Disclaimer: His, not mine. Mine, not his.
A/N: Another serious take on Salamandastronian life. Anything that offends you? Well, take it in your stride and move on. It is, after all, my take.
Ours is a society of few words.
Take for example the females among us. It is not to say that they are not fit to join the patrols - fact is, many of our best captains and leaders were, and are, females. But as time went on, they strained towards being healers and medics, closing their eyes and their emotions. The more masculine aspect of the males in the patrols lead to their sense of honour: upholding the safety and integrity of Mossflower, never indulging in a dereliction of their duty. We drown our sorrows in the kill. Females? They drown their sorrows in ways I can never understand; most of them are content to be hare wives, waiting at home for husbands that they know are never coming back.
To understand Clambrithe, one must first understand life on the Mountain. It is by no means a simple retelling of philosophies and rules, no, Salamandastron is far more complex than faked accents and dubious origins.
As I said, ours is society of few words. As one grows in Salamandastron, one learns. There are no written rules of conduct for one's behaviour, no list of taboos. But they do exist, and they are significant, verily so. We are terribly different from any other species, in fact, any other form of "hare". The mountain hares, they are different, the plain hares, they are strange to us. We are a race on our own, and within our culture are strange rulings.
Admittedly, our society is one of traditional and survival instinct. We depend on the unspoken teachings passed down from generation to generation, and these teachings all stem from the one philosophy that is the basis of our existence: Kill or be killed. We live because it is more difficult to remain alive than to merely fade away. There are plenty of ramifications that appeared as a result of killing and taking lives, but we have learned to adapt to them, work around them.
We have to kill, you see. It is not so simple a matter as killing, wiping the blood away, then living the rest of your life in comparable peace and happiness.
When you kill, your life is affected, those around you are affected, your family is affected. But when those around you kill, and your family kills, and your society is based on the concept of death and life, your life is the one that is affected, and you are the one who is changed.
In Salamandastron, we kill. We kill on a daily basis: rooting out vermin and exterminating them. It might have been well if vermin were really just pests; mindless animals with no sense of mind or conscience. But it is evident, painfully evident, that vermin, too, have their idiosyncrasies, their lives, their need and will to survive. Perhaps there are good vermin out there, vermin who are pure creatures corrupted out of necessity: if we strive to kill them, technically they, too, must strive to kill us. It is a vicious cycle; their lives ruined, then ours. But we have the upper hand; we, the hares of the Long Patrol, are viewed as the saviours of Mossflower, generous, kind, noble. We have a strong fort that has been held for countless centuries, and we have a system, an organization, a method that continues to be refined and made better. We do not kill each other because we first started out as a band of hares and a badger lord killing others. Vermin kill to really survive, for them, it is their life or another's. They do not have resources, or a permanent place to live. They have no source of income, or food, of water or shelter. They have to kill their neighbour so that they may take what the dead man no longer can. We? We kill as a job, not to survive. We kill because we can, not because we actually have to. It is a duty. And when you call something a duty, you ergo have to do it. Therefore we say we must.
Sometimes, I pity vermin. Given the chance, given food, water, a hearth and a fire, maybe they might change. Maybe it was our fault.
But I do not want to think about that. It would drive me insane, and I have veered off my intended topic.
Life on Salamandastron. One starts out as a leveret, to be trained as soon as one reaches an age old enough that one may hold a weapon without pointing the wrong end at one's self. Then these leverets are moved along, imbued with the teachings of Salamandastron: protect the weak, become the strong. Duty, duty, honour and death. That is your life to come, young one. I went through it, and perhaps it did me some good. We are taught to become creatures of nobility and honour, creatures of responsibility and fervour. Then, one moves up the ranks: naturally beginning as a runner; scouting the countryside and attempting not to get into any skirmishes. Then, if you were not rooted out because of your oddity or your lack of competence, you became a galloper or an attachment to a patrol, and your life's path was laid out in front of you.
Oddity. That was the major factor. If one was seen as dangerous, one could no be put on the field. Ideas were always dangerous. Those who asked: why do we kill?, those were the ones who were dangerous. They thought too much, saw into things. Those were the few who could change everything, and at all costs they had to be kept under control. They were made into administrative machines; their keen minds dulled by paperwork and treaties. Those who remained were the smart, but not insightful, leverets and Greens: those who knew their way around strategy, but not the reason why they used strategies as such.
