Sorrow In Her Making

[Yemana]

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[Yemana]

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[Yemana]

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[Yichimet]

Swallows Rats Whole was lazily drifting down through the air currents that were rushing up the sides of Thunder Bluff, and Yichimet watched him impatiently. He had made this flight four times in the past weeks, his messenger and animal guide, each time returning with a note from Conshomek that said he'd found nothing new. It had now been weeks since he'd spoken to Yemana on the small elevator rise that looked over the rolling hills of Mulgore.

Their words that night started friendly but had become tense when they began talking of peace and war. Words always became tense when Yichimet spoke openly with shu'halo of the other tribes about such things. Suddenly, though, Yemana's face had changed, somehow looking sour and sad and curious all in one expression, and she asked him to help her find out about her father, the Grimtotem. Yichimet feigned surprise, for it was the hunter's keen edge in her eyes that had drawn him to her in the first place.

The owl, with a soft and playful hoot, finally came down from the air to clasp onto Yichimet's first finger shielded with a leather guard. The note was small, folded into a box at the owl's ankle, and he pulled it out, unfolding it slowly, thinking he knew what was inside. Written there, in Conshomek's words, was a simple phrase that Yichimet did not believe: It was Hidua, and you must bring her home.

[Yemana]

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[Yemana]

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[Yichimet]

The Eye of Night was low in the sky, giant and orange, just peaking above the treetops of Feralas's wildlands. Yichimet could see Her only because he sat at the bottom of a valley in a clearing, rubbing a bruiseweed salve onto his arms and legs. His whole body ached. He had been running for weeks through the lands, from Ashenvale through the Stonetalon Mountains, into Desolace and finally into Feralas. During the day he was a ghost-wolf, and the pads of his paws were scabbed; at night, in his shu'halo form, his body felt pieced together from rock and wood. Each night he was so exhausted he could barely stay awake enough to choke down food and light a fire to keep the animals away. While he slept he did not dream, he had no Visions, and when he woke he was more exhausted than when he went to sleep. If he was not so mindless, so rote in his movements now, he would be scared that his nights were cut off from the Spirits.

Swallows Rats Whole hooted from a nearby tree limb. Yichimet hooted back and curled up to sleep.

* * *

When he woke, An'she had replaced Mu'sha in His peaking over the leaves. The morning was golden and misty down in the valley, and Yichimet was cold from the water on his fur. He chewed on some smoked fish jerky before he looked about for Swallows Rats Whole, who was sleeping high above.

The sun had risen little in the short time between their waking and their moving from camp. They ran through the morning, calling back and forth, the owl flying ahead and Yichimet yipping his disappointment when the owl found nothing.

At mid-day, with An'she glaring down upon them, they came to a river, and at its banks was a black-coated shu'halo sipping from her cupped hands. She was bloodied, but not with her own blood, and her manetails dipped into the water. When she stood and saw him, she froze in place, and so did Yichimet.

A hole in his chest he had thought long closed ripped open again, and in his head the name rattled around, Snowfeather, and as he turned back into shu'halo he put his hand to his heart. It is not her. It is not her.

"Yemana," he said, and sat down hard, his head light. An'she grinned down wickedly between the trees as he lost consciousness.

[Yichimet]

Hidua looked at the resting Ishnalea from the other side of the tent. The bloodied linen he had packed around her wound looked like a dark cloud in an otherwise clear sky: the omens were all around him tonight. The wound was graver than even his great skill could fix in one night, and so he had packed it with an herb salve while her lips tightened against the pain and Hidua's reticence.

Now she slept again, and he sat stirring the coals of the fire and humming a chant to call the Spirits to him. He had become the Great Bear and moved the centaur's bodies far from the tent hours ago, and already rock buzzards were feasting on them, and their spirits' release and the chant and the bundle of dreamfoil he tossed on the fire were all he needed to walk into the Vision.

The Hawk perched on the Eye of Night, lifted a wing and called across the dark.

In his heart a stone gave birth to a stone.

The number of footprints on the canyon floor grew steadily.

Tying the sapling limbs together, she wove a net for the Wind.

Owl and Eye covered by clouds, unseeing but seen.

A litter of coyotes barking their hunger, the Mother sunning on a rock.

The Vision lifted as swiftly as it came, and he felt the Spirits' fingertips brushing his nose as they left. The moon was much further in its trip, and daylight was only hours away.

The same thing each time, he thought. He remembered her weaving branches together: an omen of futility, trapping that which can't be trapped. Buzzards fought for the dead flesh, squawking and screaming in the night, and the hair across Hidua's body rose. He stood and shifted into the Great Cat quickly, sniffing about for a sign of danger. His ears perked, but no sound other than the clumsy birds came to him. He became shu'halo again and crossed to Ishnalea on the other side of the fire, lay down beside her, and went to sleep.

