starry starry night

Year 756 of the new age - - - Autumn

...dan get up... the soft voice was a gentle whisper on a breeze that never should have existed in the twisting, damp caverns of Oakfern. Cool air kissed her skin as she moved, closing her eyes and breathing deeply the fresh scent of fallen rain, damp, musty earth, and the night. yes the night, ah the all too familiar scent of those things dark and secret and lost and sacred. She rose on obedient limbs, unsure what possessed her to rise and move through the shadows. Passing from her tear drop caverns to the nearest congressional cavern she stared at the silver-blue waters rippling beneath the pires and ledges she perched upon.

What a silly little place this was in silence. The waters so crystaline and pure despite the heavy tolls that had been taken - the many bodies rotting as lifeless corpses at the bottom of the pool. Countless tales untold. Countless lives taken. How many dead were there at the bottom of the moonlit pools? She shuddered and cast her thoughts, and eyes, away from the deadly waters. If she stared for too long she would see their faces like a distant plague rising to the surface to haunt her. Their mouths and eyes open wide, agape, gasping for air desperate for life. Bubbles swirling from mouth and nose as their lungs lost the last bit of air trapped in them and were filled with those deadly waters. Shouldn't the moonpools be poisonous by now? Or were there. . . creatures in the dark waters, creatures that fed upon those lifeless bodies down below?

look. . . why? She balked at the thought of looking into that pool. It always disgusted her. Frightened her even. Hah! An Oakfern afraid of water! But it wasn't the water that frightened her, it was the death in the water. So she was afraid of death, if you really thought about it. . . . look. . . She felt compelled to look, unable to control herself she did look, at last, into the waters. The serene surface was almost black in the shadows, the gentle ripples were the only thing kissed by the moon and overhead stars. Her pale green eyes stared and, despite her hereditary blindness she saw what was in those waters.

The dark ink swirled with color and life. Murky blobs of shapes formed slowly developing into an actual image. Vivid, aglow, and violent yet silent. She tried to control the image, desperately trying to make sense of what she saw in the waters. As visions always do the one beneath her balked at the attempt at controlling it and quickly dissolved into a new image, punishing her for trying to order it around. Sighing softly the old doe released her mind to absorb what was shown to her in a half trance of obedience. The silence that accompanied the agonized, twisted, screaming faces, the terror and agony that greeted her in the visions was more haunting than the splashing and screaming echoes that always accompanied the true acts of violence being portrayed.

"Why do you show me these deaths?" she inquired of the night. silence answered her. With a soft sight she began to retreat from the waters. Wait... something was there. Struggling to control herself she let her mind fuzz over once more, her gaze going absent as she sank into the visions and let them ride around her like a river parting around a stone. Something about that fawnling seemed awful familiar. The vision would haunt her for months after but she had to watch it. She had to know who was that? and why? The vision refused to give her such answers and instead it cut off abruptly, thrusting her ungracefully back into the cold night air.

She gasped as she rocketed back into her body, surprised to find her limbs had gone numb. "What did you see?" Amaya slipped from the shadows of the cavern, already forty the ancient doe had very little time left in the world. That did not mean she did not exist. Mindelan glanced back at the older doe, straightening herself and regaining her composure.

"Nothing that concerns you Amaya."

"There was a time once when you would call me Mother." Amaya mused, not quite shunned by the Oracles dismissal. She slipped closer to her niece, her green eyes dancing with mirth. She had not gone blind yet! Mindelan pinned her ears in annoyance.

"There was a time where I believed it to be true. Yet you remain barren in your long life, proven by shaman after shaman to have been so since birth. Your secret was lost long ago, Amaya. You raised me but you did not give birth to me."

"Didn't I?" she chuckled, "No, perhaps not. I did not carry you and I did not birth you, but is that really what makes a mother, Mindelan? If so then Fa'ra was a pitiful excuse for one. Dying at the birth of her one and only daughter. Pity."

"What do you want, Amaya."

"Only to know what you saw." the old doe stopped inches from her niece and stared down at her. Her lighter red-champagne body stood out strong against the shadows despite the lack of markings on it. Mindelan eyed her with suspicion.

"I told you it does not concern you, Amaya. Go back to sleep." she turned, dismissing the doe, and began to walk away, trying to ignore the baiting tongue of her aunt.

"Oh I will, Mindelan. The question is, will you sleep again this night? Or any night?" the doe laughed into the darkness, receding back to her sleeping place as Mindelan made her slow, steady way through the cavern to the highest point. One good leap and she'd be out in the open world above the moonpools. THat was not her goal tonight, though. Instead she looked up into the stars and-

"Well that's new. . ." she murmured softly, eying the young constellation in the sky. "I suppose it has a purpose now, though. What shall I be telling to the herd, Gaelach?"

you saw what you must say. . . . the voice was soft and faded as it finished speaking. The gentle, motherly warmth that had accompanied it tonight was gone. The patience no longer lingering. No longer secure as a fawn tucked to its mothers flank Mindelan shivered at the sudden absence of everyone. What would she say? What could she say? With a soft sight she turned back and returned to her caverns, her mind rolling over the bevy of information she had received tonight. How could she even begin to sort things out?

"Well, I'll figure it out tomorrow," she yawned as she curled back up in her nest like bed, drifting off, once more, to sleep. Dreamless, peaceful, oblivious blissful sleep.