Part 2 of the January task. See Recollect the Memories for Part 1. Also, for an explanation; most of the last part of this is Ralla hallucinating from fatigue.
January 27th
Morning came without Ralla really realizing it. The sun, although faint and coming weakly through the holes in the cave roof, didn't quite reach her eyes enough to wake her. But still she roused, the dying embers of her small fire burning out as if to say 'time to get up; our duty is done'. Rubbing her eyes as if she were a small child again, she sluggishly began to repack her things, driven to complete her journey and cleansing. Blessedly the blanket and fire had been enough combined warmth for the night. For some reason, as soon as daybreak came, it was as if all the magic from the caves was spirited away elsewhere, and so Ralla's sleepy eyes skimmed the cave walls and were disappointed to find the mystical music bereft of the caverns.
Next on her journey was Grandfather's Tears. She had already seen Mersey Lagoon earlier in the winter, and the once-swamp was frozen over solid without hope of entering its waters without a hammer to drive through the feet of ice. The day's journey and cleansing would be the hardest and most difficult, if not just because of the legends she had heard, but the danger. Some had commented that the danger was just a myth. But Ralla... Ralla believed firmly in superstition, if not because she was led and almost seemed to revolve around the whims of the moon and Great Spirits. The river to the four great bodies of water was as lethargic as Ralla's body, although she picked up the pace the more her muscles warmed from walking. She would reach the water within an hour or so, but she would not cleanse in them until dusk; when there would be a full moon to light her way in the night and the sun setting to guide her in the day; the path between the two great times; the twilight, and time of balance. Until then, she would meditate. She desperatly needed to sort some thoughts.
Arriving, Ralla was almost confused to see quite the common scene. Stretched across the way were the four springs, each one connected as if in an eternal loop, and a final stretch of river leading from them to feed the ever hungering sea. The ground was firm around her, but Ralla was still careful lest she find a patch of ice or a pitfall into a cave, although she doubted that those occupied her current area. She walked to one end of the grove and climbed a Balsam Poplar. The way up was rigged with hundreds of little twigs and branches, but Ralla managed to maneuver agilely to rest in the curve of a branch, setting her pack in a close crook for safe keeping. The white wolfess would be lying if she said that she wasn't afraid of the curse said to be placed on the waters that she was so closely near, and so she felt safer in the trees. It had always been that way.
Climbing back down, Ralla went to what she determined as the center of the sporadically placed springs and sat in the snow, clearing the patch first with her foot so she rested upon slightly drenched and cool grass. Closing her eyes, hands resting serenly in her lap, Ralla let her mind go. It was a basic technique that was included in the first things the Crescent Moon Pack elders had taught her; it cleared her mind, separated her from the distractions of the outside world, and allowed her to think clearly. Yet try as she might have done to do so back in her hut or near the Great Fire, she couldn't achieve that inner peace. Not yet. But this, what she was doing then, was her chance to change that. She would have peace of mind yet; she was determined to stay in the light and lead her life full.
First there was darkness; perpetual, silent darkness. And then, like a storyboard, color began to sprout through Ralla's mind's eye. Her adventure on the gypsy luperci ship; three weeks at sea; the salty brine of the great ocean; the calls of the nomadic sailors; the songs of the women and children; the happiness. Many wolves had gossiped around Ralla, asking how a pack of wolves with no place could ever be happy, what with no guarantee of steady food or shelter. But Ralla didn't see it that way; she saw a pack of happy, content wolves who were grateful for their lot in life and were able to travel and see more than what was lying right in front of them. Had she been so inclined, she would've joined them at one point. But alas, it was not in Ralla's way. Sure she travelled from time to time, but she needed that assurance of home; a stable place to call one's own. She needed AniWaya.
And that brought up her contradicting nature of loyalty.