[Yichimet]

The sun came down from its zenith, set, and the moon rose, spreading pale, cold light over Feralas, then it too disappeared as the sun rose again above the treetops. All this time Yichimet slept feverishly. He woke slowly in mid-morning to a burnt-out fire and a bedroll across from him, taking nearly a full minute to remember where he was and what he was doing there. His head felt wrapped in cloud tied loosely with linen strips. He sat up slowly, and Swallows Rats Whole gave a soft hoot from the branches before gliding down to his shoulder.

Before he even had time to consider the rustling brush behind him a threat, Yemana pushed through quietly with a newly-filled waterskin in her hands. Yichimet turned to face her and some emotion he could not recognize registered in her eyes. Her face and body looked tired, but her eyes were steeled unlike when they first met.

"I wasn't sure how long you'd sleep, Clouded Eyes," she said, bringing the waterskin to him. "I dreamt you were waiting for me to burn my fingers in the fire again, and then you would wake and laugh at me." Yemana smiled with these last words and sat down across from him. She plucked little barbed seeds out of her manetails while she spoke to him, looking only at the braids in her hands.

Yichimet guzzled the water. His throat was dry as a canyon floor, but the water sloshed uncomfortably in his empty stomach when he finished. "Sister, you honor me with your care. I have been running for weeks, and the last puddle of my strength dried up yesterday when I finally saw you."

Yemana looked up from her braids curiously. "Finally saw me?" she asked. It took a beat for the meaning to come to her. "You were...looking for me?"

He nodded, looking in her eyes. "You asked something of me, many moons ago, and I have been searching all this time."

She was frozen where she sat now, one braid clutched to her chest. In the mid-morning light, and with a rested mind, Yichimet could not remember what it was that yesterday broke open that hole in his chest. Nothing about this shu'halo was like Snowfeather: her markings were different, her fur a different color; Yemana was taller and her words more reserved. But still, Yichimet remembered this shu'halo bending for a drink, blood on her, and something in his heart tightened.

"You found him?" she said softly.

"Only his name. He is with our ancestors now, sister," Yichimet said. "He is a Spirit who watches over us."

She looked down, letting go of her braid and bracing her hands on her knees. "Praise the Earthmother. Praise the Northern Wind."

Yichimet repeated her prayer and rose slowly from the ground. His muscles and joints ached badly. He walked to her and sat on the ground beside her, facing the firepit. "We need to return to the Thousand Needles, Yemana," he said, looking up to the sun's position.

"But you say he is dead. Why then would I need to go there, when I have been pushed away before?"

"Because your father was the Sorcerer of our Tribe. The new Sorcerer will need to see you."

She looked up from the ground slowly, meeting his eyes, and he prayed she did not read the words that also rang in his head: He will need to see you, and he may well kill you.

[Greebo]

(( someone needs to take those grimtotem punks out back and teach them a lesson in humility and being-nice-ness. ))

[Yichimet]

Yemana danced and feasted with the Grimtotem long into the night while Yichimet sat beside Conshomek. They talked in low tones about everything but her: Magatha, the long-ears and pink-skins, Conshomek's Vision Hunts, the elders who were passing and those who would be taking their place. Everything but the sparking flint behind Conshomek's eyes: Yichimet could no more read what stake the Sorcerer had in Yemana than he could pluck the hard stone that had settled in Conshomek's spine since he had taken the title. The matter of a daughter of Hidua was something like a rock on a cliff face. When you pulled at it, would it fall? Or would it hold your weight? Yichimet could not answer the questions himself. He did not know the shu'halo; he had spent days on the trail with her, but before that nothing but kind or sharp words in strange places. She was a soft wind, either to blow a bit of dust or to bring a storm into the canyons. And Conshomek was too much himself to ask.

Yemana glanced at Yichimet from time to time, his the only familiar face in the orange glow of the giant bonfire, and he could only smile broadly at the mussed tails of her hair and the feather mask she had been given. She knew nothing of Hidua or his Visions, only what little Yichimet had told her on their hike through the wildlands. If she was here to test herself against Conshomek, she was much more cunning than the most fearsome giant cat.

Eventually the feasting and dancing and music died down. Yemana was given a tent of her own, next to Conshomek's. Yichimet slept through the night in his family's tent, dreaming of darkness only, and woke when the sun was only a faint hint of light in the dawn sky. Night on the Bluffs was cold, and he wrapped a valleycat hide around himself when he stepped outside. He had hunted and killed the cat himself when he was barely older than a mooncalf, before he had been Hidua's apprentice, before learning to talk to Spirits. That it was still in his mother's tent when he returned from time to time made his spirit warm also. He thought about Conshomek then, the new Sorcerer, about the Hunt they had taken and Yichimet's failing. He was again the apprentice, the calf to a Sorcerer, and he was not sure he minded. So much happened in the world, and walking with the Horde made him proud most days.

He made his way across the camp slowly, breathing puffs of mist, nodding and smiling to the braves who walked among the dark tents. He reached Yemana's tent and sat on the ground outside it, waiting for her to wake so he could tell her more things she must know. A soft snoring came from Conshomek's nearby tent.

[Yichimet]

"Hidua hunted me silently when I was younger, like you just did,â€