1813, Thorolf, Birutise'aha, Rakhana


He gazed over at her, perched as a gargoyle he was on the fence of the di'leans' pen. She had eyes as red as his own, hers with sight natural to Drells. Her skin was pearl-scale, shimmery, softly inviting to touch though he never dared, and she stood out everywhere she went...She sat across from him on the opposite fence. They signaled to each other with their hands. No one else understood this language between them...It was theirs alone...He signed with his fingers making a fist, his other hand pointing to the onyx knuckles reflecting sun from above, and then to his chest, to her next. She signed back with only her lips—a smile.

She left the fence.

Among the decagon of wooden posts surrounding the inner dirt, feathers and fur, droppings and leftover food bowls were two white and color-splotched Di'lean twins, their red, green, and blue feathers, furry hides dirty from rolling on the ground after their meals….The morthwyl watched the drellahna move among them, clucking her tongue at the young pair.

(: Are you going to release the terrors? :)

(: Not quite. :) She turned, went to him, and blew flirtatiously on his face, then proceeded to walk backwards as the morthwyl fluttered his eyelids.

(: Watch out, Dahnna. :)

Without looking down, she stepped over a large food bowl hazarding her path backwards.

"You really think I'd not see it?"

His grin was warm, and in his hand was a string now looped over his finger with a small stone disc attached to it, and he hung it over his smooth head, letting the leather thong weigh round his neck with the stone dangling in front of his onyx chest.

(: No, but it was a courtesy to you... :) The stone disc hung by its thong about his neck, beneath a brilliant silver and red tebris, and he readied to stand from his perch...With the litheness and silence of a cat, he hopped and landed in the pen beside her.

"Shall we take these two for a walk, Cemal?"

(: The leads, then. :)

He had no other clothes to speak of besides a halakh that was wound tightly round his muscular waist and hung two soft, liquid-moving panels of heavy leather cloth in front and behind him between his legs, fine black boots tied up his shins by which, on the outside of each leg, were the ends of two exotic, barbed swords strapped to the powerful thighs revealed either end of the halakh's parts. He was her antithesis, svelte black he was….The hardness of his body was clear to see, made so by his training….The red eyes did not see as Drells did, for Cemal was Morthwyl, and saw with a "sight" unique to his species….His ruby and silver tebris made a soft vibration as he spoke with her in Silent Song….An ability shared by Drell and Morthwyl alike on Rakhana. It was hard not to think of him as Drell, but the morthwyls had come from a separate animal kingdom altogether, evolved from anything but Dahnna's ilk.

Dahnna removed two leather leads from their hooks outside the pen, hung off the wooden fence, and brought one each with its halter to the kids' heads.

She herself was dressed in a halakh, too—while Cemal's was black as his skin, hers was a soft, cream-colored leather, and over the rest of her she wore a long yellow shawl with cape and hood...She called to him in 'Song, using the special structures inside her neck, behind her tebris, and among this, her chest and throat, to create the complicated vibrations his inner hearing immediately picked up on... (: Take Tihalt's lead, will you? :)

He did so, holding the long lead and guiding the younger of the twins (by two hours from the finality of birth following his sister, Tille, from their mother's belly) to the gate Dahnna had opened and led out the older of the twins to the yard beyond.

As they walked, Dahnna took hold of his hand...She gave him a blushing smile, her tebris expanding slightly...The sun shown off his onyx, athletic physique, his skin tight and smooth over dense muscle covered with boa scales—hardly discernible except along their scalps, faces, and necks...The pearl-shimmer of her own skin and more pronounced crests seemed to glow as they moved under the sun that was above the open backyard of the cotti.

Dahnna did not realize it then, but those like her would be classed one day among the I'lorie—"The Ordained"—and highly sought-after for the power their appearance was thought to signify they to possess within them...Her country was yet to waken to the "Terje Tierrea".

Dahnna was kept apart from the news outside Thorolf, where they lived with the remaining members of her immediate family. She heard some of the "goings on" outside the forest, but no one knew what was coming to the Birutise'aha, the continent on which they lived. The morthwyl leading the male di'lean beside her knew evil was coming, but to Cemal, that threat was always present….Not being Drell, he was an immediate enemy to her species. The morthwyls were ancient, natives to Rakhana, pushed south since the colonization of Drells from across the water, who landed on the shores of the Meir desert which had not always been desert….Cemal was in fact two hundred years old, and had seen the plains before these dried out to become the Meir dunes that existed in their place.

To be precise, he was two-hundred-twelve by Rakhïk Standard.

One would not think so, looking at him, and one would be surprised to hear that Morthwyls came from pods, not drellahnas' wombs.

Dahnna had known Cemal since she was a child. And he had watched her grow into a young, fertile drellahna.

Alongside her father, he had trained her from a sprat to the drellahna she was now...Her father was a fearsome drell, but fair and kind to his children, as well as Cemal.

