s bone and blood, sinue and muscle, and skin to consider. And that’s just in a simple break like this.” She exerted a bit of magical power – which several of the healer-types saw with their magical eyes as well as their feelings – and the bone began to straighten. “It’s important to start with the worst bits. You’ll know them – you’ll feel them yourself if you let it.”
“You mean we’ll be in pain if someone asks us to heal them?” Asked one girl. “That sucks.”
“Well not exactly,” Nettle explained as she knit the split muscle and fixed the tendon down again. “You can be aware without being … given over to it. I mean, maybe you’ll like it, I don’t know.” She gave a fierce grin.
“Myself,” she said when the Ice Trader’s hand was healed – within mere moments – “I can do more than just heal. With my magic, I’ve learned to hurt and shape flesh too.”
“Shape… flesh?” Asked one of the others, “why?”
“Because some folks – ah, like Fin over there,” She pointed to a man whose ears were fluted and split, and who had literally fins growing from his arms, for swimming? “Can’t shape themselves. You’ll learn. I use my hurting to hunt, or, to get back at people for pissing me off,” she whispered, but Cameo again cleared her throat and the mischievious elf stepped aside. “Well I was done anyway.”
“Thank you,” Cameo said. She had a long brown braid, and fair skin. Her dress was pretty purple and violet, her eyes contrasted with it with their yellow green. “It is my pleasure to show those of you who have an affinity with plants, how to coax them to grow the ways you wish them to.”
At least two or three of their number perked up at that. Cameo explained, “you’ll understand the names of the trees and plants here easily, they are all connected to their appearance.” She indicated the squat, bulbous wide-boll trees that lined almost every ‘avenue’ of the huge holt, “these are wide-boll trees. They are ideal for shaping into homes – and not only because their boll is hollow, but because they accept elf shaping magic more easily than others. The only other tree that does,” she smiled and turned to face the north, “are the great Fog Catchers.”
The massive trees that actually formed the Startree could have gone on for miles. Towering above everything, with gigantic branches starting much lower than many of their height would, they looked similar to wide-bolls but on a different scale entirely.
“Fog catchers,” she said with a secret, conspiratorial grin, “are intelligent in a way. They have a collective memory, and they feel each other across the planet, by virtue of their root system.”
That shut even the locals up, “but how? Plants with a brain?” Asked one of the newcomers.
“Magic, my dear,” Cameo said. “We have had travelers through this place many times, and one is well known for his communication with the great trees. He is actually a kind of emissary for their kind. Rafter, should you meet him, is perhaps the world’s greatest plant shaper. But he spread this knowledge so that we would know – if the tree resists, let it be. That is good advice in almost all ways. If your magic is refused by something – and you cannot simply overcome it with power – then the shaping was not meant to be. Do not keep going back to it. Your magic can fester in that place, go bad, and cause… accidents.”
That lifted a few eyebrows. Cameo let it sink in. At least one of the newcomers was hoping to ask her about not just those things she’d been talking about, but her way of communicating.
“I’m sure that where you all wind up living you’ll find new names for your local flora and fauna,” Cameo finished. “But remember that all things are connected, even here where all life started out from another world. Every spore, leaf, ant and person, their ancestor or first comer chose the shape that all of their kind would take.” She paused, “except for some things, apparently…”
They glanced around, not sure what in the world she was talking about, when a perfect, white and lilac colored unicorn approached. He lowered his twisted horn to her shoulder, breathed out softly, and gazed at the group. He turned to look at two or three of them specifically, unblinking, and walked away with a grace that even the most dextrous of elves could never match.
“That… was…”
“Yes, a unicorn,” Cameo said with a soft smile. “I used to paint them when I was human, but he … used to be merely a horse. And they rarely come through portals the same way twice. I think they like to pick and choose among the many myths humans have about them, I’ve seen ones with wings, fangs, fish tails… all manner of shapes. And they always approach us with cautious friendship. Aren’t they wonderful?”
Some tried to look through the deep trees for a sign of the beautiful beast, but he was already gone.
While they were doing so, Cameo sat back down and another took her place at the center of attention. Red haired, brighter red than the elf of that namesake, with pale skin and a pleasant curl to her hair, decorated with bangles over her cleverly ripped looking leathers, she bowed slightly to the group before starting.
“My name is Shine, and like some of you I can shape rock and metal to my desire.” She fiddled with some of the bangles that dangled from thin leather cords around her neck, waist and wrists. “Unlike plants, stone is not alive – and much harder to draw into new shapes. But it can be, and the good part about that, is that they don’t then fall back into their old shapes!” A ripple of laughter spread, and she picked up that same lump of shaped stone that had been passed around earlier.
“The more a stone has been shaped the easier it gets to do so. Perhaps it does pick up a certain amount of our power, but not nearly as much as the plants. In the case of metal and gems, this is even harder to do. Anyone with the ability to shape rock, can try to coax mineral ore or pure stones from it. But only metal and gem shapers can then truly work with those things. I can do all three, let me show you.”
Again, the ones with some kind of connection to this magic stepped forward and watched closely, while others looked on or fiddled with the idea that they were elves and wasn’t it weird?
Shine encouraged the newcomers to touch the stone while she worked it into a new shape. “Envision the shape you wish it to be. Some stone will not go into particular shapes, because of its … what was it again Portal?” She called out to the tall portal-producing computer geek, who vaguely turned and had absolutely no clue what she was talking about, since he wasn’t one of the instructors. Apparently she quickly ‘sent’ a question, and then shook her head and laughed, “crystalline structure!”
“So we won’t be able to make, say, cloth out of gemstone?” Asked one of the new shapers.
“Correct,” Shine replied, “but you might with metal. Some metals are quite soft, and pliable. I would imagine that shaping that metal onto a cloth of some kind would be better, because… won’t that get hot?”
They laughed a bit, and she added one more bit of information for them. “Ore shaping and gem finding is an art. To be able to find it is one thing, but to bring it from stones themselves, requires rock shaping. A single ore strain will come out of rock easily and then can be used by a metal shaper. Handfuls of precious stones, the Ice Traders love those,” she giggled as one particularly decorated plump-bodied woman walked by and chuckled herself, “they work best when they’ve been removed of all other substances. A rock shaper can sense the presence of such things as impurities in the stone around them, and they may also have an ability to coax healthy dirt from mere dust. Some can, and some cannot. It’s all in how you use your powers.”
She sat back down, and a couple of the newcomers had to resist clapping for her, her speech over, she nodded to a male who sat nearby. He was quite attractive in a robe of shining white-green, having long red-brown hair and pure, wide brown eyes.
“I am Dusty,” he said, “Shine’s lifemate.” That certainly deflated the thoughts of a few new girls… “I carry several powers but the one I have been asked to discuss with you, is a very rare one. I sense that perhaps one or two of your number have it, that’s pretty typical. Usually there is one of this kind for every eight or even more healers.”
The girls and few males looked at one another, wondering who among them had this rare gift. If he was to talk about it, who would rise? Eventually they decided to just watch his demonstration.
“I am a shaper of bone, living or dead. While healers do this unconsciously while they work on an injury such as a break or bash, I only knit the bones back to their old shape, or,” he held up a cleaned animal bone, “cause new shape out of them.”
The leg bone went from being a straightish bulb-ended thing, into a curved shape, a bow? He then concentrated, it seemed to cost him much, “when you want to use this power on living bone, it is … extremely painful. Remember that unless you are a healer as well, all the nerves and such will feel your work as though it’s an invasion. I don’t recommend using it that way. But with dead bone you can make many useful tools and weapons. That’s what most bone shapers do.”
“Like this chair,” said one newcomer, who was comfortable in the weirdly lumpy bone-shaped seat. Dusty nodded and laughed. He sat back down, while a female stood.
She had short brown hair, save for a long tail of it in blond from her forelock, and a loose rather sexy green dress. Her dress matched her eyes perfectly. She gave a smile, “I am Turntail,” she said, “and you’ll learn why in a few minutes. They plan to come back to me. First, I will show you a shaping power that I sense in quite a few of you. Water shaping,” she said, and someone found a bowl of it for her to demonstrate on.
She placed her hands around the bowl and smiled again. “Water is easy, since it’s already in motion, to cause currents and eddys in. However, for that reason of course, it’s harder to actually form shape out of it.”
“That makes sense,” said one of the handful of newcomers who stepped up to watch closely. “If it’s already so mall… malleable?”
“Exactly,” Turntail said. “But it can at least be coaxed into some kinds of shapes relatively easily.” She exerted her power and suddenly there stood a pillar of moving water! It stood straight up, out of the bowl, like … ice?
One of the others touched it, and it was still in motion, as though a slice of waterfall had been brought into the bowl. “It’s holding its shape, you’re keeping it like this with your power?”
“Yes, so the longer you want me to show you that, the harder it will be.”
She retracted her hand, laughing, and Turntail continued after allowing the pillar to splash back down into a regular bowl of water. “Water shapers around the world use their power to purify and make sure that the drinking water streams in their area are not contaminated. In the Coastal holt, I’ve been told, a host of them pool their powers together and actually shape the salt water away from their bay, leaving it fresh. That’s quite a feat, actually.”
“Of course,” said another newcomer, “because it’s all moving all the time. Like air, you can hardly keep air in one place for long, before a breeze comes along.”
Others nodded, and Turntail grinned. “Yes, that’s true. There is another power, sort of, that some have. Ice shaping is not truly water shaping, really. I sense it in at least one of you, to manipulate cold is an extremely rare talent, even more rare than bone shapers. It can be very handy though. I think we have one here, but they’re asleep or hunting or something…” Her group laughed, and she continued. “But the longer you work with ice, the more heated it gets, the more it melts. It’s a good idea to shape it once, and leave it to melt on its own. I don’t know if you’ll be in a place with much ice but perhaps. It’s quite fun when an ice or cold shaper is here in winter!”
“Ice sculptures!” Cried one or two of the newcomers. Turntail sat, waiting for her next turn up, while Cameo’s mate Sumac stood.
He was a very handsome white-haired elf, with pale skin and deep green eyes the shade of dark sap. A pleasant grey and green leather outfit suited him well.
“I am Sumac, and I’ll be speaking to you several times as well. First though, is to explain another of the shaping powers that you might have. Though some won’t call it shaping so much. Firestarting and fireshaping are in fact different powers. But most that can do one, can also do the other to an extent. Firestarters can do just that,” he said holding up a small dry branch, and as he concentrated it burst into flames. “If there is to be burning done, a firestarter can cause it to happen. Be very careful with this power.”
Nods and accession followed. Of course, who would want to be responsible for burning down the woods?
“Shaping it, however, is a different matter. That requires an already present fire, and usually a large one.” He tossed the small burning piece onto a pile of wood that had been brought in while he was speaking. Again he concentrated on it and the rest of the logs began to burn. Since it was getting on evening, this was not a problem or issue. Everyone could see the flames perfectly well and they’d need it later on anyway.
“Shaping the flames of a fire is a lot like shaping water. Since it is always consuming itself, always in motion already, you have to learn to know its motion, how it catches air and converts it to energy.” He said, and then there was a shape, a … tree? in the flames. “Once you know where it will be, you can keep it where you’d like it to stay. It’s quite hard.” The tree dropped, and he stood straighter, “I know some have powers such as a flame blast, they require other powers to mix with their fire shaping. At least one of you has such a power, we’ll talk later, perhaps.”
While he sat, Moondance – who was now the female grey-brown haired Quicksilver – stood. She-he had already spoken to one of the members of the new group, but now was asked to speak again.
“Some of you know that I’m a self-shaper, a shapeshifter. But this turn I’m going to speak of a power common to quite a few of you, that of flight.” She raised into the air with a sweep of her long arms. Her hair fanned out a little behind her, with the light breeze. While several of the group gasped and clapped, others merely nodded. They already knew – how could they help it?
“To some, the art of levitation is merely pushing themselves through the air. To others, it means pushing themselves with the air. An air-shaper is able to do some different things, I don’t … sense any of those with you at this time, but there’s always other newcomers.” The pair of new elves who had hardly been surprised, bobbed in the air as though it were water. They floated gently upwards, trying out their powers for the first time truly, under Quicksilver’s guidance.
“That’s good,” she said. “Now, try staying on the ground.”
They waited a moment, and for one, that seemed to be quite difficult. “I… I can’t!” She said, “it’s hard!” It was like trying to get a duck to sink. It could be done, but …
“You’ll eventually learn more control. Practice for fliers should include knowing when to stop, too. Exhausting yourself at the wrong moment… could cause disaster.” She saw that they understood this. “But also, know where to stop. Remember that the higher you go, the less air there is. I know of at least one elf… who did actually make it to the airless space above this planet. Quite incredible actually.” She paused, “she had to be healed extensively later, of course…”
“How do you … move around like that?” Asked one, jerking in the air a bit weirdly.
“Relax,” Quicksilver said, “just … come forward to me. Hold your hand out and come to me as though you’re walking.”
Her motion became smooth, but everyone could see she was resisting ‘walking’ on the air. “I get it now,” she said. Others practiced a little, darting up and down, back and forth.
“The one thing you’ll want to learn though, is to have eyes in the back of your head. Since you’re going to be able to move up and down, backwards and forwards and side to side, you’ll need to get to know your surroundings perfectly to avoid crashing into things. Keep your eyes – and your powers – open.”
When her lesson was over, Redhair stood. By now, it was growing darker. Other fires had been started in large pits that were scattered around, and some torches burned. It wasn’t as bright as day but to the new elves’ eyes, it was good enough.
Red said, “I will speak to you now of the art of Finding. It’s what I do, I find things for people – I found you all, for instance.”
They were a bit confounded at that. How did she ‘find’ them, they’d only just arrived! None of them had any idea how exactly her powers worked, but… most likely she’d be going with them to their new holt in the future and ‘remix’ something up their Holt would use.
“Hold this,” she said to one of the newcomers, of a small woven ball. “Sense it, sniff at it.” Redhair gave her time enough to do so, only just, and then snatched it from her hands. Another local elf scampered away with it, racing like the wind. Disappearing into the woods, everyone was a bit weirded out.
“The power of finding is that you can in fact locate something that has been lost, or find something you need, by concentrating on it. I find… lots of things that way.” About then was when people noticed that there was a little … furry animal thing, on her shoulder. The leathers of grey under her mop of red hair, concealed it at first. A fox like creature, tiny, no bigger than two hands spread. She absently scratched its shoulder, then went back to speaking. “A holt’s finder can be of great use. Looking for the right things of course. Lost arrows, especially when there’s no time to make more, during a hunt. Or, the hunted animal itself – find a badger, find a boar. While it’s relatively easy to locate things here by sniffing the wind or checking for tracks, Finders can do those things and much more.”
She paused and then said to the girl who’d been her subject, “now go find it.”
Blinking, the elfess stood and nodded. She had to concentrate kind of hard, and at first merely looked to the last place they’d seen the elf running with the object. But then her eyes traced around, behind where the group of teachers stood. Then, up into one of the nearby trees….