How could Chief Dawali believed me so easily when I said that I had left my last tribe? How could he have believed me that I would stay and return as many times as I have? How would he believe that she would come back when she left in spring...? Ralla had left the Crescent Moon Pack of the Moon Tribe because she was afraid; afraid to be alone, cut off from family and any other wolf save to deliver the words of the moon. And so she had run from her responsibility, duty, and home without looking back, a pain in her heart for leaving her brother and father. She had left them, believing that they would never find her and believe that she was happy elsewhere. That alone should've labeled her as someone not to trust with an obligation. But somehow, when she came to AniWaya, Chief Dawali and everyone she had met was so kind to her. They trusted her without asking too many questions, and had helped her with whatever she had asked. What more could a wolfess ask for? And if her eyes had not been shut, Ralla might've cried just feeling the sense of trust that she felt from her tribes members. And she trusted them. She wanted to protect them... Oh Kemo, she mourned, remembering how she had been powerless when he had told her that he had raped one of her pack mates. How was she supposed to handle that? She had said that she loved him, and he her, and now she was torn between him and her tribe; her family. And she had a good guess of who it was, too. Sanuye Because she had not been around and Ralla had not seen her at all. She might've seen some pack mates less than others, but there had always been tell-tale signs that alerted Ralla to their presence. But it was as if Sanuye had been wiped clean off the slate in AniWaya since Ralla had learned the news. And knowing Sanuye as she did, it was all a terrible, terrible mess.
But did she love him? ... She had to say yes. She felt so strongly about Kemo. She wanted to protect him. She enjoyed his company. She wanted to be there for him. If that wasn't love, what was it? Ralla had never really loved anyone before; she had gotten the idea of loving someone taken out of her head at an early age as a precaution should she be too heartbroken when the time would've come for her to be permanantly separated from the main pack. And so, she had never really let herself loose with her emotions other than with her father, brother, and best friend, Naka. Everyone else...was a blur. And that was a terrible thought, because that 'blur' was her old tribe. But their faces didn't register in her mind anymore. They were gone like the cry of a mourning dove at dawn; finite and fleeting.
Up in the trees, resting on some blankets and wrapped in that leather grip, was her little axe. As she had first mused on it before she had left on the cleansing journey, it held the responsibility of many others before her. It represented her duty and purpose within AniWaya, and she had honed the blade to sharpness as was Ember's teaching; another show of kindness. And what had Ralla done for the tribe? Fed the fires. Told fortunes and stories and songs. But was that really usefull...? It all depended on who one talked to. Chief Dawali had assured Ralla of her place in the tribe; she was no longer afraid to say that she was fully a part of it, nor afraid to say that she belonged. It just felt so right. If she had to compare love, she truly loved her home. Truly.
She had met many others. J'adore. Naniko. Valinta. Shawchert. Bangle. Strel. Liev. And so many passing others that she regretted to not have caught the names of. Each name and face held a seperate story and feeling, so much so that her once dark solarium in her mind ascended to a rainbow kaleidoscope, shifting in shapes and sometimes mirroring each other, some good, some bad. Scrunching up her face a little, Ralla dismissed the chaos wihtin her and returned to step one.
For hours as the sun shined overhead, Ralla repeated the exercise, breathing shallowly and occasionally feeling a chill. She had not eaten since the night before, and would not for fear of becoming tired. When night came, she would stake out the area in her tree and see just what the curse of Grandfather's Tears was. For now, as she let another round of her life crescendo, she began to hum when she felt emotional distress. Singing... Yes, that was a constant companion of love. It comforted her; protected her from harsh realities and loneliness. At one point she thought that she could've dealt with the moon, stars, and songs for company in that cave. But it had been too much, especially when she learned the true meaning of the word 'forever'.
Dusk arrived just as Ralla felt herself begin to find clarity amongst the discord. For once in a long while, Ralla felt level-headed and clear on what had exactly transpired; it had all been so fast that there had not been enough time for her to directly translate all the true meanings in her mind. Truth; there was another easily manipulated word. What was truth? It was what wanted to see. It would never be singular for any situation; it was all what one would see and perceive. It was just something one had to accept, no matter how stubborn a statement or 'truth' was. Ralla would have to live with that, because she alone--or even standing beside a million other wolves--could not change that truth. She rose from her little circle and made her way to the first spring. With the moon risin just over the horizon and the sun blinking its last vestiges of light on the other side, Ralla stood on the cusp of the change of day as she lowered her right foot to the barely moving waters.
Like the other times, this water was so cold it burned. But still she went on. She would most assuredly contract a cold from this journey, but she shoved that reality from her mind, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. Deeper and deeper she went in, repeating her actions from the day before and at least getting her head and face drenched in the water. If that didn't wake her up, nothing would. But instead of drying off as she did after every chilling wash, Ralla stepped right back up to the shore and walked to the next large body of water, dripping little droplets of water that were already begin to turn crystaline as she hurried to finish the process. The next cleansing was slightly more numbing, so much so that Ralla couldn't diffrientiate the chill from the water from the chill that was going up her spine in warning. Again for the third lake. By the fourth, her muscles were jelly, although she could not feel them any more than she could feel her fingers or toes. Shaking ferociously to try and dislodge as much water as possible, Ralla began her slow but steady climb back up the poplar, careful not to slip and to make sure her claws had firm hold in the bark. She reached her pack and engulfed herself in all the blankets, nestling into the fork of branches comfortably and almost blending into the brown bark with the shade of the leather coverlets. An hour or so must have passed as Ralla sat shivering in that tree, her cleansing finished and all that was left was to rid her morbid curiosity with Grandfather's tears. With that last small achievement, she would count herself rid of all her impurities from the last year.
