Of Primordial Greatness
Written By: B. Carlisle
We all still remember… We still have remnants of memories… Memories of crawling our slimy, incoherent selves out of the primordial ooze which is life.
Where are all the answers we seek today? In the blood, in the blood. The answers lie in
DNA… in the blood.
Imagine a great formula of vitamins and minerals. A great life producing formula that was only found in the beginning. The beginning before it became used; with time leaching the great particles back into the Land and Air. The formula for life before it became contaminated with fecal matter and newly produced substances. Substances produced by the living things created from this wonderful formula. This wonderful formula made of mud can never be found again… unless you can find another new, untouched planet in the stages of “beginning”.
God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt.
Chapter 1
I was a tadpole… before that, a micro organism no one could name. My tadpoleness grew out of the most miraculous mud.
Golden mud. Full of the best elements in the periodic table and now my tadpoleness is evolving. Happy. I am not lacking in any minerals or vitamins… all needs are met and here is food. Right here with me.
Sometimes I entertain the thought of never having to leave my pond… So comfortable and convenient… Every thing I need is right here.
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It is early in the primordial world. The sun cuts a misty, golden light across the swamps and glitters on the fresh dew. Strange creatures begin to stir. Julia (that’s what we will call her) sits back on her haunches and scratches her back on the tree behind her. She yawns and shakes last night’s leaves from her fur.
Slowly stretching she looks around for something to eat and plucks a fruit from the tree she is scratching on. Chewing slowly she wanders down to the creek and gets a drink. It is already a beautiful, easy day in Julia’s life. Pretty much like all the others…
Julia still remembers the warm, lapping caress of the waters from which her kind came. The childhood of evolution in her mind running through her blood. So few had come through… but survival of her kind was not what Julia worried about, if Julia worried about anything. Her home in the huge old oak by the pond her ancestors emerged from was forever. Food was plentiful. It seemed strange that they all had come out the same. Not much variation between her and the others. Only five of them evolved… only five and here they were. Tree, food, water and perfect weather all the time.
Life was good for Julia; she had plenty of time to study her surroundings. No thoughts of “fight for survival”. Simple, innocent creature that she was; but the mud that her kind had evolved from was truly miraculous stuff. The bluish gold stuff sat there shining in the sun now. Rich in cobalt minerals and vitamin B… the creative functions of Julia’s kind were highlighted upon arrival. Julia really didn’t possess a curiosity that would help her figure out how things worked or anything. She did possess a curiosity that drove her towards beauty and creations. Julia was fascinated by her world and would be a member of the first kind to pick up the mud and start smearing it around on things, trying to copy what she saw.
She also had time to study her food sources. Figure out which ones were the best. After getting sick from a particularly gooey green bug, she was a little more disconcerting in her choices now. Julia was watching one of her favorites at the moment. A huge, blue-backed dragonfly. The dragonfly would land, Julia would pounce, and the dragonfly would take off again. It was in this manner that Julia was led away from her tree and pond. In fact, it was this dragonfly, this breakfast, that would lead Julia into a new area of her garden; where her life and the course of mankind would be changed forever.
Chapter 2
I was a tadpole… I became that way because I evolved and am still evolving. I remember coming from mud. Smelly, black mud where I fought the fungus and mold for food so I could make it to my tadpoleness.
In my memories of memories I recall a lack of something… something always not quite there or enough of it. Later, after “The Evolution” I would discover it was a lack of vitamin B-12… among other things that my mud just did not have.
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Memories of hunger and pain. Flashes of black and red… pains in the legs, tail and back. Pains in the head. Hunger and need. “Kelvin” only knows survival and darkness. Only three of the tadpoles had made it. Only three out of hundreds… but there was not enough food. Not enough of whatever it was that caused them to start attacking each other. Kelvin thought back through those distant memories… things he had never experienced, never seen, but knew because the memories of them flowed through him. Memories lodged forever in his blood. Memories he had woken up with when he opened his eyes for the first time. He scratches his head. Trying to shake off the memories and the memories from twenty suns ago when he lashed out at his feeding creature over the fish she would not share.
He knew he had broken her arm when he grabbed the fish and ran off. He felt a little strange about it for some reason but that didn’t matter. He had food and he had run a long way. Run a long way from the gloomy, cold area he knew. As he crouched in the unknown bushes, he contemplated what happened to his kind when they got hurt or sick. His feeder would probably die. He didn’t care but he did feel a little something about the fact there were only two left of his kind now. He had no idea where the other one was either. All this fighting for survival… fighting just to get to the sand… just to get off all fours and stand on two legs… just to be able to reach the fruit on the trees… just to live. Alone.
Kelvin went back to thinking of food. He didn’t care about much but the monster in his guts when he was hungry. All that mattered was he was alive today, at least right now. Kelvin also went through a bevy of emotions all the time. Being that his mud was severely deficient in the vitamins and minerals needed to control the emotions… Kelvin’s kind had outrageous situations that had involved emotions. Kelvin remembered the last six of them bellowing out “the noise” in anger and fear. Then breaking out in tears when the last three of them saw everyone lay dead. The mourning for days. Then the strange need for them to do something, anything… After “the other one”, his feeder and himself had buried all the bodies (“planting them” so maybe they would grow back like the trees) “the other one” had left them. He just walked off one day. Kelvin was lost in his thoughts… resting.
Chapter 3
In Julia’s pursuit of the dragonfly she never saw the creature in the bush. Until she ran into him of course.
Kelvin had no idea what had just run into him but it was roughly his size and sort of looked like a smaller, yellowish white colored version of his feeder. What he did know was he was hungry and this creature looked like a lot of food. All Kelvin’s survival tactics kicked in and he lashed out with his arm catching Julia square in the back and pinning her to the forest floor. Julia who had never been “attacked” or anything short of “play time”, laughed at first. She wasn’t hurt, but when she looked at the face of the creature on top of her she began to whimper… and didn’t even know what the sound was or that it was coming from her.
Kelvin’s first thoughts were of his stomach and now he must kill and eat the thing. Fortunately for Julia and mankind, he did not. Something about the way this creature smelled. The strange noise it was making. The trembling all over. It reminded him of one of the small, white furry things he liked to snack on when he could catch them.
The largest thing that kept Kelvin from killing Julia is that they were very similar to each other. Kelvin had never seen any other thing alive (besides his feeder and the other one of his kind) that looked like him. Everything had wings or scales. Everything walked around on all fours or crawled. He saw this creature running at him on two legs. Just like him. This creature also had fur all over like him but it was much lighter, a light golden white color, and softer. Its face was a very pale brown. Its eyes were blue like the sky and like Kelvin’s feeder.
The smell of its fear was doing something to him as well and Julia was done being observed. In a move learned from play she rolled over and knocked Kelvin off of her. Then it was her turn to observe. Within the first two minutes Julia began to feel joy and happiness at finding a friend like her. A new friend like her and the other four but not quite. This creature had dark brown fur and a paler face than she was used to… almost light gray. Its eyes were blue like the other creatures like her. Its fur was rougher than hers and it was bigger, taller. She batted its arm trying to get it to play with her and got knocked in the head for it. Scampering off into the bushes she felt a way she had never felt before. Fear and this intense want to get away from this thing replaced her joy.
The “thing”, was not finished with Julia though. Kelvin followed her through the forest, back to her cozy home by the pond. As he did so, he began to notice this area was much more pleasant than the gloomy cold world he knew. Julia’s pond was clear blue, not brown and murky like his. There were no slimy, green leafy things all in it competing for food or nutrients. He could see the fish swimming in it and they were big! They were way different than the tiny gray minnows that only caused more problems in his pond. There were a lot of those fish too. Plenty. He could eat them all and never be hungry again. Maybe, just maybe… the “thing” that was needed was here. The missing thing that no food ever got rid of.
Kelvin felt the sun on his fur. He felt lazy. The light colored creature had disappeared into a large oak tree. All Kelvin had to do was reach into the pond and he brought out a large tasty fish. After his belly was full he stretched out over the grass and fell asleep in the sun. It was the first time Kelvin ever felt safe, warm and full.
He awoke in a circle of five golden white colored creatures staring at him with their big blue eyes and jolted in fear. Eyes wide, he began to growl and make “the noise”. The noise always worked and it didn’t fail him this time either. All of the creatures scattered to various bushes and trees, only Julia came cautiously back to him.
Julia didn’t know danger or fear. She had not gained the survival skills Kelvin had. Julia did not carry the vitamin deficiency that ran strongly through Kelvin’s DNA. Julia did have pheromones. Strong ones that were touching Kelvin in ways he did not understand. Kelvin’s animalistic mind told him two basic things: One: He did not ever want to leave this sunny land of abundance. Two: he knew he wanted this creature with him to make him feel this way always. It might not have been what was missing in the mud or his blood but it did make Kelvin feel different and that was good enough right now. Kelvin flew out of the clearing at Julia and grabbing her up, made off into the forest with her.
It was making that strange noise again. How was it making that noise? It was similar to “the noise” that he made but not really. This was neither loud nor powerful. The sound was coming from the creatures face. That’s where his came from too. Struggling with his capture he sat on it, then opened its mouth with his hands. Looking in he saw nothing spectacular. Nothing different from his own face hole. The sound was coming from in there though. Placing his face over the creatures face hole he tried to breathe in. He tried to “suck up” the sound. Julia was struggling underneath him to no avail. The dark rough creature on top of her was stronger and would not let her head go. He now had his eating hole on hers and was poking around in there. She couldn’t get away. He wouldn’t stop and he wouldn’t let her up.
When Kelvin put his mouth over Julia’s he had no idea what the chemical reactions between the two of them would do to him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt the creature now laying there making the weird noise, crying with her eyes closed. He didn’t want to make it scared of him but it was too late now. Kelvin really had no remorse though. Of all his emotions it was regret that was rather unfamiliar to him. As long as things didn’t die it was okay. Sitting back on his haunches he relived this moment in his life. For in this moment of capture, he had taken something from this creature that could replace what his DNA had always lacked. Kelvin felt great, better than he ever had in his whole life, but as the glow from what he had found began to wear off he felt the hole begin to reopen in his being. He knew he could never let this creature go now. Dragging Julia behind him he took off through the forest.
Chapter 4
It was five suns later when Kelvin found a pond and tree just like Julia’s. Julia knew she had no others anymore, no one but this rough dark creature. She didn’t know where she was. Didn’t know how to find the others or her pond and she was terrified. Terror also being a new thing to her. Something was happening to her and she didn’t know what. This strange creature that was keeping her with it only seemed to care about food and getting food… and attacking her. It never looked at or smelled the flowers, only crushed them looking for food. It never took long swims in the pond, only splashed violently around looking for food. It never picked up the mud and spread it around in designs on rocks, only dug in it for food. She wished desperately for the others and missed her tree. The creature that had her didn’t care for anything but food and attacking her all the time.
Kelvin had a sense that something was wrong with this creature he had taken. He wondered if it was like the sickness the others had gotten. He wondered if it would die. Something in him did not want that to happen. He had never cared about the others. He didn’t care about the one who sometimes fed him before he was big enough to catch his own food. All he had cared about that one was that it would not share its fish with him. This was different. This creature was not food. It was not strong, nor could it get him food but it filled that desperate need for a time… that want, that hole in his belly no food would fill. He could not let it die.
He had also noticed that the creature liked to do pointless things that had nothing to do with his form of survival. He watched the creature holding flowers up to its face and getting handfuls of mud to smear on the rocks. He watched it smash berries that could be eaten and put them in the mud to add color. One morning Kelvin decided to see what the creature was doing. He wanted it to show him. He wanted it to not be so afraid of him.
While the creature was still sleeping, Kelvin went over to its favorite flower bush. He stared at it for awhile, trying to remember what the gold one did. The flower was so calming to look at, so peaceful. So different to everything he had known up until this point. He reached out, picked it from its branch and held it up to his face. Nothing happened. Taking a deep breath he went to taste it, see if he could eat it. Then he found it. The fragrance went all through his face and head. He had smelled death and mud. He had smelled the creature. Never had he experienced a smell like this.
A whole new level of understanding opened in his mind. This level of understanding battled with his level of survival. The flower could not feed him, it could not help feed him, but it did something to him. He did not know what, but it reminded him of the creature that still lay sleeping behind him. Kelvin walked over to Julia and laid the flower on the grass next to her head.
Julia woke up sick. She had never been this sick. She thought she might be dying. Even Julia knew about death. Though she had never seen it first hand she wondered if this was what it was. She rolled over on her side and saw the flower. The flower was a long way from its bush. How did it get here? Her curiosity made her forget how sick she felt at the moment. She got up and sat cross-legged on the grass holding the flower. She took a long whiff of its wonderful smell. Looking up she saw the dark creature watching her and wondered if he was going to attack her again. Watching him watching her, he slowly made his way over to her and took a deep smell of the flower in her hand. Then he pushed it up to her face.
In that moment in the history of mankind, two primordial individuals began creating the processes of life. Basic survival skills, aesthetic knowledge and curiosity. The blending of elements to create what we are today. There are parts of mankind that will never find the thing missing in Kelvin’s DNA… our DNA; that was present in Julia’s. It was never there, should have been there but just wasn’t. The mud wasn’t right but the time was.
It had been a little over thirty suns now. Julia was more than sick. Now she knew she was dying. The berries she loved were no longer good. The fish she ate came right back up. Mornings were the worst. She could not get up until the sun was in the middle most days now. Kelvin is torn with grief and worry. He is waiting for her to die. He knows anything that can’t eat will die. What will he do when she dies? Maybe there is another one like her? Maybe he can find the other gold ones. He only saw four of them maybe there were more. None he saw smelled like Julia though. What could he do? Maybe they should move to a different place in the forest but he didn’t think Julia would make it. Kelvin decided to wait until Julia died.
Julia did not die, and in fact, Julia seemed to be getting bigger; like she had eaten all day, every day for awhile. She didn’t get sick so much now and she was constantly foraging for food. Kelvin watched his golden creature changing, evolving and when she woke him up screaming in pain and fear one night; he had no idea what to do. He fled into the forest. Julia knew she would be dead soon. The pain was like nothing she had ever known. Her body seemed to be ripping apart. As she lay there panting on the grass another pain hit her and she passed out.
The night was terrifying. Kelvin hid in the forest until the screams died out but he was still scared. Creeping back to the body of Julia, Kelvin saw something move in her arms. Was she alive? Had she been attacked? She was wet and bloody but there was something alive. Kelvin came nearer to her and in her sleeping arms was a tiny version of them. It was not dark and course like Kelvin. It looked like Julia but it had the blue eyes of his feeder.
The small creature was hungrily sucking at Julia’s chest and Kelvin went off to get some food. It was all he could think to do. He still was not sure if she was even alive or if the new creature had killed her and was now eating her. When Kelvin came back with the fish, Julia was awake. The relief he felt over this was an unknown emotion, one of many he now dealt with. The feeling brought another with it and now he felt the need to protect. Protect Julia from whatever the thing was that had attacked and was now eating. So what was the new creature? Should he kill it? Was it edible? It seemed like it was eating Julia.
Julia didn’t like the way Kelvin was watching her. Kelvin advanced on Julia and the new one and saw Julia wrap her arms around it. Trying to hide it from him. She was protecting it, baring her teeth at him in a snarl. Kelvin didn’t understand and he had never seen his golden creature act this way towards him. Not even when he attacked her. He backed away and sat down on the grass with his fish. Watching Julia and the new creature he began to realize the new creature really couldn’t walk on its own. It couldn’t crawl around, definitely couldn’t catch any food. He remembered the other one of his kind, the one who wouldn’t share its fish with him. The one whose arm he had broken. She had been his feeder. Julia must be this one’s feeder. Somehow this situation made him think of that one so long ago now. Would Julia share her fish with this new creature?
Julia didn’t remember being born. She didn’t remember what fed her or kept her safe the first years of her life. She didn’t remember anything but the four others who just “were” there in her world. They shared food and living quarters. They played and gathered food together. She had never seen anything like this miniature her in her life. Its eyes were different than hers but they looked like Kelvin’s. She had no idea what she had gone through. She was alive though and felt okay. All she knew was that a piece of her body had fallen out so she must keep it with her now. She would NOT let Kelvin eat it.
Chapter 5
The new creature… we will call him Sam, came into the world blinded with conflicting memories. Some memories came through black and red. Dark cold slime. Pain and there was a want there that caused little Sam to scream and cry about something he could hardly comprehend if he ever did. On the other hand, there were memories of golden warm sun. Clear blue pond water and immense joy. These were enough to calm Sam and help him adjust. What was missing in Sam’s memories was the clear memory of how the evolution actually occurred. As the blood thinned and mixed the memories would become confused. Sam didn’t remember the ponds like his parents did. He only got some pictures and the emotional imprint. In Kelvin it was pain, cold and fear. From Julia it was warmth, sun and gold.
The deficiency passed on to Sam through Kelvin was only slightly lessened by Julia’s DNA. To make an individual with a drive, a passion, a thing searching to fill a hunger that could never be filled and douse it with some innocence, emotion, feeling and an ability to create you must have the hand of God. The hand of God slammed the planets together and brought us here, where we stand confused, lost and searching for what? We are searching for the deficiency in the mud. We are searching for the element that Julia received and Kelvin did not. One perfect being and one imperfect collide to try and right a wrong. Gold shines on darkness in the hopes the violence and fear will subside but its there… That constant battle now between good and evil. Between the tadpole that got the B-12 and the one that didn’t. The fact that what should happen for our survival is that we learn from Julia how to stop and smell the flowers.
So Julia and Kelvin and now Sam have become the world. They take care of Sam until he can fend for himself and they exist together. Julia still does not really understand Kelvin. She paints on rocks and gathers fruit. She steers clear of his wild rages where he holds both hands to his head and makes “the noise” loudly into the night. One evening was so bad she was terrified and she hid with Sam in the bushes. She hid there, holding Sam and she realized there was a strange sound coming from her. It was the whimpering sound that had first appeared when she was scared for the first time. Sam began to cry. Scared and clinging to Julia, she noticed that the pressure on her belly made the whimpering noise to change. Julia whimpers and presses on her belly. A new sound emerged from her. Sam likes it and begins to calm. With a motion learned from pressing high on her belly while whimpering, Julia begins to hum a little unknown tune to Sam.
Time goes by. It always does. Slips through the air and leaves us or piles onto our backs until we fall.
So is Sam our proverbial Adam? The whole universe wants to begin our existence on the planet with Adam. Alas, the reasons the human race has so many issues is because of Kelvin; and not really because of Kelvin, but because Kelvin had so many deficiencies in his initial DNA. His primordial memories are scraps of paper to us now but we are still searching for something that now can only be obtained from something like Julia. That emotion deeply rooted. Sam on the other hand will produce the whole human race. Sam was born to mentally adapt to what was already in his head. The emotions the world will eventually throw at him and his descendants will be dealt with. At least until nature plays a huge part in changing things again. Evolution with no point? We humans always need a point right?
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I was a tadpole… my pond was very similar to Julia’s except we had to share with everything. Too many of us in that pond! It went on like that for many suns. Crowded, some jumped out and dried out on the shore. One night a terrible storm swept through. That night lightening struck the pond. Hundreds of us were killed but those who survived came out better… better that any creature on the Land at the time… and we had knowledge. We had a fire in our heads.
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By the time Sam was twenty moons old, Julia had mastered music and art. She would put her ear to a tree and listen. Then she would copy what she heard with a tone from her mouth. She would listen to the wind in the trees and then copy the sound. Sometimes Julia would just stand with her bare feet absorbing the vibrations from the Land, letting them run through her thick, hairy body and emerge from her mouth in a high keening type of wail. Her first word was “Ow” and it emerged out of her
unexpectantly when Sam stepped on her foot one day. She immediately went to Kelvin, stepped on his foot and said “Ow”. Kelvin got it. Sam got it. Julia’s family now had a way to say when they were hurt and eventually they developed their own little language.
After all this time in the forest, Julia and Kelvin never saw another creature like them. They never saw Julia’s “others”, they never saw anything else that looked like Kelvin. They never looked either. The weather began to change in the forest. Great storms like never before were blowing through bringing down trees and flooding the areas around the ponds and creeks. The forest was under water at one point leaving Kelvin, Sam and Julia stuck in the tree for days. After spending three suns in the tree, they emerged starving and realized their home was gone. They had to move on. They decided to follow the sun.
They followed the sun out of the forest and into a large open area. There were no trees or water. No bushes. They saw only sun and the Land was blowing around blinding them. They retreated back into the edge of the forest but without water they knew they would eventually have continue on. There was not enough of the forest left to go back so they waited.