“They got busy,” she muttered. She walked over to the tree, and fiddled around with it, until she came out with the ball in her hands. “I knew just where to look. Like I could see my hands finding it.”
“That’s the idea,” Red said with a grin.
When she sat, Turntail and Quicksilver stood again. They sent between each other, a private conversation that only a couple of the newcomers could – or should – pry into.
“We are two kinds of self-shapers,” Turntail announced. “You’ve already seen a little of Quicksilver’s art, she changes her appearance – but she also changes inside. Her powers shift too, there are things only Moondance can do, while only Quicksilver others.”
She-he changed back into his male form, with the shorter darker curled hair, though all the other features seemed the same.
“So… you … grow a … thing?” Asked one of the males. Everyone laughed – everyone save one or two, and specifically the one who Moondance had singled out earlier.
“Yes, I grow a ‘thing’,” Moondance laughed. “I don’t recommend trying to use self-shaping unless you’ve got the confidence it takes to work your body into new things. Appearance shifting is relatively easy, and I sense some others can do it among your number.”
They all looked around, and noticed that yes, hair or skin could be changed with a little bit of power.
“But be careful where you are, who you are with. When I… discovered my feminine side, I didn’t even know it. I hadn’t been paying attention. And I was found by some rather hostile people – people who have issues with shapeshifters. Keep track of who you are.”
That seemed good advice, to those who needed it. Then Turntail addressed others.
“And some of you are animal shapers – that’s a more common use for our power. To grow fur, claws, fangs… To run with the hunters is a primal urge in some of us.” She then shifted her body and limbs – into a wolf! With tan fur, and a yellow stripe from her head to her side, it looked as though her clothing simply melted away into her body! She walked up to the males, and sniffed at them.
** You two are both self-shapers to a degree. Come now, show us.** She sent, unable to speak in this form.
One of the males instantly took on a new shape, though what it was was beyond everyone. Tall and still elfin looking sort of, but… with flaps?
“A flying squirrel?!” Yelled one girl, “squirrley!” Others laughed, but Turntail – now her name would make more sense, as she wagged her tail angrily side to side – warned them off.
**Don’t mock him – I would bet that his friend here,** who had chosen a wolf form too, like their teacher, **could hardly catch him if they were to give chase.**
At that, the pair of males sprinted off. Well, one did. The squirrel-elf lept into the air, obviously using some amount of levitation, and he found a branch to his liking. The wolf-shaped one, however, had some trouble getting all four paws to do what he wanted!
**Don’t think about running,** Turntail suggested to them, **just run!**
With that advice, the merry chase that they led all around the area caused a lot of laughter, and spilled several bowls of food that were being carried around! When they got back to the group, the wolf-shaped one turned into something else entirely, keeping the shaggy fur but gaining what looked like hooves instead.
“That’s an interesting one,” Moondance said, shifting back into Quicksilver who was apparently his ‘evening’ form. “With practice you’ll both be able to shift without difficulty. I would recommend,” he said while Turntail was shifting back into her elfin form, “that you not try flying like a bird or swimming like a fish, just yet.”
Though it was good advice everyone still got a chuckle out of that. When they were done, and everyone got to sample some of the fresh baked goods and delicious cheeses (causing one or two of the new elves to squeal in delight – they’d never tasted cheese like this) another elf came to the front of their ‘class’.
He was blond, with a high forehead and a quick smile. Though something told people that he’d had his share of dangerous experiences – perhaps on Earth. The way he carried himself told everyone that he knew his way around the staff he carried, set on the log nearby.
With a clear voice, he said, “I am Endgame. I’m going to give some lessons in the mental powers that many of you have.”
Some of the elves looked around in surprise, while others straightened. He picked two newcomers, one a blonde haired female who had latched onto a dark red robe straight away, and the other was the deer-like shaper male. “You two, come up to the front. I’ve got a power that we share – hypnosis.”
Right off, the male thought he could get the jump on the crimson-garbed female, but she instead turned the tables on him. Though quick enough in his shaping efforts, the woman’s eyes caught his and he froze.
“That’s… very good,” Endgame admitted. “Now, can you tell how you did it? And what to do with him now?”
“Well he’s …” she blinked, and suddenly stiffened up herself.
“Taking over,” the man said. “She’s got power!” He turned slyly to the ‘audience’ and said, “but I’ve got skill!”
Endgame rolled his eyes. “Yes, that’s a point. What do you sense, anyway?”
The man thought about it now, and said, “well she’s … on hold. That’s all I can think of. Just, that she’s not going anywhere, thinking anything. I think she knows she’s gonna be angry after this though.”
“You did take her by surprise,” Endgame said. “You use a bit of your sending in the process, to focus and latch on. But animals can’t send – and hypnosis works on them too. It’s quite useful for catching prey that you would otherwise not be able to get near. As long as you can look it in the eye once, that’s the key. Eye contact. Now, let her go.”
The man let her out of the daze she was in, and she blinked a few times to get some moisness back on them – she’d not blinked the whole time. “That was weird,” she muttered. But when she was about to turn and head back to the seating, Endgame stopped her.
“No, you, and she,” he pointed out one of the females with long ears and markings playing across her skin. “You’re both about evenly matched. Now I’m going to show you what I’m named for.”
He sat them down opposite each other, on the log near the fire. As the darkness crept in over the treetops, everyone waited. They could sense him sending, strongly, at the pair.
The darker haired of the two women gasped, and then the crimson-garbed one as well.
“What do you see?” Endgame asked.
“It’s… a … a maze!” Said the blond, “a big tree maze! In my head!”
“And I can see you,” said the other, with a smile. Though she barely moved, her head turned and her open eyes seemed to see things that certainly weren’t there. She waved her hand gently, but again her motion was muted, as though she were under water. “It’s beautiful! Where is this?”
“Tis all in my big balding head,” Endgame said with a wry grin.
“I want to see!” Said another of the elves sitting and watching. “Can’t we see too?”
“Well I hadn’t planned on it, but yes. Send to me, ‘listen in’.” Endgame encouraged them, and he could feel more than half of those present prying into his mental space. He was quite good at this game, though, and was used to the attention.
What they all saw, as vividly as though it were right in front of them, was a brightly sunlit hedge maze. From above and a bit to the side, he could be seen standing on a kind of twisty hill. “This is my mind scape, my game. Those who are playing the game – cannot get out until they beat my maze. If you find your way through, or find a different way of getting out, you can wake up. The rest of us get to watch, bwah hah hah!” He said the last in a chilling but funny voice.
“A game, in your head!” The blond announced, “fantastic! Come on, let’s find the exit!”
**Usually,** Endgame said with his mind, **when you get used to doing it, you don’t need to speak or move. The game is all inside your mind, and mine, and don’t worry about hurting anything. It’s all illusion.**
**And a beautiful one at that,** said the longer eared one. They ‘walked’ through the maze until one of them spotted something. It was partially hidden, halfway underneath a carefully shaped bush. On the ground was a ring of metal, large, enough to put a hand through and pull…
They pulled up on it, and a strange gurgling water-whooshing noise filled their ears. Then – the two were awake.
“How… wow that was great,” the darker-haired one said. “And you say we’ve both got this magic?”
“It’s all about the rules you want to make, in your mind. The more detail you put into your world, the harder you must concentrate on it to keep the illusion alive. A truly good game – between two of about the same level of proficiency, like yourselves – will be a grand adventure to watch.”
“How were we watching, anyway?” Asked one other from the audience. “It was like we were right there with them, but I couldn’t see myself. Or any of the others.”
Endgame nodded, “that’s right, that’s my view too. I know you saw me, but that’s part of the illusion. Remember, this is all in my head. I can feel every step they take, I have to imagine the texture of the grass and the breeze on their skin, the sounds of the woods around them, mice and birds… It’s all very complicated but when you learn how, it gets easier.”
He sent the women back to their seats, and drew a deep breath, and took a long sip of water from a shaped mug. “One more for me, and then someone else gets to take over.”
He selected two in particular, a golden haired woman, and another male from the group. “It’s strongest in you,” he said to the woman. “But you all should know about this power. Far-sending, or astral projection, is an important part of every Holt’s community. With it, people can exchange ideas over a greater distance than mere sending can achieve.”
He sent to the pair, **sit, and get into a relaxed position.**
They did so, though Endgame continued to stand. “Now, breathe calmly, and listen with your minds as far as they’ll go. Seek out the edge of your ranges. You can feel the group here, close to you. But you also sense bright minds of the Deer folk nearby,” he said and the woman nodded faintly, “and there are scattered hunting parties and people doing their crafts around the edges of the Holt. It’s a big holt, I wouldn’t expect you to reach the edge of it without any training or practice.”
“I can feel people … far away,” said the woman. “Very far away…” She almost sounded as though in a dream.
“To the west?” Endgame asked, and the man nodded with her. “That, my friends, is a place called the Ambience. It’s more than twelve hundred miles away.”
That broke the man out of his trance, “tw—! hun—! That’s really far!”
“It is,” Endgame said. “But it’s well within your reach if you concentrate. But to do that, you’ll have to literally leave your body behind. When freed of the body’s limitations, your minds can travel for a very long while. You can’t leave forever though – you’re going to still need to remember to breathe…”
“Kinda important,” muttered someone in the group of newcomers. “So they’re not … ‘in’ their bodies, where are they?”
“Watch and see,” Endgame said with a smile. It was a good thing it was night time – for elfin eyes could see quite well in this magical spectrum of theirs. And what all saw, faintly at first, but some quite clearly given their individual prowess, were the ‘shapes’ of the two elves – hovering like ghosts above their physical bodies. They glowed, with a silvery-white light. Oddly enough, they both had ‘clothing’ on their imagined bodies.
Endgame pointed west. “The Ambience is a place where magic is magnified. Even here in the Startree we’re able to feel it’s pull on our powers. Some of the most powerful senders live there, you’ll be meeting one of them shortly. Her name is Patience. She’s commonly called the heart of the Ambience.”
And with that – the two elves minds sped away! Their bodies, limp and relaxed, did continue to breathe softly.
“What would happen if something touched their bodies?” Asked one elf.
“They would feel it, but only distantly,” Endgame told him. “Their bodies are very vulnerable. That’s why it is vital that if you know they’re off out of their shapes like this, you keep watch over them so nothing comes and eats them.”
“Look, there’s a thin thread still here,” said another elf. “It’s connected to them … to their spirits?”
“Indeed,” Endgame said. “That is really what you must look for, if you’re in doubt. All elves have a magical presence, their power creates a kind of force field, an aura, a spirit if you will. But hurt the body in this state – and the mind will forever be cut off from it. The body will die, and…”
“What happens?” Asked someone timidly.
“Elves do die,” Endgame said. Snowdrift behind him looked uncomfortable, as did Discovery. “Their spirits… remain, in a way. I know of several elves, arrived elves, not born ones, who … changed, when their other life ended.”
“Their other…” someone asked, “their life on earth ended?”
“Yes. And no, they did not die here. But they did change. They became a bit more… hollow. Alone, even though they were always among others. It’s a very strange sensation. I don’t hope you’ll ever have to feel that.”
“But what about death here?” Asked one male, “what about killing an elf?”
“Also, elves die. Yes. Their spirits remain. One I know of went insane, and tormented her killer for years.” Again, Discovery and Snowdrift looked uncomfortable to hear this, along with Quicksilver who just turned away. “Others, few though they are, have died from exhaustion and exposure, or from animal wounds. It is possible with an expert healer to bring their spirit back into their body – provided it can be healed and revived. Death here is … well, slightly less than a permanent problem.”
All this, while the pair of elves were flying about on their astral journey.
“I’ve got a question,” said one girl. “How … old are you?”
“Here?” Endgame asked, with a chuckle. “Only about forty turns of the seasons. Give or take. It’s her you should be asking,” he indicated Snowdrift. She was obviously torn between being deeply offended, and laughing out loud.
“That’s true, Endgame, very true…” She said, and without standing announced, “I found this place, the Otherforest, more than one hundred ten turns ago. And selfish me, I kept it secret for the first two.” She grinned widely. “But since then I’ve seen many people come to the world. From earth, and from other worlds.”
“So you’re pretty old,” asked another person, “but you don’t hardly look it.”
“I’m very flattered,” laughed Snowdrift. “But no, we… well, children age a bit, those who are very young when they arrive. They come to be young adults, and simply stop where they’re comfortable. I came here when I was …” She rolled her leafy green eyes, “I don’t even remember, a teenager. I’ve mellowed a little. A century of walking around the planet will do that for you.”
“Forever young, and hardly a death,” muttered the one male, “that sounds pretty good.”
**We’ve seen so much!** mentally bellowed the golden haired astral elfess as she zipped around the air suddenly. She made several others jump, and even one person tried to feel her by putting out her hand – encountering nothing but the warm night air.
**It’s amazing,** added the male, who arrived shortly and seemed a bit out of ‘breath’. **It’s an old city, a ruin, but it’s fantastic!**
The pair gushed about their brief adventure overland. Then shortly, the male returned to his body and promptly – fell asleep.
“He’s exhausted,” Endgame said. “And you will be too, though I suspect not as much.”
She returned to her chilly body. “It’s cold, you could have put us closer to the fire!” She staggered a bit before regaining her walking legs. Speaking with the others about it, they hardly noticed when Endgame sat back down, and Cameo stood back up.
“And that brings us back to me,” she said. “I’ve one more power to hare with some of you.” She beckoned a trio and a couple others who seemed interested. She gazed at the male who slumbered now, obviously wanting to have him awake for this too. “There is an art to reading people’s auras. They’re not like shaped objects – but in a way they really are. It’s the same aura, that magical sphere around us, that is left on a shaped stone or stick.”
She chuckled a bit, “you’re all much more talented at it than I am. Deep sensing is something I think you’ll enjoy doing.” She started using the power, and that was all it took for the tattooed girl to understand.
“It’s the colors … it’s hard to see them though.”
“With time and practice you’ll understand what they all mean. She is a stone shaper, look at her aura closely.” She pointed to someone off on the other side of the glen. Those with the power saw that she had a kind of golden glow to her, even when she wasn’t shaping. “And those two, working on that broken tree branch?”
“A pale green, like a tree…” said one deep senser. “And she’s got a sort of fire-color, I bet she shapes flame!”
“That one over there – it’s pink, sort of. Healer?” asked another.
“You’re catching on. That’s not the only thing you can use this power for, though. If we – ah, your friend here. Turn to him.” Cameo showed them the sleeping, exhausted male. “Though you can see his powers in his aura, you can see past that into his … soul?”
“He’s really pale, right now. I don’t think he was like that earlier. When he was awake.” Said one.
“Oh – that boy just tripped, and I saw a bright red flash – he was in pain when his foot hit something!” Said another.
They were all growing excited, learning their new powers. But also – quite hungry, and uniformly tired. After all they’d been up and running about all day long. Served food and drink again, this time more hearty pieces of barely-cooked meat, and potatos with a spicy garnish. While everyone ate and rested up, some looked to the sky that could be seen from this clearing.
