Day 3 | Night | Uneasy Homecoming

[Kannon]

Efren survived the explosion of the no-ship by hanging on the side of the cliff, seeing the thopter fly off to the carrier. The ancient rock withstood the quake and did not chip him off, favouring its master. He used the lattice of rope they had spread to go up the Trial to bring Thra Yoll down with him, descending by a combination of climbing down and abseiling. After he had mastered the mountain, it no longer seemed foreboding, at least physically. The setting sunset was painting it in hauntingly, even eerily beautiful shade of orange-red, making him feel as if he was traversing the flame of creation. Or destruction, on second thought. There were distant noises of engagement with cartel holdouts, violence had not yet abandoned this place.

During the descent solitude impressed on him, but not loneliness. Thra Yoll, who he hadn't known before, was his silent unconscious companion but what he felt more acutely was the presence of the jungle. Its pre-nocturnal cacophonies, and silences when there should have been noises, spoke to him of struggle and suffering. They may have rescued everyone they could conceivably have saved, but the jungle had been paying the price.

[Efren Lanville]

Efren lowered Thra gently onto the ground before dismounting from the cliff face himself. He softly untied the rope around the other man's waist as he listened to the depths of the jungle and his own heart. Efren had little capacity to understand the ecological underpinnings which held the jungle in its fluctuating states of balance and imbalance. The jungle paid a price today... it paid a price in the months leading until today... and had been paying a price ever since humans had arrived on this planet.

But to him it felt wrong to somehow think of the environment and the humans in it as something inherently different. They were in the jungle and the jungle is in them. It was obvious that both could transgress on the other in ways which endangered them both. He could feel the push and pull that kind of interaction involved. He did not believe of the religion of his mother's people... but perhaps they would call that exchange as something destined by God. He had time as a young man reading of their religion wanting to know more of his own roots. But this didn't seem like God to him... but something within him told him that he had helped the jungle push back in some way. Deny its rape and plunder... including the rape and plunder of the 'beasts' called Muadh... that were a part of this jungle the same as any bird or bug.

Sometimes the jungle needed to push... And he was increasingly ready to lend it a hand.

Efren carefully picked up Thra in his arms and began walking his way back along the path towards the village... Trying to understand in his heart what he couldn't in his head.

[Kannon]

It was indeed difficult to unpack it all, with contradictory guidance coming from his training and his recent discoveries of who the tribe he came from actually were. What was easier was to go forward, along the memorised path, and the burden of the fellow Muadh was giving him purpose. He couldn't save them all. But if the Old Mother knew how to treat Thra Yoll, he would at least save one.

It was dark when he reached the village. And it seemed empty, abandoned. All lights were extinguished. When he tried to pierce the eerie silence he heard the waterfall.

[Efren Lanville]

Efren found a flat space to lay down the man in his arms, and began looking around in confusion. Where was everyone...

He began to call out, "[Mother! Old Mother! Hello! It is Ef Ren!]"

[Kannon]

Thra Yoll may have groaned when laid down, his first sign of life since he had become Efren's responsibility.

His calls were answered by echo or stifled by the hum of the waterfalls.

[Efren Lanville]

Seeing no response from the village, Efren began to feel a rising tinge of worry well up from within. Worry for what wasn't clear just yet...

He kneeled down and took Thra's hand gently in his, "[Wait. I find Old Mother. Soon back.]"

Efren then began jogging through the town looking for any signs of a village-worth of people's rapid departure...

The hum of the waterfalls grew until he found himself looking at them from a short distance away.

[Kannon]

In the huts, he found nothing. No human presence, but also no signs of violence or abrupt departure. All seemed normal, except people were not there.

When he was standing quietly by waterfalls, he finally heard something like... wailing? It must have been the wind.

[Efren Lanville]

Efren turned his head towards the faint sound... and tried to follow the stream of wind that had brought it to him.

[Kannon]

If it wasn't a figment of his imagination, it may have only come from some of the caves the waterfall was secluding from the outside world. Efren knew there were some of those from his past visits.

[Efren Lanville]

He decided that was his best shot at finding them. He jogged to the base of the waterfall and walked through…

[Kannon]

He found them there, clustering, waiting through, and wailing. On a cot there lay a body he could not see clearly but could only belong to the Old Mother. It wasn't moving. Yar Zell and other men were further from the cot, and stayed silent.

Efren's own mother acknowledged him with a blank stare, breaking off from the wordless dirge. She looked as if she had aged ten years in a day.

"You have survived, Eph Ren. Why have you come? Don't you belong more among the destroyers?"

[Efren Lanville]

"I am not a destroyer..." He said softly with a shake of his head.

"I am a... steward... a protector. I have brought one of the people from the village back from the destroyers. Thra Yoll. He will need medicine... The destroyers ravaged his body."

