Hidua is dead. by Yichimet

[Keeper Of Lore]

Yichimet puffed on his pipe and the peacebloom smoke curled through the air. When he exhaled, the smoke from his breath blew through the wafting strings and made shapes and swirls in the air of the inn. He recognized some of the shapes, but did not Name them so they would have no power over him. He was not hunting on Tomorrow's Path. He blew harder to ward away the signs. He stood up and left the small room, stepping into the busy streets of Orgrimmar. He had been sleeping here for a few weeks, away from the strong winds and strong glares of Thunder Bluff. The elevation assured the first. His Grimtotem pride assured the second. In Orgrimmar, though, he was another face among many faces. He had spent little time here before. The feeling of loneliness was a small stone in his hoof--something that shouldn't have been more than a minor annoyance, but made him lame nonetheless. Nearly as soon as he left the inn a hawk owl swooped down from one of the rooftops, hooting loudly. Yichimet barely had time to put out his wrist for Swallows Rats Whole to grasp. Hidua's bird, Yichimet thought. Tied to the leg was a small, thick scrap of skin with ink scribbles on it. The message was short: It is time to come home, Clouded Eyes. Hidua is dead.The handwriting was Conshomek's. Yichimet Clouded-Eyes-Sees would go home, would walk the path of the Sorcerer, would face his tribe-brother Conshomek. His teacher was dead. He could not avoid the hunter who had been stalking him through the grasses. * * * In two days he was standing beside Conshomek in front of the Elders' Fire, the circle of old shu'halo watching the two. Feathers were tied with leather strips around his horns and arms. The air was filled with smoke of all kinds: the mountain silversage burnt for cleansing, the peacebloom passed in the pipe, the mageroyal to invite the Spirits. Yichimet breathed deeply and felt calm and sad. “When the Sorcerer dies, his spirit is but a spirit,” Rewsha Heart-Too-Fast said, his old eyes drooping as if sleep was coming over him. “He walks the crevasses and the spires and slowly he becomes one with the Spirits.” “He looks to the East for direction,” Ahwe Split-Finger said. “He looks to the North for peace,” Neshaminock Face-Dyed-Deep said. “He looks to the West for his destination,” Seeram Coyote-Tongue said. “He looks to the South at us,” Rewsha said. Rewsha passed a bowl of skyserpent liver around. Last in the circle, Yichimet took the bowl from Conshomek’s hands and ate his share, then puffed on the pipe when it came to him. “Mu’sha’s eye keep us straight,” Rewsha prayed. Yichimet prepared for the Vision Hunt.

[Keeper Of Lore]

It is a Vision not like others. He is himself, he walks on his hooves, he knows who he is and where he is and what he is. In the distance he sees a giant tree, which is his teacher. His teacher is standing beside him with a stag-skull for a head. From the branches of his antlers hang feathers, a demon-hand, a smoothly polished stone, a braided twist of white hair. His teacher hands him an apple and says “You have always been my food, my son,” and when their hands touch a storm is frozen in the sky. Together they say the words “You know what I must do” and Hidua pulls a moon from Yichimet’s chest while Yichimet puts his fingers in the eyeholes of the skull and tears it from the body. “You will hold her safe while I find these things,” Yichimet says. Hidua’s pool-deep eyes close slowly, open slowly. “Snowfeather is here,” he says, and swallows the moon past his flat-toothed mouth. “The truth is I will not find them,” Yichimet says as he pulls the strings from the antlers. “The truth is she is only mine.” “The bullfrog sings from the valley, the owl from the tree. You will never be alone again.” Yichimet has a stag-skull for a head, and ringing wood-chimes in his hands. A giant tree is on the horizon, and it is his teacher, and through its branches shines the moon, and it is his lover.

[Keeper Of Lore]

Yichimet woke suddenly in the night, the fire burned low, the other old bulls and Conshomek still Hunting the Vision. He reached for his neck and felt the familiar cool crescent moon against his matted fur, dangling from a rawhide twist he had made just days after Snowfeather’s passing. A coyote howled through the ravines, the sound ghostly. He was unafraid of the things he saw, but he could now feel his loneliness like a woven cloak thrown around his body. His was the Lone Path. He knew that now. He pulled out his pipe and packed peacebloom, then lit it with a twig that had missed the fire. He drew deeply and blew out the smoke, watching the first pass for a sign. The Wing over the Head. Not necessarily a bad sign, but a potent warning to watch the skies. He blew again. This was harder to make out. As it whirled away, he decided it was The Falling Bone-tipped Spear. A strange sign to see here, among his friends, where the land could not be split among them. He blew again. The Injured Ear, a warning to think hard on the Signs from his Vision of Hidua and the Tree. One final cloud to read before he had looked all ways, and it was the clearest: The Harpy’s Heart, either a victory song or a Sign of defeat. He pulled his bedroll underneath his head as he lay back down to sleep the night away. Above him, the moon silently closed her eye on her way down.

[Keeper Of Lore]

The feeling of his body in the physical world, however, kept him awake for some time, as it always did after he walked the Spirit Path. The others around him moaned or snorted at odd times too, and Yichimet found himself staring at the sky, unable to sleep, thinking about the Vision and what it meant.His heart ached from things he had buried for months: his love of Snowfeather and her death, his feeling of betrayal at Hidua’s hands, his loneliness as he walked the lands away from his tribe. As the wind howled through the chasms of the Thousand Needles, his spirit was purged of its sun-bleached feeling, but he now felt the loss of the two he loved most in this world even more keenly. Hidua was dead, and though his spirit would soon walk with the Spirits, and though Yichimet would soon have his teacher’s watchful gaze on him always, the grief boiled up.When it had finished coursing through his body and had settled like a stone again in his heart, he rolled over and looked at Conshomek, who still sat upright, staring at the fire. His mouth moved but Yichimet could not make out the words; he was still on the Vision Hunt. He remembered the first time Conshomek, tall, young and quiet, had come to sit around the fire with him and Hidua. In his eyes was the pride Yichimet remembered at his own first sitting, when he had left his parents tent at the Sorcerer’s urging to follow the path that Hidua set before him.By the time Conshomek came to share the fire, Yichimet had walked the Spirit Path with Hidua several times. The first was the terrible vision of The Great Tree dropping demon-fruit that grew into world-wrecking beings of hate, and when he had gained his name known only to the Grimtotem, though in orcish it meant “Clouded Eyes Sees,” and a few of the Horde he trusted knew that much. When Conshomek came to sit with them, Yichimet already knew how to pull lightning from the air, and use the earth’s power to concuss an enemy, and had learned to put the elemental spirits into a totem. Yichimet had not thought of him as a rival for the title of Sorcerer then, when he wanted so badly to please Hidua. Now Yichimet was not sure he even wanted to follow Hidua’s path.Conshomek muttered something lowly and snorted, and Yichimet turned away again to stare at the sky. He thought of the direction in which his Vision pointed him, the four directions he would seek: the things that hung from the antlers that had sprouted from stag-Hidua. Something so clear in a Vision must have clarity in the Waking Path, too, and so he remembered: feathers, hand, stone, hair. Feathers, hand, stone, hair.As he fell asleep, feathers, hand, stone, hair.