“The stars are different than I remember,” she said. “But then I don’t even really remember them at all…”
“Their shapes still dance for us,” Cameo said. “We still name the outlines we see. Hunter, Wolf, Waterfall… star patterns for each of the seasons.”
The stars were small and bright, but seemed … older … than those anyone could recall. Where was this world, a couple wondered. How far away was it really, from Earth, if they shared the same universe at all? Could there be a way to travel… through space as well as these weird portals?
That thought turned to dreams, soon enough. With everyone else sound asleep, Snowdrift and her companions picked up and found their temporary shelters too.
The morning brought new sights and sounds to everyone. For the first time, these newcomers saw the sun rise (well, some of them anyway) over their new world. For most, this meant the start of a day filled with discoveries. Others decided that they would find a mentor or just sit and talk with locals.
Almost all of them, in speaking with the local folk, kept asking, “what’s south of here, anyway?”
Confiriming the suspicion that they’d be wandering soon.
“We don’t really go too far south of here,” said Cameo. She indicated Snowdrift and her friends, “they occasionally meet up with the Nomads, there is a large canyon, that might be where you’ll wander.”
Those who could, started attempting their magic far-sending again. Between them they could spread their seeking eyes to all four directions should they so choose – instead they all chose to head south. Drifting along on silver gossamer thoughts, they saw the start of the Nomads’ territory first hand.
** It’s huge,** one commented. **And it doesn’t really feel like home does it?**
** Not to me,** answered another, who was bobbing farther and farther south. **We must go past it. What are we waiting here for, anyway?**
The male of their group sensibly replied, **We’re waiting for our clothing and travel gear,** he added, ** and hunting equipment.**
**Did your astral stomach just gurgle?** Laughed the female whose aura danced with brilliant colors instead of just silver.
They returned home to their bodies shortly, and privately found little groups to discuss what they found. What one elfess found was that gossip spread like wildfire among elves. She listened in with her ears as well as her mind, plotting ways to organize them. Would everyone still be going the same direction? It appeared so.
While those elves were busy chatting about the local landscape, a couple others had drifted from the elfin trees to the other species who lived in the Startree. Some found that the Hive patrons were almost insanely helpful and nice – maybe they were making up for their bizarre appearance. They seemed quite smart, those half-bug creatures. They weren’t elves, though. They had females that did one kind of work (the web spinning, of course), and scouts who could fly with their stiff chitinous wings, and others who plotted and planned their lives – from hanging coccoons that decorated one particular Hive tree. Those elves who interacted with the Hive would find that the Scout class were more outgoing and friendly, while the others were a bit less eager to join every conversation. They had work to do.
One bit of work they loved, though, was that of spinning the strong, soft silk that they used to capture prey or cover eggs. The spinners and egg layers were quite generous with their extrusions – it didn’t cost them anything to spit out an arm-length sheet of the stuff. Plus, their deft tiny ‘weaving hands’ could then manipulate it into what appeared to be not just thread, but whole cloth. How they did this was absolutely a mystery to everyone.
(/Take this to your weaver, Cameo will know what to do with it./) said one of the spinners. The elves, with their arms piled high with the silvery white stuff, wandered around until they found Cameo who was talking to one of the Ice Traders, but shortly broke off to accept the package of silk.
“I’m sure that some of you will take to these silks,” Cameo said. “But they should be dyed, and that will take a little time. I hope…” She glanced over the small group, and then to their companions scattered around the holt’s glade, “that this will not hold you all up.”
“We’ll wait for nice clothing,” laughed one girl. “I just wish there was something we could do for you in return.”
“Little else needs to be done,” Cameo said smiling nicely, “this keeps us all busy – and you’ll find that when you’ve got your own Holt established, you will want to have visitors come and steal your ‘valuable’ time. After all,” she laughed, “We’re from Earth and used to working every day on something. It’s not like that here, so much. But old habits die hard.”
She turned and went to her work den, which was filled with colorful pots of not just inks and dyes, but paints and brushes. Cameo clearly had a hand for artistry.
“Huh,” said someone, “not everyone’s arrived yet, I guess,” he helped the next newcomer stand on her feet, and assisted her to the nearest den where she could be explained everything she needed to know.
Over the next few days, in fact, arrivals came in here and there in twos and threes. Doubling their original number, in fact! Another batch of eggs dropped too, indicating that whatever would come from those eggs, was meant for every one of the elfin arrivals.
Weapons were handed off to those who felt like learning to hunt. To some this activity came very easy, while to others it was distasteful at best. To those, they were recommended to learn to tend a garden or to use a trap for their food – everyone was expected to pull weight in a Holt, after all, so if they didn’t hunt they’d best have some other talent that everyone either wanted or needed.
The hunters traded spear for axe or sword, seeking the right instrument for them. Some immediately took to the bow, while others could heft a heavy staff or club. Hunting took all day for the new group – it wasn’t because they were bad at it, but because they were also being trained in the arts of stealth and tracking. Those who could use an animal-sensing power did so to aid the group, but that should never prevent anyone from seeking the clues left on the ground and in the trees. A broken branch, a clawmark indicating territory, hoofprints, spoor, fur left on a stick… All those things and many more were what the elves had to learn to find. It would take time to learn what animals even existed here – this was not Earth, this world was very different indeed.
The variety of animals astounded some, there were creatures which kind of resembled dinosaurs and huge insects that looked like turtles. Birds of all varieties came through the air, while snakes and lizards basked in the sun on rocks. Other, unexplainable animals also existed. Furry snakes, hogs with six limbs and huge spines down their back, flying deer, everything.
Each having their own set of territory and diet requirements, where they denned and when they grazed, who predated upon whom, all those things were new.
“Well to be fair,” said a red headed male named Revel, “you might not even have these kinds of animals where you’re going to live. But it’s always a good idea to know the basics, isn’t it?” He pointed through a gap between two tall trees with his spear, and everyone looked that way. His spear was true to its mark as they located a group of bachelor deer. Several years old, but not old enough or strong enough to attract their own harem, these deer would not have sired any offspring, and would provide a good chase to the elves.
They sought out good hiding places, all trying to be as silent as they could.
**Sending makes our hunts go more easily,** Revel told them, **So try and remember to just think instead of speaking. It also saves your breath when we must run!**
The deer were tall, long in body and clearly healthy – not exactly the prey that an individual hunter would have gone after. Revel and his local companions helped explain this too: that you should only hunt the healthy when there are no other options. Knowing the territory as well as he did, he was sure that these three bucks would not be missed. If it were a mother and her young, or an established buck with a strong harem, those would be off limits.
**Observation is the key to all hunting,** he reminded them. **Where will they run, when they sense us?**
One of the newcomers glanced around the glade, **There, a break in the bushes, if we’re on this side, they’ll head that way.**
**Nicely done,** Revel announced. **Then you two,** he indicated one of his friends and one newcomer, **head over that way and scout out their likely running trail. The rest of us will prepare for the chase.**
**Don’t you expect us to catch them?** Asked the shapeshifted male newcomer, **I mean, we haven’t even alerted them yet. That’s pretty good.**
**It is,** Revel said with a wink, **But no one hits on their first throw of a spear.**
The faint sound of elfin giggling came from a couple others, which made the deer’s ears twitch. **Ready?** Revel asked.
As one, the group began to sneak closer. They were within a quick sprint – if there were no plants in the way. But this was a heavy forest, filled with bracken and vines, bushes and rocks in the way. The noise they’d generate by running through all that would certainly startle the deer.
**We’ve found a path they’ve used before,** Announced one of the pair sent off to the other side. **We can startle them off to another direction, there are heavy bushes everywhere. They’ll try and spring over them, but there’s not a lot of head room.**
**Good, that’s an excellent plan. Try and keep them in a group,** Revel said. **But if they split up, tell us and we’ll split too.**
Sound advice. For when they did get to just outside the brightly lit glade’s edge, the deer stiffened and clearly had started to smell the group. Their wide cuplike ears moved around trying to spot exactly where the hunters were – and would find them nearly everywhere!
**Ready,** Revel sent, **On my move.**
He leveled his spear with a strong arm, holding one arm forward and lining up his shot along the shaft. Then, faster than the newcomers could see, he threw the spear! It soared into the clearing and struck one of the three deer on the leg, but bounced off leaving a bit of a gash.
That was their signal, so three other spears swept out from the bushes. One hit, the shoulder of the nearest deer bled freely and now had a barb dangling and impeeding its escape. The other two deer, one uninjured still, bolted straight for their path exit.
**Split up – you three take down the injured one here, we’ll get the other two on the trail!** Revel sent, his mind colored with the thrill and blood lust of the hunt now. He retrieved his spear as the other deer left the clearing, following them along with the small group of hunters.
Those left to tend to the injured buck had to decide what they’d do with it. Two newcomers and one local, so they followed the lead of the man named Whitewater. He sprang into the clearing and blocked the path where the other deer had gone. The yellow-haired crimson-wearing female and the gender-shifter (who was at this moment a male) crashed through the bushes and brandished their weapons. A sturdy staff and a long spear, plus Whitewater’s spear menaced the young deer. The deer made a screaming sound – almost taking the blond female by surprise. But her blood was up already, this was a thrilling moment. She swung her staff hard around and up, impacting the buck’s head with a sound that everyone knew meant she’d actually cracked its jaw!
Disoriented for a moment, the deer staggered and at that time Whitewater and the gender-shifter’s spears both struck into its neck. Within a few moments, the deer was struggling to breathe and was clearly going to bleed out.
“It’s … messy,” said the crimson garbed female. “But we’ve gotta eat, right?”
Whitewater laughed, and sent, **We’ve killed the one, how are you lot doing?**
Revel’s groups were split up now, since the one he’d injured had sprung left and unexpectedly over the head of the awaiting elf. The other had continued down the trail until meeting the last elf, who stood his ground – having shapeshifted into something predatory, this suddenly panicked the deer. It froze, then began to back up with his head lowered a little. Though he had a rack, it was not a large one yet. Never would be, either.
The shapeshifted male lept up on legs geared to such things. Strongly impacting the chest and neck of the buck, his fangs sank into the area right under the buck’s chin. While he did that, a spear thrown by a long-eared newcomer female struck the buck’s back, bouncing but startling it. It kicked, but in doing it lost its forelimbs balance with the weight of the wolf-shaped elf clinging to its neck. Dragged to the ground, the elfess retrieved her spear careful of the kicking legs, and watched as the wolf-elf strangled the life from the deer.
**Why aren’t you helping?** He asked.
**I would rather see a good unbroken hide from this kill, that’s why. You’re going to get the rack, too, you know. Nice work.** She said, smiling.
Revel and the other four were now being led on a chase through the woods. Revel and his local friend Char raced ahead and stood upon a rock where the buck had to turn. Char tossed a javelin to little effect, but then the buck stopped in full panic.
In front of him was suddenly a wall of flames! Crackling, burning flames! The panic of being struck and in pain was replaced in the buck by a sheer force of fear, and it turned in the air high and graceful – before being struck by two more javelins and then being hit by a wide axe’s blade. The blade cut its forelimb almost all the way off, and it fell to the ground – dead.
Perhaps the panic had actually killed it, none of the wounds were obviously the death-wound.
Panting, the elfess with the axe looked at the big bodied male who had clearly thrown up a wall of magic-induced fire.
“That could have killed us!” She yelled.
“Nope,” he announced, “It’s not burning the plants, look.” He held his hand out and summoned it again. While the air was warm around it, it wasn’t dry and burning – but then the axe-weilder concentrated and – the flames went out!
“Hey!” the fire-producer said. “That was weird! It didn’t hurt but I felt you do that!”
“Cold shape and fire shields,” Revel muttered, “what’s the world coming to?”
As the days went on, something unusual began to happen. More elves arrived, though sporadically, always following the drop-drop-drop of the large eggs. Cameo decided that every few days they would collect the newest arrivals and basically put them through their training. Not only was it becoming great fun for the first coming in, to aid in this process, but it was an excellent workout for the instructors as well.
Some of the latest to arrive were more exotic in appearance than the first – one even had leathery wings and a tail! Everyone in Startree got to work on clothing, weaponry, training sessions and travel gear. Regular hunting groups started forming – mixes of new elves and Startree hunters. Eventually it was silently decided that the newcomers would hunt for themselves when they were ready, and very soon, they were.
While half a dozen eager new students practiced their magic, another group learned to sew or tan leather. A reasonable few also hung out with the Hive or the Ice Traders, learning how to make weavings or devices. The Lady Greyhoof, a high ranking female of the Deer folk, finally arrived and with her came the wisdom of a truly great mind. Between she and the Ancient Hekef, those who had strong magical mental powers were trained.
It was clear to Snowdrift that some of these newcomers – many of the males anyway – were not originally human at all. Especially that winged fellow – though he was shy at times he was quite interesting. Inspiring, one might say. She sat down near her friends, and said, “muses.”
Moondance glanced at her, and blinked. “What?”
“They’re muses,” Snowdrift asserted with a wave of her hand, as though that would make it obvious. “I’ve even seen you drawing again,” she looked at Moondance who jolted with a strange caught-in-the-act look, “and I have this urge to … I don’t know, write a ballad about our travels. They’re muses – I mean, they did come through an impossibly strange portal, right?”
“So why can’t they be impossible people?” Discovery chuckled. “Okay Snow, you win. They’re muses.”
“Whatever you say,” quipped Redhair. Snowdrift rolled her eyes and sighed. It was clear that Moondance understood – he was an artist on Earth, who’d all but abandoned his pencils and colors, to travel this world. Once able to, though, he found a sheet of papyrus and a charcoal stick and started sketching.
There were two females though, who would sometimes drift through the Holt humming softly to themselves, and it put Snowdrift and Redhair on edge… They knew those songs too – didn’t they. But that was so long ago, how could they remember? When one red-and-pink haired girl began to hum the distinct flute solo Bouree, Snowdrift about panicked.
“Do you think that … he… sent these people?” She asked of Redhair. Red shook her head.
“I don’t think so, why not send everyone from his concerts? It’s just incidental, is all. Come on, you know that some folks remember Earth better than others.”
More calm, Snowdrift shrugged and let things be. If anyone else realized what those two were singing, would they too be curious about why? Why those and no others? It was hardly a matter for general discussion – practically no one here at Startree had a clue who Jethro Tull was anyway…
***
When the hubub of the arrivals of many of these new elves had died down, but the portal through which they'd come still glowed brightly in the air over a glen in Startree Holt, it was apparently the right time for a certain newcomer to arrive.
As if drawn to it by magic, Snowdrift walked toward the portal stiffly. There was concern in her green eyes. Other folks didn't pay much heed, but some of the more attuned and power-perceptive elves watched with interest as a new blob of energy came seeping out of the portal.
Like the other elves before it, this one would condense as though honey into a glass statue. The computer portal was truly gathering some odd 'information' here, though.
