a part of my heart,,

Korva · 12-20-2010, 02:10 AM

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Yay! I did it. This is Korva’s Spiritual Journey where she travels northeast and finds her spirit guide, a Philippine Tarsier named Gitlu.

Korva knew it was going to be cold. In fact, she even shivered as she thought about it, throwing on layer after layer of skins. Although she had gradually learned to love pack life, she had also learned a thing or two about the AniWayan culture. The tribesmembers believed in a kind of thing called “Spirit Guides,” who were animals that guided a wolf through life. This light-brown she-wolf had finally decided that she was going to find hers. She had discovered where she truly belonged – yes? – and it was about time that she really became a part of the pack. Perhaps she would feel even more welcome if she became a living part of their traditions.

The she-wolf had finally gotten around to braiding feathers into her hair: owl feathers, to be exact. The dark brown and white feathers stood out among her light brown fur. Her once long and wavy mane that came along with her Optime form had been expertly chopped off, but she still had bangs that fell in her eyes. There, in the bangs, she had strung turquoise beads in her hair, as well. While she had thought the decorations at first to be rather tacky and actually kind of silly, Korva decided that if you couldn’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em. She also wore usually light clothing, but in the cold she knew she would need more than that. The snow and cold wasn’t entirely bone-chilling, but it was still cold and she needed clothes. For some reason, the warmer she was, the better, and in times like this her own fur just wasn’t enough. There were inexplicable differences between pack life and loner life, and Korva enjoyed pack life much more.

As she stepped out of the door to her tiny hut, she sighed and took in the freezing air. She loved the smell of snow – it was her second winter, but she couldn’t remember very much of her first one as she had been very young. The clouds above betrayed their intentions, and the light brown wolf knew she would be knee-deep in the icy stuff before the day was over. Korva had learned to use a walking stick in her Optime form because it stabilized her more – she could walk without hunching over or swaying side-to-side. She looked one more time around the place that had become familiar to her in the past few months, and continued on out of the village. On her way, she passed a few wolves, who all nodded acknowledgment to her, but not as many as normal because it was early morning and the sun had just begun to rise.

Korva felt more alone than she had before she came to the pack. She felt like she was running away, similar to the feeling she had before she left her family with the corpse of her brother. At the thought, she shuddered inwardly, and paused, wondering what direction she should take. She squinted at the rising sun, and decided to take a northeast path, and continued along. Although she still knew little about healing, she had learned some from the time when her bloodied paws had been fixed by the pack’s healers, and in that case she would be able to manage. In the little pouch tied around her waist she held nothing but a flint. She had once heard rumors of a beautiful place in the northeast called Flanders Fields that was filled with nothing but red poppies, but Korva also wondered if that was too much of a stretch of a walk from here. She had not yet broken the borders of the tribe’s land, but who knew when she would reach her destination? Her return time, although she would prefer for it to be within a month, was whenever she finally met her spirit guide.

When Korva finally reached the border, she decided it would be best to go on four legs. She removed her fairly empty deerskin bag (aside from a flint), a gift from a particularly welcoming tribesmember, and she removed her skins one by one and placed them carefully in the bag, and slung it across her back. She focused for a long second, and then felt her body become more compact. Her limbs shortened, and soon she found her fur thickening and roughening, her paws becoming smaller and more nimble, her thumbs retracting to become dewclaws and her fingers shortening to become paws. She became overall smaller, and she was forced to be on all fours, her hind legs making it possible to keep her broadened head upright. And here the light-colored wolf was a wolf yet again. If she didn’t have a bag slung across her back, she might have been considered to be a fairly normal wolf.

Picking up her plain, smoothed-out walking stick in her strong jaws, Korva sauntered on happily. She was much more comfortable in this form, and outside the limits of the AniWayan customs she was free once more. She had nearly forgotten what it was like to sprint on all fours – the last time she had done it, she had wound up with horribly bloody paws and an exhausted mind. The she-wolf continued on, and as the days dragged by she found herself going more north than east. It didn’t hurt her eyes so much, looking into the rising sun, as it did to simply walk alongside it.

Her prediction of when it would snow turned out to be wrong. It snowed only about a week after, and she trudged through the blizzard, cold and weary. She found refuge in a cave, the gods knew how, and waited out the storm in her Optime form by a fire. Once her blood had thawed out, she continued in the glittering land of white. At this point, Korva wouldn’t have been surprised if she simply hallucinated a spirit guide.

The days went by, and one night as the sun went down Korva reached a body of water. Could this be the ocean? The smell of it betrayed yes; it was ocean water, although it couldn’t be the Pacific because she had gone the complete opposite direction. She felt a complete exhaustion take over her body, and the least she could do was shift into her Optime form and lay down a few skins on the sand before shivering herself to sleep.

She had a dream that she was a fish, and she was swimming in an ocean, when all of a sudden a shark ate her and she was inside the shark’s belly. She hated the feeling because it was dark and slimy in the stomach of the animal, and she just wanted out.

Korva jerked awake, her canine eyes staring up at the clear night sky, the undisturbed stars blinking at her calmly. She shivered violently, and threw a few skins over herself. Why did she have to leave the pack when it was so cold? Turning over onto her side, she found herself face-to-face with a pair of enormous eyes. “Ahhh!”

Screaming, Korva jumped up and skittered backwards in the sand, panting heavily. She could see her breath on the air, but a small, nearly amphibian creature stared at her with quite possibly the largest eyes she had ever seen. Upon further study, she noticed it had fur, and that it was actually a bit rodent-like. The thing had long spindly fingers and toes, like that of a tree frog (but longer) and a ridiculously long tail that was similar to a rat’s. It had small elfish ears and poofy, beige fur all over the main parts of its body. A tiny pointed snout quivered at her. Could this be her spirit guide? Was this some kind of a joke?

“Who are you?” she ventured, not wanting to look insane, but perhaps she was just dreaming still anyway. The tiny creature kind of quivered there for a bit, then spoke. Oh, I’m Gitlu, it said in a very high-pitched, feminine voice. It’s awful cold isn’t it? she continued politely, would you mind very much if we went home? Mesmerized, Korva crept towards Gitlu, and scooped it up in her hand. The tiny thing attached her long fingers and toes to Korva’s arm and hand, and her eyes became even bigger. In fact, they were so large that the wolf was afraid the poor thing might explode. The tiny animal began breathing quickly and anxiously. Please…put me down… she protested in between her quick breaths. Korva gently placed the fragile being on the ground, and she sighed in relief.

“I suppose… we might as well go home,” the wolf agreed, and began packing her skins back into the bag. She wasn’t looking forward to the long journey home – here, it had taken nearly a week and a half to get here, and probably even longer to get home because she was so tired. It felt good, though, to finally have found her spirit guide. Transforming once more into her Lupine form, she picked her stick up in her mouth, and watched as the tiny creature leapt onto the stick, feeling much more comfortable there than on her arm. The wide eyes lessened a bit, and Gitlu looked around anxiously. Deciding she probably wasn’t going to get any more sleep for the rest of the night anyway, Korva turned around and started the long journey home. After a few hours of walking in silence, Korva realized that even with the small exchange she had had with Gitlu, she had felt a connection, known that she was her spirit guide. The very shy Tarsier closed her eyes as they moved into the daytime, and for the first time in weeks Korva knew that she was happy.

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