Two suns later they saw something coming across the sands towards them. It was a band of about twenty-five creatures. Their fur was black as night and Julia couldn’t tell if they were actual beings or just shadows but they were walking on two legs like them and they carried long sticks. It was three suns after that everyone was hungry and thirsty. Julia and her family had observed the shadows make loud noises at each other, not unlike Kelvin’s noise. They fought with each other as well but they didn’t die. They slept mostly during the day and prowled the sands at night, hunting for food in the dark.
When Julia awoke on the fifth morning of their foodless, now waterless journey she couldn’t believe her eyes. The shadow creatures had a huge carcass of what looked like a massive thing. They had pulled it into the middle of their compound and they were eating it. Stabbing it and ripping pieces off with their sticks. Should they join these creatures? Kelvin was scared of them. He was reminded of the harshness and violence of his “others” and himself. He was afraid for his family but they needed food and water or they would die.
Sam had never seen anything but Julia and Kelvin. He wanted to go the first day. They let Sam go out to contact the shadow creatures and hoped he would not die.
Sam smelled her before he saw her and then he was down. He awoke to find himself staring up at the most beautiful black pools of water. Her black shaggy fur hung over him as she peered into his face. He noticed that where his fur covered every bit of him, hers had vacated her thighs, upper arms and the backs of her calves revealing smooth surfaces like those on his face. These surfaces were also black. He wanted to reach out and touch those places on her.
One by one the other members of the camp came and looked into his eyes. They touched him, smelled him, the carcass forgotten at the moment. He lay there in the hot sand until one of the male creatures pulled him to his feet and slapped him on the back. “Ow” said Sam. The shadow man smiled a big smile and held up a hand.
Chapter 6
Julia, Kelvin and Sam joined the group of shadow creatures and soon Sam was deeply attached to the girl we will call Ava. Ava’s tadpole pool was the one hit by lightening. Her people could not speak with their mouths but they had learned to use their hands a long time ago. They made and used tools, weapons and they had knowledge.
One night as Sam and Ava were sitting under the stars, Ava began to draw in the sand, something Sam thought only Julia could do. She drew pictures of the shadow people from a long time ago. Things she still remembered through her DNA but also passed on through these pictures. It seems the shadow people had forgotten nothing about their evolution and were trying hard not to forget.
She first drew a picture of a pond crowded with hundreds of tadpoles. Next came a picture of two tadpoles fighting over a leaf. The third picture Sam did not understand. It showed the crowded pond and something that looked like a stick or branch going down into it. In fact, the branch going down into the pond looked like the ones they carried. Sam shrugged at Ava. “Nolo” he said and tapped his head looking confused like the shadow people did. Ava pointed her stick at the sky. She raised it up high and stabbed it down into the sand. Around the stick she drew dead tadpoles. Sam had no idea what she meant until the big storm hit and she showed him the lightening.
These shadow creatures would be the planners, the thinkers, the scientists. These shadow creatures would take the qualities Julia, Kelvin and Sam possessed, add it to their own and build a future for humanity.
“It came from the sky, it came from the sky”… “What came from the sky?”
“What makes us smarter than you”…
Until Sam entered the picture, Ava’s gene pool was pure shadow creature. It’s why her memories were so strong. The shadow creatures had still not encountered anything like Julia, Kelvin or Sam in their world yet. They never would have if the weather hadn’t changed, but now it seemed everything was on the move. Life with the shadow creatures was pretty good. It was the area that took some adapting to. Eventually Sam, Julia and Kelvin all lost fur where they were exposed to the most sun. Just like the shadow people, their skin was the same color as their fur. Sam was happiest with this development because he was so hot all the time. Julia and Kelvin were a little cold at night. Over time their skin became darker where the sun continuously burned it. They adapted easily.
As the days went on the shadow people did not stay in one place. Even though the desert was safe, feeding the entire tribe was constantly an issue. The shadow people had learned to follow large groups of animals and did so; making migratory roads throughout the continent we call Africa today. They were dodging the weather everywhere. Sometimes they went underground; sometimes they had to climb up into the huge caves to avoid the rising water.
The whole time Julia painted the story. She painted it on rocks, trees, anything that she could make a mark on. The shadow people were artists as well but Julia was a good one. They made her their designated story teller and relayed all their history to her. On one particularly long stay in the caves, Julia painted the entire thing on the walls.
Julia’s ability to sing and vocalize also made her a sort of celebrity with the shadow tribe. She began to teach them the language that she, Sam and Kelvin used. Combined with the hand symbols, they could all communicate very well now. Julia turned the stories into songs so she wouldn’t forget. Her memory was not as good as some of the others. On top of having not so well of a memory, Julia liked to elaborate on things. Her creative nature got the best of her sometimes and the histories of the shadow tribe, Kelvin and her own began to blend and flow like a painting.
Julia could never remember what it was the shadow tribe had told her came from the sky. What it was that made them smarter. She had seen it, they had shown her, but she was left to her own interpretation in the end. It was bright, hot and you couldn’t go near it. It had shot down from the clouds like it still does but that time it had hit their pond. It triggered the already vitamin and mineral rich ooze and caused a reaction in the tadpoles. All this she knew and tried to describe it the best she could. Julia’s interpretation came out something like this:
Light rained from the sky and burned my eyes.
Gifts were given from the stars above.
We have fiery heads.
Sometimes she left out the tadpole memories and other times she misinterpreted them so badly you couldn’t figure out what the story was. She didn’t know it but she was leaving behind what was important for us all to remember. She was taking the basic beginnings and turning them to fairy tales.
The shadow tribe saw but Julia really didn’t understand when they tried to correct her. Luckily for them they kept their own records and stories. They are still keeping them in the tower that stands in the heart of the motherland to this day. What Julia was doing was creating an entirely new story. This story about the beginnings would come out of the tribe and be about the tribe but it was completely distorted.
The future was only a slight concept to these people though and the weather was the issue at the moment. It was getting worse by the day. They never knew now what they would wake up to. The tribe had spoken of moving up into the high mountains. They had to go through the forest that Julia and hers had come through and then climb. It was an adventure that none of them had wanted to go on but with the water closing in on them it was hard not to go now. “The mountains will fall” they said, “but we will be on top of the rubble when they do”… and they laughed, danced, and slapped each other on the backs.
Chapter 7
There were more of them now than when Julia, Kelvin and Sam first joined them. Sam an Ava had two children. Both of them gray in color with pale brown faces. The tribesmen marveled at the one child with blue eyes like Sam and the one with black eyes like Ava. The shadow people had many children amongst them. Life was busy but not particularly hard. There was time to learn new things and test out new found abilities. Some of the children were moving small rocks and things without doing anything. They didn’t pick them up or kick them, they simply stared at the things and the things moved.
This was something the old ones were noticing and they attributed it to the same cause for all of their amazing new ideas. The bolt of lightening. No matter how hard Sam and Ava’s children tried they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t move anything except with their hands. It was the first time that some of them could not learn a new thing. It separated Sam and Ava from the tribe to a certain extent. In the years to come, it would separate the tribe forever.
The tribe traveled lightly carrying only the furs, skins and bones that were needed for the tents. The desert was quickly changing. Areas that were once dry were now large bodies of strange colored water. The air had changed as well. It was heavier and full of rain. The tribe began the journey through the forest and the ascent up into the mountains. They seemed to know the world was changing again. They seemed to know that once again, they would adapt or die. On the way up the mountain they began to experiment with drying their meat. The game was plentiful in the forest and all their skin packs were almost full of dried meat. They gathered fruit and stored that for the future as well.
Despite their incredible adaptability the shadow tribe had no experience with the forest at all. A few of them became sick and they had to stop for a few suns. During this time Julia found one of her favorite fruit trees from before. She gathered up an armload of it and brought it back for everyone to eat. The tribe loved it. They did not know “sweet”. Kelvin and Sam had long forgotten and they were happy as well. Ava expressed to Sam how she wished they could take the tree up the mountain with them. They were sitting near the tree and Sam could see the small green shoots coming up around the fallen and rotten fruit.
Thinking of Kelvin’s mumblings about “burying dead ones in the ground” Sam gathered the rotten fruit and put it in a skin sack. Back at the camp, he asked Kelvin if there was anything else to be done but put it in the ground… Kelvin remembered the bodies from long ago… he remembered the others wanting to “plant” the bodies in the hopes they would grow back like the plants and trees…
“Maybe we are trees whose roots we have ripped up and forsaken to skitter about the Land.”
Kelvin explained to Sam that if he buried the dead fruit, the tree might grow up from it. So Sam carried the rotten fruit until it dried up in the sack. All the way through the rest of the forest and up the mountain.
The weather was fierce now. Winds, rain, thunder and lightening came down from all sides. The daylight was a red, fleeting stripe across a blackened sky most of the time. The shadow tribe found themselves wandering in the dark, trying to find clearings big enough for all of them to set up camp. Higher and higher they went with the trees and greenery falling behind them. Finally one morning the sun woke the tribe with brilliance. The sun they had not seen in so long was cutting a bright warm swath through the dark clouds.
As the tribe danced, sang and rejoiced in the sunrise, the black clouds ran and fled from them. The red sky gave way to purples and blues creating the most beautiful scene. The tribe looked around them at the place they had found. It was dry and clean, like the desert. The walls of the Land had caves in them. Lots of caves and the shadow tribe almost unanimously decided this was where they would stay. They noticed the rain had left water in pools all over and besides that were little pools with water bubbling from the Land in them. They did not want to travel anymore and this would be as good a place as any. It was the only place at any rate. The trip here had taken a hard toll on the children and old ones. The road behind them was littered with their bodies.
They would be safe here now. Here they were close to the stars they loved so much and they were safe. The tribe held a sort of meeting that evening and it was decided they would stay here until the Land settled down. They used the caves to shelter them and their furs to keep warm at night. It was much colder up here than they were used to. The caves became a commune for the tribe. Sam finally put half his fruits into the dirt and twelve moons later a small green tree had begun to grow. This amazed Sam, Ava and Kelvin. Kelvin had only heard of it, never seen it.
This knowledge would lead the tribe into a whole new area of human development. The discovery of being able to plant food. At least these particular fruits opened the tribe’s eyes to the reality of them being able to bring the food to them instead of having to go get it. The fantasy of never having to leave her pond was coming true again for Julia. It might not be a pond, or hers, but everything she needed was in one place again. She could die happy here and maybe they would bury her in the ground like Kelvin’s others did. Maybe she would grow like this fruit tree and come back. Julia painted the story on the cave wall.
Chapter 8
I was a tadpole… and my pond was hot!! The warm water never cooled but gave us plenty of what we needed the most. We all emerged from the water with a reddish tint to our flesh. The fur would grow in red like the mud surrounding our pond. The smell would never leave us…
The old one rubbed his bleary eyes. It had been many moons on the run. Many suns, water and fire behind him. The Land falling away in large chunks… floating away on black, steaming, salty water. There were only two left with him and one was sick. They didn’t act right so maybe both of them were sick. It was incomprehensible to the old one what had happened. His memories had been shocked into visions of something similar happening before, somewhere else… to creatures he did not know.
Somehow in the middle of all the loud rumbling, the Land coming apart, and fire spewing forth, he had a vision of terror. Clearly felt the fear of a hundred bodies like his. He began to know how he and all the others had come to be. The beginning. Strange he wouldn’t know the beginning until the end but here they were. On the run. With a thousand other creatures. Some of them had become trapped on half the Land and floated away. Just pushed by the tides and waves to who knows where. Others thought the tree floaters would save them. Maybe they did save some, but the old man had witnessed huge waves covering hairy arms reaching for the sky.
The old one and his group had taken the gray road out. The strange path cutting right through the deep water, splitting it in half and hardening on its surface. Who knew the same fiery red stuff spilling from the Land like blood; eating everything in its way, would be their very escape? But there it was, sliding into the water and turning to steaming rock as it went.
They had taken the chance, driven by terror of being eaten by the Land and it had worked. Here they were. Where they were though, who knew? The old one rubbed his eyes again. He looked at the red mud clinging to his fur. The bits of stinking yellow powder all over him. He was a sharp contrast to the black mud and green grass he was sitting on. The other two looked worse. They had burned almost every bit of flesh and fur off of their feet and ankles trying to cross the gray too soon. Lucky for them there were still smelly smooth trees in the falling forests around the water. They had packed their skin sacks with the leaves and branches, crushing the leaves and packing them into the burnt flesh. It had helped enough so they could carry on. When the old leaves dried and fell off they would stop and pack on new ones. He decided he hated the smell.
Watching them, the old one wondered what made everything just want to live? Everything running from death. To where? Why do the animals do it? He wished he didn’t know. He wished he hadn’t had been given the memories. He absentmindedly thought about how those feet would never be the same…burnt to the bone they were. He closed his old eyes and in seconds was sound asleep.
Screams woke him. Running and huge clouds of yellow smoke. Great plumes of hot, white stuff coming from the cracks in the Land. Red heat everywhere, blackening everything as it ran along the ground… Red hot chasing them out, over the ground… The old one shot out of sleep like he was running for his life. Looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings he saw the other two and how they were restlessly sleeping. Feet moving, twitching toes.
He slowly got up and without thinking he began to gather wood like he had done every morning all his life. Then he realized there was no fire here. They had always just had it, never had to make it, so he didn’t know what to do. How would they get fire now? How would they send their bodies back to the sky? He had asked himself these questions every morning since the disaster. It began to rain and the water started to come from the ground and the sky. Quickly he shuffled over to wake up the other two. They jumped out of their unrestful sleep with a start. One jumped up, forgetting his burnt feet and fell over. It was a rush. Grabbing their packs of leaves they again went on the move, the now rushing water chasing them up and out of the forest.
From the top of the mountain the shadow tribe saw the three stragglers emerging from the forest below. Lightening and thunder were slashing the sky and up on the mountain the wind was incredibly strong. The tribesmen couldn’t watch for too long or they would be blown off the cliff. The three refugees didn’t make it to the top until morning. After climbing all night and traveling for many moons, they collapsed; wet and raggedy on the first solid dry ground they had seen since going on the run.
The shadow tribe found the three strange looking creatures piled on top of each other, wet, asleep and shaking. Two had no fur or skin on their ankles and feet. Just leaves, crushed and pressed into the burnt flesh. The other one was old. They could tell because his dark red fur was striped with gray. Their old ones did the same thing, coming to look almost like Julia in the end. The shadow tribe decided to leave them alone at the moment but all throughout the day they would check on them. Curious.
Night time fell with another round of huge booms and crashes from the sky and forest. The rain poured down and collected in pools everywhere. It woke up the stragglers who didn’t know where they were, nor could they see. It was dark. As lightening hit a bush right next to them, the shadow tribe watched one of the new arrivals hobble over to the smoking, blackening, bright bush and carefully, break a branch off of it. The creature then added the burning branch to a pile of leaves and sticks they had gathered.
The tribe became excited as they watched the red ones huddle around the light they had made. They began creeping out, coming closer to the three huddled at the edge of their camp. The shadow tribe knew of this stuff. They had the lightening of course and knew what it did. They had watched it hit the bushes or forest before and turn it black with brightness and smoke. They had been too near to the bushes once and had been bitten by it so up until now they were afraid and stayed away or ran from it. Every one of them knew you could not touch the burning bush.
These creatures did. They used it, controlled it. They chased off the darkness with it. Light bringers. The shadow tribe was excited over this. They advanced on the red ones.
“The light bringers came in wounded. Chased out of the very pits of Hell, into the heart of darkness where Heaven needed them the most…”
The old one watched these black creatures advance on them but could do nothing. His very bones hurt. The other two had gathered the sticks and fire from the bushes, he couldn’t move. He wondered if he would die. At the approach of the black ones the other two had run off, trying to hide. He would have as well but he couldn’t. Trapped, he sat there, legs crossed under him, staring into the fire.
They had him by the shoulders, dragging him away from the warm flames but keeping him in the light. The other two had been found and were also brought out into the light. The black ones felt, sniffed and poked them all over. They stared into their eyes for a long time. The red ones were too weak to fight about it. Finally the black ones seemed to conclude the red ones were okay and they ran away into their caves. The old one didn’t know what they were doing but he soon saw them coming back. They came back with food; or what they called food. The old one didn’t call it food until he had stuck it on the end of a stick and roasted over the fire.
The shadow tribe watched these strange creatures do this one by one. Why were they burning the food? The shadows became very excited again. They started to get angry but then the old one offered up his stick to them. They smelled it first and the smell had their mouths watering.
They took the offering and passed it around taking bites as they went. This was good. This was good and new like the sweet fruit had been. It also warmed their bellies, getting rid of the cold they had adopted since moving so high into the mountains. The shadow tribe was joyful and they went all around the three red creatures, each one slapping one of them on the back and smiling.
The two red ones with the strange feet stayed away from almost everyone, even the old one. The leaves and sticks they had carried with them had been stuck into the ground by the shadow tribe. They were growing too. Soon after they did it, little green shoots began popping up where the stuff had been buried. The shadow people seemed to think anything dead could be buried and it would come back. Everything but people that was… the bloated, stinking bodies of their dead were not buried too deep in the Land and the rain would expose them regularly.
The old man hated this. He wanted to make sure they burned him. So he decided to have the old white female teach him to speak to them. Once the old one learned to communicate with his new tribe, they thought he would never be quiet again. He taught them to build big piles of wood and to burn their dead. He taught them all to keep the fire going so they wouldn’t have to wait on the lightening.
He told them stories. He told long stories that kept everyone staring at him, quietly listening. Trying to remember. They followed Julia around making sure she was painting the stories on the cave walls. They sang songs about the old one and how he had rescued them from the darkness with fire. One particularly long evening, the old man began a new story… a story about how the Land was made…
Chapter 9
The old one sat down cross legged by the fire and began to speak and sign a story like no other. He spoke of hearing what people thought, of being linked to everything on the Land. He knew of lava and heat in the Land’s core, he knew because the Land told him it was there. It proved it when the stuff boiled up out of its surface burning everything in sight. He pointed at Julia, “I know what you are thinking” he said to her. He said he knew because her thoughts bounced through the Land and out where he could catch them.
He said it was because we came from the Land. Made of it. Then he spoke of a different memory, one that began every thing. A memory of dark, cold infinite space. A memory of a problem with the planets rotations… Their planet was hot, red and dry. The air almost unbreathable. The other planet was green, cool, beautiful and full of life. Life that would be forever changed when the huge event occurred.
The event that changed and began all this. The old one spread his arms and looked around. The planets crashed. He slammed his hands together scaring the little ones. All things were shaken, some shaken off the ground. Many things died. Then the planet cracked… it cracked until it was splitting into many pieces, lava seeping out into cold space solidifying as it went in long spirals.
The long strands of lava stone formed and joined the rotation of debris. We clung to those rocks. Trying to stay alive but space was too much. We couldn’t breath. What was left was barely a planet, barely enough. Then one day, the lava spewed up from the rock, trapping us on one side. A bluish pink looking ball was heading towards us… it battled with our sun hanging in the sky and then slammed into us. It slammed right into the lava side welding it to us. Lava, water and stone.
The old man looked up and sighed… the fire made him look a thousand years old. Now for the tadpole memories… All of them died as the planets became one and formed what we are today. They died within weeks of that fatal collision. We are not their descendants but we came from their mud.
As the group broke off in wonderment, one we will call “Abe” stayed behind to help and speak to the old one. They knew certain things about the stars. They knew they moved, that they formed shapes like the clouds, but those shapes always stayed the same. The sky was much brighter in those days. Much bigger and closer to the Land. Certain shapes in the sky were way bigger and brighter than the others. Some of those had color. For the creatures mingling about the surface of the Land, the sky was their theatre. Only the shadow tribe had the sense to figure out how to use it.
That is what brought Abe to the old one that night. Curiosity about the stars. The old one didn’t know much about them though. Of course he knew Sun and Moon, but he said everything else was just a distant memory and not his own. It was the Land’s memory. If Abe wanted to know more about the stars, he would have to speak to the Land.
Then the old man nodded off there by the fire. Abe shook his head as he draped a fur blanket over the old ones shoulders. Squeezing his head in between his large hands he wondered with exasperation why he wanted to know so much. His curiosity about things drove him mad. He watched the bugs, sky, trees, plants and anything that crossed his path. He would figure out the stars. He would talk to the Land. That he surely could learn from the old one.
Abe was staring into the old ones filmy red-brown eyes when he woke up. The old one was not pleased and growled at Abe, warning him away. Abe obliged, but only from a short distance.
The old one was not pleased. First at not waking up in his bed and second at the huge, black eyes staring him down like it was going to eat him. He got up and snorted a final warning as he ambled off down the path. His fully furred form weaving its way towards the nearest water pool. Abe followed at a safe distance and patiently waited for the old one to finish his interrupted morning regime.