Male, the shape was male. He dropped to the ground silently, but landed on the ground instead of falling. He was awake, aware. Sort of. Perhaps a dozen in the history of all the arrivals were awake, it wasn’t unique but it certainly wasn’t the norm.
Snowdrift stared, transfixed as he stood. She seemed to mouth words - to him - a whisper, perhaps a choked off name?
As the magic glow finally subsided around him, and the portal spat out no further additions to the Holt this day, the elf under it lifted his head carefully and began to open his eyes.
The first thing they saw, therefore, were the bright leaf green ones belonging to Snow. With what could only be called 'concern' on his handsome face, the newcomer turned away and looked down quickly. Backing off - why? Was Snow issuing a challenge to him right upon entry to the world? She certainly hadn’t acted like this when any of the others came!
“You’ll need ... something to wear,” Snowdrift muttered, waving her hand around as though to indicate to someone else to pick up that detail. She still didn't take her eyes off him. He was well built, tall for an elf, and very muscular. He had tanned skin, olive without sun on it. His hair, rich raven black almost violet in the light and falling to his lower back in one long straight mass. His eyes - before they'd turned away abruptly - were vibrant peacock blue.
**How is it you can be here?** Asked Snowdrift, sending to him and suddenly regretting it. He winced - and she knew he would.
“The same way you can be here and there at the same time, I suppose,” was his answer. A deep, quiet voice. He still would not meet her eyes. “I come from your ... imagination, do I not? Didn’t this place?”
“How do you know those things?” Snow hissed. She turned him around, almost surprised to feel his warm skin under her hand. “How can you know who I am, if that’s who you are?”
“I am you, Snow,” he announced. “And you know that. I am everything that you’ve become, outside of here, and perhaps more. I am everything you are not.”
At that, he held up his own hand, with dark fingernails tipping strong digits. He held her hand in his, and finally looked at her firmly. “Look at us. Opposites. Male and female, active and passive, black and white.”
“I... I ...”
“I hardly think that we’re incompatable,” he continued with a smile betraying large white teeth, “Two sides of one coin can be very different and still be the same.” He added mentally, **So welcome me, won’t you? I know I’ve come early. And you know that too. But it doesn’t make my arrival any less valid, does it?**
“Early?” Snowdrift said, and then tossed her head back. “OH. Okay. I ... I get it. Yes, I’m sorry - and welcome. Blackbuck.”
“He already has a name?” Asked Portal, suspicious.
“Yes, he does, he’s always had a name.” Snowdrift introduced her ... counterpart, to everyone that was near. Someone had found him a robe, but he indicated that he’d want something else shortly - he was more physical than a robe would allow politely!
It was a good thing someone found him some real clothing too – because almost immediately he attracted a following in precisely the way Snowdrift never did. Was she jealous? Probably not – because the ‘glomping’ and squealing that some of these elves was almost intolerable to her. Yet Blackbuck took it mostly in stride. He did tend to jump a bit when that weirdly pale spooky muse-male would show up right behind him, trying to hang on to him like a clingy girl.
***
Nearly eight hands of elves had arrived in such a short time. Already, they had formed friendships and a few rivalries, hunting packs and trade partners. Most had begun to learn the written form of language that the Startree elves and Ice Traders used, and would use it more often than any other Holt on the world some day.
The one common trait that they shared, in addition to their desire to move South, was that they kept returning to the glade where all the eggs had been deposited. An assortment of healers, fire shapers and plant shapers were on hand to keep those eggs warm – no one wanted to just let them die, alone and untended!
It came as a strange group revelation – eggs would hatch. Hatching eggs meant … hatchling dragons! And dragons needed aid when they hatched! Trying to explain this phenomenon to the locals was hard work. How did they know that the eggs were dragon eggs? Why couldn’t they be really big swamp lizard eggs? Still, no one had ever really seen eggs like these so perhaps the newcomers were right.
But the eggs showed no signs of moving, yet. They were alive, as anyone with a touch of animal bonding magic could say. Some even showed flares of magical power themselves, though of an indistinct type – and rarely was someone really paying attention enough to spot which eggs did that or how often.
“The dragon hatchlings will choose, when they’re ready,” said one female. “That’s how we know it’ll happen, anyway.”
Crimson – probably the first to have her name – smiled and nodded sagely. “Of course.”
“How about when they’re going to hatch?” Challened the gender-shifter. Crimson sighed and flipped her hands up in the air, laughing as she went off to help Cameo chart the newcomers’ descriptions.
***
Eventually over several hands of days, the trickle of elves and their eggs slowed further. There may be more on the way, everyone knew that, but those present were seemingly a bit more agitated and ready to leave for their new home to the south soon.
“But there’s something really important that most of you are missing!” Cried perpetually-childlike Chirrup, “most of you don’t even have names yet!”
That got a bunch of the newcomers gathered in their egg-glade. Over the course of the evening, they mulled over each other’s abilities and appearances, half-remembered earth memories, and current demands of real life in the forest.
“Well, Crimson’s already got her name,” said one.
“And Wyvern over there,” someone else thumbed at the winged muse. “But if it were really that easy to have a name, wouldn’t we have come through like Blackbuck and have them already?”
“It’s true,” Cameo said, approaching their group. “Names are difficult to come by and quite important.” She pondered for a moment, listening in to her lifemate’s thoughts privately sent. “There is more to a name, than just a word.”
Her mate Sumac approached, “some of you came through knowing a name, a word, a sound…” He looked around and saw a few faces who seemed to know what he meant. “That name, is a private one. Your soul-name, one which carries a lot of power when dealing magic. It is… a shield, a fence, a protective device around your true self, though it itself is not the true power in you.”
Cameo nodded but then added, “perhaps think more of it as a … locked door. You build the wall around your private self – if you need to, some elves don’t bother. But you do still need to allow someone in, sometimes. That word is the lock, the hinge. Open the door, and beyond it is your true essense. That can be harmed, opening that door is sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatic.”
The male muse who clung to his creator, pale and dark combined in the pair, snickered. “Oooh, good. I’ll have to figure out-” His female creator slapped him and he shut up.
“The one who knows that word, the key to your locked self,” Sumac said, a bit flustered, “may become what’s called recognized to you. If you know theirs, automatically as they might, and you’re a compatable gender…”
“What he’s trying to say,” Cameo laughed, “is that recognized couples usually have mad monkey sex until they concieve a child together. The child is almost guaranteed to be strong and healthy, and have a good or even better selection of powers than their parents had.”
The group of elves at first chuckled, but then realized: they were … all somewhat young. Did they want that kind of responsibility?
It was Quicksilver, out of her male shape and into her eveningwear of female, who supplied, “sex in general doesn’t result in children unless you try very hard.” He heard the one dark skinned girl slap her pale muse again, and snorted a laugh before continuing. “It has been known to happen, but in general most of the children of elves are only concieved through recognition.”
“It doesn’t mean you must permanently mate with that partner,” said Discovery who was just apparently waking up after a long day napping. “We call people like you,” she pointed to Crimson and her tall slender partner who as yet had no name, “lovemates – those who choose each other’s company yet might share or drift apart and together as the seasons dictate. Lifemates, like Cameo and Sumac,” she nodded at the pair who looked good together – like they’d been comfortable with each other for years and years on earth before coming here – “are sort of ‘married couples’. Those that recognize and fall in love might Lifemate, ones who don’t, might not even Lovemate for very long.”
“And before your friend explodes from curiosity,” added Quicksilver to the pale muse, “elfin pregnancy lasts almost two years, and children grow up rather quickly.”
“What about me?” laughed Chirrup, who bolted away tittering.
“She’s been here almost as long as I have,” Quicksilver said, “and she’s never grown past a child. Perhaps she was a little young to come, but her whole family is here – and she’s so fun like this.” The dark skinned girl scampered in and out of a tree playing with one of her siblings, who had grown into what looked to be teens before stopping their aging process.
“What about names?” Asked one of the rare ‘real’ males. “How are we supposed to get our real names? Our soul-names?”
“Sometimes they come on you when you least expect it,” Discovery said, “some know all along, and sometimes,” she grinned privately, shared with Snowdrift and Redhair who had as usual approached when the gathering elves came. “Sometimes your recognized finds it for you.” Clearly that was a story they all knew, but now was not the time for it.
“I went on a journey,” Snowdrift supplied. “I wasn’t feeling right, not really ill but I didn’t want to be around any of my friends. This was … well, hardly anyone was here at that time anyway. But enough that I needed to form a stronghold in my own soul to keep myself … private. And I found a place, I stayed there for almost three days, I didn’t bother eating, and I just… thought.”
“You meditated?” Asked Cameo.
“I suppose I did, it was more instinctual than that though,” Snowdrift said. “But eventually I found my name, I realized I knew it, sounded it out to myself and knew that it was right. Only my loves know it.”
There was apparently some amount of untruth to that, as Discovery scowled at her friend, but she said nothing.
“It’s something that you should more consider a private matter than public – I don’t recommend loudly proclaiming it when you find it,” Snowdrift smiled and laughed. “I almost did, and it’s a good thing that my wolf-friend stopped me.”
“I’d love to see the wolves up close,” said one elf, recently arrived. “Are they not coming near us because we’re going to be the egg’s guardians?”
“Probably,” Snowdrift said.
However, as she did so, something else pretty strange happened. Four large wolves approached, and several others backed away. It almost looked as though they did so with superstitious awe, some of the newcomer elves noticed the behavior. They weren’t ‘real wolves’ at all – none of these gigantic furballs were Earthly wolves. They were much bigger, barrel chested. Perhaps in size and shape, the extinct ice-age ‘dire wolves’ might have come close. Ridable by elves, easily, but with longer legs than one might think such a large body should have, and with multi-colored fur with sometimes interesting patterns on it.
Snowdrift’s wolf friend Streamseeker stood casually behind his elf, towering over the normal local wolves, but keeping an eye on these four others.
Then one of them spoke. “We will go with you, to this new place you will find.”
“Can wolves speak?” Someone asked, and there was a chorus from the local elves of no they can’t.
The wolf that had said the words, gravelly and oddly accented, was a burly shouldered tan and black male. His eyes were notably red, his markings were largely on his back and shoulders, black over tree-bark-tan. “I speak for us, and others,” he continued. It was truly bizarre seeing a wolf do this, hearing it even more so.
“You’re rarely welcome in certain Holts,” Snowdrift said, unconsciously glancing back at Streamseeker behind her. “Why do you think they’d want you in theirs?”
“I would like them,” said one young female, “they’re beautiful and smart, and this one talks!”
“That is because he’s elf-blooded,” Snowdrift said darkly. “So you know – there are shapeshifters who breed with their wolf-partners. And other creatures.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” said one of the muses, “how else would you get animals to have elfin intelligence?” He was joined in agreement by the other ‘mad scientist’ type, the one with hair. “We’ll take you, I can’t see why not.”
Crimson looked a bit weirded out, “so … yeah, I … come along with us. How many are you?”
The wolf sat down, and his companions (a female with yellow colored eyes and fur, a male with dark grey fur and russet markings, and another male with orangish brown fur that seemed to have faint stripes) watched the other people with interest. “We are eight, now. There will be others, perhaps, if elves can help us announce a new location.”
“Once we get there,” Crimson cautioned. “We don’t even know what kind of environment it’ll be.”
“We are very flexible,” the wolf said, and everyone swore he did it with a smirk. One of the other wolves set off a fire by staring at some wood, while another doused it with a brief wind. “We can be very helpful.”
“Greater wolves,” Snowdrift said, “as they’re known to us, they’re from far and wide, I guess. Fang, Feral, Tiger, Shifter, Silverwolf… There is a large colony of them in the Canyon, isn’t there?”
“Yes, that would be our lineage,” the wolf said. He seemed utterly in control of the situation, so Snowdrift shrugged and let it be the newcomer’s problem. Whatever she had against them, wasn’t all that strong.
Nor would it rub off on the batch of new elves. They were entranced by the Greater Wolves, a few even went walking away with them to discuss life here with them.
It wasn’t much more than a few days later, when the flow of newcomers had all but stopped. The eggs that had come along with them were still being guarded carefully by elves, but also by the Greater Wolves now that they were considered a part of the tribe. The females would walk around the eggs, nudging one or another until it rolled over, then nestling themselves between a few to sleep and keep them warm.
“They number quite a few now,” said Sumac with a little worry. “Almost more than half our number, and we’re a big Holt.”
Snowdrift nodded, “I know, but they’re probably about ready to leave. Look at how they all just stand there facing south.”
The white-haired elves shared a chuckle, then went about doing practical things for them: were their leathers all done? Did they have enough silk and cloth to last for a while? Were there enough folks who knew how to fix broken weapons and make new ones along the way out of whatever kinds of substances they could find? Had some of them found names?
The answers were quickly becoming ‘yes’. After being tutored in their magics and helped to learn to track, trap and hunt, after a few started learning secrets about not only themselves but their world… They decided they were indeed ready to leave.
One of the locals asked, “what about the eggs? Are you going to … carry them? They’re quite large!”
“They are almost ready to hatch,” said one who would wait for her own egg to hatch. “Once they are, we’ll be out of your hair and hunting territory.” She gave a strong grin, striding away confidently.
And sure enough it came to pass fewer than a hand of days later, that the pile of eggs began to make a strange sound. Not unlike the hatching of a turtle or bird, but something faintly sharper in tone. More insistant. The hatchlings within wanted out – and they wanted something more.
“Shouldn’t there be … singing?” One of the newcomers, named Machination for her love of mind games. Others nodded but no one could quite say why they needed accompaniment. But shortly a group of elves and curious Ice Traders brought out their instruments and started playing.
That prodded several elves into their own musical gestures, which went on while the eggs began to hatch.
One by one, an egg here and there rolled and wobbled away from the pile. When they began to crack gently open, everyone held their breath – save those who were humming and playing their flutes…
The first of the dragonets that came from the eggs – and that most certainly was what they were – was a creamy color, nosing its way from the hard egg shell with its small claws, chewing on the inside of the shell ineffectually until it burst out. Quite large, one would suppose from her cramped curl that exploded outward once she hit the air, the creamy hatchling staggered about while other eggs began doing the same.
One of the first to have arrived, now named Waterfall for her excellent water shaping powers, walked carefully to the cream. She knelt, the hatchlings were still only knee-high to the elves.
“She… is mine,” she said with a faint quaver and tears running down her cheeks. “She’ll be such a good flier!”
The dragonet didn’t bother looking at anyone else, instead just walked right into Waterfall’s hands.
Next up was a darker one, green shaded with dark speckles of brown on his back and wings. He was much smaller, perhaps half the size of the cream. Oddly enough, he was approached by Waterfall’s mate Squirrel – the shapeshifter knew right away that this was his bond.
More and more eggs began to hatch. Red and yellow, browns and greys – some with stripes or speckles, some with leafy green coloration and a few wildly weird ones. Redbarb’s orange, if anything even bigger than the one that came to Waterfall, was quite loud and easily excited. A bizarre occurance, when the gender-shifter (halfway named Night’sRain, and considering a second name for her male counterpart like Quicksilver/Moondance had) went to the egg pile to pick through them and help dig out her hatchling. She’d gotten through half the broken shells and was helping Firebolt’s pine-colored hatchling get to his bond, when the green head of her own dragonet poked from the shells beyond. When she got to it, however, everyone saw that strong green shade turn vibrantly purple!