Night came swiftly, as it was wont to do in winter, but the stars did not shine and the moon was misted over from the rising vapor that emanated from the four springs. All the trees, seen through Ralla's eyes and the fog, were a ghostly white; even the brown poplar's branches looked paler. Ralla's eyes were hooded as she recalled the legend of the four bodies of water, the dark green orbs hazed over with cold and fatigue. Once there was a tribe here... They were many and prosperous. But one year, prey and food became scarce, and the pack began to die out... When winter came, and all seemed lost, it was said that an elder cried for his pack--praying for their safety and deliverance--and his tears were so great that they formed these lakes. But instead of the pack's survival, the entire tribe was claimed by winter's breath. Ralla looked down to the water and saw their once clear color had darkened in the night to a deep indigo; appealing, entrancing, and tempting to go near. But Ralla had already done her cleansing; she had no need to return to the ground. I was warned away from here because prey animals sometimes come here... and end up dead, without a marking or any sign of poison. How was that possible that prey animals could so mysteriously die? Would it happen to Ralla, too? But she was no prey animal... But had any wolf ever attempted what she had? Looking down again, Ralla saw a small wapiti pad over to the side of one of the Tears, a ways away from where Ralla was. It's neck bent down to drink, and Ralla let it be. Minutes passed before Ralla heard a splash, snapping her attention to where the wapiti had been.
Looking down, the wapiti was gone; without a trace.
Awake from fear, Ralla sat up a little higher in her pseudo-nest. Her ears were ringing as she searched for the wapiti, the curse's entailment returning to her mind the longer the time passed. Her eyes scanned the ground below, although she had to rub them to keep them clear. The cold waters of the land had sapped her strength over the course of two days... She heard a faint howl--indistinct, haunting--rise from below, and Ralla's heart rate shot up at least ten times faster. Through her eyes, she saw the mist condense and form into many wolves, all in lupus form, and all prowling close to the water's edge. The forms congealed and dispersed easily--one moment there, the next gone--but Ralla could almost see white specks floating where she thought the eyes would be. She hunkered down deeper into her blankets, chanting prayers for the Great Fire and prayers to the moon for protection. The chants were not even spoken aloud for fear of alerting the apparations of her presence, if they didn't already know; instead she spoke them in time with her rapidly beating heart.
The entire night passed thusly.
At some point during the night, Ralla had fallen asleep, although she was stiff as a log from fear. She opened her eyes and peaked carefully over the branches to the ground below. But there was no mist; no apparitions; no foreboding feeling; no chill up her spine. But there was a dead wapiti body by the waterside. And then, it was as if Ralla understood the reason behind the curse. Even after death... The pack's still hungry... But they couldn't partake in their meal, so they kept doing what they had been taught to do; hunt, kill, and try to satisfy a hunger that could never be sated. It was sad, the more Ralla thought about it. Because the truly cursed ones was them, weren't they? Carefully, knees shaking--mostly from fatigue--Ralla shimmied down the trunk with her pack and blankets, not daring to go near the former pack's kill. Instead she neared one of the water edges and knelt, closing her eyes and saying a prayer, touching a single hand to the ground in the position of respect that she had shown to Chief Dawali and once to her father.
Leaving behind Grandfather's Tears was like leaving behind a sorrow and burden; the past year's fears were gone, and with it the inner conflict. Yes, new problems and sorrows would arise, and she would have to face them head on. But there at those four waters she had left much; she had left a little bit of herself in all of AniWaya's waters. Would they remember her? Would they tell the rocks and trees? I doubt it, she thought with a private laugh to herself. She wasn't so important as to be remembered forever by the land. But maybe...maybe it would deign to know her for the time she had left living. And who knew? Maybe she would join her ancestors, or even the AniWayan ancestors, to take part in the Everlasting Hunt.
In the morning haze, if Ralla had looked back, she might've been able to see the mist contort briefly into the shape almost distinctly canine.
Moon walks. "Moon talks." Moon thinks.
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