Finally the old one turned and motioned for Abe to come near. Abe hurriedly did so and quickly told the old one his plan. The old one motioned for him to slow down and looking at him wisely, told him to start over. Abe took a deep breath and tried to contain his excitement, his curiosity… after a moment he got it together. He stared patiently at the old one and slowly began his plan again. He would talk to the Land about the stars. The old one would show him how. Then he, Abe, would know.
The old one thought about it for a minute and then looked at Abe. He thought he could do it, and he would teach this one to burn him when he died. Yes, this would ensure he received a proper burning. “Yes” he told Abe, yes, he would teach him to speak to the Land but that first lesson he must not forget. Abe was confused. “What lesson was that old one?” The old one told Abe to recall how he felt when he had to contain all that excitement and impatience to speak to him. Abe did, he remembered how difficult it had been. He remembered how happy and in control of his thoughts he was as well when he had done it. That was the first lesson. Abe nodded and the old one motioned for him to get lost with a grunt.
Chapter 10
Sam and Ava had a nice situation. Their cave was large and their children’s families had their own caves. Their children had large families too. Sam and Ava only had two children, two males. Those two children had children… seven children between the two of them. They all lived together with the growing tribe. Sam thought frequently of food. He knew it came from his father. He was eating a fruit one day, looking at the pattern in the middle. The thought occurred to him maybe these things, these little things, were what the tree must grow out of. Not the whole fruit. It was the only part of the fruit that wasn’t sweet and in fact, it kind of tasted like tree.
Sam dug out the seeds with his fingernail and planted them later that day. A couple moons later he was proven right, just like before. Green shoots had come up where he planted the seeds. Sam was excited. From that moment on Sam saved seeds from every fruit and plant he loved and could eat. For Sam, all plants with seeds were good things. He taught these things to whoever would listen.
Two of those who would listen were the other red ones that had come with the old one. Their feet and ankles had healed but the flesh was a pale pink and very smooth. They would go down where the forest met the water and collect strange fruits and plants. Their own cave was full of drying things, seeds and plants. They cooked with these dried and fresh plants as well. The smells from their caves became known all over camp. They would send out food with the old one, but they hardly ever came out themselves.
The tribe asked the old one if they were sick. They asked him why they did not come out and join the tribe. Why do they never come to a water pool to drink? The old one told them there was a bubbling water pool inside the red ones cave. He also told the tribe that, not only were they ashamed of their strange feet, but the feet gave them pain. The bones were delicate and frail. They were scared to walk on the Land if it was the slightest bit warm. They jumped at every sound. The tribe knew this to be truth because they had witnessed on one occasion or another, the red ones coming to water pools to bathe.
They also knew that every now and then the red ones would visit Sam and when they did they brought wonderful food, seeds, plants and things they made. Things they made that healed. Not death. Nothing could save you from death, but they could stop bleeding and heal cuts. They could fix your leg or arm if it was broken. So on these nights when they would visit Sam, the tribe would watch the red ones journey down the mountain from their caves. Jumping and hopping along, trying not to step on the ground or anything else… sometimes one would stop and stand still for a few minutes. They would trip and help each other so as not to drop what they carried. Once one of them ran into the bushes and hid for no apparent reason.
The tribesmen would have laughed except they were waiting to join in the feast, have their hurts helped, and they felt sorrow for the ones who came far to bring light and help them.
Julia was carried up to their cave one night. She was sick and had been for a long time. Her eyes had grown so pale you could almost see through them into her skull. She stayed up there for three suns and then Kelvin came down with her lifeless body. The red ones were sad and mourned the death of the one who taught them to speak. The one whose pictures told their stories and whose songs had filled the ears of a hundred children.
The tribe built a large pile of wood and leaves. They piled Julia’s favorite fruits, her tools, and her flowers on it. All of the things she loved so much on the Land, she would have when they released her to Air. They gently laid Julia’s body on top of it all and lit the fire.
Kelvin wouldn’t leave his and Julia’s cave. Sam tried, the red ones tried. Even the old one had gone to try and make him come out. Because of his foul temper he didn’t have many friends so after that he was on his own. It was a full moon later that Kelvin emerged from the cave. He was skinny, dirty and raggedy looking but he was still alive. The tribe watched him go down to the big water pool to bathe. When he emerged he joined some of the tribe in a hunt then he visited with Sam and his families. When the night fell, Kelvin ambled off to his cave.
Eventually Kelvin took one of the shadow tribe females in to his cave and they co-existed until his death some moons later. Kelvin was never the same without Julia. Sam and the whole tribe would miss her terribly and they sang great songs about her so they would never forget.
Chapter 11
After Julia’s death the weather took a turn for the worse. The ground began to rumble and shake. Some tribesmen were lost when two of the caves collapsed. The forest appeared to be rising up to join them as the water grew higher.
The stars were not in the right places either. The tribe had watched them for many suns now and they were different. People began to be afraid. Afraid of what would happen to them. They were trapped on the mountain, with all the shaking, rain, wind and the tremendous booms and crashes coming from the sky and the forest below.
The sky turned black and red on the fourth day. There was no sun to be seen. The night was too dark. No stars, no moon. If it weren’t for the fire the tribe would have been blind. It rained so hard the tribe retreated into the caves where they stayed for many suns. Finally the rain ceased and when the tribe emerged, they came out into a different world.
The forest was gone and in its place was water. Water as far as the eye could see. The whole tribe climbed the mountain to the highest point and lined up along the cliff wall. There was no land to be seen. Only other mountain tops, sticking out of the water. Some of them began to cry and mourn the loss of the Land but the old one calmed them. He told them the Land was still there…under the water and beyond what they could see. He reminded them they were still here. The sound of a baby crying silenced them all. The tribe could hear it echoing from the caves below. All of them quickly descended to find this baby. They ended up at the cave of the red ones.
Inside they discovered the red ones had a baby. A new one, just born. Its parents looked from the little red furry mess to the tribe and back again. The tribe could only see its feet as they were bare of fur and very red, very small. They all approached this odd little thing and touched its smooth feet and legs.
In fact, this baby was almost hairless compared to the other tribal babies. The fur that it did have was shorter, softer and very thin. Barely even there. One of the shadow females pointed at the baby and shivered. It was going to be cold. It was a female with bright red skin and what fur it had was bright red as well. It had quieted considerably while the tribe examined it.
Well this is something, the old one thought to himself. New world and new strange creatures coming from his blood. He shook his head, found a place in the corner of the cave and took a nap. When he awoke everyone was gone except the two red ones and their new joy. They didn’t even notice him. He shuffled over, startling them with his silence. What does this one remember? What memories did it bring with it? He began to teach it to sign right away.
The tribe was more concerned about how to get off the mountain and if it was even worth it. They knew they would have to figure this out. Eventually their stored food would run out and food on the mountain was already getting slim. The game running up from the forest below had been good but half of it hadn’t made it through this last round of disastrous weather. They had seen quite a few of their favorite four legged foods floating in the water below. The red ones had escaped disaster before, the tribe needed their thoughts.
One of the children was sent to get them. The old one came as well, carrying the hairless newborn in his thick hairy arms. At this meeting of all tribal meetings is where all their knowledge combined to save mankind. The red ones remembered the tree floaters. Where they had come from was surrounded by water just like this only there was land within floating distance.
The red people would burn and dig out the inside of the trees and float them on the water. These small boats were good to go a mile or so, but the old one reminded all of what he had seen happen to them in the waves. “Well they could fish” he said… He could show them how to make nets if they could gather up some good vines.
Kelvin perked up at that. He still loved fish. Fishing in this water was much different than a pond though… If he went grabbing around in this he would probably drown.
Sam and Ava didn’t want to leave at all. Sam was sure the land would return. They were not going with the tribe, they would stay here. Sam felt the pull of Julia’s DNA and never wanted to leave his happy place. The red ones were torn, they didn’t want to be alone; but they didn’t want to leave either. Especially with the new baby. They knew it may become necessary but it wasn’t right now.
The confused and scared tribe curled up in their caves that night and slept with dreams full of shaking ground, red sky and water. In the morning the tribe decided to wait for a couple of suns to pass. They may not have to leave if the water went down.
Chapter 12
The red ones baby needed a lot of help. Its feet needed to toughen up. It was cold. It got sun burnt and it cried. The other children of the shadow tribe didn’t play with it much because of how fragile it was. The old one had it most of the time and it could already sign that it was hurt or hungry. Ava had picked up Julia’s songs and sang to the baby. Sam played with it. Everyone had a part in this little creature’s life as it was so needy and helpless.
The shadow tribe didn’t want to leave the little red one either. They were afraid for it and its parents. They needed the protection of the tribe. The tribe also needed them and their ways of helping the hurts. No, the majority of the tribe decided, they would not leave the red ones here if they left. They would take them with them. The red ones thought differently, they had survived worse than this.
It turned out all this was unnecessary, the water started to go down in about a moon’s time. Soon as the tribe could begin its descent down the mountain they went looking for the desert, only to discover it gone. The forest that had been under water for a month was totally different now. The whole atmosphere had changed, the plants were all different. Greener, bigger. The air was thick with water and it rained a little bit every day now. The forest was back but it had completely changed. Different animals, different insects and birds. It was now full of massive creatures that attacked or would simply crush you without noticing. It had plants that ate animals. The tribe was terrified by these plants. The new forest was full of food though. Full of seeds and new plants. There were no worries about that.
Some of the younger members of the tribe wanted to explore. They had the tree floaters. After the scary situation on the mountain, they wanted to find new lands. The tribe let them go and these young shadow tribe members would discover great things, new lands and other creatures but they would never come home again.
The tribe watched them push off in their boats packed with little food and water. They waved, cried and sang songs as their tribesmen floated away to where they could not be seen anymore.
The old one watched and wondered why all of them couldn’t just be happy in one place. Why couldn’t they be like Julia or the animals? He had a vision of the red ones in their tree floaters. The way they paddled around and swam in the beautiful water. Not like this though. The world was much smaller then.
Abe watched them leave too and his thoughts were about his own explorations. He couldn’t wait until things calmed down and he could really get some lessons in on speaking to the Land. He was already memorizing the new patterns of the stars. It would take him twelve moons or more to get them all but when he did, he would have a new star map in his head.
Abe wanted to learn how the old one could hear or know peoples thoughts. He wanted to know how the children could move things without touching them. Most of all Abe wanted to know about the planets that had crashed. Where were they now? Where would they be in his star map? His mind ached with the questions stored there. Abe wanted to see the Land the old one had come from.
He never would. That land was gone. Under the sea where it would not be seen again for millions, billions of years. The old one knew this. He knew because when he closed his eyes and thought about it, he could see the Land, see the little mountains still spewing the red hot liquid, it quickly turning to gray stone. He saw it all under water.
The old one had a lot to teach Abe and not a lot of time to do it in. He was getting older. He was already old. He knew his kind lived a long time but he wasn’t sure how much more time he had. It took a long time to teach someone how to speak to the Land. He and the other red ones had been taught from the time they were born. They had begun teaching Emma right away. He was pretty sure the other red ones stayed away from the main group because they just couldn’t block out the others thoughts like he could. The shadow tribe was very excitable. Kelvin and Sam alone had visions and memories that would give you bad dreams when you slept. These things came through like a breeze blowing softly or like a tornado, knocking you over. At any rate, Abe had a long way to go.
The old one motioned for Abe to follow him and they went off by themselves. Abe followed the old one into a cave he had not been in before, though he had seen the old one go in and out a couple of times. The first thing Abe noticed was the strange green light bouncing off the damp walls at the back of the cave. He saw the green plants growing in the semi-darkness and as his eyes adjusted, he noticed all this was around a small dark and rocky hole filled with water.
The old one spoke. “Here you are in the belly of the Land. In her caves you are inside. What you find inside, what you do with it, is in here.” The old one tapped Abe’s head. The old one motioned for Abe to come over to the bubbling pool. “Look” he said. Abe saw bright green plants that lit up the water just enough so he could see it was very clear. He could see the plants waving and swaying as the bubbles rose to the top of the pool. Tiny fish were swimming slowly around.
It was quiet, so quiet and as Abe watched he began to feel strange. He heard a very faint buzz start in his ears. The buzz carried into his head and settled like a hand right over his eyes. His eyes closed involuntarily and his mind began to drift away. In his drifting mind he heard the bubbling of the spring. He heard the old one breathing. He heard the soft breeze wafting through the cave. Then, listening, he began to hear farther out. He caught a sound of children playing. He heard two tribesmen arguing over the last piece of fruit in a cave somewhere. He heard the red ones new baby crying softly. That he couldn’t have heard. His own thoughts shot in and interrupted what he was listening to.
Abe was excited. This had been lesson two. He understood. He would hear what the old one did soon. The old one looked up at Abe with sad eyes and told him he didn’t want to hear all that he had heard. Abe didn’t understand and the old one didn’t explain. Lesson two is over he grunted and shuffled off leaving Abe staring after him. Abe was okay. He was happy. In the days to come Abe would practice his newfound skill until he could hear every ones thoughts.
The old one had told him to be careful or he would confuse one of their thoughts with one from a tree, rock or animal. There were spirits out now. Tied to the Land because of the way their dead bodies were treated. Residues from the thinking creatures dying and not sending them into the air. The old one had started hearing the spirits some moons ago. Hideous, crying lost things. Tied to the Land but unable to do the things they loved so much here. The Land had told him this is what happens when they come back to me and not to Air where your kinds are supposed to go.
The old one was becoming afraid of the world he had walked for so long. It was changing so fast; so many new things and the Land told him it wasn’t done yet. He worried about Abe. Abe was listening to the others, not the Land and the Land was the only one who knew anything.
Abe didn’t understand a lot of what he heard on the wind. The old one kept telling him to only listen to the Land but it was hard for him to tell the difference. Which was the Land? Which were the others? The voices all sounded the same to him. The old one said it was where the voice went in. Did it come into your head? Your heart? Your belly? The Land speaks through your belly. The old one also said the Land doesn’t care about the things we do. The thoughts of the Land are deep within us. They care about the Land.
Confusing as it was, Abe began to understand. Over time he could predict the weather and where the best game was in the forest. The Landly things. It was almost time for Lesson Three with the old one and Abe was ready!
Chapter 13
The red ones lying on the beach were almost dead. As it turned out though, it was just as safe in a boat on the water as it was in the mountains. They had crashed on to many small areas of drifting land. They had to replace their boats at least twenty times since fleeing their piece of the world. Many had died. There were only ten of them to begin with, now there were only three and that was only if they survived. They lay on the beach with sand in their wet, raggedy fur and looked dead. There was no sign of the tree floats, they were gone.
Crabs began to pinch at one of them. A mean looking sort, he awoke with a start and groaned. Jamu was not a friendly beast. He had never been. While the others were playing or learning, he was fighting with other ones like him. He was twenty suns old and all he ever heard out of the Land was: “Change! Change!” the Land was not happy with itself thought Jamu.
Jamu was not happy about anything and especially now. He guessed the only reason he and the others had survived until this point at all was because they were so mean. He grabbed the crab with a burly paw and shoved it in his mouth, crunching loudly. At least there was food. What he didn’t see was fire. He hadn’t see fire in a long time. How would they get it if the Land didn’t give them any? Jamu hadn’t eaten raw meat in a long time but he would.
He leaned over and smacked the female to wake her up. She woke up sore and mad and smacked him back. Their early morning fighting woke up the third red one there and he picked up a rock and threw it at them.
Jamu thought how lucky they were to have fur since he had just realized how cold it was here. They were wet and freezing! Oh how he wished for a fire!! Looking around he saw nothing. Nothing but white. No trees, no plants and no other living thing in sight. Just endless white. So this was how they were to die? In this totally strange land, with nothing and… just nothing. Jamu sighed. Who would burn them? Who would send him to the sky?
This thought is what motivated Jamu. He roughly motioned for the others to get up and follow him. Jamu started across the frozen plains.
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Kalima held on to the weather beaten piece of tree until she could hold on no more. Then the waves pushed her to shore. She lay there shaking, freezing, and all alone. As far as she knew she was the last one of her kind. There were only five of them a long time ago. Then one of them had been kidnapped by a dark, gray faced creature. That left four and since the weather started going crazy, she was all that was left of them.
She picked leaves from her freezing grayish white fur. She stared out over the frozen plains and saw the tree line rising up from nothing. She was so cold she couldn’t move. She was so hungry she couldn’t move. Her kind was creative but not too bright to begin with. She had no idea where to begin or what to do. Tears welled up in her big blue eyes and froze as they mingled with the fur around her face.
She saw dark shapes emerge from the trees moving her direction. If she had been in better condition she might have run. She still had bad dreams about what happened to one of them a long time ago. She tried to blend in with her surroundings by lying down flat and staring at the sky like she was dead.
That’s what she was doing when Kelvin’s descendants found her. Further proof that some things in this small world are just meant to be. They thought she was dead. One of them had actually tripped over her because she blended in with the snow so well. Kalima had blinked then and they knew she was alive. Throwing some blankets over her, they continued on to the water where they began splashing around trying to catch some fish or whatever they could catch.
The warmth of the blankets revived Kalima a little and she began to feel like she could move. Sitting up slowly and wrapping the blankets tighter around her she wondered about these creatures. They looked exactly like the one who had stolen her friend so long ago. She waited there silently, watching them and didn’t move.
The gray faces were a little surprised at tripping over Kalima on the beach. They did wonder why she was there. Why she was not with the others of her kind on the warmer end of the Land. She looked like she had been on a long journey and with this cold… They just wanted to get back to the caves and eat.
The cold was new. All this ice and white stuff was new. Ten moons ago the Land had been covered in green as far as the eye could see. They had piled up furs and quite unexpectedly, been joined by three red creatures that happened to know how to use this hot light to warm them all up. Food was a new discovery because of them. The fish was so much better after being held over the fire.
They were about ready to head back. The water on their fur would be frozen solid by the time they got back to the caves. They decided to take the old white female with them and maybe back to her home if needed. The white ones were an odd bunch.
Kalima watched them as they came nearer to her and motioned for her to join them. She tried to get up but couldn’t. The bigger of the creatures lifted her up by the arms and two others tried to help her walk. She could do it after trying for a minute. Finally after much struggle, they got moving across the frozen wasteland to the caves.
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Jamu and the other two struggled across the frozen land for an entire sun before they saw anything. Anything would turn out to be a line of trees leading into a thick frozen forest. Jamu became angrier and angrier as he went. Kicking frozen trees and bushes… he grumbled at the darkening sky. More rain… Thunder rumbled with Jamu.
The small group found shelter under a pile of fallen trees just as moon came out and the sky opened up, pouring freezing rain all over them. Jamu sat brooding, wondering what to do with his belly that was booming at him as loud as the sky. It was too dark to see anything when a sudden bolt of lightening hit a frozen tree. The fire started in the top of the tree and Jamu scrambled to get up there to it.
After several attempts to get up the frozen tree, he finally made it. He broke off a flaming branch and quickly slid, kind of climbed, back down to where the others had amassed a pile of semi-dry leaves and branches. Almost willing it to burn with his mind, Jamu held the fiery branch to the pile. Rain and ice sputtered, a little steam rose up and then the bright warm light they all missed and needed so badly.
The three red creatures looked wild as they grabbed each other and ran around the fire whooping and yelling loudly. Now they just had to keep it going. Jamu would set this whole place on fire if he had to. Now though, Jamu began step two, food. Jamu and the other two would sleep hungry that night despite their fire. There was nothing out in the cold but them.
Chapter 14
The first thing Jamu saw in the morning was footprints. Quite a few of them and they were way bigger than theirs. The footprints went on into the forest. Whatever had been here had come and gone. They apparently just walked by Jamu and the other two and carried on.
Jamu woke up the other two and motioned for them to follow him and the footprints. He picked up a smoldering log and blew on it. He smiled as the flames blew up and began to eat the wood. Jamu would carry the fire, replacing the flames with new torches as they went along.
The footprints ended at a group of caves in a clearing in the forest. A small stream ran nearby. Jamu handed off the torch and went for a drink, running into a female gray face on the way. She growled at him and he growled back. Pacing around each other, the noises became louder and soon they were fighting and wrestling on the forest floor. The other two red ones and more gray faces, drawn by the noise, eventually formed a crowd around them.
Shiva won. She was bigger and ultimately meaner than Jamu. As Jamu lay on his back in the mud, with this dark creature sitting on him; he thought to himself about how much the world had changed. The gray faces that had gathered around split them up. Shiva stood off to the side, furious at this red hairy creature. The other two red ones just stood there, holding the dying torch, waiting to see what would happen.