A colorshifting dragonet? Well, to match its bonded elf, certainly! The day wore on like this – until all but a few of the eggs had broken. All the elves present that had found their bond seemed quite satisfied, though it looked like a couple hadn’t bonded. That wasn’t too disturbing, not all these elves needed wings on a dragon – they had their own, didn’t they?
The remaining eggs were not stirring. They were hardly dead – they just weren’t ready to hatch.
“It looks like this is it,” said Snowdrift, watched the happy newcomers embrace their dragonets. Everyone wound down – but some of the musicians kept playing: apparently they were ready to write songs commemorating this event!
By the late evening, it was not a surprise that the newcomer elves were exhausted. Most slept soundly with their hatchling by their side. Large numbers of rodents and birds had been caught shortly after the first dragonets loudly creeled their hunger pangs.
After the feedings and first experiences with dragon-poop, and the complaints by the hunters that hunting tiny mice and rats was much harder than hunting deer… The Startree Holt slept soundly.
***
“Well we have enough far-senders,” Crimson said to Cameo and Sumac, “we’ll keep in touch while we’re on the way.”
Satisfied with the progress that the newcomers had made in their time at Startree, the pair of ‘elders’ were able to watch with confidence as the big group of mostly-female elves strode off southward.
Many of the locals caught up to the travelers to hand off a last-minute gift or item, or just to say good bye one more time. Snow, Red, Discovery and Moondance accompanied the group, and would do so until they reached their final home. After that – of course – they would be on their way again.
It was a little weird when Snowdrift and Blackbuck would start talking to one another. It was actually somewhat rare: Snow was still clearly disturbed by his presence at all. But he was cheerful and happy to be moving along. He hadn’t found an egg, among those in the big pile. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to have a bond. Perhaps one would come looking for him. Perhaps he’d just live without.
It took nearly four days to reach what was the edge of the Startree Holt’s central territory. Extended scouting parties looking for dangerous predators or the signs of any environmental dangers like fires would travel much farther than this. There were clearly marked trails, then fewer markings but easily followed footpaths, then mere single-person wide paths through the light woods… And finally there was the edge of the gigantic forest.
For another two hands of days, the lighter woods dwindled into scrubland. Snowdrift explained that this was the Nomads’ territory – the far-senders confirmed that in the evening on camping. The Nomads were far away at the moment though – out in the desert to the east!
“I’m totally not interested in going there,” said one elfess, “I like the cover of the trees best, I think.”
“Most of us do,” Redhair said. “But the Nomads and the Tundra elves both live without it most of their lives.”
“Even the Nomads’ eastern counterparts the Plains wanderers,” explained Moondance, “have trees and plants around them – and that high grass,” he waved his hand. “It’s great for making mats and thatch but I hate sleeping out on that stuff.”
It seemed a lifetime out there on the edge of the scrubland, with what was said to be a great dune and scrub desert to the east, and the rugged hilly coastline many days travel to the west, as the group traveled southward.
It was during the tenth hand of days, traveling nowhere near done, that a strange cloud suddenly appeared in the sky over the group. Out of nowhere – literally – a dark hard-edged cloud much smaller than most storms grew. Shortly, it began to rain hail stones as big as fists down to the ground.
While a couple of the elves gave a bit of a panicked response, one remained quite calm and clear headed. People were getting hurt – bruised by the hard cold chunks of ice. The little dragons, some hardly bigger than waist high, were going to be in danger!
The short-haired and long-eared elf who could shape wind and rarely stuck on the ground, rose into the air. Among the falling hailstones, she flew. Then she concentrated hard – causing that wind she could create to rise against the storm! She covered the area where the elves were huddling, there were so many…
But eventually when she was exhausted, the storm had abated as suddenly as it had come. A couple healers descended on her, lifting the ache in her body. But they had to rest, now, with the healers needing time to recover from their own exertion.
“Sky shield,” Crimson named her, “good job. I wonder why that storm just came up like that.”
“Well I hope another doesn’t, any time soon!” Skyshield exclaimed wearily. “I can hardly move!”
“It is odd seeing you on the ground like that,” commented newly named Solace, one of the healers.
Only a keenly observant elf, perhaps one looking for such things, might have seen a very guilty looking red-skinned muse Jackal sulking around the edge of the group with the other troublemaking muses Metanoia and Epicure.
Trouble, so named by Snow somewhat quickly after the ‘training sessions’ at Startree, caught up with her muse Epicure and dragged him away from the other males. She scolded him but he explained that it had been most likely Metanoia ‘coersing’ Jackal – after all, he was experimenting with weird spells and magic that the other elves didn’t have.
Weren’t they all curious about it anyway? Why some elves could do ‘magic spells’ while the others used their own powers?
Apparently not nearly as curious as the muses were…
***
All along the way, every time they bedded down, Firebolt dreamed odd things. One night she woke in a sweat, panicked. Another, she could hardly be awakened by the travelers. When asked, she merely stated that they were just dreams and couldn’t harm her. Not really, could they?
“Sometimes we have prophetic dreams,” Snowdrift warned. “So if there is something you do need to say, you should say it.”
“Well they haven’t involved anything but me, so far,” she replied with worry. “But if I see anything weirder than what I have, I’ll be sure to speak up.”
Satisfied with that, though still quite curious, Snowdrift allowed the cold-and-fire shaper her privacy.
It was Skyshield that discovered the truth, when she was ‘practicing’ her other power of mind-snaring. For some reason, between the two of them competing with each other, instead of Skyshield pushing her own imaginary landscape onto her friend’s mind, Firebolt’s ‘other’ mind suddenly appeared in her own!
Jolted out of their game, Skyshield whispered, “that was weird, I was in your mind, but … what I saw through your eyes wasn’t here at all!”
Firebolt looked away, eyes a bit haunted. “I know,” she said, “that’s what I’ve been dreaming lately. Did you see the hands? The arms?”
Skyshield thought back. Privately she sent, instead of speaking aloud, **those were a male’s hands, thick, strong. Not that you’re not strong, but … they didn’t look like your hands anyway. You’re dreaming of this guy?**
**I am dreaming as that guy,** Firebolt said. **And I don’t know who he is nor why he’s in my dreams… I wonder if it’s like Night’sRain and Moondance? But that’d be weird.**
“Well you are weird,” Skyshield laughed, and they went off to practice more with a bit more caution.
Interminable days, nights, travel. While they walked, flew or sometimes even swam (as there was at least one beautiful wide, slow south-east bound river that poured into the canyon system beyond) south, the group named one another. Some it seemed would want to take a new name if something else came up – but no one really tried to name anyone silly things. Not on purpose anyway…
While they walked, hunted and bedded down wherever they stopped, the group’s dragon bonds also grew. Though they would clearly be of a size to ride, only a few seemed to be truly spectacularly large. Elves themselves were hardly big – next to that elf back at Startree, Portal, who was probably the world’s biggest elf in height and size, most elves came up to the bottom of his chest, full head and shoulders shorter than any given average ‘human’.
So the dragons, hatched about the size of earthly adult cats, were growing as fast as they could. With around a quarter of a year behind them, perhaps more, these dragonets were hardly bumbling hatchlings any longer. Their legs were growing longer, tails that had been stubby in the shell were now elongating farther and farther. Their wings, short still, were growing more scoop shaped and stronger with every hand of days.
Plus they were getting hungrier. It wasn’t long before they were running around in packs, aided by the Greater Wolves to show them the best way to root out voles and rabbits, bigger fare now that they were able to eat it. A couple tiny dragonets would stick with the little animals, while those three or four that were more than double their size kept chomping down on ever larger prey. Clearly these guys didn’t qualify as ‘low maintenance’!
In addition, there were quite a few of them. Nearly as many as the elves, more than thirty of them. They would need large territories, and no one knew quite where the elves would wind up living! A place the size of Startree wouldn’t be enough if there were more on the way – and everyone knew there were, since more than a dozen eggs had been left behind under the portal!
But the Greater Wolves helped to edge the dragons toward maturity. The dragons were varied quite a lot in terms of their intelligence and personalities. While some could be said to be a notch more than animals, some were conversational already with not just their elf bond, but sometimes others. A handful of them could perform complimentary magic to their bond – like Night’sRain’s colorshifter. Some were plant shapers, one or two could manipulate rock, and there were those who had additional air-shaping abilities. That helped them rise into the air as they tried to fly the first time.
It would be a while before they were ready to ride, but for now the growing dragons weren’t half the size of the smaller of the Greater Wolves. They were as varied in personality as they were in color. Some of the females enjoyed hanging out with one another, many of the males were friendly to one another. There were sulky loners and argumentative troublemakers.
Quite a lot like their elves…
***
While the elves celebrated their first half-year on the Otherforest’s scrub plain, several of the far-senders went out in different directions to see what they could find. Of course they’d been in contact with the Startree elves, but also as the Nomads wandered around to the east they came into contact with a few of them, and the Ambience as always seemed a glowing presence on the western shore a hundred days away. It was getting to be a bit of a strain, at this distance. So the white-haired and ‘spooky’ elf named Vanish (for his ability to disappear from sight of course) was placed in the center of the far-senders to use his other far more important power: that of enhancing others magic!
The golden haired and strongwilled female they’d tentatively named Tradewind, and one of the few ‘real’ males, a blond named Ditto for his ability to mimic exact copies of elf minds, went out to Startree. Others headed toward the Ambience or drifted south – always south, because that was eventually where they’d wind up.
With this group concentrating so hard, the rest of the elves hunted or fixed up shelters. They’d rest here at their ‘hopeful halfway point’ for a while, and move on when they had more stored food. The far-senders were experiencing a little more of interest.
Ditto and Tradewind found their way back north, commenting to one another’s spirit forms that ‘there was the stream where Clarion almost broke her leg’ or ‘that’s the gulley where we cornered those yellow-deer’. Eventually the huge shape of the fog-catchers that made up the Startree holt came into view. The only reason they could even do it this far – more than a thousand miles north – was due to Vanish’s ability. Soon they’d be out of range entirely.
They were met with a strangely agitated astral Startree elf, Tadpole, whom they’d spoken to before. Only this time she was a bit frantic.
**There are others,** she sent, glancing away with her eerie amber eyes. **But we aren’t sure what to do! Should we sent them to you, where you are? Or wait?** She peered at them oddly, **You’re so far away already!**
**We are,** Ditto sent, **and we’re only going to get farther. The pull to go south is stronger than ever.**
Tradewind added, **We can consult with the others, about these newcomers. Are you all right? You look so … worried.**
Tadpole nodded again, **Well since no one can really pry in on this, I am worried. Some of the newcomers stole their dragon eggs and ran off, we didn’t even see them properly. And we don’t know what’s happened with them, no one can find a trace of them. They may have gone your way, but I don’t know whether they’re friendly or just what…**
**Well,** Tradewind sent, narrowing her astral eyes, **If they are friends, they’ll be welcomed. But if they’re not…**
**They can expect a fierce chase away,** Ditto put in.
They broke contact, abruptly soaring back to their bodies and swaying with the rebound of power when they did so. Quickly recovering, Tradewind stood and shook life back into her legs. She bolted over to Crimson and Snowdrift who were setting up the big fire pit where they’d be roasting deer.
She explained what Tadpole had told them, which brought concern to Crimson’s brow.
“That’s not… exactly the news I was hoping for.”
“She said there were others though, hanging about. They don’t know how many of those that came and vanished there were,” Tradewind said.
“Well, I know it’s a strain on you, but go back and tell them to just let the newcomers travel when they’re ready. It’s taken us this long to get even this far, I can’t imagine that those eggs haven’t hatched already.”
“She didn’t say if they had, I guess they didn’t,” Ditto said. “Weird.”
“Not really,” Snowdrift said, looking at the couple dragons who were lounging around on the dirt nearby. “Like the wolves we normally bond, sometimes they stay around a pack for ages, waiting for their right bond to arrive or be born. The eggs are probably waiting because it’s best to have a hatchling bond, not an adult.”
She glanced at Streamseeker, her huge silvery colored wolf, “Streamseeker was an adult when we formed our friendship, but then …” She smiled softly and aimed a genuine feeling of adoration toward him, “he was also the first of his kind here. Waiting for me to arrive…”
***
As the celebration went into its second hand of days, the Nomads began arriving. This group of hardy, well-tanned elves had traveled their part of the world for more than fifty years, back and forth across the wide western deserts. They added their information to the mix – the Red Wall Canyon was where the travelers were going to pass soon, the halfway point toward what they knew was the edge of the continent.
Sending images didn’t do this place justice, they said. They sent them anyway. Nomad, the brave blond-haired and strongly muscled leader of their troupe spent time with the elves who fancied themselves mapmakers. Pointing out details about where and when the herds of Yellow Deer would come and go, what direction the waters would sweep through it and how the winds shaped the canyon walls even now.
The newcomers were going to start up walking toward it shortly, and a small number of Nomads offered to go with. Normally they would head toward The Ambience and sweep around the southern part of the Startree’s forest, and most would still be doing that.
“Perhaps you’ll be able to help out the late arrivals,” Crimson said, “on your way back past there, they might be in your path.”
“We would be honored,” Nomad said, bowing to her politely as he rode away with the wolves and elves of his tribe. They had a variety of bond animals like pumas and huge eagles, in addition to the wolves. Many of the Nomad tribe looked on with jealousy at the dragons – perhaps some day one of theirs would find a bond among these dragons?
As the large group traveled again, getting into their routines of hunting, bedding down, shaping temporary shelters, and fixing leathers and weaponry, the scenery changed.
To the north, it’d been more skinny brown-colored trees and sparse brush covering the very pale dirt. Very dry, but not completely so – there were streams and waterfalls, slate flats with beautiful thick trees around them. Meadows, grassland and the like framing the encroaching scrubland.
But now, there were fewer trees and more low, tan and grey-green bushes, short flat-grass that almost looked like sand itself since it was hardly green. Over the next few hands of days, with the change of seasons into summer, the seeded grasses grew wild and long-stemmed flowers. For several days at a time, all that could be seen was an endless plain of yellow, blue and red flowers.
And then the Canyon.
It was true, what Nomad said. No words could truly describe it, and the memories – though strong in the Nomad tribe’s minds – were tinted with age and seasoned with opinion or context.
Seeing it for the first time brought the entire group of travelers to a halt. A dead stop, at the edge of the massive walls of the deepest fracture they could possibly imagine. On the west, they were told, was the dune desert and difficult travels. They’d be clinging to the edge of the canyon, as the land there was much better suited for shelter making and travel or hunting.
Looking east, as far as the eye could see and then some, the Red Wall Canyon blotted out the land. True to its name, it contrasted deeply with the yellow sandy dirt that surrounded it. Trees grew everywhere on it, but they were long and slender-limbed, dark trunks with even darker leaves. There was a river at the bottom of the canyon, moving west.
