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*Kuro's Rebirth / Kali's Shadow*

–

It seemed as though the world was frozen in this moment.

The forest was burning. The last spirit of that infernal tree lay dying at her feet, and the burning light was trapped firmly in her talons. After all the trouble she had gone through to ensure it, Kuro had finally torn down the last threat to what remained of her nest. She supposed she should have been feeling... something. Victorious, maybe, at least relieved? But then that other creature came running, didn't stop for all that she loomed over the both of them.

Then that creature took the spirit in its arms and cradled it close, and she very well recognized the grief on its face. It was enough to make her realize; the creature was a mother, and the spirit its child.

A mother holding her child close even as it slips away from her forever. Kuro knew that pain thrice over... And yet, for all her resolutions, she had brought that pain upon another.

Silence, or as silent as a raging inferno could be. The creature tore its gaze from the dying spirit, stared at her with nothing but grief and an unspoken question on its face; why? All the rage of the past several months was snuffed out like flames to water under that expression. Why? The answer had seemed so simple back then, and now... Now it wasn't. That infernal tree had stolen nearly everything that mattered to her; the forest only began to wither after she had slaughtered its spirits and stolen its light in return. This last spirit had tried to undo everything she did to protect her last unhatched egg; it was merely trying to bring its home back to life.

And then she realized something else—the tree itself, a parent, and all those spirits, nothing less than hundreds of children that were helpless to save themselves.

Children that she had ripped apart by the dozen in the name of justice... In the name of blind vengeance.

The forest was burning, and Kuro had never felt so cold in her life.

Unthinking, she pulled her gaze away, looked to the west where she had made her home among the crags. Her last child still lay there in its egg... And like everywhere else, she could see the fires spreading ever closer to the nest she had so viciously defended. It occurred to her that she had to hurry, had to fly over and save her last egg before the flames claimed it. And then she would have to take it far away, make a new nest... somewhere. But she felt too numb to bother with lifting her own wings.

What was the point? The vast forest was burning. There was nowhere left to go.

Hadn't the last spirit tried to save it all from that? Hadn't it tried to bring back the light that kept this land alive?

Kuro's gaze drifted back down, to that same light which burned away at her talons. Conscious thought failed her in that moment, but it was beyond thinking to simply know what had to be done. To stand by and let this nightmare play out to the bitter end? No. That was what was unthinkable. She shifted her grip on the light, took to the sky for one last time. The great tree loomed ahead in the smoky cloud, the fire already climbing its way up that towering height; she reached the empty crown before it could, landed heavily and jammed the light back into the place it belonged. And the light began to glow much stronger.

Much stronger.

She edged away from it, hunched behind her wings like that would do any good for her. There was no outrunning whatever was to come next as a powerful energy pulsed within and built upon itself. Stray thoughts had time to drift in from the edge of her awareness: No one left to raise her last egg. Would this hurt? The fire was everywhere, too late to consider anything else. The faint memory of a familiar tune. Sing your children to sleep, Kuro. Sing yourself to sl—

PAIN!

The light burned. There was no thought. The light burned. There was no mercy. The light burned for an eternity, and the pain began to crumble away with the rest of her being.

Bit. By. Bit.

...

And then all was silence.

The light stopped burning... or maybe it hadn't, and there was simply nothing left of her with which to feel it with. Nothing left to feel or think, nothing left to do but to sink back into the drifting dark and melt away within it.

...

But the light refused to let her go. It held onto her being, cradled her close as it sang her to sleep...

–

–

We shall always remember the night when I lost Ori to the Great Storm.

And we shall always remember the dark times that followed.

The children lost to despair, the silence which swathed the land,

And the sacrifices made in the name of our future.

We shall always remember the tragedy of Kuro,

The tragedy of our blindness and the loss that followed.

But her story, like ours, was not to end with her death,

In giving us the chance to thrive again, so we too gave the same to her.