What happened was not much. The gray faces saw that one of the red ones carried fire on a stick and they all ran off into the forest. With that done, the red ones built a huge fire and helped themselves to any food they could find. Driven by the smell of the cooking food, the gray faces slowly came back into the clearing one by one. Jamu motioned for them to join and offered them some of their own new and improved food.
Good food in cold weather warms many bellies and hearts no matter what the millennia. The creatures formed a bond over this new development and allowed the red ones to join their tribe. Shiva and Jamu would just have to find a way to get along.
One would think these early humans, being more animal than human in this dawn of mankind, would not get along. That hormones, pheromones and God knows what else that causes animals to fight, would interrupt them joining each other at all. Lions don’t bed down with tigers usually. But in a world where so few things stood and walked on two legs, curiosity was key and adaptability was life.
The brains in these creatures head were nothing like an animal. Brains supercharged with vitamins and minerals upon their initial creation. These creatures, not so unlike us today, realized early that if they did not adapt they would die. They realized as well that, in a world where only one other like them may be found at any given time, they needed whatever kind of two legged, higher thinking, walking creature they could find. The goal was to evolve, adapt and survive. Even we once knew the basic key to life.
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Kalima woke up warm and dry in a nice clean cave. Two gray faced females were watching over her. One of them brought her a nicely grilled fish. This was something else Kalima had never seen. Who burned their food first? It was good though and it filled the great hole in her belly. She tried to get up and found that warmth and rest had worked. She stood up slowly and stretched her body. The two females just sat and watched her. Kalima motioned for a drink and the females motioned back for her to follow them.
After the food and water, Kalima felt much better, almost normal. The two gray faced females motioned for her to follow them again and she did. Out of the forest they went, back into the frozen tundra. Where were they going? The sun was in the middle of the sky when they stopped to eat some roots and have a drink. Then they continued on.
The air seemed to get a little warmer as they went. There was less white stuff everywhere and patches of green started to show through. Kalima began to notice the trees. The huge trees had none of the furry fruits on it she loved so much, but they did have the big green leaves and many branches of the trees back home. These were the same trees from back there. The same trees that fell and broke under the flood of water. The same trees she used to call home.
They traveled a little further and were met on the path by two mid-sized furry white creatures with blue eyes just like Kalima. She couldn’t believe it. Neither could they. Where did this strange one of their own come from? They came close to her, sniffing and poking her. When they had established she actually was one of their own, Kalima and the two gray faced females were allowed to follow the white ones further.
They arrived at a clearing with twenty or so of the trees surrounding it. As they stood there quietly, many white ones began descending from the trees. They all sniffed and poked at Kalima. One of them brought her a rock with a little figure painted on it with mud. It poked it at her until she took it and dipping her finger into the dirt, she drew a bird on the other side and handed it back. The one she handed it back to was very excited over this. By evening Kalima had her own tree, food, and she was listening to the others softly humming in the trees around her. Peace.
She wasn’t sure where they had spent the night but in the morning the two gray faced females who brought her here were gone.
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Shiva and Jamu had two children. They came out a dark red, almost the color of blood and their eyes were a violet color. Strange looking little beasts, the rest of the tribe had stayed away from them for days. The gray faces and red ones had blended fine. They were both of the same temperament… same vitamin deficiencies in the mud.
Jamu had realized in the beginning the red ones were a little more advanced than the gray faces. The fire for one thing. Control over their emotions was a little better than the gray faces, even though both sides were prone to rages. The gray faces had no knowledge of talking to the Land though. Jamu had already taught Shiva how to listen.
The worst was what they did with their dead. Instead of sending them into Air, like The Land had told them to do, the gray faces buried their dead in the Land. Jamu knew this was not right. the Land was not happy about it either. Things were born of the Land. Living things. He had tried to set them right a couple of suns after he got settled in. There would be no new ghosts while he was around. The ones already there were bad enough. Not only that, but if he didn’t get them to change, no one would burn him when he died. Especially if he lived longer than Shiva.
No one had died in the last 15 moons so he couldn’t show them yet but he would. Jamu watched his offspring fighting with each other on the frozen grass. Strange looking, but looks were not what mattered. Everything looked strange and different as far as Jamu was concerned. What mattered was if they could learn to speak to the Land. That’s all that mattered. Jamu silently thanked the Land for Shiva and his two little ones.
Eventually Jamu and his family would leave the gray faces and venture out into the world. Jamu could never get used to the weather in this cold part of the Land. It had warmed up for a little while, for three moons the sun had shone and it was hot just like his home land, but then the cold white stuff and ice would come back.
Shiva had problems getting along with the other two red ones. Jamu had problems with some of the gray faces and eventually… the other two red ones as well. The day finally came when Jamu and Shiva packed up and moved out across the thawed out terrain. They were headed back towards Jamu’s former home. The Land that he did not realize was totally gone. Well not totally gone, but at the moment they would need scuba gear to get to it. Didn’t matter though because they were headed the wrong way.
Of the two red ones left, the male decided he wanted to go south too. He was always one of the more peaceable of his kind. These gray faced creatures were even worse than the red ones. Always fighting, aggravating each other, moaning and mourning. He ended up moving into the white ones territory and the children from that had the brightest orange fur and the bluest eyes of any creature ever seen on The Land. This development also brought fire to another tribe. Soon all the creatures worldwide would know about fire. With fire they would also gain the knowledge of having someone keep the fire from going out, getting mad at someone because it went out and the judgments received for letting it go out.
With fire came the first workforce. Employees and employers. Perhaps fire was the “fruit” of knowledge?
The gray faces had always loved food. It filled the hole that was left in their creation. They loved food of any kind. Since Jamu had introduced them to the fire, they had come to love their any kind of food cooked. Having to wait on a storm to come through was no good and they kept letting the fire go out. The gray faces loved to argue and fight, but some of their biggest fights yet had come about over the fire. There had to be a better way. If Jamu had only waited two more suns he would have had a body to burn, but no fire to burn it with.
Back up on the mountain, the shadow tribe had beaten them to it and their solution would not only create breakfast, lunch and dinner times and be a source of unsolvable mystery to future men; but it would also become the altar that so many of the world’s religions were founded on. Burnt offerings and all…
It had taken a lot of work, but it took big things to capture Sun. First they had to break off huge slabs of rock off of the cliffs. They did this by hammering their sticks into the cracks left by the old the Landquakes. The slabs would break free and slide down the cliff face hitting the ground with big booms. Some broke but most stayed whole. They had consulted with Abe and his star maps because if they were going to capture Sun, they would need help from those around him.
In fact, the whole thing was really Abe’s idea. The great slabs of rock formed the cage that they would keep Sun in every day. The bars pointed to each of Sun’s twelve friends in the sky. The shadows from the bars kept Sun from going where he was not supposed to inside the cage. Where he was supposed to go and stay, was right in the middle where a large flat rock was to be set.
Abe told them he had turned the stars into twelve animal shapes so he could follow them in their journey across the sky. The people didn’t understand Abe, but they could kind of see the shapes he was pointing out, comparing them to the star map on his cave wall. Abe said the animals would help them capture Sun. The point was to circle the animals around the prey and then use it to help them cook.
Once the slabs of stone were down in the valley, the tribes people (it took all of them) dug trenches in a circle then dragging, pushing and pulling the slabs of stone into place. Fitting them into the trenches and standing them up right. It was a lot of work. An amazing amount of work. It took over twenty four moons to complete. Six moons more to get the cook stone in the middle.
Each stone lined up with it’s animal partner in the sky. When the sun began to rise over the Land in the morning it’s rays were caught and held by the Horse and Scorpion. They were supposed to start the fire. Sun would still be able to move on his own, but at certain times he would be held in place by the animals above the stones so the fire would stay going. The middle of the day would see him held in place by the Twin Stars and the Bull. The evening it was held by the Fish and the Male. It was the Lion and the Female who were in charge of letting Sun go at night. All this was a great plan but on the day of reckoning it did not work. The dry leaves piled on the cook stone were lit up and warmed by Sun, but they didn’t even smoke.
After all that work and hope, the tribe was pretty mad at Abe. His “animals” were supposed to hold Sun long enough to start a fire from his warmth. They were not doing a good job. Abe retreated to his cave above the monstrosity of rock in the valley and hid himself from the rest of the tribe. It took the first good thunderstorm since they built the thing to show them really how to use it.
It rained all night long and in the morning there were little puddles everywhere like usual. By noon the small pile of leaves and sticks left on the cook stone were dry, but the slabs of rock were still wet and shiny. The Twin Stars and the Bull caught Sun and held him where he could shine on the cook stone… it took a second of Sun reflecting off the wet walls of rock but then… smoke started to come from the pile of leaves. Abe saw the smoke from his cave and got down there before it went out. Looking at the rays of Sun bouncing around the rocks he got a pretty good idea that the only thing different this time was the rocks were wet and shiny. He ran to get the others.
The shadow tribe thought they were pretty special to be able to catch Sun like they had. They rejoiced and celebrated Abe now. They wrote songs and long stories about him and his greatness. Up on the mountain, life was pretty good for the shadow tribe.
Chapter 15
The shadow tribe’s cage to catch the Sun was news. If there was a two legged walking creature within ten miles of the thing, they had seen it. It was huge and there was no way around it in the valley. You had to walk near it or through it and most things were scared to walk through it because of the smoking pile of fire in the center. Normally, individual shadow tribe members would come down and get some fire to take back to their caves. Sometimes they would have great feasts there and celebrate Abe or really successful hunting expeditions. Sometimes they would remember Julia at these gatherings. On these occasions there wasn’t an eating creature around that did not want to get into the feast.
With the herbs, spices and various other plants the two red ones added, the smells of the meats roasting around the cook stone drew in everything in the valley. Refugee creatures, lost in the forest, would inevitably come out and join in if they could. Over time the shadow tribe would be one of the largest conglomerations of hominid species on the planet. They took in all. They helped all.
Their tribe would consist of black fur, white fur, red fur, bloody red fur, bright orange, yellow and gray. Blue, black, green, brown and violet eyes. They had creatures there with strange delicate feet. They had creatures there of all sizes as well. Gray faced creatures were particularly bothersome as they liked to antagonize and fight. It didn’t help they were the biggest of them all. The only reason they were even let into the tribe was because of Kelvin. They had some there with no fur at all.
The shadow people learned new things fast and now they could build. At least, they knew they could move the walls of the Land and make them their own.
The original red ones were now old and striped with gray. The old one had passed away a long time ago with many songs and stories to remember him by. Abe had personally lit the funeral pyre. The lessons he taught Abe would be repeated by Abe to certain members of the tribe who wanted to know. Abe now understood how the children could move things with their minds. He understood why most could not still do it anymore after they got older.
He knew the stars and how they moved. He knew a lot of things. He was grateful that the Land would speak to him. He was humbled by the Land who truly was the greatest, mightiest living thing around. “The Land” needed a name thought Abe. But who was he to name the the Land? The Land spoke to Abe then and told him its name. Abe heard the word grow warmly in his feet, then his belly, his heart and finally his head. He felt the warmly vibrating hum coming from the dirt. “Ela… Ela” that is what it said. It echoed in Abe’s head until he fell to his knees.
Abe decided to put together a feast for the naming of the Land. He invited everyone in the tribe and welcomed those who would join later. Abe told his whole world the name of the Land and they all agreed it was a good name. They all agreed to call the living creature they lived on “Ela”.
The word “Ela” would become the first internationally known word for the people of Ela. Walking creatures far and wide would all know the word Ela from now on and forever. Abe decided to leave the mountain and go tell everything he met about stars, fire, and Ela.
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Jamu and Shiva did indeed head the wrong way. Jamu thought that by following the warmer weather that they would get back to his home. It had been many moons since that time of fire and destruction, and Jamu had no sense of direction. First they went south, and then followed Sun.
They traveled through many harsh environments. Freezing cold, warm, sunny days and vicious storms were only some of the things they went through. They lost one of their grandchildren along the way as well. It was a sad hard journey and if Jamu knew he wasn’t headed home he definitely would have given up sooner.
Jamu led his family across the world, finally reaching the water. They could go no farther and Jamu realized he was not home. He sat down on the strange beach with a thud and put his head in his hands. An angry tear of frustration dampened his face.
Shiva came up and kicked him hard. Pointing at the cliffs she saw caves… By evening they were settled in some dry caves with rain water pools all around. Jamu had protected the fire stick the whole journey and now he lit a fire for them. It was nice to rest, be at the end of a journey and munch on the roots and stuff they had.
Shiva had never really thought about too much. Their old ones had said to let their emotions guide them so she did. If she wanted something, she took it. If she was mad, she yelled and fought. The old ones used to talk about “tadpole memories” and things like that, but she didn’t care. It had nothing to do with today. The line of thought that Shiva and her whole kind took on, would never make such a difference as it would in the far, not even imagined yet, future.
Every now and then she would have flashbacks. Memories of a horrible, painful emerging from mud and nasty water, with a tail of all things! Shiva shuddered to herself. Those were things best forgotten. She turned her thoughts to the task at hand. Breakfast. Everyone else was still asleep.
Shiva poked the fire and got it going again, and then she stood up and stretched lazily, taking a deep breath of her new air. A rabbit darted across her path and a second later she felt the ground begin to rumble. Soon everyone was up and afraid, as a great hulking beast, with no fur anywhere and a huge long tail dragging behind it came stomping by them.
They stood watching it go in terror. They couldn’t move. One of the babies began to cry and it woke them from the daze. They ran into the caves to figure out what to do. Maybe they wouldn’t be staying here after all.
Shiva and Jamu’s children and their children, etc… were wild. Both Shiva and Jamu had severe mineral deficiencies in their elemental makeup and these had been passed on. Luckily for their kind, Jamu had some really awesome stuff despite the mineral deficiencies. Though the children would be great warriors in time, there were always a rare few of them who would turn out ultraviolent. The others just stayed away from them.
Now they were in this new land everyone felt more comfortable to go out on their own and the opinions on the great lizard thing were loud and varied. Some wanted to kill it of course. There were a lot of them who wanted to move on to somewhere else. Shiva, Jamu and all the babies were tired… tired of moving in general. They decided to stay and see what happened. At least they would have a chance to rest, eat and restore their supplies.
Everyone agreed with that logic and a hunt was organized along with a group to scout out the Landscape. It turned out there was a hammock near the beach and caves. This hammock was dark and jungley… all green and the air was thick, moist and hot. Yellow steam rose from little mounds of dirt in places and there were pools of cloudy, hot water that bubbled violently. The trees were huge.
It was into this hammock the scouts went first. Poking their way in cautiously they were amazed at the insects and plants they had never seen before. In all their travels they had never seen anything like this! Everything was huge. All of it was way bigger than the scouts and they were used to being bigger than everything else. The Land was extremely powerful here as well. They could feel everything on full volume.
They heard something big crashing through the bushes. They hid just as the thing came into the far side of the area they were in. Terrified and watching, they saw another creature that walked on two legs! This thing was big, twice as big as them and green. It had two scrawny little arms and a huge tail dragging the ground. It just sniffed the air with its long snout and went crashing through the palms in front of it.
The scouts would have to be careful. They still didn’t know if these things were dangerous or not. They could certainly be eaten by them. After spending a whole sun in the rainforest jungle, they came out with skin bags full of fruits, nuts, and roots.
The hunters came back with rabbits and other furry things that looked edible. They had stories that proved the big lizards were most definitely dangerous. They had also discovered a really great spring with crystal clear water. It was very cool but it smelled awful. A bad odor like… they pointed to their bottoms… The Land had spoken to them and told them they could drink, so they did. It was good water! The hunters were very eager to take the others to this pool.
Chapter 16
The original two red ones left on the mountain with the shadow tribe, had passed away to Air in the same twelve moons that Abe decided to go tell the world what he knew. They had passed on all their plant and healing knowledge to Emma, their only child.
Emma with the strange feet and very little fur. She was the first they knew of with almost no fur. As time went on there would be more that came in with almost no fur and it was not so exceptional anymore. Her little feet were. Nothing on Ela had feet and legs like Emma.
She was also one of the last full blooded red ones. That she knew of anyway. She remembered the disaster through her blood like it was yesterday. She was smart; her DNA not too dilapidated by deficiency. She could talk plainly to Ela and she had much plant knowledge. Emma also had a mean temper when she felt it. Of all this, the most important thing to Emma was Abe. She was in, what we would call, love with him. Like a dog loves its master, Emma would tag along with Abe almost everywhere he went.
Naturally when Abe went on his mission, Emma followed right behind him, leaving the tribe, caves, and everything she knew. She didn’t leave them without the knowledge though. She had already taught that to a few others.
They made a very good pair for mankind though. Abe would teach other creatures they met about the stars, fire and Ela. Emma would show them wild plants they could use and how to heal. When creatures wondered where they came from, Emma or Abe would point up towards the sky. They meant they came from up the mountain. Most of the creatures they showed this to thought they meant they came from the sky and Emma and Abe had such wonderful things to teach them.
It turned out there were a few other tribes in various locations by now. None as advanced as the shadow tribe. None so diverse either. Most of the tribes they met had only one or two differences about them. Mostly the older ones were the same.
One group they met were all a soft, light gray fur with blue eyes. They reminded Abe and Emma of Julia only their fur was not quite the same color as hers was. They were big too. As big as some of the gray faces and they really needed help if they were going to survive and evolve. They learned quickly though and it was good.
There were many times Abe was thankful for the ever burning torch they carried. He was pleased with the nickname they were given as well. “Light bringers” is what they were being called now.
It was twelve moons later when they arrived in a strange land. A long, wide river was to their left and they would have to cross it to follow their path. When they set up camp that evening, they noticed lights across the river. Little pinpoints of light. Abe and Emma didn’t know what to think of it so they got their fire going and thanked Ela for not killing them today.
Emma went to the river bank to gather some water. She saw eyes in her torch light staring back at her. A second later a huge beast propelled itself out of the water, straight at her. Emma bravely brandished the torch at the monster but it didn’t care. She turned and ran for her life.
Abe joined Emma as she ran past. He could hear the thundering thing crashing through the plants behind them. His chest was pounding with fear. Finally it gave up the chase. They stopped in the now silent hammock and tried to catch their breaths. They slept in a tree, right there, until morning when Sun would at least let them see the monsters trying to eat them.
In the morning everything at their camp was still there. Luckily there were still coals burning and Abe rekindled the fire. Emma looked around and saw no creatures, but a lush green hammock area following the river. A river that seemed to Emma, to not be flowing the same direction as all the others she had seen.
On the other side of the river, basking in the sun and mud were long scaly, lizard looking things. They had sharp points all over them and long snouts. Emma was pretty sure it was one of these creatures that had chased them into the bushes.
Looking at them in the warm light of day, Emma thought they almost appeared harmless but she knew better! Then she turned her thoughts to how they would get across the river. Obviously they couldn’t swim with those things in the water. The river was too wide to swing across, there were no overhanging branches. Emma could remember from her tadpole memories about the tree floats of her kind. She thought they could make one if they could find some good, sharp rocks.
Turning to Abe standing next to her she saw he was thinking about the river as well. Their thoughts were interrupted as a strange type of thing came floating across towards them. They watched the two golden dark brown, almost hairless males propel the craft with a long pole. As they approached the shore they started pointing to the fire and making strange sounds.
First Abe had to check out their boat. It was about twenty small trees lashed together with some kind of strong vines. On either side it had a hollowed out tree to balance it. Some sort of black, sticky stuff had been jammed into the cracks between the trees. He wanted them to show him how he could make one, he signed this to the males and was answered with a grunt.
“Get on” they motioned to Emma and Abe. For the first time since they were out on their own, Abe felt a little fear. These creatures were aggressive and they would not let Abe and Emma get their skin packs or their fire to bring with them. They just pushed and shoved them onto the little raft.
Over the river the four went and they landed on the bank with a jolt that almost knocked Abe into the water. The lazy scaly beasts started sliding in as their naps were interrupted. The two golden colored males didn’t waste any time. They bullied Emma and Abe up the bank and onto yellow dirt that had been worn into a road. They did not have far to go and Emma caught her breath as she saw what these creatures were doing.
There were a lot of them. A lot of different kinds of beings, diverse like the shadow tribe but none of them looked happy.
They didn’t look happy because they were working. The furless ones were plentiful and it looked to Emma and Abe that they were forcing the furred creatures to build something.
A something that Emma, Abe, the shadow tribe and all the walking creatures they knew of couldn’t even imagine. It looked to Emma and Abe that these furless creatures were trying to build a mountain. Not themselves of course, they were forcing the furred creatures to do everything.