“But we saw that river moving into the canyon!” Exclaimed Rival, “how can it be moving west? That was going east!”
“The river goes underground when it ends, there,” said Flux, pointing down at the green lake which apparently bottomed out at the edge of this massive canyon. She continued to gaze that way, probably looking for something to hunt.
“It resurfaces beyond the dunes,” added Chameleon. “There have been a couple crazy water-shapers that actually followed it under ground, but,” he looked with a dark warning on his eyes, “I wouldn’t recommend trying that. It comes up at the edge of a very large cliff.”
The couple watershapers who clearly did want to try something crazy – anything to get out of this relentlessly dry weather – looked a bit peeved but would obey his words. They’d only arrived half a year ago. They hardly wanted to throw their lives away so soon.
“The edge of the canyon goes quite far south, actually,” Slate, garbed in her cloak sensibly under the sun, told the group as they began picking their way down into the canyon itself. “So we’ll follow this wall until it turns back east.”
“Well it’s better than trying to cross a dune desert,” muttered Crimson’s mate who had gained the name Farstep for his ability to effectively teleport away. They followed Flux down into the canyon, on a wide, well traveled path.
Flux said, “it’s strange, we’re usually traveling down this slope in Winter.”
She described their normal path, which could take up to three years of wandering to achieve! They mainly followed this apparently gigantic herd of Yellow deer, every year the deer stormed through the canyon after the rains in the east flooded it. Sometimes, unseasonable wash-floods came through before the herd, trapping it in places. That was where the elves truly triumphed: they would clear the path, so the deer’s travel wasn’t completely disrupted.
“They’re just deer,” said the muse-elf Metanoia. “Animals, useful for food and entertainment.”
“These Yellow deer you wouldn’t want to mess with,” replied Wordsmith. “They travel by the millions, and even one splinter group of them getting lost or killed off would change everything.”
“We found one pile of bones,” Slate said, “in the center of a gulley. Hundreds of them died in that river, and it dried no more than a few hands of days later. There aren’t enough natural predators in the area to have taken care of the bodies, so they lay there rotting until we came across them. It was pretty powerful.”
“And a useless waste,” said Chameleon, “not even their hides could be used, I think we got some bone and antler out of it but otherwise it was just such a huge waste.” He shook his head.
By nightfall, travel was almost impossible. The good part was having excellent navigators here to bring them into the right part of the canyon. The bad part was that now they could only travel during the hottest brightest part of the day – otherwise the danger of falling or losing the way was far too great.
The distance to fall, even here at the eastern rim, was so great that no elf could calculate it. The winged elves, joined by the bigger of the dragons who by now had learned how to fly, dropped down into the windy space near the canyon wall. Descending for thousands of feet, until they could not even be seen by the keenest of eyes, they kept in sending distance but only barely. Leather-winged Wyvern and the angelic-looking Praxis, both muses, came back up with difficulty by nightfall.
“So many layers,” Praxis said, gasping and smiling. “It’s really beautiful – but I think I’ll stick to walking for the time being.”
“The winds are tremendous,” Wyvern added. “Do they ever stop?”
“No,” Slate said, “they don’t. It’s a wonder you and those dragons made it down there at all, see those birds?” She pointed to the barely-visible dark-on-dark specks in the velvety sky. “They hardly ever flap – and they’re the only really visible predators out here. Oh -,” she started a bit, and glanced at her tribemates. “The sand-spiders!”
“Well we’ll be avoiding the dunes if we can,” said Chameleon, “but… yeah, the sand spiders…”
“Okay this is already creeping me out,” said one elfess, joined by a couple others immediately. “I really don’t like spiders.”
“Then you are going to want to stay away from the dunes…” Said Flux, “the sand spiders are really big. They’re not worth eating or fighting – they do too much damage and they’re way too dangerous. They are the Yellow deer’s main predator when they’re not in the canyon itself.”
She sent an image – hiding it from those who appeared squeamish about it – of the battles they’d had with the things. Wordsmith and Chameleon both featured in those fights, it seemed everyone in the Nomads fought these things at one point or another. They burrowed into the soft hot sands, waiting for movement above. When the time was right, say, when a herd of deer was approaching, or when elves were walking with their wolf-friends, the spider thing would approach the surface. It would wait, they hinted, until a number of the leading creatures had passed overhead. Then, they would strike at the middle of a herd – or tribe – and try grabbing as many individuals as it could with its many sharp spined arms.
Though not truly a ‘spider’, that itself was enough to make a good hand or two of elves permanently swear off that dune desert to the west.
“Unfortunately,” said Flux, hefting a javelin absently, “we’ll have to cross some of it to keep going south. It’s thin there, we’ve passed it ourselves just to see what’s on the other side.” She paused, looking around, “you know there’s a volcano to the south,” she said. “Is that where you’re going?”
It was all they could talk about for days. It helped pass the time, certainly – discussion about this volcano and what it might mean. As they wandered down to the bottom of the sticky-hot canyon, with the walls towering over the tiny elves, their minds and voices were still active even if their bodies could hardly move with the heat.
This deep into summer, what the elves called Hotdays (for good reason), was when the Nomads tried to head north or into the scrub. Flashfloods were fairly common in the canyon this time of year, but with the guides’ knowledge of the area the newcomers were feeling a bit more confident that they’d avoid that danger. It soon became common to sleep during the earlier part of the day and begin traveling only as noon past. With the tall canyon wall on the west side, it blocked the worst of the heat but still left the canyon brilliantly lit.
The warm dirt kept its heat for hours, but unfortunately without light they couldn’t travel once the sun no longer lit even the last of the cloudless sky above. With the few light and fire-shapers trying their hardest they couldn’t get more than an hour past nightfall, before exhaustion took its toll. No one wanted to bother – after a while, the heat just made everything less worth doing.
The dragons were having a good time, at least. Though some of the bigger ones were complaining that their skin was itchy and they’d already shed a few layers of skin among the bunch of them. All but a couple (some of the more… portly ones) could already fly reasonably well, and they were still growing even though they had to survive on less and less food here.
The Nomad guides’ wolf-friends pointed out good hunting grounds, and the Greater Wolves had made their way up to the canyon rim again to hunt there. They communicated by howling and sending, but for this part of the journey they preferred flatter lands.
The hunting was sparse but good – in the bottom of the canyon, where the green-colored river spread slowly to the west, were huge fish. Lake to lake, apparently, they would spawn and get moved around when the flooding occurred. They fed on the rich algae and smaller fish, while some more energetic fish lept from the water to catch the myriad insects living on the surface.
“You just can’t escape bugs,” said Clarion’s mate, who had yet to find himself a proper name. Some of the females in the tribe wanted to call him ‘Hottie’ but Clarion wouldn’t let them. He waved his hand around to dissuade some of the gnats from pestering him.
“Aren’t there any elves who can make insects stop biting?” Demanded the green-garbed female who would become Orchard before long. “I can only make animals do what I need, not bugs!” Though she eyed the mosquitoes with a glow in her aura, her power just didn’t affect them. She wound up muttering about how she wanted to make that power work on something that wasn’t a mammal…
***
For almost ten more hands of days, the tribe and their dragons felt their way around the shadowy-hot canyon depths. They saw things that amazed and even confused them. Towering spires of rock, with balancing boulders atop them. Nests of birdlike animals that flocked out in swarms almost like bats, only during the brightest part of the day. Here and there was evidence that the Nomads had traveled through this part of the world before, if not regularly this far south: caverns that had obviously been shaped to house the tribe as it traveled, and with decorations of bright paint and burnt charcoal, from the artists who traveled with them.
It couldn’t be called a ‘whim’ because more than a dozen of the travelers stood as one and decided to add their own grafitti to the walls of one particular cave. They’d been told that soon they would leave the canyon and have to traverse the desert once more, so they wanted to leave a message to anyone who did travel this same way: we were here, you’re on the right track.
Each took up whatever pigments had been left behind – apparently several among the Nomads were artists as well, so they did such things – and began making an image. Some did their dragon, while others portrayed the volcano they could almost see in their mind.
Snowdrift and her friends had been largely keeping to themselves, answering whatever odd question came up that the Nomad guides could not, on this trip. They usually kept to the northern areas, not delving this deep into the Western lands – all of them were a bit more ‘tree’ oriented. Discovery perked up when the artistry was finished for the night.
“In the Hall of Portals, there’s a collection of hand prints, elves who arrived there put them down so the next to arrive wouldn’t feel so weirded out.”
“Along with the leathers and silks, and needles and thread,” Quicksilver put in, smiling. “I’m still wearing mine,” she added with a giggle.
In the next few days, then, they rose back up out of the canyon. “It’s a shame we’re too far into the season to see the Yellow deer herds,” said Wordsmith. Everyone else noticed Chameleon cringing: he knew something they didn’t?
“But they haven’t!” The bearded elf man laughed. Over the next day he told the story of how he and the first group of Nomads – Chameleon included obviously – had found the herd as it stampeeded through the canyon to the north-east. Apparently they watched for a while, and then decided what the hell, and dove in to hunt among the throngs of hooves and tossed antlers.
Wordsmith was quite good at storytelling, but what surprised the group was that even though he was clearly tired of this story, Chameleon could produce light illusions in the evening sky to actually show a kind of ‘movie’ of the event! Straight from his memories, clearly, the images and words combined to make the whole amazed group watch enrapt.
The canyon – seen at a different angle and in a different season far away from this place south on the edge – was filled with what at first looked like smoke. But then they realized it was dirt, perhaps kicked up by thousands of hooves. Closer, a mass of pale yellow-tan colored animals, taller than an elf at the shoulder, but not by much, could be seen flashing by below in a narrow pass. They extended all the way west, heading into the sunset, making their way around boulders and chasms.
Though they were aware of the danger, several of the group of Nomads grabbed their spears and started riding off, trying to find the stragglers – trying really to find a way down into the gulley itself, since the animals weren’t up on the plains.
And then, Wordsmith literally dove headlong into the stampeed.
(That got a gasp of surprise and fear from the group, even after some sixty-five years of telling and re-telling this story it was still that good. Chameleon chuckled to himself.)
When the rest of the little tribe arrived to the edge of the gulley, searching in vain through the dust and kicked up dirt, they panicked until Wordsmith climbed out of the wreckage. His leathers and hair and all exposed skin were covered in dirt, dung, spittle and some blood – he’d killed a couple of them and his wolf friend Pun was busy dragging the carcasses up to the edge. But when asked why he’d done such a maddening thing, he replied, “I feel like a million bucks!”
***
When they got to the top of the canyon, and looked northward to survey where they’d been all this time, it drew a long silence from the travelers. So much space, so many miles. Almost every day was filled with walking, and all of them were now so used to walking that they hardly sat still on days they decided not to travel.
There was nothing at all visible in the distance to the north, east and a bit west too – nothing but the striped red, tan, black and yellow canyon walls. It all sloped gently down to the west. The mountain range to the east that split the large single continent into east and west halves was obviously quite tall compared to this flatland they now stood upon, and very clearly now the water ways sloped toward the coasts.
They were closer now, than they’d ever been to the coast.
And they were still only two thirds through their journey.
The dunes awaited. Now Slate explained they would be traveling in the evenings and early mornings, and bedding down in the heat of the day. It was beginning to reach autumn, and right about the same time they hit the first sandy stretch of true desert, the dragons began to moult.
It was almost embarrassing – because some of them had begun to grow beautiful coats of fluffy feathery-crests or trim. The dragons were almost fully grown, and their disparate sizes and abilities were beginning to show too. That handful that started flying first were big – really big. Compared to elves, that is. Those big ones could stretch their wing and shade three elves and a wolf. And sometimes they were asked to.
They collected water, and the watershapers were put essentially in charge of producing what was needed along the way. But the main work of this part of the journey was done by the stone shapers. Not to keep the sand from getting into everything (because nothing, not even Golden’s ‘magic spells’ – much more under control than Jackals’ – could stop sand from getting where it would) but to sense for sand-spiders.
Praxis came up with a new use for himself – he had a kind of nature-sensing ability, and since he could fly as well he would scout ahead with one or more other fliers, and they would return with a path in their mind’s eye. Deviation from that path – as a pair of the medium sized and now flightless moulting dragons learned – was dangerous at the very least.
“It’s … really ugly,” said Flourish, mistress of copying powers – she powered herself up beside Windrider and helped with the healing when those dragonets limped back with holes in their wings. She kept looking over her shoulder, as though the gigantic creature would either come back to life or somehow appear outside of its now-bloody pit.
The rim of the sand-spider’s ‘nest’ was its only clue. Flux flew over and immediately recognized the signs of a big spider, one which had been missed because of the shape and design of its nest. It had figured out that by building near an existing dune, it could shape the dune itself to look normal – but still be laying in wait at the bottom of it!
Flux was quick to summon anyone capable of flying and throwing weapons or firing arrows – or whatever – at it. She was adamant that no one else walk anywhere around the area until they knew it was dead. Sometimes, she explained when they were finished and patching up, they’d leave dummy parts of themselves – or cast off exoskeletons – to decieve things into thinking it was dead.
“They’re … smart?” Asked Chromatique, more curious than disgusted by it all. “That’s pretty scary.”
“They seem to have gotten smarter in this part of the desert,” Slate admitted. “Others aren’t so big either, so maybe this one just had time to work itself into a better spot.” She then looked at Flux who frowned, “I just hope it didn’t breed…”
With a couple more mistakes behind them, the group did get into the swing of setting up camp as the sun got ‘about four hands’ into the sky. Looking at the horizon, placing one hand atop the next, that meant mid-morning no matter what time of year it was, this far south. Any later than that and it would be just too blindingly hot to move. Any earlier, and not enough ground would be covered across this waste.
Of all the places on the planet to have to be, they collectively decided, this was not one to stick in too long. Some aspects of the dunes were very fun: they could be slid down, burrowed into, even shaped by the stone shapers! The hunting, while quite sparse, yeilded some interesting animal and insect life beyond just the sand-spiders. Obviously, those carnivores had to get their food somewhere!
“They’re almost like the dragons,” said Enrapture, whose mood-song could lull the camp into sleep whether they wanted to be down or not – and wake them at the drop of a hat too. “But they’re wingless. Do you have a name for them?”
Slate and Wordsmith conferred and decided that they’d be called ‘dune-flippers’. Reptilian, with a pair of sail-like hind feet that they apparently used to fling sand up over themselves, and two more feet up front by the smallish pointed head, which were designed to cling to prey. Burrowers, quite large ones at that, they were the reptile version of a trapdoor spider. They were at least the size of the Greater Wolves, and it took several elves to kill one. Their skin and hide was very thick – and excellent for armor, decided ‘Hottie’, but blond Whipstitch swept past him and insisted that it’d be much better for durable water skins or housing.
“Well there are probably enough of them around here to keep you both busy,” laughed Crimson, “there are three on that ridge – you can see them flipping the sand…”
“So…” Asked Cliffclipper the self-shaper, “what do they eat?”