Then there were those who were insightful, but were insightful enough that they kept their views to themselves. Those were the most brilliant, and the most volatile, of the lot. They were the ones with the most potential: they knew when to shut their mouths, and therefore they were already wise enough to get along with life. They could adapt. They could adjust. They could understand. They were the future leaders, the majors, the brigadiers, the colonels. They were the ones who would lead a new generation.
Clambrithe was one of those. He saw into people like he looked through glass, and whatever he saw was advantageous to his constantly turbulent mind. He knew how to position people, to assign them, to lead and prod them, to manipulate them. And all the while, he was manipulating himself, a little pawn of the machine that ran all of us.
He opened his eyes to that, and because of that, I call him a fool.
One never speaks openly in Salamandastron about such topics. Death, the reason for killing, those were taboo subjects. You never mentioned them. It just was. You grew up, you sacrificed yourself, it was all honourable and righteous and fine. You never wondered why it was you, why it could not be someone else. That was just stupidity.
Yes, in my society, one never mentions the obvious. Everything was traditional, tradition, truth.
At least, that was what is seemed to any outsider.
We, the hares of Salamandastron, with our strange accents and our petty ways, our flippant attitudes and our even odder eating habits.
Take a step into the heart of our mountain, and you would find yourself disillusioned.
Our accents are faked. We speak as well as the next. Our petty ways are discarded once we become serious, a facade to hide deeper thoughts. Flippancy is generally frowned upon unless partaking in play, and eating habits... When one is out on the field for months on end, one learns the importance of rationing and living off the land.
Odd that nobeast else notices, it may seem. But we have become inexplicably good at hiding our true selves from everyone, ourselves included.
Reiteration of my previous point, perhaps, but it warrants emphasis.
But our lack of eloquence regarding ourselves is a farce. We decline seeing things that could taint our reputation, but those things are the wheels and cogs of our society, the things that keep us running.
There are always hidden facets. I have seen them in the dark, obscured from sight. Fearful things, dark things, heinous things.
It is not uncommon, no, not uncommon at all, for two to take comfort in hushed, hurried embraces while on patrol. Sex is disregarded, most of the time, turned on a blind eye. When you live next to your friend, your compatriot, your secret lover, you tend to be able to ignore the most close of intimacies surprisingly well. Gender does not even matter. You do it to forget, not to remember, and so when the sun comes up the next day, it never happened.
We are not liberalists, no. I have seen homosexuals thrown out of the mountain without second glance from the upper echelons or the badger lord. You do it, you do what you please, but we implore you, forget about it and do not try to take it any further. If you must, you must, but your actions are your own and when you are not supposed to speak, you do not. If you continue? You leave. Your life is thrown away, and you follow soon after. We send our regards to your personal hell, but we do not care. You broke the rules. You tainted our record. You stained black what blackness that is supposed to be white. Deviants are not accepted here.
Neither is it unheard of for blood to be spilt for no reason, one's own blood. Somebeasts simply cannot take the stress, and Clambrithe stands as a perfect example. Granted, it never happens too often, because troublesome cases are usually spotted and dealt with long before they are given the leeway to ripen, but, as I said, it is not unheard of.
None of this makes it to the light of day. They are secrets of the night, our secrets, not the Long Patrol's. They may come as a side-effect of being in the Long Patrol, but they are our secrets and not meant to be made known. If you created or did something worthy of being kept quiet and kept well, you very well kept it and lived with it.
I have lived through all of this. Clambrithe lived through all of this.
Why am I so insightful? Why do I see into things, and why am I here if I mentioned so adamantly that those who follow intuition are so quickly removed from active duty?
Because Jonathan showed me.
He opened this one terrible door and shoved me through, and before I knew why he had done it or why I had gone along, it was far too late. I became his little ardent follower, his pupil of philosophy. With his actions, he showed me his thoughts, and though he never spoke of them, I knew. I knew just as well as he did. We were both masters of speaking the unspoken, just the same as all these hares around me. He and I had come to some sort of mutual understanding. A friendship based on nothing but wordless moments by the open fire.
It kept me sane.
It drove him insane.
It is times like these I wonder if I have already been driven mad. But the more I try to understand Clambrithe, the more I try to understand myself.
Like I said. Even though he is dead, Jonathan Clambrithe continues to make me think and reconsider and ponder and go absolutely crazy.
It is this madness that saves me.
It is this madness that saves us all.