Eyeing the large vines securing the furred creatures to their areas of work, Abe looked worried. Ela felt horrible here. Extremely sick. He could barely hear or feel her usually strong, deep and comforting heart beat in this place. His revere was broken by the hairless ones pushing him and pointing to Emma’s feet. He simply shrugged. It was no use to try and explain to them about her parents arduous journey through fire and how Emma now bore that mutation.
No use telling these things anything. They already had fire. Those were the lights Emma and Abe had seen from the opposite shore. They obviously could move Ela and build with her. Calm, happiness and peace was something to teach them, but somehow Abe didn’t think they wanted to listen to that. They had their own language as well, but Abe and Emma could only understand what looked like tiny pictures on long leaves. Instructions on what they were to do.
What they were to do was get the hell out of there, that was Abe’s only thought but the hairless creatures already had Emma attached to one of those big vines and soon he would be too. What to do? He could feel Ela trying to tell him but she was so sick here…
Chapter 17
Jamu couldn’t believe his nose or the terror that came with that smell… He remembered that smell and it reminded him of death, liquid fire, and disaster. From that point on Jamu would not go near the spring no matter what the Land said.
For the rest of them it would become their life. In fact, it would turn out this spring seemed to be the life source for many creatures. Jamu’s tribe had already witnessed a few dinners going on by the water.
On one particularly hot day, some of the tribe decided to take a swim in the spring and discovered there were caves that could be accessed by swimming to the bottom of the spring pool. They swam in and discovered great chambers, brilliantly lit with bright green plants glowing in the darkness, gently swaying ferns and strange insects.
The great pool the tribesmen had emerged from lay in the center of the caverns. They spent the afternoon exploring and wandering in the weird darkness and they came out cold, wet and exhausted but already wanting to return.
Everyday while it was hot this small group of Jamu’s tribe would dive into the spring and disappear for the day. They kept it a secret from everyone else too. Some days Shiva was the only one who missed them. She had followed them one day but all she saw was the group dive into the spring pool and not come out. She never saw them float to the top, after Jamu’s reaction she would not go in the water, she finally got tired of waiting. After dark, here they came.
This group got into this habit and finally decided they would move into the caverns under the spring for good. Once they figured out how to get the fire down there that was. It was accomplished after trying multiple times to get in there with skin bags full of hot coals. Eventually they got one in that didn’t get wet. They kept to themselves after that. Always were a strange little group anyways. It was a good thing they kept the fire going too because it would save their ancestors lives one day.
The red ones had been in this place for twelve moons or more now. A few had been eaten by the huge lizard things, a few squished and not eaten. One definitely could not be careless here. The weather was not Jamu’s favorite either. It would get cold for a few months, everything would die and disappear and then it would warm up again. Jamu did not like the cold. He still wished he was home. He still wanted to continue to follow the warmth.
Eventually he, Shiva and a group of their tribe packed up and continued on… past the hammock and out over a great plain of sand. There were no trees, no water, just rocks, sand and Sun. They cleared the desert and found themselves in another hammock forest. It seemed to Jamu that was all this land was. He guessed to himself that was all any land was. At least it was warm and getting warmer.
Once again Jamu had started a journey to get away from the cold and once he came to a place where it was nice and warm, he stopped. Their tribe didn’t know it but this was the last journey Jamu would lead them on. He was sick and tired. Old. His once bright red fur was now heavily striped with white. Shiva’s stripes were wide, gray and steadily getting whiter. Once they made it up one of the taller mountains, they didn’t even care if there were no caves.
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Emma and Abe were in trouble. The furless creatures beat them and only fed them just enough food to keep them alive. Every day the group of furred creatures would be visited by Death. Emma’s small feet and legs were giving her trouble. She couldn’t stand as long as the others and she was getting more beatings because of it.
Abe knew he had to do something to save them. Emma’s pain was more than he could bear. He didn’t even know what these things were making them build… If they would only talk to him… something! One day as he was talking to an old gray face, he learned something extraordinary about their captors.
They were trying to rebuild a mountain. It seems these creatures had lived inside of a mountain somewhere when the ground shook the whole thing down. Those left alive climbed out of the rubble and realized everything they knew was gone and changed.
Apparently according to the old gray face, they never got over it and in their desperation; they actually started piling up the rocks from the mountain. Then they figured there weren’t enough of them left so they started forcing other creatures, running from disaster, to work on it.
The obsession continued and here they are… with half a mountain and not a friend in the world. The old gray face wrinkled his nose and brow and wished they had all died. No different than us, he said. Just got so nervous they lost all their fur over it. He and Abe fell silent as they heaved a huge rock into place.
It had been seven suns. Way too many as far as Abe was concerned! He knew a lot of stuff and all that information he put to use now. Abe called on Ela and leant her his strength. As Abe felt his energy drain into Ela, he felt her rising up against these injustices to her. She did not want the mountain rebuilt. She did not want so many of her children abused.
Gaining strength from Abe, Ela began to rumble. Everyone felt it. The furred and no fur alike began to get nervous. All had felt this before. One of the furless creatures saw Abe standing there with his head up and arms out and hit him with a stick, knocking Abe to the ground.
It was too late; Ela was awake, and madder than ever over the pain she felt when Abe was struck. The Land split in two, sucking in groups of furred and non-furred alike. The makeshift mountain began to fall with great boulders and rocks tumbling to the ground.
The furless creatures saw what was happening and became hysterical. Running and jumping over the fissures in the Land they tried to hold their structure together with their bodies to no avail. There was much death when it was all over and Abe was lucky to find Emma, which he did. There were one or two of the furless creatures just standing, shocked, but what Abe couldn’t forget as he grabbed a torch on the way out; was the look on their faces.
A look of sheer hatred that Abe had never seen on another creature before and they were looking at him. Abe, Emma and all the furred creatures held captive took off. Each one hoping never to set eyes on that backwards flowing river again.
Later on, Abe would draw a large circle around the man with the stars around his waist on his star map. This area was now off limits and he warned everything he met about it and the strange furless beings. Including his fellow tribesmen. Abe and Emma headed back towards their home, warned everyone there and then continued on. This time following rising Sun instead of setting Sun.
What they found would amaze them forever. Their journey was long and hard heading into rising Sun. When they got to a certain point the air began to change and it was hard to breathe. Yellow powdery stuff floated on the breeze and covered Emma and Abe’s fur. They would not stay here. Abe didn’t care if they walked all night, he was not staying here. Ela was in transition here and Abe knew she didn’t like their kind watching her get dressed.
Looking around at the barren, hot red landscape, it was a sight to behold. All the living trees and plants were burnt black and then covered with a white and yellow powder. The ground was a hard, gray rock as far as the eye could see. There was a strange little path of the gray rock that started at the shore and led into the water. It stopped in the middle of the black water. Little did they know but this was the very spot that the old one and the two red ones had escaped the lava and destruction of their world.
The black water seemed to cover everything else. Calm, black water, so hot it was steaming. What a strange place. Emma pointed out some dead fish on the beach and Abe informed her they would continue on. He had a feeling if they stayed much longer they would end up just like those dead fish… They walked through the desolate, dead wasteland for two suns without stopping. On the other side of the dead land, Abe wished they had taken their time.
It had been getting cooler as they went on but when they finally stopped to make camp it was down right cold. Abe got a huge, warm fire going and they went to sleep semi-comfortably. They awoke freezing, Emma had ice crystals in her fur.
With the fire rekindled, Abe and Emma just sat and tried to thaw out. Maybe coming to this side of Ela was not so smart. They had no idea what they were about to get into, but they would soon find out as Sun began to rise over the most beautiful white, sparkling landscape they had ever seen.
They were amazed and they were cold. They had never been this cold. They thanked Ela for their fur and their fire. Emma thanked her for the fur pelt she kept with her always. Then they packed up, cleaned up and started out towards and across the icy plains ahead of them.
So began Emma and Abe’s journey across what they would label “The Great Cold”. It would take them a whole moon to get somewhere that was truly inhabitable. It would take at least seven more moons before they ran into Jamu and Shiva.
Chapter 18
It was actually one of Jamu and Shiva’s great grandchildren who found Emma and Abe. Curious little beast that he was, Emma awoke to a pair of big, bright violet eyes staring her in the face. Big violet eyes that were more than happy to lead the newcomers to his tribe.
Abe discovered that he was about the same age as Shiva and Jamu. Old. Emma was younger than them. They had all four been around the world. They had all survived Ela’s transition to her present state. It was in describing the Lands Emma and Abe had come through that Jamu remembered what happened to his land. He relayed this to Abe and Abe agreed that they had come through a land with red dirt and the smell they could not forget. Jamu wanted desperately to know if they could go back to this land and Abe shook his head. No. Nothing could live there. He told Jamu of the dead fish on the shore of the black water that went on forever.
Jamu and Abe had more in common than that though. While Emma showed Shiva plants and medicine, Jamu and Abe would begin the first holy war over the name of the creature they called home.
Shiva liked Emma. Liked her even more once she discovered Emma could show her useful things. Shiva knew something useful that she could share with Emma as well. One afternoon Shiva pointed to Emma’s belly and then pointed to one of the babies crawling around. Emma shook her head but Shiva knew better and insisted. Shiva was proven right within a moon’s time when Emma began to get sick in the mornings.
Days went by and time piled up. Emma and Abe stayed with Jamu and Shiva until after their baby was born. When the baby was born the whole tribe had to see it. It was an amazing creature. The tribe likened her to the full moon at night sparkling on the water. That was the most beautiful thing they knew of. She was nearly furless and what she did have was a rich, deep blackish red. Her bare skin and face was as black as her father Abe. Her eyes were huge and a deep reddish purple color. The most interesting thing about her was her size. She was tiny, almost fragile. There was no stoutness to her like the other babies. She also had the legs and feet of her mother. Delicate and thin, they were like nothing Jamu and Shiva’s tribe had ever seen.
The whole tribe was impressed with the child. She was impressive. Abe and Emma wanted her to have a name that reflected her beauty. Emma wanted to name her after Ela but Abe said that the name of Ela is sacred. So they decided to create a new word from Ela’s name. Their daughter’s name would begin with the last sound of Ela’s name. Her name would be “Lalita”… the beautiful female child… as beautiful as Ela, Ela’s child.
Jamu didn’t know what to think of all this “naming” business. He and Abe had long argued over it. Jamu of all people would have known the name of the Land if it had one. After all, was it not one of his own people that had taught Abe how to speak to it? The red ones had always thought of the Land as the great unnamable. It was everything and everywhere. You would have to name everything within the Land as well. It just was. If it was anything it was “feeder creature” like he had when he was small.
Another thing that bothered Jamu about the way Abe described the Land was that Abe seemed convinced his “Ela” was female. Obviously Abe had never seen the fire that could shoot up out of the Land’s core or the work that the Land put in to feed all its creatures. Just like a male, the Land had to protect its own as well. It was huge and strong. The Land was a powerful force. Like him.
Abe swore by his beliefs and could not convince Jamu of anything else. One night this argument came to a head when Abe angrily claimed Ela loved him more than Jamu because she had told him her name.
Jamu had snorted, his jealousy rising, and said that The Land loved him more, in fact, loved all his kind more, because they were his original creatures. They were the first. Now Jamu really didn’t know this for sure but since they were the only ones who ever spoke to the Land, he felt it must be true.
The two highly spirited males got into a nasty fight that night over this. Blood flowed and Abe decided it was time for them to move on. Before they went though, Abe and Emma would witness the crazy Jamu and some others building a pile of stones in the middle of the clearing. When they were done building, Jamu climbed on top of it and began telling his story about the great unnamable; the Land.
Jamu’s purpose was to try and correct any nonsense that Abe may have spread to his tribe. Tell them the real story before Abe’s version would pollute their minds. Jamu didn’t have to do this though. Abe, Emma and the tiny Lalita would be gone within the next moon.
There was one of Jamu’s tribe that was intensely affected by Abe though and that was Eton, Jamu’s son. Eton was a nosy thing, about twenty two moons old. He also looked more like Jamu than any of his siblings. His fur was bright red and where it had been burnt away by the sun; his skin was a deep rich, brown red color. He had Jamu’s fierce attitude as well. He had gotten into Abe’s skin bag one evening and found the star map. After begging Abe for two days, Abe finally taught him the jist of the thing. Abe showed Eton the constellations and how they related to the different areas of Ela.
Eton liked that the Land had a name in Abe’s world as well; and he found himself kicked out of the tribe when he decided to go against Jamu and call the Land Ela. Having no where to go on his own, he went back to try and find the spring dwellers. He traveled for miles and finally found the spring. He thought he would sit there until someone came along. It was three suns before anyone found him besides the great lizards. The reason for this as he would later find out, was that the spring dwellers could now only come out at night. It was just too hot and bright for them on the surface.
They took Eton in but Eton was not one to live under ground. He wanted to draw up his own star map. He wanted to study the sky and you can’t do that in the ground. Eton also still held a great appreciation for his father’s viewpoint. He liked that he was from the “original beings” as his father would put it. “Both views are good” he told the spring dwellers… both males had the true story. Eton combined them to make his own story, which without conflict, would be the truest of them all. Eton fashioned himself a small tree house on the outskirts of the spring and that is where he stayed. Over time Eton would create his own star map and teach the spring dwellers all about the sky, Ela and how to heal.
Abe, Emma and Lalita were on the road again. Lately it seemed as if Abe was getting older by the day. It would be nice if they could settle down somewhere. He was beginning to think his job was done. He had told as many beings as he could about Ela and her greatness. Emma had taught many about the plants and healing ways. Abe was thinking it was time to go home. Emma agreed.
They consulted Abe’s star maps; they had changed from one side of the world to the other. It looked like a long walk. They started in the morning. Heading into rising Sun they headed home.
Chapter 19
It took them a very long time and they met some very interesting creatures in the meantime. Apparently the big lizards were not the only outrageous creations that Ela had coughed up. There were huge hairy beasts with long trunks for noses. There were a lot of them too. Abe and Emma actually happened upon a tribe of walking creatures that only killed and ate these things. It was horrific to watch as well. Chasing the monstrous beast off a cliff and then scavenging the remains… They were an okay tribe though and gave them food, warm pelts of fur and let them rest a few suns.
They also noticed that more and more of the walking creatures like them were losing their fur. Even old ones that were still totally covered in thick fur were starting to lose it in large patches leaving dry ashy skin in its place. It was strange; Emma and Abe didn’t know what to make of it except that it was getting warmer.
Everyplace was getting warmer. It had been a long time now since Emma or Abe had felt a cold breeze. In fact, they hadn’t been cold since coming out of the Great Cold many moons ago. As they steadily moved on towards their home in the mountains, it steadily became warmer and warmer. By the time they arrived home they had lost almost all the fur between them. When they saw their home they were amazed and in awe.
The shadow tribe had always been the more advanced of the species. They had now surpassed everything else. Abe and Emma could only stare at the structure in the middle of the forest. Apparently the shadow tribe thought the hairless ones they heard about had a pretty good idea… minus the slavery. Shortly after Emma and Abe had left them last time, they decided they wanted to try and build a mountain. So they did and they did it much better than the hairless ones.
The structure looked at first like just a huge pile of rocks but on closer observation you could see doors and windows. Inside was a makeshift rock staircase that led up to different sleeping quarters and rooms. There were quite a few tribesmen coming and going out of it as well. The entire area looked busy. Time had been good to the shadow tribe and they were extremely advanced compared to the other hominid creatures on Ela at the time.
Sam and Ava were still there. Abe couldn’t believe they were still alive! Sam’s fur was still the same light, smoky gray and now Ava’s was almost the same color. Her once beautiful jet black fur striped heavily with gray and white. Sam came running out so excited to see his friends. He grabbed Abe and talking excitedly, dragged him to the outskirts of the main clearing. Standing on the edge of a large field of green rows he spread his arms wide in a gesture towards the massive stalks softly swaying in the breeze.
Abe didn’t understand why Sam was so excited over this field. It’s a field. Sam explained to Abe that he had planted this field. These plants produced things you could eat. To prove his point he walked up to a stalk and pulled a long green thing from it. Peeling off the leaves revealed a yellowish cob. Sam took a bite then offered it to Abe. Abe tasted the thing, it was good…
Abe and Emma settled into their old caves above the stone monstrosity the shadow tribe occupied. They were happy to be home and so was the tiny Lalita. Everyone loved her already. She was so smart and such a sparkling child! She never fussed. She was always fair. If another small one started a fight or argument, Lalita would settle it one way or the other. She was a tiny little beautiful powerhouse and the entire tribe was happy to let her rule them in one way or another.
The shadow tribe had a great culture and society by this time. They had managed to pull together all the little talents that the refugees possessed and created an educated, cultured society. They had begun to delegate official jobs a while ago. Right now there were two healers, twenty rock cutters, hunters, gatherers, scouts, musicians and artists. Sam and Ava had even recruited their own group and turned them into planters.
If you were to see the shadow tribe today, one could easily imagine the Mayans or ancient Sumerians. It was amazing that none of this physically lasted but being that they used only things made by Ela, it is understandable. The advancements they made would only be carried on by word and memory with shoddy reproductions popping up here and there. The years of struggle and survival after the Great Catastrophe would wipe clean most memories of anything but how to get food and survive. Creating yet another restart in the course of mankind.
The one thing the shadow tribe did not have yet was a written form of their language. They had pictures because their artists were good. There were quite a few of Julia’s descendants running around thanks to Sam and Ava. As for their actual words though, there was nothing. They really saw no need to write anything down.
You learned what you learned and you taught it to your children. One drew a picture of a person they wanted to remember and then told the story.
There weren’t many secrets in this world at this time. Nothing to be spirited away and hidden in some vault. Nothing important that couldn’t be remembered. Every advancement the shadow tribe made was shared with whatever beings wanted to know. This was their way.
This system worked well for the tribe and it was good. What wasn’t good was that there were some beings walking Ela that were not so trustworthy. Descendants of some mineral deficient creature, carrying around the very human conditions of trauma, psychosis and various other problems.
Some of these creatures had already met Abe and Emma along the backwards river. Some of them had followed them home. The tribe hadn’t really noticed the newcomers too much. Most beings entered the tribes domain and just integrated themselves into their society. The hairless dark ones did not do this. They observed the tribe for days and then they decided to take an abandoned cave near Emma and Abe. Abe was the one they were watching. He had decimated their group so badly there were only about twenty of them left.
Over time the shadow tribe did begin to notice them. Sneaking into gatherings to get food or getting caught in Sam’s field. The tribe said nothing but they soon found out who they were when Abe saw them one day. Now the tribe was watching the hairless ones. There was a new scout to follow them and report daily. Obviously the hairless ones didn’t notice because three suns later, they tried to kill Abe and almost succeeded.
The scout couldn’t move fast enough when he saw the hairless one running towards Abe out of the bushes. The hairless creature put body and force into Abe and they both tumbled down the cliff wall, Abe being the bigger and stronger one, fortunately landed on the hairless one killing him.
This episode brought the tribe together and the scouts gathered up the hairless ones, named them the dark ones for their actions, and sent them away. Sending them away was not even close to enough for Abe though. He knew that this kind of creature would be a plague on all future creatures.
The dark ones left without much issue and they took with them something interesting. Art work. As written before, the shadow tribe drew pictures. It was something they had in common with the dark ones, but the dark ones now had a use for it besides little instructions on leaves for slaves.
They wanted to tell their own crazy story of Abe. They wanted to make the world know he was not good. They wanted to distribute the story so when people saw Abe they would run away from him. By the time they had returned to their homeland many moons later, they knew what they would do. The first tablet would be carved on a slab from the mountain Abe destroyed.
Chapter 20
The Dark Ones Story- Hell is Cold
The old grey face had told Abe just a small portion of the dark ones story. They had indeed lost their mountain, but what no one on Ela realized was that the Dark Ones, the Green Ones and the Golden Ones were here before the Great Catastrophe. They were here before Ela had broken and caused everyone to run. The Dark Ones knew Ela had the creatures of the land running for a long time. Their memories of crawling out of the mud were very clear and very cold.
By the time Abe and Emma met them, the Dark Ones were pretty much half mad if not totally. They wanted their homeland back, but could never survive there now thanks to Ela. They unwillingly traded their cool, dark world for the hot, bright sun and they hated it. They hated Ela. Eventually they would succeed in building their makeshift mountains. The reason they wanted them was so they could get out of the infernal Sun and to live like they had before.
The Dark Ones would carry a mysterious resentment for the whole land forever. They didn’t start out this way though. They started by crawling out of frozen, thick mud. Black mud. Black as the frozen perpetual night that Ela was trapped in at the time. Not a single dark one had ever known the difference between opening their eyes and closing them. In the beginning it was so frozen, so dark, so silent. The whole world was silent except for the slippery slap of the dark ones evolving from the mud and onto the black ice.