“Snakes, burrowing insects, probably small sand-spiders too,” said Chameleon. “All that stuff under the dunes, it’s pretty amazing. It’s like another whole world.”
As the days grew even warmer than before, those few who could shape the cold were aided by Vanish and Flourish – enhanced powers and copied ones were better than nothing. But still, it was easier to burrow and wear out the stone shapers by getting them to build ‘sand igloos’ to fend off the worst of the day’s heat, than to wear out the couple cold shapers.
Plus it brought water that much closer. They were following a thin underground passage that held water at the table level some hundred feet below the surface. But at around sixty, the dunes turned to solid stone. Obviously, what kept the water down there in the first place…
“The floods have to go somewhere,” commented Flux, “and we know that the canyon doesn’t just let out in that one place, no matter how much Chameleon insists it does. It lets out in dozens, and dissipates below the desert. It does bloom every year, you know,” she stuck her tongue out at Chameleon.
“I wouldn’t care to know, my dear,” he replied, “I like the forest. I’ll be riding the coastline back to the Ambience, not taking this route back. Even if Dawnhowl and I have to do it alone, we’re not coming back through this desert.”
“We’ll wind up going with you,” Discovery piped up.
Through this leg of the journey, when the elves were awake but unable to do much other than sigh or groan, they sent many thoughts.
Snowdrift, Discovery, Redhair and Moondance supplied stories of their adventures to pass the time. Blackbuck paid attention to these, but more often than not he and Epicure and Metanoia found other things to do in private.
Loudly, Trouble shouted, “and STAY there!” before rushing up to the main ‘sand igloo’. “I swear, Crimson, those muses of ours are entirely out of control.”
Without pause, Crimson, Trouble and a number of other females came rushing back out to step quickly over the hot-as-coals sand, and into the ‘boy-muse’ bivouac. Where…
“Trouble,” Crimson said, barely containing a laugh behind a serious expression, “did you make them do this?”
“I only made them pause,” Trouble said with a broad, broad grin.
The skinny pair – Epicure and Metanoia – were stuck in a rather compromising position, feet somewhere near each other’s ears. While Blackbuck, bewildered to be frozen in motion, was sitting on top of them, doing … something…with some spare leather…
“Well, put them back,” Crimson hissed with an equally fierce broad grin.
Things would go downhill for the muses, very very quickly that day…
***
Camping in the desert day after blistering day was beginning to take its toll when they finally could see trees and rocks again. Though far from empty of life, and the hunting having been fairly good if not merely entertaining, the desert would leave the group too weary to move on for a while after they reached a broken tree with a spring beside it. This meager shade and sustenance carried them to build a little shrine of sorts, fixing the tree (Orchard and Rival’s work) and strengthening the flow of water (thanks to Waterfall and Tradewind). The stone around the place was reinforced and made into a sort of courtyard by Spiritshine, Slate and Whipstitch, while Clarion and the muse Niche decorated it with sparkling gems and inset metals.
“Well,” Slate said, brushing her hands off and examining the area, “for a bunch of dead-tired folks we sure did a good job here…” She laughed, the other Nomads having been hunting in the light scrubland nearby. They were a lot more hardy than they looked, these Nomads – but even Flux had to admit that she was impressed by the newcomers.
“We’ll bed down here for a while, now that you’ve made yourselves at home,” Flux said with a grin. She deposited her half of the ground-running birds they’d caught onto the newly-shaped stone ‘floor’.
When the night turned to day the elves were so used to sleeping that they just kept right on doing so – after a huge walk across the desert and a full day’s magic exertion to boot, and their big meal? Who wanted to move anyway?
After another day of rest, the elves did much needed work on their boots, clothing and weapons. They had to get the sand out of everything. Every nook and niche in their weapons, sacks of items and clothing, the cloth itself! The little stream that drifted away toward the south afforded them bathing opportunities they had missed dearly since leaving the Red Wall canyon behind. Their clothing alone blew dust through the air, when they flapped it, and one doesn’t want to guess at the amount of grime that was finally released from their hair and skin when they all finally got the chance to bathe!
Cloudburst (Night’s Rain’s alter ego’s new name) was able to work with the low lying clouds that formed on what appeared to be the scrubland’s edge – though far away, they could be coaxed nearer… And finally letting loose a downpour that washed over the whole plain, the elves reveled in it all.
“This is where we leave you,” said Chameleon, “though I admit I’m curious where you’ll wind up, really.”
“Me too,” Wordsmith said, “but now I know you can write,” he winked at one or two of the elves, who’d started jotting down his jokes because they really were pretty good, “I’ll be sure to send for an update.”
“Oh!” Gestalt, an elfess who could take the group’s mind and make everyone more strong, “we should tell Cameo and Sumac we’re at the edge of the desert!”
“They’re very far away,” Tradewind said, putting her fingers to her forehead with the effort of just ‘listening’ for the Holt. “I don’t know if we can even reach there. Maybe the Ambience.”
“I’ll help,” Gestalt said, “come on into a circle, we’ll all do it.”
With the dragons circling each other and wolves howling and chasing rabbits on the scrubland nearby, the elves made one mental circle. Those with the far-sending ability, sharing it with ones whose raw power might be able to boost the distance. Gestalt functioned a lot like Redhair, in the center of the circle, commanding a number of elves to send or to aid with a bit of healing.
RedHair didn’t put herself in the circle, that could be dangerous if her own powers started up. After all, that one accidental teleport incident proved that she was never quite fully in control of her true summoning powers…
**I’ve seen them,** Tradewind said, **We can contact Patience, she’s strong enough,** the astral elf said, and moved off toward the north-west. Now more than double the distance from other elf minds, she lingered in the aether a long time before coming home to her body.
Exhausted, she broke the circle and Gestalt let her rest. “That’s done,” Tradewind said, and fell to a deep slumber.
Eventually they got the story that she told – very quickly – to Patience. They’d moved through the canyon with out incident, gone through the dunes, and now were on what they hoped would be the end of their journey. They were sending Flux, Slate, Chameleon and Wordsmith back to the Ambience or wherever they’d wind up, and not to worry about things – the dragons were growing and most would fly again after their moult.
This brief statement was delivered more than two thousand miles away – no wonder it took so much out of everyone. Tradewind used the energy of all those gathered as a kind of springboard, their spirits still hung out and mingled, ghostly essences chatting about where their next travel leg would bring them.
***
Two hands of nights at this spring was enough to bring everyone’s energy back. Legs and backs rested, blisters healed up, sunburns soothed. Snowdrift and her friends were now very eager indeed to see where the pull of these elves would lead.
They felt it too, sort of. Where the newcomers – now calling themselves the Dragonclan – felt inside them a deep pull toward one particular direction, almost like a lure, like a swift current in a deep river… Snow, Red, Discovery and Moondance felt it in a vague, all-directions at once way. Wherever it was they were meant to be, it was never quite ‘here’. Always on the move, they explained, they felt most comfortable when they were between places.
As the travel was much easier across the packed, almost parched-seeming dirt here, they made very good time indeed. Walking or even riding the wolves – the Greater Wolves were apt now to allow this or that elf to ride them to let them rest a bit, and make better time – the elves could talk and tell stories again.
The stories turned to ‘what’s on the other side? What’s this Hall of Portals thing?’ and those questions led to more.
The tale of Dare’s Valley, all the way across the world… Founded by a group of young girls, supposedly not much different than this group – only as Discovery put it, ‘fewer. Much fewer.’ The Hall of Portals, which was a beautiful if spooky black marble building on the far eastern coast. Windows, portals to other worlds, were arranged on every surface. The image that Discovery gave to the elves was impressive. Slabs of black on black floor, even though the ceiling was more than three elf-heights up it still gave off a kind of claustrophobic feel. Each few paces there was another portal to another foreign world.
“Do you go there?” Asked Windrider, curious. Disovery shrugged.
“I do, Snowdrift won’t. A lot of wolves won’t. They’ve got ‘issues’ with it.” She put her fingers up and ‘quoted’. Snowdrift was somewhere between angry and silly about it.
They got back to their stories. Dare and her small group got caught up with an elf tribe living in the Swamp that surrounded where the Hall of Portals sat. Fang’s tree, Fang’s property. Fang, it appeared by all accounts, was a miserable, insane man. Images of him were both attractive and shocking: a self-shaper, like Cliffclipper and Squirrel’s Glide, but he was more haggard, angry, dangerous looking. And possessive of ‘his’ things. Such as ‘his women’ and ‘his wolves’.
He, it turned out, was the grandsire of at least two of the Greater Wolves in the party here and now. While they listened in, some of the Dragonclan elves were worried they’d be offended. But even they chimed in when needed to aid this story. The wolves were his – because he sired them. They had to prove their worth, to him and he alone. When they could not – and they rarely could, because he set ridiculous requirements – he sent them away. Ostensibly to be killed by the other wolves who mistrusted them anyway.
But they got away more and more often. Then – with the arrival of Dare and her friends Talon and Jade (along with others, but those three in particular set the stage), Fang thought he’d be getting some ‘new blood’ for his harem. Talon was a shapeshifter – a very powerful one. Jade, a flesh-shaper and healer. Both those things Fang found to be required for his girls.
Neither of the elves wanted anything to do with this. Of course – they were young, hardly more than young teens, when they came to the Otherforest! They managed to challenge Fang, and get away from his clutches. But time and again he would lead raids onto their new lands at the edge, the beach, to try and steal them back.
When the elves forged an alliance with the outcast Greater wolves, the raids got fewer and farther between.
Discovery hinted that she knew something else was going on, even now, but couldn’t say what it was. Either she’d been sworn to secrecy by the elves there, or she just didn’t know. Perhaps they’d find out later, when they made the rounds again some day.
Trouble noticed that Epicure and Metanoia were mentally chatting it up – but in private, lock-sending so no one else could intrude. Trouble sidled up to Bringer, and said, “could you please tell me what they’re talking about?” And nudged her view toward the two muses deep in conversation.
“Allow me,” Bringer said, with a narrow look in her eye. She concentrated a bit, and then her face twitched with a sneer. She aimed a lock-send at Trouble. **They’re talking about this Fang guy. They actually think they’d like to meet him. Are they crazy?**
“Yes,” Trouble said loudly, loud enough to break up the muses little bubble, “they are crazy, and they’d better look out because crazy is trouble.”
She exerted a little of her power – and they stopped sending. They couldn’t send any more or use any of their powers, one of Trouble’s better used abilities.
Annoyed, but humbled, the pair of muses continued walking, in sullen silence. Bringer and Trouble giggled and walked along behind them to make sure things didn’t drift back the way they had been.
Noticably after another few hands of days travel, the ground began to rise. It had been sloping gently to the south-west, but then anyone with stone shaping or some kind of nature sense ability could tell that the land was now higher. It was dimmer on the horizon, the land rose indistinctly and with a great amount of haze.
They found that they had to pick their way through boulders, though the ground was still somewhat dry and pale, there were bigger clumps of trees and sprawling red bushes, flowering plants and the sounds of animal life. Though the desert wasn’t entirely silent, it wasn’t like this.
Plus the dragons had grown their new coat of furry feathers, and some of them… Spectacular crests, frilled tail feathers, some had lines of bright feathers from head to tail. They were now large enough to ride… And fly!
The biggest again had the advantage here. They’d moulted first, gotten into the air first, and were impatiently waiting for their elf-friends to get between their shoulders and ride!
Skyshield’s huge mottled red and aqua colored mount soared up into the air with her first, followed shortly by Crimson and her male, who’d grown a stunning dark brown coating of fur on his back covering the bright goldenrod and yellow he’d had as a hatchling.
Very shortly, two dozen dragons with their elves clutching frantically to the necks were in the air. Whooping and hollering, this was the noisiest this group had ever gotten! Back on the ground, those who had dragons who were too small or had moulted later, or just didn’t have a flying bond at all like the older wanderers, watched in cheerful amusement.
“We’ll make great time!” Cheered pink-haired Shockwave, whose dragon was predictably pink-trimmed as well.
Yet… What they found they most wanted to do now, was walk. Scouting and hunting could be done on dragon back, but for some reason this group of young women and their muses, and a couple ‘real’ mates and friends… walked.
Their dragons were perturbed, but enjoyed their free time playing tag and getting stronger in the air. Inspired, Enrapture decided to try something out – something that she hadn’t done since being back at the Startree holt. She shapeshifted, which wasn’t entirely unusual around here. But into what, that was something new.
With the strong legs of the dragons to run with, and their feathery-downed wings, Enrapture shaped herself into a half-dragon! Putting all her energy into it, she raced along the ground until she got lift, and flapped hard enough to fly! She maintained this only long enough to play one round of aerial tag, and was then exhausted enough to land and return to her two-footed shape.
“That was fun,” she panted. The winged muses got into the game as well. Tumbling through the sky, with the walking elves below, the next dozen days gave the group more to do than ever.
They were almost at the edge of a rolling canyon hill, when they as a group all received the same strange sending.
&&ontheirwaylostneedaidtransportplease&&
Stunned, aware only that a great powerful mind had ‘pinged’ them, and that there was some kind of information needing to be sent… Half the group paused where they stood, while the others put their hands to their temples or foreheads – reeling from a weird pressure.
“What was that?” asked Crimson, one of the stronger senders of the group.
Snowdrift replied, blinking away a dizzy spell. “That, Crimson, was Lady Greyhoof, in the Ambience. She said that the others coming have become lost and need assistance.”
“You … got that?” Firebolt said.
“Well we’ve traveled together for years, I know her mind anywhere, and I’m a bit more tuned to her than most,” Snow explained. “But … well, you’ve got dragons. Someone should go back… north.”
That was met with groaning and sighs. “We’ve come so far,” said Tradewind.
“Well I can’t see more than a couple people needing to go,” Moondance said, “if they stay put and you’ve got dragons who can fly well enough, they’ll be able to arrive safely.”
“I’ll go,” said Farstep, shortly echoed by Firebird. The self-shaper could fly on her own, and her big male dragon could probably seat three elves less than comfortably.
It was agreed that they and three others – they got the impression that would be a good number of dragons, to airlift the hatchlings and elves comfortably – would head back.
Among them they had Bringer, whose ability to sense minds and locate them at a fair distance was almost as good as far-sending and her long bodided dragoness could fit a couple beyond her. Farstep’s teleportation would allow him to let his medium sized dragon carry those in need. Windrider and her huge female would be of assistance with healing both elf and dragon, they might need it.
“But did she say where they’d gotten lost?” Asked Farstep, concerned that he’d be teleporting blindly into territory that they’d passed many hands before, and would have to go further into unexplored places.
Snowdrift looked around, concerned. “Not really.”
“Let me look,” Bringer said, approaching the white-haired woman. They touched minds only briefly but Bringer sifted through the very quick sending memory. This Lady Greyhoof was one of the deer folk, poewrful beyond belief, and so far away that she needed the Ambience’s influence to send this far?
