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Nature's Tenderness | Registered: Jun 11, 2020 06:02

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𝓐 𝓢𝓱𝓪𝓶𝓮...





The young one was not one where you would expect to have an exciting life from the livelihood of being a nomad, most especially when one would have taken a closer look at her parents before that fateful day – born among the mountains where the snow capped the peaks and the valleys below brought more danger towards the winter months than the walls of stones themselves, her father was a pronounced and infamous hunter among their small gathering of a clan, always somehow able to track the hardest prey almong the ice and frost that surrounded their migratory paths and was the most successful in bringing anything back home to their little ‘village’ known as the Wingfoot Clan that kept themselves reclusive throughout the paths of stone and snow. Her mother, on the other hand, was known as one of the sacred members of the tribe itself, an accomplished herbalist and speaker for the Earth Mother herself as a Head Shaman that could extract the cleanest oils from the most fibrous of plants for healing concoctions and various medicines, able to grant the blessings of the earth through her vast experience and knowledge with having the earth give it’s secrets, molding simple stone into the crystals where they received their power.



Meredina, ever since she could sit beside her mother as she mashed away at the plants they’ve gathered or needed to commune with the earthly spirits that still lingered upon their land, was so much more intrigued and enraptured with the art of herbalism, and the capability of reading through the natural elements to see what could come in the near future. The little one would be able to begin aiding her own mother in collecting the plants that they could find in their journeys along the passes, never staying truly in one place for very long – and she was always warned not to wander too far from the rest of the group itself, most especially when her own affinity with the earthly magics her mother possessed came to fruition within her own self. “It is much too dangerous… I don’t want to lose you,” her mother would always say to her, whenever she would cry and beg to go play with the other children – or, at least, the few that were around, their own natural biology making it difficult for the endangered species to truly thrive in these harsh lands in itself.



She never truly understood… until that fateful day.



There had already begun the talks of her father setting her up for marriage with another tribe – the Head Shaman’s own son whom she had never even met before, and she had gone out with her own mother in the lower part of the mountain they had migrated to when the peaks had grown more harsh this winter than any other. There was much more available plantlife in this area, and she was ecstatic that she had a chance to truly forage with her mother at that time who was singing one of her favorite songs… but she chanced a look back towards the directions of where her clan had set itself up for the next week or so. There was smoke… black, belching out into the sky past the treeline, and she brought her notice of it to her mother at her side. She saw the immensity of distress suddenly crossing over the older woman’s features – and was all too quick in suddenly grabbing at her only daughter, bringing her to a crevasse to a split boulder that had crumbled into an odd shape, and she remembered how her mother stared her deep in her warm summer blues with a shake of her shoulder. “Whatever you do… do not leave here until I come back. Promise me!” Of course the young teenager promised, why would she not listen to her mother?



It was so long, though… too long. The day had waned since she had last seen the flash of white that was her mother darting out towards the traveling village itself, and she had still not come back… and it was the one and only time she had ever broken a promise, as she finally emerged stiffly from the stone shelter she had been shoved within, and she followed the lines of the smoke outwards.



She wished she hadn’t.



The scent of horrendous, burned gore is what first met her senses when she came to the edge of the clearing where they had made their camp, the fire scattered and gone as the rest of the huts and tents that had been erected were smouldering in ruin, with priceless generations of homes now wafting away in the breeze in a swirl of black smoke. Her clan… scattered around her, singed fur stinging her senses, but not nearly as much as the acrid burning of boiling blood and seeping wounds crusting into the hard-packed earth itself. And there was her mother… an arm slung over her father’s chest where fletched arrows protruded from his chest bunched and centered into his sternum, gaping out in the jaws of death as the crisped fur of her mother’s back was nothing but ash and crusted flesh, her mother’s gaze still stuck in the throes of agony. No one had died well… and not even the other children and the elders of her clan that could not fight back were spared. She didn’t even think of how there was still a possibility of enemies being close by, of someone coming up behind her as she collapsed before the figures of her parents’ lifeless corpses before her – an agonized scream belting one last time in the sheer raw grief of the moment. Her jaws still parted from the heart-wrenching noise erupting from the depths of her lungs, she didn’t realize until too late that someone had come in behind her. A harsh grip within the long, descending locks that yanked her head straight back, baring her throat to the searing slice of terrible pain that cut her voice away with a bubbling gurgle… and she was dropped in place, right on top of her parents like meat being butchered.



She didn’t wake up until much later, when the moon shone down upon the gruesome scene with her blood covering the bodies of her family – how she had even survived, it was a miracle all in itself that she was even alive, even with how weakened she was with all the loss of blood. Her frame propped up by the bodies of her own parents is likely what saved her… or something else. She didn’t know, but with all the knowledge that she had, she was forced to keep herself hunkered in place at the ruins of her clan, using everything she had left at her disposal with her own earthly power to bring herself back from the brink of death, made to take in the slow decay of everyone around her… at least, until she was finally strong enough and healed enough to where she could begin the burial. One by one, they were all given their last rites by the last living survivor of their now nearly extinct clan, and her symbol of grief was finally made apparent with a crystal knive slicing through her long, descending locks, leaving the silvery white strands uneven and short along the edges of her jawline, unable to hide her pain from the rest of the world.



She mostly kept to herself after that, bracing herself at one of the smaller passes through the mountains where smaller bands of merchants and travelers could make their way to one of the small hamlets of towns that were scattered among the reaches and valleys all around. An offer to aid the few that would eventually encounter her, there was always more or less exchanges for medicines she had whipped up, or spelled stones she had made to where she would be given food, essential supplies… but there was always a wonderment as to why she always wore that scarf around her neck.



Well…. Who knows. Earth Mother knows she doesn’t speak about it.





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