Nothing flapped across the land; no insects were yet to crawl in this area. There was nothing for these newborn creatures to eat and they were hungry. Many ate each other to survive. As time grew, so did the Dark Ones. It came about that only the biggest and strongest of them would survive as the only food they had was each other for the longest time.
It seems in those early stages all the Dark Ones had to do was roam around in the dark looking for food or simply other life. So their story really begins as they began it, not at the very beginning, but at a great moment when they really had to evolve to survive. That terrible moment when the Sun entered their existence.
The Dark Ones note that they did realize the ice was melting. They realized things were not as they were when they came up out of the mud. The first sign was the lightness in the darkness. Instead of pitch black, the sky was now a kind of inky blue. Their eyes were adjusting to it and they began to see shapes, other creatures and their surroundings.
One day, actually, on the first morning of the new world; the Dark Ones observed with their myopic and soon to be blinded eyes, the Sun peeking over the horizon. The brilliant strip of light looked to the dark ones like something rising out of the land. They spent some time blind. Finally their eyes adjusted and when they saw each other for the first time, they ran. They were scared of themselves. Humans didn’t start out with fur.
The Dark Ones before the Sun were very white, almost blue with webbed hands and toes. A very prominent tail graced their backsides and their eyes were huge from constantly trying to see. Their slick, smooth skin was very shiny in the new sunlight. The land opening up under the new Sun was all white as well, not pitch black as the dark ones knew it to be and in the center of this land was a huge mountain. When the Sun hit this great mountain light beamed throwing the dark ones into a frenzy. They lay face down on the melting ice and cried. They screamed and moaned as the light burned their skin and eyes. The mountain did nothing but shine.
The frozen ground stretching out and around this great mountain was streaked with black and oily streams, steaming as they melted ice along their path. The ice all flickered with reds and golds in the bright Sun. Many of the Dark Ones died because of this new Sun. Its brilliance blinded them and burnt their skin. The ground began to unfreeze in places wearing their tails to nothing as it dragged behind them. Sickness came with the warmth.
With the new Sun also came new land. As things began to thaw, the dark ones found themselves surrounded by water with the mountain becoming an island of refuge. They crowded onto it, ate each other and watched their world move and change around them.
The Mountain
This was a very special mountain and the Dark Ones thought it was going to eat them when it began to rumble like their bellies. It shook like it was cold and hot red liquid had started to seep out of places. The Dark Ones began to see red flowing in the black oily cracks in the ice as well. Things got worse, but the Dark Ones had no idea what was happening and there was no where for them to go anyway. When the mountain finally blew it almost wiped out all of the first creatures on Ela. Some of them were trapped in the hardening lava right where they stood. Later, the Dark Ones would free them and eat them; which would interestingly enough show them that their food was better cooked.
Another gift given by the mountain to the ten or so remaining Dark Ones was fire. The lava had set little fires all over the mountain. The dark ones played with it first, and then discovered their burnt brethren matched the burns on their hands. Eventually they discovered uses for the fire but at first it really wasn’t all that important. It was hot, and the Dark Ones were over being hot.
The Dark Ones would carry on the last gift they received from the mountain forever and to this day. The eruption had scaled off a whole side of the mountain, revealing a shiny bright yellow side. It was hard, cold and smooth, and it shone brilliantly in the new Sun. They could see themselves in it. The few that were left spent a good deal of their time speaking to the reflections. They were so amazed at the creatures like them that lived in the mountain; they began rituals to them… only later realizing they were worshipping themselves.
Besides the new mountain, the Sun and the fire, the Dark Ones had other things to worry about. Food. There were not enough of them left now to really be able to sustain themselves for very long by eating each other. They decided to kill and eat the fattest one of them to see how long he would last. The dark ones felt if they made this special to the mountain it may do something for them in regards to food. Multiply this dark one or something.
They knocked him out with a rock and carried him as far as they could get up the top of the mountain. The very top was unattainable. It was way too hot. There was a huge fire up there spewing yellow smoke and powder. It was impossible to get near it without their skin searing off. They got close enough to really begin to feel the heat and they left their knocked out brother on the ground there. When he was done cooking, they took sharp rocks and divided his parts among them. They ate well that day, and they left the remains of their dinner where it lay so the mountain may give them more.
It did produce. The next day the Dark Ones went to see what happened with their dead brother. They were amazed that the mountain had given them something back. Little creatures with legs and wings were all over the remains. There were little squirmy things moving everywhere. There were slimy, long white worms and black flies the size of their hands. The Dark Ones had never seen this life beyond their own two legged existence and they tried them out.
After that, the Dark Ones had much to thank the mountain for. When their numbers began to build again a copy of the first ritual was created for everyone. They believed the mountain fed them so they would feed it. They also preferred the taste of their own flesh to the bugs so they decided the mountain would like that better as well.
Their sacrifices to the mountain may have convinced the strange eyes when they came around, but the mountain couldn’t help its own destruction. All this time the Sun had not gone down. For all that time in the dark, it seemed the Sun would make up for it. Time was not counted but the Dark Ones began to miss the darkness and the freezing cold. It was still cool away from the top of the mountain, but it was not the same as in the beginning. They began to wish for the mountain to take away the Sun and one day they got their wish for that as well.
They were used to the mountain rumbling and smoking all the time. They had gotten used to breathing in the sulphurous fumes that surrounded them. They did notice that there was more black oily stuff pumping out of the cracks in the ice but who knew what it meant?
They found out. The Dark Ones wrote: “The mountain rumbled hard and a huge cloud of yellow dust came out of the top of the mountain. The dust was followed by the red liquid coming out of the hole and flowing towards us down the mountain. We ran, but as before, we could not all escape.”
The mountain blew up for an unknown amount of time but it was a long time according to the Dark Ones. It spewed black and yellow smoke for days and when it was done, the mountain was a pile of rocks and the Sun was gone again. They mourned the loss of their precious mountain, but they were very pleased with its sacrifice for them. They no longer had to hide from the burning bright Sun all the time, and when they needed light, they now had fire.
The Dark Ones settled into their new, old dark world and now… now they began to really be something. They decided to rebuild the mountain and that became the work day. Some would scour Ela for bugs and food. It was on one of these journeys that a dark one discovered a four legged creature that didn’t seem to have a problem seeing in the dark. It was a strange looking thing, even to the Dark Ones, and they decided they wanted to catch it to see if it could be eaten.
They did catch the thing and more of them. They found that they could eat them, ride them and the hump backs could run fast and see in the dark. Another plus to these leggy hump backs were they were covered in thick fur and made nice sleeping buddies. The hump backs became a part of every day life for the dark ones and they thanked the mountain.
The hump backs were not the only creature the Dark Ones had encountered. There were things in the water as well. Great beasts with scales and claws. They did not even chew when they ate, they simply swallowed. The Dark Ones remembered a time when one of them had to claw his way out of one creature’s belly. Luckily, the creatures did not chew but they ran on land. The Dark Ones had been chased many times by these things lunging out of the water and speeding across the ice at them. They were good to eat, but it was more likely they would eat you.
With all these advancements the Dark Ones were making, there were no other creatures like them to compare them to. The Golden Ones were still to the west of them, the two did not know about each other and that was a good thing for the Golden Ones. The Dark Ones were decidedly cruel. Whether this was by nature or a result of breathing the noxious gasses on the mountain, they were damaged somehow. It was no big deal to see one Dark One ripping another apart and gorging on the flesh. It was nothing to see how they treated their hump backs by kicking and beating them. Their hearts and natures were as black and frozen as the astronomical polar night of their surroundings. After their story became known, they would be the Dark Ones from the black land to all who walked Ela.
The Exodus
Time had been good to the Dark Ones but Ela was not. Ela was in transition. She was changing and growing and had no time for the parasites living off of her. They had gotten used to the dark most of the time. Most of the time, because the Sun still came around with its bright, hot light every now and then. The Dark Ones looked different now. Their skin was used to being burnt when the Sun came around so it was no longer fragile and shiny. They were no longer white as the snow around them either. Their tails were gone and no new Dark Ones were born like the originals. Now they came out golden brown with no tails and smooth skin. No hair at all. Amazing how the scariest thing on Ela eventually became one of the more beautiful creatures.
Being beautiful was a goal of theirs anyway. Ever since the mountain had given them the mirror, they had cherished the shiny yellow rock. Some of them kept a piece with them always so they could look at themselves. Some of them made things out of it, little stones with holes in them. The Dark Ones would wear these and decorate themselves with the precious stones. The loss of this massive amount of golden rock would cause them to search for it and hoard it.
It was when Ela split apart again that they would have to leave their black land and move into the Sun forever more. It was a wave. A freezing cold black wave of everything Ela could cough up took them out. It had rained for many days. The black oily brew bubbling out of the ground was pushing the ice sheets farther apart and the water was rising. The Dark Ones had their new mountain about half way built. They had built it as they remembered the old one: Straight up into the air in a cone like shape. It was hollow inside and the top came off so they could crawl inside if they needed to.
When the ice became nothing but water this is where they ran. They crowded inside the makeshift mountain with all their golden rocks and humpbacks but it made no difference. Luckily the humpbacks could swim. As the wave crashed over the mountain it filled it with water, drowning every dark one that did not get on a humpback.
It was a sight to see as the humpbacks swam their masters over the rim and into the deepening sea. The humpbacks swam for days in the dark. The Dark Ones did not know where to direct the humpbacks so the humpbacks just swam until they hit land. It was dark when they landed, but it was night time.
The morning sun woke them and they cursed the light. In the same breath they thanked the mountain for saving them again. In the same minute they began mourning the loss of their beloved black land. In an hour they were amazed with the color green and all the plant life. They had never seen any of this before and the only thing they appreciated was the proliferation of food available. Within the day they were on the move for someplace that reminded them of home.
As far as the Dark Ones knew there was nothing that walked or looked like them on Ela. In fact there was not much on Ela at all, so they roamed, taking advantage of the land that didn’t move under them or freeze their feet. They roamed, hating the trees, disliking the clutter of the world. They wanted a place wiped clean like the black land. They roamed until the primordial forest spit them out into a sandy wasteland. A production left over from the first time Ela sent them on the run. This would be perfect if it were cold and dark. Maybe they could make it so.
The water that flowed through this land was thick and dark. That did please the Dark Ones. It was salty and moved in a strange way from the other water ways they had seen in their travels. It impressed them in that it cut through this land like the boiling black water cut through the ice in their homeland. They settled all around it.
The Dark Ones moved into this new land and set about cutting blocks out of the hard sand like they would have cut out of the ice. They began to rebuild their mountain. They were still trying to build this special mountain when Abe and Emma found them. The Dark Ones wished they had never laid eyes on Abe. The story they would write using the shadow tribe’s own pictures would be a source of evil confusion forever. Abe was no light bringer and even if he was, light bringers were the most evil of things to the Dark Ones. Even if no other creature agreed.
The Dark Ones Story of Abe
No trouble was at hand anywhere. The slaves were happy and full. They worked on the mountain with us readily. There was no trouble. Until this two legged creature and his sister arrived into our land.
They created havoc with the great beasts in the river, and then they created fires on our other shore. We had to do something with them. We took them in, feeding them as if they were our own slaves. We, the people from the dark land, tended their wounds and healed them. They treated us with disregard.
The two came into our land on a bright, sunny day as all bad things happen on those types of days… The two were different from each other and we did not believe they were sister and brother anyway. The female was short and red with those strange legs and feet, and the male was very large, with skin blacker than our land. They were hairy ones as well, not that it will make a difference. It does seem all the creatures are losing that strange fur we never grew.
The female caused havoc with the beasts of the water right away. The crashing and breaking of trees was heard for a great long time. Our kind was very afraid. When we looked over the river to try and see, we saw a great fire built on the bank. Then more. They were burning the land. We had to stop them so we traveled in our boats to try and speak with them to no avail.
The male became aggressive and demanded we bring them across the river to our land so we did. There he and the female became involved in our building and decided they did not like it, and he had powers. Evil powers that our kind had never seen before. Our slaves begged him to not hurt us. They told him they needed the mountain too. He did not care.
It was terrifying the forces this black creature pulled out of the land. He summoned great monsters that flung us and the slaves far and wide. Blood flowed down and into the river turning it red. The mountain that we had almost built again tumbled to the ground killing many.
Those who were left of us recovered and followed them after our destruction. We discovered there were many of the black evil creatures. They were all evil. They ate strange food, did not sacrifice or give thanks to the mountain and they knew nothing of our shiny yellow rocks or our great dark land.
We tried to capture the male who destroyed our mountain and killed so many but he had friends and help. We had to run for our lives from the black creatures but we did find out something of importance. The black creature’s name is Abe and he is well known now in the land for teaching evil powers to the others.
We will forever on be wary of Abe and his kind… we will always seek revenge on the black ones and the descendants of this great evil black spirit.
Chapter 21
Eton was curious like Abe had been and he didn’t stay in the tree by the spring long. When he had worked out his star maps and determined he needed a mate, he decided to go on a journey. He would come back, but not alone. Eton journeyed across his land towards the rising sun and when he reached the water he stopped.
He determined the land he was in was very different to the land he knew. The ground was squishy everywhere. Everything was green and water. So much green, Eton found it hard to determine whether something was a bush or tree, or both. He had passed a strange river as well. It did not flow like the others he had seen, something was weird about it. There were strange trees he had never seen before and huge insects. There were no great lizard creatures here but he had seen big furry ones with long noses. Those things were everywhere. Eton decided the best way to explore this land was to make camp and let it come to him.
It did. Shortly after Eton had built his fire, some strange creatures emerged from the trees. Like their surroundings, Eton had never seen this type of two legged creature before. They were not very hairy and their skin was a smooth light brown color. They had hair on their heads. Long hair that almost covered their bodies and the females were beautiful with big, watery blue eyes and they were all tall and thin. Lanky would be the word today.
They were friendly, thank Ela, and they brought Eton food from their land. This type of food Eton had never seen before. Was it meat? He did not know. The little slimy slivers of salty stuff came out of a shell that they lived in. The two legged creatures cooked them in these shells. They had other things too. Things that looked like spiders with hard shells. Eton had to bite and break the shell to get to the meat. All in all he thought it was too much work. He would have to show them how to hunt.
In the morning the creatures were there again to feed Eton and after they were done, Eton asked them to show him around. They did and in the meantime, Eton asked them if they knew Ela. They did. In fact, these creatures had been living with, in, and around Ela since they could remember. It was Ela that brought them from the lakes and ponds and helped them to walk.
Eton was ecstatic! He had met no one but his own tribe and Abe who knew about Ela. He asked them what they did with their dead… he asked if they buried them, he held his breath while he waited for the answer. First they were confused. They did not seem to understand death. Then he drew some pictures in the sand and they understood. They knew Ela so well, they put their dead back in the ponds. The ponds were what they came out of so they designated certain ponds to go back into.
Eton thought this was rather similar to burial and he did not know what to think about it but these creatures knew Ela. He had seen them talking to her already on a few occasions. In his short time with these creatures, he would find they were unchanged by natural disaster. Ela had not violently evolved here. These creatures were only changed by their reaching for branches or fruits. They had lost hair, but according to them they had never had that much. In fact, Eton was so strange to them; they kept going around petting his fur.
He discovered they lived in the trees like he did. The difference was the trees were around a large mound of the shells from the food. The mound rose up in the middle of the trees and at night when the creatures were cozy in their nests eating or whatever, they would throw the shells right out onto the mound. That’s apparently how it got there. Eton loved this place. He had seen no ghosts so he guessed burial by pond was as good as being burnt so that was good too. Then he saw them raise the dead.
Eton was not scared easily. He did not care for ghosts, but they were just part of Ela. In Eton’s world though, ghosts were not alive and the dead stayed dead. In these creatures world, there was no such thing as death. When one of them died, they were taken to the pond. The pond “ate” the body and turned it back into water, fungus, mud and whatever made up the pond. The creatures knew this because Ela told them. Ela also had told them that if they would sit very quietly near the ponds and wish very hard for their loved ones to come back, they would.
Eton came upon the creatures all sitting around one of the largest burial ponds. Even the flying things and insects were quiet. The silence was all consuming and soon the creatures began to hum. They all hummed, they all kept the same tone. It made Eton rather uncomfortable and he started to question whether these creatures knew the same Ela he did. Then he saw the water of the pond start to ripple. One by one, the creatures in the lake rose to the surface and floated on the water. Their eyes were open. It really freaked out Eton. He was now hiding behind a tree.
The creatures rowed tiny canoes out to sit beside their chosen dead ones and Eton watched them feed the dead, talk to them, and point at him. They were telling their dead ones about him. The dead ones were talking back. Eton was terrified. When it was all over, the same ritual but in reverse, Eton viewed the creatures much differently. They reassured him, telling him Ela had taught them this. Ela was good. Their dead knew things and told them. Their dead told them they were still alive, just somewhere else. Their dead told them the ponds were like doors to a house. Their dead told them we will all go there someday.
When Eton asked if they would teach him how to do it, they refused. They didn’t know how to teach him since Ela had taught them. They explained if they didn’t use the right tone, other things came through and their dead could not stop them. They could not let those other things in. That was the rule Ela had given them. So they could not teach Eton.
In the end, this particular ritual would be one of the great secrets of Ela and would never be solved again. Never told or taught by anything but Ela. That is the key, thought Eton. What is taught to us by Ela is sacred, what we learn ourselves can be done by anything. Eton decided to start keeping separate teachings about Ela.
Eton also decided that he may never find another creature as ancient as these. He was wrong. These creatures were only one of three that were still around from the great Evolution, but Eton did not know that. These creatures were actually the least evolved of any of the two legged creatures on Ela. Eton took his wife from these creatures but she could not live very far from her land.
Eton’s first wife died in the hot grass of that middle plain in between Eton’s land and hers. Eton was heartbroken and he had to take her body all the way back to the green land for burial. Her people would have known otherwise. The good thing about it was Eton could speak to her whenever he wanted to journey out to the green land.
That was what he and the rest of Ela would call them and their land over time. They were the “Green Ones” and they lived in the “Green Land”. They were the first and interestingly enough, thousands of years into the future, they would be the last. Eton went back to his tree by the spring but he didn’t stay long. He was still lonely and though others would join them occasionally, he rarely saw the spring dwellers. This time Eton headed in the direction of the man with the starry belt. In the direction of the land Abe had warned him about.
Eton hadn’t thought of Abe in some time but now he remembered the beautiful Lalita. Abe had a daughter and she must be special. Ela favored Abe. Eton had to find them and he wasn’t wasting any time. He traveled day and night. He managed to get through the Dark Ones land without their notice and they were back up to their old tricks. Everything there was just as Abe and Emma had said. Multitudes of different two legged creatures piling rocks into a mountain. They were tied to their work with large vines and looked miserable.
Eton had felt Ela here just as Abe had. Her cries ran up his legs and into his belly. Her misery brought him to his knees and he pleaded with whatever else was there to help her. He had to escape this land quickly. The vibes from Ela alone may kill him. He made it across the wide strange river that very closely resembled the river in the Green Land. Eton felt that strange river was some type of path for the Green Ones dead. He wondered if there were similar ponds in the bad land of the Dark Ones. He was definitely scared of what the Dark Ones would bring out if they had the knowledge. He prayed Ela had never given it to them and he prayed that these two strange rivers, flowing the same direction yet so far away from each other, would never meet.
Eton went farther North than he wanted. His star maps were a little off and Abe’s had gotten so old he could hardly see it. It was a good thing he did or he never would have found that perfect female. First he crossed a desert, then he climbed mountains, then he froze and was thankful to Ela for the small bit of fur he had remaining on his body.
While shivering in the snow in front of a dying fire, he thought he was dying when he saw her. She had almost no fur and she was tiny with smooth golden skin. She had long black hair like the Green Ones and her eyes were green like their land. Her eyes were the strangest thing. He hadn’t seen any creature on Ela with eyes like hers. They started out large, but ended in almost a squint, like she was laughing all the time. He loved them and her instantly, but he was freezing and about on the edge of his life. He thought he was dreaming.
Jiao had no idea what she had found but she knew it was new to her and would be to her tribe. She had found a big, hairy creature that looked like the big animals in the jungle below. Only this was red and definitely not an animal. It smelled like a male anyway and it was looking at her with the biggest, strangest eyes. They were the color of the flowers on the mountainside. A beautiful violet color.