But there was content to the brief message. “Somewhere near the canyon, but they entered it instead of going around the west wall.” Bringer announced. “There’s an image wedged in there, dim, maybe from one of the newcomers. It doesn’t look exactly like the places we’d traveled, though.”
She shared the image, all part of her exceptional information-magic. Everyone soon could see the hazy and half-dreamlike image of red, orange brown dirt rising all around, the clear blue sky above framed on all sides by the canyon. It looked like around eight or nine newcomers, and their small, growing dragonets – it was hard to say, because no one knew whether this was an image provided by the elves there, or by Lady Greyhoof.
“We might be gone a while,” Farstep said. Crimson and he shared a long embrace, while the others were busy packing what supplies they could onto the dragon’s waiting arms.
“We could use sacks,” Thunder said, having shaped a number of cylindrical ‘bags’ from the leathers that they’d been hulking around for a while. Every kill would be valuable now – and they had quite a stock. Mostly they’d kept the nice furs and leathers for future use, but since Thunder could shape dead flesh like skins, they’d probably be able to re-use these later on.
He made up five slings, which the dragons eagerly helped put over their necks. These held water skins, dried fruits and tubers that the elves had collected, and some healing and hunting supplies, plus one had rolled up silken sheets – they’d used those in the desert and they had worked beautifully for shelter.
“What worries me,” Discovery said, “is that it’s almost winter, won’t the floods come down the canyon?”
“Usually in spring,” said Moondance, “but there are always storms over the Spine Mountains…” They looked worriedly at the rescuerers. “You should hurry.”
“It will still take hands to get there,” muttered Farstep. He truly seemed to be taking his mate’s leadership role to heart, if he was going without her, someone had to be in charge…
They mounted up onto their dragons, and flew away into the northern skies.
Discussion immediately turned to what they’d do next, with the hand and one of rescuers out, plus perhaps two hands more on their way. Should they wait? Press on?
It was decided fairly quickly, by a show of hands, that they would wait. It was best, they all considered, to let one or two on dragonback continue ahead and scout the area for good resting points, while the rest stayed in one place to wait for the others to arrive.
“That way,” Crimson added to the end of the council, “we’ll all come to our home at once.”
While they waited, for however long it took, pairs of elves on dragon back went out to fly, scout, or hunt. Though the area was easier to plot as far as resting places and water, the hunting was of concern. There were both herds of deer like creatures, as well as a good number of large predators in this place. Not at all like the sheer cliff faces of the Red Wall canyon system, this bunch of canyons and ridges was covered in trees and plant life, with nooks and vales, boulders and crevasses to consider.
Maps suddenly became all the rage. Who could draw the best one, who could navigate through another’s without aid. That, and mental challenges started up. There were a good number of mind-snare experts by the time any news came.
Every day, for at least a hand of days, Farstep gave what he could to an astral conversation with Tradewind. His ability was weak though, geared only toward finding him a place to teleport to. Apparently he did so frequently, having his dragon and the others catch up when he spotted a place that they had bedded down. The dune desert was where they’d had to stay now for several nights, carefully avoiding the sand-spiders but with growing concern that the elves wouldn’t be exactly where they said they were, when they finally reached the canyon.
**Just carry on,** Tradewind recommended, via Crimson urging her on. **They’ll be there somewhere. If you need to conserve your power, just send every other day.**
Eventually he would not be able to reach them anyway, his sending range far exceeded by the flight distances they’d been traveling every day. Snowdrift comforted Crimson with a smile and a light hand on her shoulder. “He’s smart enough to know what to do. Plus, you’ve all proven yourselves quite capable in emergencies as well as travel. He’ll be okay.”
***
Dragons and team sports became the next big thing. While some of the shapers were busy putting together their second ‘travel port’ of trees and roots, rocks and stone, the elves with the small, quick flying dragons started games of aerial tag, catch-the-flag, passing-ball games, and the like.
Something buried deep in most of the elfin minds was a weirdly fantastic game with several balls and hoops played flying – incorporated into a new dragon game they liked to call Tail-Flail for the motion that many of the dragons got into guiding themselves around a levitated ball.
Injuries were common, but always well earned.
About this time too, Clarion and her mate who decided upon Forge as a name (much later he’d gain that Master part), started making metal objects. While she would coax ores from stone with magic, he would refine them into beautiful bars of pure silver, gold, or whatever it was that was colored a faint green-grey. It was plain that some objects, stones, gems and plants just didn’t have what the elves could call an “Earth type” to go with it, and thus had to invent names for them. After being put into that shape, they were much easier to manipulate either with fire, or magic.
Clarion’s machinery immediately caught the interest of the muses. Or perhaps their influence being near their ‘creators’ for some time had finally gelled into art. Or… something.
A couple elves stood around the first of Clarion’s creations, looking at it with their heads tilted and eyes blinking. “What… does it do?”
“I don’t know,” Clarion said, happily. “But I’m working on two more.”
She didn’t tell them about the other experiments, those with the local ground-fowl. … Nope. Not yet.
***
Farstep and the others were moving at a good clip, allowing him to teleport from spot to spot, retracing their steps backwards into the canyon. His memory was getting a good workout too, though they had spent a third of a year here, it was a while ago and it all kind of looked the same after a while.
But he was certain that they’d never passed that particular rock formation that he saw in the mental remnants given by Lady Greyhoof. Since he did have that image though, he waited until their small group settled in a nice nook they’d slept in many weeks before. His power grew quickly, his expert use of this unique magic growing by the day. He would make one or two ‘Steps’ a day at the start but now he was up to five or six, and the distances he could travel were growing.
“I’m going to try and find it now,” he told the others. They wished him well, and watched as he popped away. One moment there, and the next he was gone with a faint whooshing sound of air filling where he’d been.
The women were prepared, as always, for his sending. He was never quite out of sending range, but to travel that far on foot would take hours. His dragon waited as well, with his eyes fixed on the spot miles away where the elf had teleported.
**!** They felt, which was typical of Farstep’s ‘ping’ on arrival. And then, **Here!**
The inflection meant, yes he’d found the place, but …
**Have you found the elves?** Asked Skyshield.
**I see their cook fire, they’ve moved a little. They’re right at the bottom of the gorge, we’ve got to get them to higher ground as soon as possible.**
Why would he say that? The four elves looked into the evening sky and saw something to dread: thick, dark clouds obscuring the eastern area.
Firebird lept into the air, her birdlike shape already on most of the day. **Let’s go!** She exclaimed, and bolted out of their nook. The others followed, Bringer whistling to her dragon who swept below and she lept to his back. Skyshield and Windrider both flew on their magic as their gigantic dragons winged upwards themselves. Unerringly they followed Bringer as she was best able to simply cast out with her magic and locate anyone. She’d gotten good at locating Farstep.
They flew over the dim haze of the canyon, the sun was setting so they only had a few good minutes of light left. And with that storm front on the eastern horizon, that time might be less than they ought.
They felt Farstep sending to the elves below, and heard a number of bright replies. Though lost, they’d hardly been disappointed or afraid – but now they knew they ought to be. With the speed that she was known for, Firebird lit onto the ground near one female, and insisted that she and her young dragon pick up their stuff and get off toward the full grown dragons.
“Come on, come on,” Skyshield said, “there is a storm, it might cause a flash flood – and they’re deadly here in the canyon!”
That got the group moving. Several sisters were taken by Windrider’s large female, their hunting gear put into the satchel slung on the dragon’s wide collar. Another couple male muses were there, plus an assortment of bewildered newcomers and their dragonets.
“We need to get our bed rolls,” said one whose sunset-colored leathers were flattering but needed cleaning. They’d be a bit too clean if the storm rolled in.
“Grab them while we move,” warned Skyshield, “hear it? We don’t have time!”
Though they all were in motion, some mounting the strong slender backs of the dragons, and some lifting into the air under their own power, others still cleaning up the last of their goods before tossing them into the sacks the dragons carried, everyone heard the same thing. A rumbling, crashing sound.
Water. There was already a flood pouring into the canyon? Two hands plus one new elves, and dragonets that hadn’t even begun to fly yet – all scrambling madly up the side of the canyon wall. The wings of the dragons were scraping the red dirt, the biggest had to clear the lowest ledge by scrunching her neck down.
“If you can fly, get off the dragons!” Yelled Bringer. “They need lift!”
Skyshield obliged with a gust of strong updraft, causing the dragons wings to fill with air and help them up. It was just in time too, because the nook where these newcomers had been resting was suddenly filled with water as quick as the air took the dragons.
Barely able to see in the now-encroached darkness, they watched below as the place where they were planning on sleeping that night was swept into hundreds of chunks of dirt and muck – the end of the road for this flash flood would be hundreds of miles away to the west, but this culdesac ran with a fierce whirlpool.
“That was too close,” Farstep gasped, as they landed safely on the upper crest of the canyon mesa. They were surrounded by canyon on all sides, all the lowest parts were at least touched by the storm water. The clouds overhead began to sweep more quickly westward, carrying with them cold, refreshing rain.
With the hand-of-hands that the elves spent waiting for Farstep and the new-newcomers to arrive to their location, the Dragonclan made some interesting discoveries.
Jackal’s use of magic spells was discovered fully, and while he was chastised for having done stupid things with it (he caused another hailstorm – a very similar one to that which helped name Skyshield) he was then invited to practice against Golden, the only female muse so far.
It started to show the abilities of those who would become the tailors, the crafters, the story tellers. With an intensely artistic group like this – and with muses scattered among them to keep them inspired – it was inevitable that they would have art contests and challenge each other. Shaping was a favored contest – an equal amount of plant matter or stone or bone was given out, and within a certain period of time, something had to be shaped from it.
But also the more subtle arts, design and architecture, became apparent. Under the expert eye of the bone shaper, now named Xiphos, they designed a large semi-enclosed tree house. As the winter winds started kicking dust from the canyon out into the sky and causing beautiful sunsets, they took shelter in this complicated tree system.
When the errant elves finally came to the encampment, everyone cheered. They knew very well that there could be others on their way – and whatever happened to the bunch that took eggs and ran? But it was now time, at last, to be on their last leg of the journey.
Leaving the constructed tree behind, knowing it would regrow in time into its natural shape, the group stocked it with a few items stored in shaped stone cubbyholes. Weapons, silks, a map or two on leather. The shaped stone would give off its aura strongly, for half a dozen elves worked on it. If any elf came this way again, they’d know to try opening it. A little stream was nearby naturally, any weary traveller would have a nice place to stay, here.
The littler dragonets were going into moult when they reached the edge of a southern forest. They could make out clouds in an odd formation a little to the south west, but the woods were what captured their full attention just now. The welcome shade, the feeling of life surrounding them, animals and birds and insects of all kinds made noises as they passed through this wood.
The trees were great, old, straight-trunked and topped with boughs of needles. Though it was winter, they knew they were awfully far south, and few of the leaf-bearing trees that stood under the evergreens would lose their canopy.
“I wonder if it’ll ever snow here,” Flourish said. “I kind of miss snow, not that I remember why…” They passed through the woods slowly. Surrounding the woods, the fliers said, there were dark mountains on either side, this long valley spread out toward the south-west. Streams and pools collected in places, and a winter rainfall struck without warning.
But it was hardly chilly, this deep into the tropics. While it was not a tropical forest, it certainly proved hard to get through in places, with such thick growth everywhere!
“It’s more like the First holt,” Snowdrift commented. “There are places where the water and ground are so rich, the trees grow uncontrolled. But they’re all these,” she patted an evergreen, “and vines like those – see them with the moss blankets?”
The little dinky purple and white flowers on the moss looked like stars on a green-black blanket, and it was draped simply everywhere. Snowdrift’s mood improved (not that she’d been unhappy) while they were here, as this felt like her first home on this world. Only, a little warmer…
***
It became apparent that while most others would continue on, Spiritshine and her muse newly arrived and named Seraph, would stay in this wood. Along the stony mountain cliff, slightly over the forest, that would become their home. But they did go farther – everyone did. There was such a great pull toward the immediate south-west.
When the group cleared the forest’s edge, breaking out onto a beautiful meadowland, the ground dipped down a bit before rising sharply on the other side of a valley. Surrounding every side were peaks and more peaks – but all in one spot.
They all built up, in long, seemingly wide steppes, to the volcano’s peak.
Snow covered, giving off a thin but constant steam. There were several other steam vents, but it looked nothing like it would explode. The rock shapers and Praxis with his nature sense confirmed – the vents were from the heated rock below, the water from the snow draining into it…
This was it: they’d come home.
Each was to find their own particular spot. Near the meadowland, Orchard began to plant seeds that the Startree folk had given her. Quickly they grew into fruit trees, vines, grapes. Happy to tend this grove, she created her own home and stuck there.
Others preferred the steep volcano itself, for there were deep caverns and natural hot springs there. The winds provided Thermal with an ideal location to test out her leather-shaped wings, while the dragons were having a grand time in their new aeries.
Ledges, caves, concealed passageways, everything could be shaped as well. Some took to the canyons nearby where there were herds of deer, antelope and what appeared to be horses. Gallop proved her namesake, riding by on sprinting steeds with Golden flying behind her in her winged wolf shape.
Jackal and Shockwave set up shops opposite one another near the northern woods, on the other side of the mountains from Spiritshine. They offered to complete the tattoos they’d been designing for the bunch of elves ‘crazy’ enough to accept them. (Those who didn’t already have what appeared to be tattoos upon arrival, that is!)
Each pair, group, or single elf explored the surrounding area. Most of the land remained untouched, though with the dragons finally all grown enough to fly, it was hardly uncommon to see a flock of them with riders trying to find a new place to get into.
Once they’d settled, once they were all in their homes to shape and make or design, Snowdrift and her companions were about to leave. However they heard a strange noise… a sort of fizzing hiss followed by a low ‘pop’. Then rustling as though something was moving through the bushes.
With Crimson nearby, and other curious elves gathering, they found a small nest of eggs. Much smaller than the dragon eggs, more like regular sized bird eggs.
But there were no birds coming from these darkly colored eggs… They were something else entirely.
Little brightly colored creatures, stubby limbed, with a short tail and nubs on their heads… They looked quite lumpy, even though colorful and clearly reptilian. One bounced up to Crimson, almost as though it was attaching itself to her. “tot.” it said, and flapped its clearly non-functional wings happily. “tot tot.”
Soon the wood was litterally filled with the odd call. “tot tot. tot tot.”
“What… are these things?” Crimson finally asked, covered in half a dozen of them. They were only the size of her fist at the moment, but wouldn’t they grow? How big? Would they stay this annoying the whole time? Could they be trained, or at least – controlled?
Everyone looked at Metanoia when he proudly cleared his throat. Everyone gave him a dirty look, and right about then, we’ll draw the curtain on this adventure. More stories would be had of course, but this is the beginning of all of them here in the Dragonclan lands of the Otherforest.
This is *very long*. I'll post it in chunks. It's lost a couple bits of formatting like italics but *shrug* that's okay. If you want to read it in its doc format please ask.