For in the months that followed, as the forest healed over its scars,

I held onto the remnant of her soul, nurtured it with my light.

For the first time, I had a child adopted into my being,

Sole among the many whom were born from my essence.

Yet I worried that perhaps this was not the right thing,

That my act of absolution would only cause even more harm.

But I chose to place my trust in Ori's compassion,

In the light and perseverance that brought us back from the brink.

For in she who became the beacon of our salvation,

I had faith that she could save Kuro's soul as well.

–

–

In this strange void of lights and voices, a certain question was spreading around which made her realize something important.

"Who are you? What is your name?" they always asked, drifting around and bumping up against one another—she had long made it a habit to avoid coming near any of them. After all, they were of the light while she was... something that was different. The omnipresence that encompassed them all always seemed rather sorrowful whenever she did, but wasn't it just the law of the world that everything remained wary of that which wasn't like itself?

When it told her once that its children would never mean any harm to one of their own, she asked if they would ever consider her as such. That sad silence was her only answer.

She tucked her being into a hidden nowhere as another light passed, and its childlike questioning again reminded her; what was her name? If she had one, why couldn't she remember? ...If she'd forgotten that of all things, what else had she lost? Somehow, it mattered very much to her that her life needed to be remembered; not simply because it was a window into the life that defined her, but because... because... Focus. She had to draw in her focus, to concentrate on a single, solid thought. Her name. It was the best place to start, and so she silenced her mind to everything else, turned her awareness inward as she dug through words, phrases, syllables—anything to find a proverbial foothold.

Her name. It was... K... Kuh... Kali?

No, that didn't quite line up, but she liked the sound of it. Kali... For now, she would go by that name, because even if it didn't match, it still felt quite fitting to her. Kali, Kali... The feeling made her want to dance along with the other lights and announce it to all of them. She almost did before clamping down on her giddiness with a stern self-reminder and tucking herself deeper still into her hiding place.

Such was how it had been for as long as she could remember, and such was how it continued to be. The omnipresence was always insistent that she try to interact with at least one of them, but it was always a gentle push, never forceful or demanding... Not at all like the dull, aching knot deep at her core that continued to grow through the vague passage of night and day—itself pushed back whenever the omnipresence, the Ancient Being, spoke to her. She had grown to be rather fond of those moments when it did.

And once again, it found her; to Kali's surprise, it wasn't to prod her about her isolation.

"Kali, then?" it asked, its deep, booming voice as warm and inquisitive as the lights that danced within it... Not it. Him. A sigh echoed through her mind that was more like a gust of wind than a simple breath. "I wish I could have done more for you, my child. To see you like this... All I can do for you now is hope that the outside world can heal the wounds that I could not." And there was the sadness again, a silence that carried on for one long moment, like he wanted to say something else but couldn't find the right words. "...Rest well, little Kali. It's almost time to return to the world beyond."

And then the omnipresence had left, retreated to the furthest corners of her being. The lights in the void fell silent all at once—it was jarring enough a change for Kali to come drifting out of her hiding spot, listening through the deep silence for a sign of... something. And there it was, a faint humming melody, strangely familiar and as soothing as a soft breeze. It was impossible not to listen along, to follow its cadence as it began to lull them all to sleep for what certainly wasn't the first time...

One last thought fluttered through her mind before sleep overtook her; when was the first?

…

The sensation of drifting again, but not the same as before. It brought with it the instinct to raise her wings to meet the wind, to fly beneath the starlit sky until she found her way back home, where they were waiting for her...

It was a fleeting moment, and it slipped from Kali's memory as soon as she felt the grass brushing against her belly; it was only when she opened her eyes that she remembered she had them with which to see, and the world beyond was a riot of bright colors which nearly stung to look at. To feel the life flowing through her body, to even have a body with which to feel and see and hear... This was not the first time. Her body felt wrong, like her limbs had all shifted out of place, and it seemed spread too far and bunched too close together all at once.