It seemed to Eton that Jiao was very used to this cold. She had a fur blanket around her and from a pack she carried, she pulled one out for Eton. She also produced an interesting item of food. It was like a small block, brown and soft. When Jiao broke it in half it was white inside and crumbly. She offered Eton half of the block and he found it delicious. Unlike anything he had ever eaten before. Next she pulled a small stone bowl, two small stone cups and a skin bag of some black herb from her pack. She filled the bowl with snow and set it on the fire. As the snow melted she began to add the black herb to the water. Eventually the water was steaming hot and the herb had turned it a blackish color. With the bread, blanket, hot tea and good company, Eton was very happy and totally in love with Jiao. He fell asleep without even realizing it.
Jiao meditated over her tea and wondered if this was the creature her bones had told her about. It had to be. This whole thing was so unusual. The bones were the reason she had been up here in the mountain tops to begin with. They had told her she would find something precious here and they told her it was looking for her as well. She watched as Eton snored softly and contentedly across the fire from her. She felt like curling up under the blanket next to him. He certainly looked warm.
Chapter 22
Jiao’s tribe was not creatures. They were humans. Maybe the first humans to be classified that way. They had evolved into basically what we are today, way before any other creatures in their time. Of course, they were also the oldest creatures on the planet short of Amoebas and bacteria. They, like the Green Ones had also escaped the mad transitions of Ela so they had advanced quickly.
Many things they had discovered long ago, were the things Eton and tribes like his were just learning. The shadow tribe was a baby compared to Jiao’s tribe. Jiao couldn’t remember the beginning. Her tribe had discovered that over time, the tadpole memories fade. That’s when they had started to try and write them down. They could figure out the writing. Just like the Shadow Tribe and the Dark Ones, they used pictures to represent what they wanted to say. It was just a matter of finding something to put them on that would last.
First they carved the characters all over the cliffs in the mountains. They were big pictures of creatures and celestial objects. They moved on to carving on shells and sticks and that became the written language for Jiao’s tribe. They had studied Ela and the sky for so long they discovered there were patterns in their world. They discovered when certain stars shine bright above them, certain things happen. They discovered when babies were born under certain stars they would have certain personal traits.
They discovered that they could make things out of clay and stone and they were a happy people. After they tackled remembering, they started to grow things. Sam in the Shadow Tribe would have been amazed by the enormous fields of edible plants. They had fields of some of the first grains used by humans and they used them. The small block of food that Jiao had offered Eton was made in her tribe, out of flour produced from the seeds of their plants.
Eton awoke with a beautiful little creature in his arms. She had apparently gotten too cold and had crawled under his blanket with him. She was snoring softly and he did not want to wake this perfect being. The sun was rising; he could see the brilliant light bursting over the horizon. He laid there for a good thirty minutes or so until Jiao started to stir, then he eased himself out from under the blankets to build up the fire. He rummaged through her bag until he found the right things, then he made tea for Jiao.
Jiao was very happy with Eton. She felt she didn’t want him to leave her. She sipped her tea and spoke to him of her tribe and her village in the valley below. She joked they probably thought she had been eaten by a lion by now. This concerned Eton, who felt they should go let her people know she was okay.
They made their way down the mountain and Eton began to notice that water was flowing everywhere. There were small creeks running down the mountains with little waterfalls. There were larger creeks, and there were small pools of frozen water. When they reached the valley, Eton noticed that all this water was running down the mountain towards a huge, fast flowing river. It was going the right direction, but the color was amazing. The water was a golden yellow. It sparkled in the sun and Eton thought it was as beautiful as Jiao. All around in the valley, Eton could see strange little structures built near this river. They were round with a pointed roof and a little pipe stuck out of each roof. Eton could see a little smoke puffing out of the pipes. Each one had its own little garden beside it; some of them had their own little frozen pond. There were little bridges built everywhere.
Once they reached the valley, Eton could now see the huge carvings on the cliffs above them. He couldn’t believe he saw the man with the starry belt carved there. He asked Jiao if she knew what they meant. She told him that the round drawing with the lines coming out of it was Sun. The other circle was Moon. The man with the starry belt represented a place. She was not sure what place or where. The snaky thing was from the tadpole memories. There were also a number of animals carved there. A horse, a monkey, a rat… Eton didn’t know the names of these animals then but he had seen them. Jiao says she has seen them too. In the stars.
Eton had to show her his map. He could read the stars too. Jiao looked at the map, pointed to the man with the belt and asked him if he had ever been there. He told her about the land of the Dark Ones and the backwards river. Jiao wanted Eton to stay with her here so he did. That first night, Eton discovered a flaw in this tribe. They buried their dead. There were ghosts everywhere. Eton spoke to Jiao about this and she told him that the ghosts told her people things. She showed him the bones and he watched carefully as she began inscribing new pictures on the bones, then she tossed them in the fire.
Eton saw a ghost go into the fire after the bones. He watched the flames turn blue as the ghost became one with it and wrapped itself tightly around the bones causing them to crack all over. Jiao was pleased with this, Eton was unsettled. Jiao let the fire burn out then she retrieved her bones from the coals and started examining the cracks in them. She showed Eton where he was mentioned in the bones. She showed him where they told her they would have a child together and start a great nation. He was amazed at all this. It reminded him of the Green Ones talking to their dead in the ponds. Their dead knew about the future as well.
In the morning, Jiao was packed up and ready to go. She wanted to go to Eton’s home. She wanted to meet his tribe. They set out when Sun was high and they arrived at the spring and Eton’s tree in about twenty moons. Jiao loved Eton’s tree and made herself right at home. The spring dwellers decided they loved her and brought her gifts like turtle shells and shiny rocks. Jiao liked the turtle shells so much she began using them in the fire instead of the bones. She said the ghosts liked the shells better and she needed them because she could find very few ghosts here. Jamu wouldn’t have it, Eton wouldn’t either.
Jiao and Eton had their first child in the next year. She looked a lot like Jiao. Same eyes but they were blue. She had a little fur and it was red like Eton’s. Everyone in Eton’s tribe loved the child she was so different. No one loved her more than Jamu. When the old Jamu laid eyes on the child, the Land put a word in his head he had not heard in many moons and many suns. The word was from home. Darana. Jamu stretched his poor brain trying to remember what the word meant. Why did they use it at home? He couldn’t remember, but he knew the Land had named this child. Jamu insisted Jiao and Eton name the little female Darana, so they did and Jamu put aside his differences with Eton.
Darana had spunk. Eton, Jiao, Shiva and Jamu all had their hands full. She was wild as Eton’s tribe and smart as Jiao’s. She was always naming things. Everything around Darana had a name. As Darana got older it became apparent that she was a fighter. There were not too many around her that had not been tested by her in one fight or another. Her style was good though. She was on the good side. Darana always stuck up for her weaker tribal mates. She almost policed the whole tribe to make sure no one stole, or hurt each other. Eventually she acquired her own little tribe within the tribe and no one really wanted to mess with any of them.
Darana’s gang would establish one of the first war parties. It really wasn’t war, but Darana had decided her purpose was more than just getting food and staying alive. She wanted to make sure the weak were protected, the hungry got their share of food and the injured had help. She had heard the stories of the Dark Ones and she couldn’t wait to find them. She wanted to save all the slaves. Set them free. She wanted to take the Dark Ones out forever. Darana had declared war on the Dark Ones without even meeting them yet and that war would last forever. As soon as Darana and her band were old enough, she was trying to get out and explore the world.
There was a strange thing about Darana that everyone in the tribe had noticed, and Jamu accounted it the Land. He figured it was something the Land had told her to do and it never bothered him. Darana liked to sleep outside, uncovered, under the stars. She would lay out in the dark and everyone in the tribe would worry about her getting eaten by a big lizard. Eventually it would drive Shiva to distraction and she started taking old animal hides out and building little shelters over Darana while she slept.
Darana was always amazed at Shiva’s cleverness when she awoke and eventually took Shiva’s design to a new level. She made a hide structure that was portable. Shiva was so proud and relieved. The tribe got used to seeing Darana and her small band of friends with their tents out in the field. That is where they moved. Darana said it was better to keep the tribe safe. She trained fellow warriors as well. Warriors that wanted to stay home and protect the family. She called them her “Ah-igas”. Mainly because when they really became excited in battle, they would yell like that.
When the time came, Darana and her band were ready. They all had made tents to travel with. They all had their skin packs packed and ready to go. Darana’s band would become some of the first nomads. They traveled not because they had to for survival, but because they were looking for creatures to help. This golden skinned, black haired, blue eyed bunch of warriors would become known all over the Land. Every tribe that needed help with something would try and find Darana’s band. The world was large and they discovered they could not help everyone all the time. It really didn’t matter though, because Darana was on a mission, it was a mission that did not take long to get under way.
She led her band of Ah-igas past setting Sun and into a great jungle, full of huge lizard creatures and insects bigger than them. They couldn’t even see around them for all the plants, it was dark and wet too. The dripping beat a pattern for them as they picked their way into the dangerous land. By nightfall they had their tents pitched and a nice fire burning. They were sitting around it telling battle stories when the Dark Ones tried to creep up on them.
This particular band of Dark Ones had gotten lost when their world had fallen apart. Their humpbacks eventually drowned and these Dark Ones had to swim until they hit land. They weren’t any different than the others though. They were going to rebuild the mountain and collect the gold shiny rocks. Of course they had been here in this jungle for a million years already, but the newer creatures had only heard about the ones near the great sea of sand. Just as they had done a thousand miles across the Land, they had been amassing a great number of slaves to build their mountain.
Darana saw them first. It was the gold, shiny things they had stuck all over them. They reflected the firelight and caught Darana’s attention. Silently she signaled her Ah-igas that there was trouble and they went on guard. The Dark Ones did not know they had been spotted and continued to advance towards one of the smaller Ah-igas. As soon as they crossed the threshold of the tent circle they were taken down. The Ah-igas wanted to know what to do with them and Darana ordered them to be tied with vines.
Then she tortured them until they agreed to show the band where they stayed. It was a sad and angry procession that tromped through the buggy jungle to the new mountain. The Ah-igas were amazed by what they saw rising from the jungle floor. The Dark Ones had already built one mountain and were busy trying to find a way to cover one side with the gold, shiny rocks. From what Darana could see they were not doing a very good job. Then she saw the slaves, and then she felt the Land. She went mad. Running into the crowd with a loud scream of anger, she took down the first four that got in her way.
Her band of Ah-igas joined her and when the slaves joined in, the fray was over. The Dark Ones had been defeated in the jungle. Darana gave the order to kill them all and it was so. She thought she had gotten them all, but there were some that ran and hid. They would be left there alone and eventually other tribes would move into their mountain with them. They would end up building a great lot of “mountains” in the jungle, despite Darana.
After the destruction of the Dark Ones in the jungle, Darana wanted to leave that place. On the way into the jungle, Darana had noticed there was a large river they seemed to be traveling next to. After watching this river for a few days, Darana thought it looked like it was not going the right direction. All the other rivers she had seen flowed the other direction. This one seemed to start not far from where they were and it flowed towards the direction they came from.
It was a good start to getting out of the dark jungle. The band of nomads followed the river out of the jungle and right into the Green Ones land. The Green Ones were pleased to see them. Like they knew they were coming and they welcomed them with the same foods and entertainment that they had given Eton many years ago.
The Ah-igas did not like the ponds though. At all. Eton was more open-minded than many in his tribe and Darana had spent a lot of time with her grandfather, Jamu. It was time to get out of there. Though she enjoyed the Green Ones and their ways, she could not stare into the eyes of those dead ones in the ponds. They spent a night with them that none of the Ah-igas would forget and they were off, following the river the next day.
They followed the special river for a very long time. They encountered creatures from other tribes, and they encountered humongous beasts that tried to eat them. They walked through many jungles not very different from that first one. These were brave creatures, the first of their kind. Word had spread and when Darana and her Ah-igas arrived at the Shadow Tribe, a great welcome was prepared for them. There was much celebration. If no where else in all of Ela were these creatures to be honored, it was here. Abe was very happy to have an ally. Allies.
Chapter 23
They were not with the Shadow Tribe long when it was discovered who Darana’s original tribe was made up of. Abe wanted to know if Darana shared Jamu’s ideas about Ela, or if she agreed with her father, Eton. Darana said she didn’t care either way as long as she honored the thing that made her. The Land or Ela, whatever you wanted to call it. Abe huffed and puffed at her. Darana stared at him and told him that he might just want to calm it down… Her grandfather, Jamu, had started telling all the creatures around him that there was a black monster spreading lies about the Land… the Dark Ones were telling all the creatures in the Land that Abe was evil, had destroyed their home and killed their workers.
Abe was dismayed at this news. What could he do to correct the problem now? Before he had met the Dark Ones and Jamu, he and Emma were called “Light bringers,” now they were evil? He heard Ela tell him to pay it no attention, but it was done. Abe asked Darana if Eton still believed him. She told him he did and he wondered about him all the time. She asked Abe if he could make her a new star map for her father and he did. He gave it to her right before she and her band left to continue their journey up the river. She noticed a little symbol carved into later that would break her heart for she loved Abe as her father did. Past the dots and lines, down in the corner was a little sun. The sun that represented the light and the fire. Abe’s signature.
The world was getting smaller it seemed to Darana. There were more and more creatures rising from the Land every day. Two, three and four-legged creatures. None of the two legged creatures from that point on seemed to get very far. They never grew taller and slender like the first two batches. They never lost all their fur, nor did they get around to cooking their food. They didn’t want anything to do with fire, in fact they ran from it as the Shadow Tribe had done in those first days. They ran from the older two-legged creatures walking the Land. It was a shame to Darana, they seemed very similar to her grandfather but not as smart.
Following the river introduced them to many different tribes and groups. It was easy to tell which original groups they came from though. By now Darana pretty much knew them all. There were the First Ones who were the Dark Ones, the Golden Ones (like her mother), the Green Ones, and the Red Ones (like her grandfather). Then there were the Second Ones who came up after the Land changed so greatly. They were the Grey or Pale Faces (like her grandmother), the White Furs, and the Shadow Tribe. Everywhere they went they encountered a Pale Face in some tribe. If Kelvin was still alive, he would be pleased to know there were plenty of his kind. Unfortunately he had died long ago.
She saw less and less of the White Furs and began to think they must not be making it so well. They were the rarest to find. She was relieved to discover that there were none of them held captive by the Dark Ones near the sand sea. Her group of saviors arrived in the land of the Dark Ones in the dark. They did not light a fire or pitch the tents. In fact, they stayed up all night watching the lights on the far shore and didn’t even sleep. They noticed that nothing across the river seemed to be asleep either. Darana and her Ah-igas walked the river bank until they were far enough from the Dark Ones and crossed the river on a type of raft they put together made out of their tents.
They arrived unnoticed. Sneaking around, they saw that the Dark Ones had amassed enough creatures to where they were almost as large as the Shadow Tribe. The creatures did not want to be there of course, so it was not the same at all. Darana noticed these Dark Ones were more prepared for battle than the ones in the jungle. They seemed to be waiting for an attack. The Dark Ones pushing the slaves around all had long sharpened sticks and they were alert. The Ah-igas had almost been spotted twice. There was a type of enclosure around the mountain they were building. Instead of tying the slaves with vines, they had put a sort of fence around them. Darana had never seen anything like it and she tried hard to remember the thing.
Darana crept around until she could get near the slaves without being seen and she got their attention. Drawing slowly in the sand, she wrote that they could run when she gave the signal and if they wanted, they could help the others. Nodding that they understood, they backed away from the fence so Darana could do what she needed to. With a smash the fence came down and the slaves began to run. The Dark Ones were furious! They all came running along with slaves that they were going to try and make fight for them.
The Dark Ones beat the Ah-igas with their sticks and tried to stab them but the Ah-igas were too quick and fierce. Most already had a Dark One between their big hands, crushing the life out of him or her before they could do anything. Darana was rallying the slaves, shouting at them and praising those who joined the battle. It was a battle that lasted for a long time. The river ran red with the blood of those who fought and Darana finally had to back off. Her little band was depleted and tired.
They went back to the Shadow Tribe to recover. The slaves who came with them joined the Shadow Tribe making it even larger and Darana realized that half the creatures of the Land were here. Their tribe was a city in the forest. They had large structures that copied the Dark Ones. They had music; the drums would beat out of the heart of Ela most of the night. You could hear their singers for miles around. They had art which had turned into a language and written words. This was a highly advanced group of creatures; they even revered the small, hairy beasts that had never evolved as far as they had.
Darana never wanted to see this be destroyed so she set about training a fighting force for the Shadow Tribe, out of the Shadow Tribe. The leader she chose by observing the tribe. She watched one young man until she knew that he would be the best. He was quiet and strong. Never lazy. She watched him defend his weaker brothers and observed him within a crowd. He was a very quiet man. His name was Kamau. He was also very proud to be chosen by Darana for training.
Darana spent much time getting to know Kamau and making sure he knew what he had to do. Once his training was over, she observed him training his own warriors. She spent the rest of her time with Lalita. Lalita had come to Darana to learn to fight, but had given up when she realized she really wasn’t a fighter. Lalita was a “Loved by Ela” or “Dakshalla”. At least that’s what she was being called. Lalita could move Ela just by asking her to move. Sometimes you could see the air light up around her hands when she lifted them to Ela’s massive sky. She had been trained by Abe and Emma since birth and now she knew more about Ela than them. She knew what people were thinking, what they were going to do.
Darana found this just as important for her fighters as food. She convinced the beautiful Lalita to teach her Ah-igas and she did. She taught them all. Darana loved to watch Lalita knock down her biggest warrior with the wave of her hand. It seemed the Land simply came out from under him. Meeting Lalita was a serious advancement for this band of warriors. Now they were not only fighters, but they were also “Dakshalla’s”, creatures that Ela loved and they were gaining a reputation.
Lalita and the Shadow Tribe needed something from Darana as well. They needed her sense of order. The tribe was huge and it was hard to control. The creatures there just did what they wanted. Babies, food and musical instruments were stolen the most. Star maps and herbs came up next. Some creatures were just lazy. There were fights that needed to be resolved and most of the time they came to Lalita if Abe was busy or away. She wanted to establish some kind of rules. The kind of rules that Darana was running around enforcing.
Darana, Lalita, Abe and Emma held a small sort of council meeting and the rules were established. They were simple things that Ela agreed with as well. No one thought it was right to steal. It was not fair for another to work hard for something and then lose it to someone who did nothing. Especially when it came to babies. No one thought it was right to just kill anyone. Ela was big on this one. She loved things that had been killed and it always hurt her. No one thought it was right to hurt someone so that they might die. Say Abe broke someone’s leg and he could not harvest his field. Someone steals his stored food and he starves to death. That’s Abe’s fault.
These rules were created out of necessity and Darana found the best stone carver there was to inscribe these rules on the cliff walls. There was a large ceremony of sorts with fruits, meat and harvest from the fields. The rules were inscribed on the cliffs where everyone, new and old could see them. The fighting force Darana had trained for the Shadow Tribe vowed to uphold the rules, and so it began. Darana and her Ah-ibas left the Shadow Tribe better than they had found it and in return they had found the magick of Ela.
Chapter 24
The attacks on the Dark Ones would happen until they stopped enslaving tribal members and that would not happen for a long, long time. Different tribes of creatures would start missing members and would band up to go save them. It was hard because the two bands of Dark Ones now used the river frequently to go back and forth. The tribes never knew exactly which location their missing ones might be at.
Darana’s warriors were everywhere now. One tribe in particular would survive only because of her. The White Furs. Obscure as they were, they were actually in two different places. One of them had ended up around Greece and found an established tribe there. The others from Julia’s tribe were still located around present day Tibet. They were always there and never left. If you believe in the Yeti, maybe they are still there today.
At one point, they were almost gone all together. After leaving the Shadow Tribe and hearing of Julia, Kelvin and Sam; Darana wanted to meet one of these mysterious, peaceful white furs who seem to have started the music thing. She decided to try and find them. She headed out in a direction that she hoped would go around the Dark Ones land and ended up at a strange and beautiful coast. The trees were very odd. Big furry leaves, strange brown fruits and large nests built in the tops of most she could see. It seemed to her that most of the nests were deserted; a lot of them were falling down.
There was a strange feel here too. All of her Ah-igas could feel it pressing on them. Was it good? Bad? They weren’t sure. The entire world was dead silent here. The breeze didn’t even blow. Darana and her band slowly treaded into a grove of the trees, jumping each time one of them snapped a stick into the silence. Nothing moved. The nests that they could see were hanging raggedly out of the trees, pieces swaying of their own accord. Darana felt the hair rise on her arms and neck… Ghosts… she would know them anywhere.
Her Ah-igas knew the feel of the ghosts as well and though they could not harm the band of warriors, they were still unsettling. Luckily their deaths apparently were not that bad, so the ghosts did not give off a powerful presence… but they were there. Why were they there? Where were they anyway? No where they could spend the night that’s for sure.