Eufemiusz was the nefarious sort….a soldier with unique skills. He hunted Drells.

Dahnna was not his only child….She had a brother….a brother Kiross...and he was only three years elder to her eighteen...Cuillean.

Who was very alike his father in size and colors.

Their mother was deceased.

Dahnna did not resemble her elders nor her brother needless to say….She was albino, and only in her temperament did she possess similarities with both her parents. Before Dahnna's infant mind could develop its permanency of record, her mother had died and Dahnna had no recollection of the drellahna who gave her life...She knew never to ask of the drellahna to her father, but Cemal, who had known her mother, told her what Eufemiusz wouldn't, and that Cuillean couldn't (because three years her child was not enough to know the drellahna at all). And Siarea was infamous….A huntress, too...Cemal had been less than half-a-century younger than she, when Siarea was known to him...He had told Dahnna that her father near-worshipped the drellahna while she was alive, and prayed for her still, even departed she was from the world...When Siarea died, her grave was placed in the backyard where it existed still by the cotti, and around it a garden of Plumana, "Queen's Wreath", which had been planted by Eufemiusz.

Siarea had fought in the "dark shadows" of war between Drell and Morthwyl, over in Rakka, the lands of Cemal's kind, and she had been of the few matriarchs who turned against their own side to aide the morthwyls in their plight of genocide. She was the reason why a drellahna and a morthwyl now could walk together, side by side, in peace and harmony through the woods of Thorolf along the river Tina...Cemal watched over Dahnna initially out of respect to her family...Through Eufemiusz, Cemal also had a teness or two filled with what news of the lands there was to be heard from the elder drell's (Cemal surpassed Eufemiusz by more than a century and then some) words from his travels.

Eufemiusz often took Cuillean with him to hunt across the Birutise'aha, and would be gone for days...Dahnna would be left in the care of Cemal, and Cemal had no family of his own he desired to speak of with Dahnna, or anyone.

Cemal was an exile from Rakka, his homeland. One day he might return, but the day was not come...He was an heir to a country that was dead in all senses of the word...and only he could revive it.

Until that time, Rakka would remain in its death throe.


He gazed passed Dahnna's yellow-shawled, sloping shoulders to the forest at her right as they walked on their amble there by the river...The woods were golden with light above, slipping through the canopy, reflecting off the Tina's waters. He was watching for the wuliton.

Wuliton were heathen creatures that hunted Thorolf woods at night. Cemal was able to "see", hear, and smell them well before a drell could...Like himself, wulitons were born from the rakha, and as ancient as the morthwyl's kind...They were no threat in the daylight, but it was best to be aware if one was nearby...Sunlight and firelight distracted them—so much they were transfixed by it and remained still as stone, as though the light transported their minds out of their bodies, leaving them empty, fierce-looking, but dumb beasts, throughout the woods and hills beyond Thorolf as well. It was best to kill a wuliton when found this way. Cruel, yes, cowardly even, to kill a creature in such a manner, but it was better than to let them catch you and eat you alive.

Dahnna was alerted to his gaze traveling to her western flank of the forest...It amazed her when his eyes and head moved, sightless as he was, and yet as though not, to what interested him.

(: What is it, Cemal? :)

(: Nothing. I am being vigilant. :)

She looked west of her, into the woods thickening with shadows. (: You should be looking at me instead. :)

Cemal's eyes and face turned to hers returning to see him...He couldn't see, and that didn't make a difference to a morthwyl. (: The sun sets. :) He smiled at her.

(: Are you telling me it's time for my bed? :)

(: Merely advising, Dahnna. :)

She grinned back at him with the soft pink discs among her red pupils, seeing him there beside her with Tihalt on his left, the river Tina as their backdrop.

The di'leans suddenly churred and tugged on their leads, straining against their handlers' firm holds as they stretched their necks towards the south...Dahnna and Cemal both looked to the south, passed the di'leans' raised crests of feathers above their beaks and spreading aside their eyes.

"What do you think alarms them?"

He touched her shawl at her shoulder, staying her from being about to walk forward with her di'lean's urgent pulls... (: I am sensing...There is a disruption in the woods ahead. :)

Dahnna strained her own senses, trying to read the southern forest and river but finding nothing aside from Tille and Tihalt's churs and tugs warning her something was amiss. Even having been taught by Cemal what signs to look for, she detected only peacefulness throughout the immediate vicinity. "Shall we go inspect?"

(: No. You should go back with the twins. :)

"I most certainly will not allow you to go inspecting anything without me."

(: Something comes, Child. :)

"We'll either go together to the cotti," she felt slighted by his referring to her as a 'Child', "….or go find out what's ahead together, Cemal."

(: Take the twins. :) He handed her Tihalt's lead. (: Your father forbids you to be out at dusk in any case. :) His hands loosened ties securing the swords to his thighs and Cemal went silently into the southern hem of trees, his senses high on alert, leaving Dahnna with the twins to return home while he met the threat coming north through the forest.