Unsteadily, Kali lifted her head from the ground, blinking away the harshness of the sunlight. She saw others lying in this meadow with her; the lights from before, she realized. There had to be dozens of them, dozens of little white spirits climbing to their feet and looking like they had awoken from a long, long sleep... And for every single one of what had to be over a hundred of the white leaves falling from the Ancient One, another spirit was born where it fell. Panic flared up in her gut—they were everywhere, and there was no chance of fleeing without being seen.

A flicker of old memory came back; when running fails, hide where they least expect it.

Her eyes fell back upon the Ancient One, the colossal tree which served up her new life's first dilemma... and the tangle of massive roots keeping him lodged in the ground. No time to weigh the options. Kali put one ungainly limb in front of the other, slowly, slowly, keeping herself from scrabbling as she crept along. A flash of light to the side—one of them had appeared right next to her, and she froze in her tracks. It wasn't until it raised its head that she realized the spirit had its back to her.

Another small flash of thought; weren't they supposed to be much smaller than this?

A shake of the head, as if to shake the thought. Kali crawled the rest of the way to the Ancient and tucked herself beneath the arch of its root, into the comfort and safety of the shade. And possibly not a moment too soon; she looked back and saw a whole crowd of them gathering together, moving among those still lying down and helping them to their feet. Nothing left to do now but to wait until they either left or went to sleep...and hope that their resting place wasn't under these same arching roots.

But for all her hunter's instinct, Kali was still just a child, and newly born at that. So it was that she didn't realize her head began to droop as she slowly became lost in thought, accustomed to hiding from beings who could only feel rather than see. So it was that the time passed her by, and the sun was just barely cresting the treeline when her solitude came crashing down with two words.

"Hey there!"

–

–

First Steps in the Age of Rebirth

Recounted by Ori the Wayfarer on the seventh of Rainshadow, Year 1 AoR

–

"So I just... speak into this, then?"

"Yeah, and it'll remember what you say. See that light there? That's what it's doing right now. This rune over here will put it to sleep, and that one there will have it repeat your words afterward."

"Okay then. Thanks, Gumo!"

"Be sure to put that mimicstone to good use, yeah? Y'never know when someone from another generation will want to hear what you have to say. It'd be a real shame to leave them wanting."

The fading of large, lumbering footsteps. A faint sigh and the tap-tap-tapping of smaller hoofsteps.

Silence.

"Heh, I don't even know where to start...

"It's funny how so much can change in such a short time, the way you see the world seems to change with everything you learn about it. Little more than a year ago, my whole life was Naru, a few miles of forest called Swallow's Nest and so many mysteries sitting on the horizon. And now, looking back, I can name many those places and say that I've been all over, from the bottom of the deepest lake to the top of the tallest mountain. It's... just so strange. After everything that happened, after these nightmares I'm still dealing with... I still find myself wanting to go on another adventure.

"I guess that's why I've been spending so much time running all over Nibel with Gumo, fixing a lot of things that had gotten worn down during the Days of Decay. It's nice, coming back and seeing that it wasn't all some dream, and I think Gumo's been doing better as well. Even if he's a little obsessed with all of the plans he's been making..."

Silence again. Another round of hoofsteps.

"Right, someone else is going to be listening... Ah... My name is Ori, and I'm a guardian spirit of Nibel... For a while, I was the only guardian spirit as the Days of Decay were almost at an end, and as I speak, the others—maybe you're one of them?—are still waiting to be born or reborn from the Spirit Tree. I, uh, carried many of you within me during my travels, and I just wanted to thank you for... for being there with me. The Spirit Tree gave me the last of his light back then to revive me; it was all of your lights combined which gave me the strength to carry on.

"I can't wait to meet you. Them. The new generation, I mean. I've been almost as excited for this as of late as I've been for Kuro's egg to hatch... We still don't know what we're going to name the owlet, but..."

A third round of silence.

"...I think I'll end this here, try to get my thoughts cleared up for the next time. So, ah, goodbye for now!"