Darana ordered the band to spread out and search for anything that might be there. The uneasy Ah-igas complied and it was not long before shouts of discovery were made. The White Ones had been found… at least a few of them anyway and they definitely had seen better days, they were sick. Very sick, and dying. That was why there were so many ghosts and the nests were all in such bad shape. Darana needed to know how many were left. The Ah-igas searched every intact nest and in the end, had rounded up about ten of the white furry creatures.
The day was long and the band needed to find camp. They didn’t know what was killing the White Ones but they brought them along with them anyway. The poor white creatures could only let themselves be pushed and prodded into shuffling away from the area. The band set up camp as far away from the ghosts as they could get and then began to doctor the white ones.
They used Jiao’s tea and plants they had gotten from the Shadow Tribe. The White Ones took many suns to recover but they did recover. They pulled out of their delirium to discover that most of them were dead and ghosts had taken over their village. Darana wanted to know why there were so many ghosts around… did the White Ones not do anything with their dead at all? They said no. It was the cause of the sickness to begin with. Usually if one of them was about to die, they would wander off alone and die. Unfortunately one of them had not done this and fell out of her tree, dead, where the rest of the White Ones just left her there on the ground.
Her ghost came out and started plaguing every creature in the village. It stressed them out so bad they all started to get sick. Then there were more, all wailing about and scaring everything. The White Ones didn’t know what to do so they just hunkered down in their nests, hid and stayed sick until they died, causing more problems… Darana could not believe what she was hearing. These creatures were slightly less intelligent than their non-communicating younger, hairy beasts still on all fours.
The Ah-igas began to teach the White Ones how to properly dispose of their dead, but they would be stuck with their present ghosts until Ela found a new use for them… Meanwhile, the band moved the White Ones into a new tree hammock and they reestablished themselves. That night the few White Ones treated Darana and her Ah-igas to one of their main talents: Song. The band of warriors sat in awe as the White Ones brought forth noises, tunes and songs from their bodies that sounded like the sweetest sounds on Ela.
The wind rushing through the branches of the trees. Water softly lapping at the bank. The rain flying through the sky, the clouds puffing away… Every insect or animal noise had been combined into a symphony of self produced sound. They had no instruments but themselves and while they created this beautiful music, they swayed and moved in a sort of hypnotic dance. The band of warriors could not move, could not do anything but watch and listen… in fact; Darana began to believe this was how these creatures had defended themselves from utter extinction.
When they were done, half of Darana’s warriors had been lulled to sleep and this alarmed Darana. What if they were to encounter a group of these creatures who were not so dumb? Darana decided they should spend some more time with these White Ones.
The band spent about a moon with the creatures and lived in their tents while the others went about setting up their nests in the trees. Darana realized that these creatures had not really advanced much past crawling out of the pond. They had no fire, and since they only ate the fruit from the trees, had no need for it. This was a problem when it came to disposing of the dead. She felt something wispy pass by her face and shooed off the offending ghost like a fly… something had to be done. The only thing she could think of was to have the White Ones sink their dead in the big pond that was not far into the woods. It did seem to work for the Green Ones and it would prevent another mass infestation of ghosts. She decided to call everyone together…
What came out of that evening would be something that would last among humans forever… the funeral. Darana gathered all the White Ones that were there and sent two of her bravest Ah-igas to collect a newer body from the old nesting grove. When they all were there, she had them lay the body on the ground and then had all present form a circle around him. The White Ones made noises and signs amongst themselves watching intently. Darana signed to the White One with the most outstanding voice to sing her favorite song. The White One began; slowly crooning in the saddest tone… the others could not help but join in. Soon they were all singing to soothe the spirit flitting around the dead body.
Eventually the spirit disappeared. Darana instructed the White Ones to pick up their dead one and follow her. Darana led the processional of creatures into the forest and up to the pond. They made a somber path as they went. She showed the White Ones how to float their dead out into the pond by placing him in the water, then dragging him out as far as he would go. She placed a few large stones on the body and then waded back to the shore.
The White Ones and the Ah-igas watched intently and sang together as the dead one slowly sank into the pond. It was not the best thought Darana, but it was better than before. Later, Darana would cross paths with these creatures again and see that they had taken this ritual to new levels and definitely made it more elaborate. In fact, the White Ones would become known for their strange songs and death rituals across the land.
At this point in time the creatures of the land were expanding… becoming more like our modern day humans. There was not much written word, if at all, but these ancient beings had sign language and could communicate. They had spirituality that had spread across the whole world. They could build, lived in buildings and had medicinal plant knowledge. Star maps and astrology was common amongst them. The world was very young though, and it was not done with its changes yet. What we have today are remnants… distant memories of our first ancestors… Ela was yet to mature.
Chapter 25
Most of the original creatures that held memories of the mud were gone. Had gotten old and blew away. The young ones that still had their original blood remembered. They had the same memories the old ones did but they were few and far between now. The more the creatures interbred, the more their memories blended and became lost. Abe, Kelvin, Sam and Ava had passed on a long time ago. Jamu was almost totally gray and Shiva was. Shiva also had developed pains in her bones which kept her in the cave most of the time now.
The young ones fought and had wars. The Dark Ones had become such a nuisance in the world that no one remembered a time without them. Tribes were constantly on the look out for members of the Dark Ones band who would creep, invade, and enslave. There were whole bands of creatures that had now been transported to the Dark Ones land and progress was being made over there. They had finally rebuilt their mountain, and then continued on until the entire flat desert looked like it was dotted with yellow hills pointing towards the sky.
The Shadow Tribe had become a great nation in the jungle. Many wonderful things and human advances came from them. Spices were one of the most sought after items as the Shadow Tribe used and distributed them regularly. Their great living center, built on the idea of the Dark Ones, housed many and had become a center of spiritual development. One could journey there to learn about the many quirks of Ela, how she was named, and how one could return to knowing her secrets. The Shadow Tribe also had history. In the caves that Julia had first dwelt in, the history of her, Kelvin and Sam’s first journey was painted all over the walls. The great weather and disasters, the retreat up the mountain, the red ones, all of it was painted there. The Shadow Tribe held these caves as sacred and only after you had passed a series of tests about Ela could you go near them. Then you could only go with a guide who was a descendant of Abe and Emma.
Ela was not complete though. The Land was still in transition but the creatures inhabiting it could not know this. When the rumbling started, only the oldest ones and the young purebloods had the slightest clue what was going on. No one heeded their warnings. The paintings on the ancient caves would have shown them what was coming. Julia had done a very good job telling the stories, but no one looked and even if they had there was nothing they could do.
The Shadow Tribe awoke to a thunder storm like they had never seen before. It felt and looked like the sky was falling all around them. It was so dark. Dark like they had never seen. There was no sun, no moon, just the lightening that illuminated the surrounding areas. The jungle trees around their mountain were uprooting themselves and being tossed around in the valley below. The rain was coming down so hard they could not leave their caves. Three suns later it was the same, and the water was rising.
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Jamu and Shiva didn’t know what to do. Jamu had had enough anyway. He was ready to die and was not running anymore. Shiva couldn’t. They gathered the young ones and sent for Jaio and Eton. While the wind whipped the sand into huge tornadoes outside the cave door, Jamu’s tribe sat around a large fire inside Jamu and Shiva’s cave. Jamu began the tale, he tried to elaborate the best parts, he tried to speak in his fiercest language, he tried to impress that the Land would come apart.
Jamu could not describe everything though. The young ones had no idea that he was trying to tell them about the red lava, about the Land turning to water, about the huge waves that overtook everything. They had nothing to compare it to. There was a lot of love that night in Jamu’s tribe. The ones who understood, knew they were facing death. The ones who did not understand gave respect to the ones who did. No one thought about the spring dwellers… they did not show up with Eton and Jaio.
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The White Ones were on the move. It was the oddest thing to see in the Land. Never before had these creatures gone anywhere but now they were headed across the world. The band that Darana saved had grown in size and they were all purebloods. It was a migration to see. Large white furry creatures ambling slowly across the world in the pitch dark and slashing rain. It didn’t seem to bother them at all. They apparently had someplace to go.
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The Dark Ones and all their slaves had disappeared into their “mountains”. For the first time in the ancient world their land was void of any activity whatsoever. Vines used to hold slaves lay useless on the ground, blocks of stone had tumbled down from unfinished buildings, the river had swollen and reached almost to the nearest mountain building.
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Ela unleashed all her fury. It seemed to the creatures of the Land that all things would die. The Land itself was ripping open, eating anything above it and laying bare the molten core within. Whole jungles and forests disappeared. Lakes were moved, rivers changed courses. All the creatures could do was run during the day and drown or run during the night.
From their high point in what would become modern Tibet, the White Ones saw it all. They watched as the water rose, they saw it when the animals floated by, they watched the entire Land change it’s face. They wrote songs about it, and painted pictures of the catastrophe on their cave walls as the snow and ice piled up outside the entrance.
It was snowing elsewhere too. Jamu and Shiva awoke to temperatures much colder than the night before. Snow covered the desert landscape and hail had mixed in with the terrible rain. Jamu had lived a long time. He had seen the Land reshape itself before and he knew that was what it was doing now. It did not cease to amaze him though. He watched as a crack slowly formed and ran down the length of the caves. Rumbling began, so loud that one could not hear even the rain falling. Shiva stumbled out of the cave and just as she did, the Land ripped itself open swallowing the cliff, the caves, Jamu and Shiva. Everything, even the fire was sucked into the gaping crevice.
The spring dwellers and the Green Ones seemed to know what to do. Their very existence would be the memories for the human race. The Green Ones had tied themselves to the trees with great vines. No creature on Ela would have even seen them. They held on while the whole world changed and luckily for them they did not get swallowed.
The spring dwellers ended up just as lucky. Being that they were down in the recesses of the Land, they did not experience any of the weather. The landquakes shook them up a little and even opened up a new spring not far from their location but the spring dwellers were completely unphased. It is interesting that members of some of the oddest species on Ela would be the ones who were saved…
Chapter 26
When Ela was done the world was silent. As the sun made its first break through the morning clouds, it shone on the planet that we walk today. Ela was done, at least for awhile. There was nothing left of the first inhabitants. The Shadow Tribe was gone, it’s great buildings buried deep now within Ela. The Golden Ones had been reduced to a few, scattered about the mountains and none of them were together. The White Ones were encased in ice. What would happen now world? It is ancient history.
The spring dwellers felt that the Land had changed. Though they were spared most of the drama, they knew that everything had moved around. The old entrance to their spring was no longer covered with water. In fact, the spring itself had totally moved away. The creatures found themselves peering out of an exposed and dry cave. In fact, they discovered that there was no water anywhere around them now. What was once a forested area was now a desert. It was almost as if they had changed places with Jamu and Shiva. They would later carve into the cave walls that they crawled out of the Land like ants.
The Green Ones went about their business as usual. The coastline was a whole lot closer to them now, but everything was still exactly the same as humans would find it millions of years later. The bodies would even still be in the ponds.
So the world would start over in this fresh new day of Ela. Everything that had been learned was unlearned. Every creature was now totally different and Ela did not speak to those like she used to. There would be nothing new learned now that did not come from a survivor. Great lizards and birds bigger than those of Jamu’s day came to walk the Land. Creatures wandered but did not band together as before. There were whispers though… Ela would not let these new children of hers forget everything…
The Spring Dwellers started it. They had listened to stories and teachings from Eton and Jiao for so long that it was all they knew. The first thing they did was check the stars. All wrong. Not even close to being in the places they were. The hook-tail, the female, and the creature with things on its head, were all in the wrong places now.
They knew they could “talk” to Ela… Eton and Jaio used to do it all the time. They needed to do it now. Silencing their upset spirits they tried to find the vibrations from the Land that spoke. They were still there but not as strong as they used to be. The voice of Ela had landed deep deep down inside her somewhere, but they could just hear her whisper “I am not gone”… The more they tried to contact her, the stronger the whisper became. This would set the pattern for the future. Ela had told too many creatures too many things before. Plus she was older now… Now only the ones who really wanted to talk to her would be able to.
The Spring Dwellers definitely needed Ela. They had sustained themselves on fish and plants down in the spring; there was none of that anymore. They didn’t know what to eat and they couldn’t go out in the sun for the longest time because of it burning their skin a bright red. They were mostly blind as well, and Sun did not help. Ela spoke, she helped, and she became their greatest ally in survival. She sent them insects to eat and water seeped through the cave walls for them to drink. Eventually they adjusted and could go out of the caves where Ela taught them what they could hunt and gather. Ela took care of this band of creatures and they thought they were special. They believed Ela only spoke to them and they made up great stories of their relationship with Ela. They were wrong though. The Spring Dwellers were not the only ones who survived, nor were they the only ones Ela still spoke to.
The Green Ones had always liked to argue with the Land. They were so different from the other creatures. They knew the Land or Ela, whatever the young ones wanted to call it was male and female. The thing was a creature itself and they knew they were allowed to live here like parasites on this thing. Nothing more. Ela needed the creatures for fertilizer, and the air that they breathed. The dead they buried in their ponds became fertilizer and as long as they were feeding this great beast, they would be fine. Ela still provided them with whatever they needed and though they were among the first living creatures on this planet, their age didn’t help their contributions to mankind very much.
They were in a place no other creature would go, and they had no reason to leave it themselves. Their mountains of shells, thrown down from their nests high up in the trees, would be all they would leave behind when modern man entered the picture… their knowledge would stay their own. Ela spoke to them though. The Land spoke to the Green Ones like it always had. The White Ones were the same… up in their frozen mountains they spoke to Ela but just like the Green Ones, they were not concerned with the advancement of any species, including their own.
Chapter 27
Ekundayo woke up under a slab of rock. He was trapped by the foot. As he maneuvered around under the slab he was only thinking about his foot and getting loose. When he finally did, he realized that he had rubbed most of the skin off his ankle and it was swollen badly. He couldn’t walk on it. It didn’t matter though, because as far as he could see he wouldn’t be walking anywhere. The slab he was under was on top of a very high mountain peak and it was surrounded by water. He could see nothing else.
Looking down into the water he thought he saw something move. Then he knew he saw something. The long snake like thing sailed smoothly past under the surface showing Ekundayo its spiky scales and glistening surface. Its horned tail flicked the surface as it went deeper. He slid backwards away from the edge as quickly as possible. What was he going to do? Think Ekundayo, think! He thought all right, thought about how he had survived the worst of what Ela had; lands ripping apart, freezing cold, burning red blood of the land… and was now reduced to this…
There was nothing he could do, but this young man was special. He was a descendant of Abe and Emma. A young survivor of the self-destruction of Ela. He knew all the history of the Shadow Tribe and the Red Ones. He knew how to speak to Ela but she was uncharacteristically silent this time around.. He summoned his strength. It had been a long time since he had spoken to Ela. He tried and tried but she must have been very upset with him, he heard and felt nothing. He was on his own.
Ekundayo could do nothing but stay where he was and think for three suns. His thoughts included his friend Kamau who helped keep order in the tribe. They rolled around to the beautiful Lalita who was a great and powerful gray fur when this all began. He wondered about their cave histories and the slab of carved rules… By the third sun his thoughts were completely consumed by food; and the great monster circling his mountain peak was apparently consumed by the same thoughts. It was still there.
He was dying up there, all alone and he was terrified his ghost would haunt this peak forever. Ekundayo passed out from hunger and awoke in terror with the great monster slinking its way towards him across the peak. There was nothing like this thing even in Abe’s day. Fortunately for the man, the beast was slow on the land and he plunged into the water without even thinking. Now terror took over and Ekundayo just swam. He swam as fast as he could with no direction in mind.
The monster had plunged back into the water behind him, but somehow he got away. Ekundayo swam, he swam until his arms burned then he floated. He did not know how he survived, how he got away from the great monsters in the sea, or what he was looking at when he finally saw trees. He had barely pulled himself out of the water and onto the sand when he passed out.
He woke up alone, hot and starving. He was going to starve to death. Summoning energy from a place within him where only Ela had power, he continued towards the trees. There had to be food in there somewhere and there was. There were strange fruits in the trees and in the bushes. Nothing Ekundayo recognized though. He took a few bites of one of the fuzzy brown things and decided it was good. Sweet and good. He ate so many of them it made him sick and he spent the rest of that sun trying to purge his poor body. He found he was in a place where he could survive though and it was good; but was he the only creature on the planet that survived?
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All but a few of Jiao’s tribe in the snowy mountains had been lost. Despite their bones and readings of future occurrences, they had not been able to prepare for what the Land had for them. Their river had turned on them and their entire tribe had been swallowed by two or three huge waves. Everyone was gone except for a few who had made it to the top of the mountain. They immediately began to record what had happened.
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The Dark Ones were under water. Not only that, but they were so enraged with Ela that they had done nothing but fight while locked away in their mountains. All the slaves had been eaten along with half the Dark Ones that had entered the “man” made mountains. The really bad part was that they did not know how far under water they were or how to get out of their mountains without drowning.
They were happy enough to be out of Sun though. This was actually a lot more like the place they came from originally. Dark and cold. The water lapped rhythmically against the golden mountains walls. Their mountain had saved them once again. The Dark Ones would manage to survive under the ocean that had swallowed their desert until Ela would change again and their mountains would be exposed to Sun yet again. What secrets they created, what they did down there to pass the time and what they actually were when they emerged on the Land, would be totally different than any creature ever on Ela.
The Dark Ones hated Ela. Even though this creature they lived on had given them life, they could not see that it had given them much else. Not nearly as much as the mountain. They could not see that the mountain was Ela. They could not see that what they were able to build was a gift from Ela, she provided the supplies, she provided the life force that allowed them to do what they did. They did not see any of this. They only saw that Ela killed and she killed them on a regular basis. They also were upset with Ela over her constant redecorating as well.
Down in their dark, cold, uninterrupted world of death they devised a plan to kill Ela and possibly eat her if they could. The absurdity of the plan was classic Dark Ones… they didn’t realize if they killed Ela they would have no where to live. When one of them finally did see that they could not kill Ela, they decided to make her a slave to the mountain. They could only do this with her own power and they did not know how to get this anymore. She had abandoned them a long time ago.
What they did have down there in the dark was a lot of ghosts. The residual spirits of the slaves and others who had been eaten were everywhere. The mountains were full of them. The Dark Ones, being the kings of enslaving things, of course starting to learn how to manipulate the spirits. They came up with ways of making the spirits tell them things and then they realized the spirits were not worried by the water either. They could send them out to the world to report back to them.
It was in this manner that the Dark Ones stole the ancient knowledge from the Green Ones as the spirits gave away their secrets. Spiritual spies and once that knowledge was learned there was no stopping these creatures when they were exposed to the Land again. The story would be changed, the world would be theirs, their mountains would be built everywhere on the backs of a thousand slaves. The rituals and things they came up with down there they named “teuflisch” or “the art of going against Ela” and would last within the realms of humans forever as secrets. It would be a long, long time before the Dark Ones would see land again, but when they did…
Chapter 28
Ekundayo was no coward but in the wake of this new world he had been reduced to tears numerous times. He had walked for many suns but could find no other creature like him anywhere. What he had found were huge creatures, covered in scales that were so large they didn’t even notice him. He couldn’t tell if Ela was quaking again or if the rumbles came from the creatures walking. Food was plentiful, it was just all new. Nothing was still around that was there before.
Eventually he did run across someone and it was a special someone. One day while walking in an immense swamp he actually tripped over something… that turned out to be someone. That someone would turn out to be one of the Green Ones that had decided he should go see what was up with the world. Obviously he was very young. Ekundayo was so happy to see another thing like him that he totally disregarded the appearance of this thing. It didn’t matter at all that it had almost greenish skin and extremely long, matted up black hair that had all sorts of things sticking out from it. It was walking on two legs and signing with its hands. That was all that mattered.
The young Green One was taking in Ekundayo as well. Ekundayo had very dark skin, almost shiny in the light. His hair was close to his head in tight curls that were also full of all sorts of things sticking out of it. His brushes with death recently had given his large violet colored eyes a wild look and he was tense. Two individuals could not have been more different but Ela was pleased. The young Green One told Ekundayo. The young Green One who said his name was Heyo, turned out to be a talker and he had not seen anyone like them in many, many suns..
These two young ones would not be alone in this new world. They would find and join others. They would band together in tribes and communities, that would eventually form the human race as we know it today. Their broken memories would be passed along until they were quaint distortions of the original truths.. Even those dedicated, mysterious record keepers, high in the mountains.. had lost most of the true story. The true origin, the real beginning…
A story lost is an easily distorted thing, but puzzle pieces only fit together one way to show the picture and they must be fitted next to the other pieces comfortably.
The End