"And by tomorrow morning... There will be no more destroyers near. The debt of kharma they have built led to their scattering."

[Kannon]

Thra U, hearing this about her brother, ran out of the cave on impulse. Her heart, already shaken by the death of the Old Mother, could not recover the usual indifference.

The emotions in the room were complex. All were affected by the Old Mother's passing, which must have been recent. However, Yar Zell, his family and comrades seemed welcoming to Efren's reappearance, even under such circumstances.

Dy Wan, however, was changed. The reason for this, even if not too comprehensible for Efren, was in her next, ultimately predictable, words, though spoken out in pain.

"I am the Old Mother now." Her tone eased a little hearing of Thra Yoll, but remained too distant for Efren's comfort. "Are you denying, son, that the people your father and you are with have hurt the land? The fire, the noise, the collapse, the death? Because this is why she died. She couldn't bear the agony of the garden. She was its steward, not you. Her long life was unmade tonight. Like it never happened. I must now devote mine to give it back to God and to us."

Yar Zell interceded, what in itself caused a reverberation of shock, especially among the women. He was hesitant, but said his piece.

"[He passed the Trial. His deeds are God's will. Respect God's will, Old Mother.]"

Efren felt that his presence was what the crisis among the Muadh was coalescing around. A fateful nexus emerging from what was a double calamity for these people. The destruction of the forest and the death of their leader. The new one having no natural female successor.

[Efren Lanville]

Efren responded to the emotional distance with as much affection as he could.

"When lighting strikes in the forest and sets a blaze... The destruction is horrifying. The jungle is hurt... But it does so to keep itself alive. To allow life to thrive."

He points out in the direction of the enemy camp, "Those men would have killed the forest. They poison it and strangle the life out of those who live near. We... Our people... are part of the forest. We together are its stewards and we live within it. It acts through us as much as it acts on us."

He paused and looked deeply into his mother's eyes, "Can you not see God's Will in all these things? You asked the spirits for son... in this time... and this place... One uniquely able to save the Garden when it most needed it. Who in all my years only came now to our people. Who only now was able to learn of the love of his mother... and her sacrifice for me?"

He paused as he caught his emotions in his throat.

"I am the lightning bolt that started the blaze... God wanted you to have a protector. So that you can do just what you want... to devote the Garden back to him and his creations. And do as my name suggests... make it more 'fruitful' than it could have been otherwise."

----

D3 Village, Leadership Hard 1 Upgrade, Statement Upgrade: 3eP+1eA+2eD+1eC 6 successes, 3 threat

[Kannon]

'[Lightning of God!]" Yar Zell murmurred, and then it was repeated from mouth to mouth. By far not all of them understood any Galach, but Efren's charisma spoke directly to them, giving them a beacon in a moment of darkness. If Dy Wan wanted to keep the tribe united behind the old doctrines, she was failing, and she realised this. That Efren spoke with conviction and no ill will, no ulterior motive to subvert her, made the challenge even more powerful and unstoppable in the shared emotion space of the Muadh.

She realised she would not keep this community as it had been. Her son's portentous arrival indeed brought change. Before control would completely slip from her hands, she invoked a taboo, one she didn't know she would have the Missionaria Protectiva to thank for.

"You must wait outside, son. All men must wait outside."

There was no other retort coming. Efren had explosively done what every self-appointed prophet in human history had done before him - to make people believe in a connection between the misery of now and a glorious future. But the conviction that only women understood the ancient secrets and protected the sacrum was too deeply rooted to be discarded, especially in the presence of a sacred matron's death.

[Efren Lanville]

Efren nodded and then bowed at the waist in deference to his mother.

"We will wait."

Efren understood little of the greater implications of what he had said. He wanted them to understand how he felt in words that would mean something to the people. He did not think himself a prophet... did not seek for them to follow him...

He just wanted the people to live and be free.

[Kannon]

This allayed the tension... somewhat. When Efren obeyed, so did the others, especially the Yar and the Thra families.

Outside, Thra U was kneeling be her brother, freeing him from the bundle and washing his body of sweat, blood and toxic residues. Once Efren got close, she said nothing with her mouth and everything with her eyes.

Thra U.jpg (32.28 KiB) Viewed 663 times

[Efren Lanville]

Efren returned the look with a caring and sincere one in return.

"[My friend say he strong. Both endure much pain. Take care of Thra Yoll. Important to me and my friend.]"

[Kannon]

Thra U didn't need encouragement to do her best for the sake of her miraculously rescued brother.

"[You. Kind. Sunrise.]" She finally uttered.

[Efren Lanville]

"[Thank you. If can help. Will help.]" He replied with a nod of affirmation.

He did not understand what the woman said about 'sunrises'... But it did not seem the time to question her with her brother in the state he was in front of them.