- - -
She stepped towards him and stood over his head as he grazed. Cirrus looked up at his younger sister as she spoke.
"I heard all about your plans."
Cirrus stood up himself and faced her. He let out a dribble of his lips and growled. "How."
"I forced it out of Rusamu. More like tricked it out of him." Tulip giggled, feeling clever. Her tail swished merrily, the red ball on it seeming to bounce side to side. "All I really had to do was get him talking about the rams arriving for harukos and it slipped out of his silly mouth. Like I didn't know you're up to something! So, when're we gonna kill him?"
"We aren't doing anything. You're staying out of this."
"I'm as angry as you are about it! Don't forget that I was there too. I had to see it and I was just a lamb." Tulip had nearly been trampled by the scuffle. She had bleated and run to her brother's side. The desire to see Tamar dead had run deep in her ever since. There were some things no lamb should have to see; she knew she would never be the same. She would have a part in this. "You can't stop me."
"I can choose never to forgive you if you ruin this." Cirrus paced the grass around Tulip. "There is no room for you in these plans. I wanted to spare you from having to know."
"I'm not some lamb to hide things from! She's my mama too and if there's any plans for vengeance, I'm a part of them and that's that." When would her family take her seriously and treat her like an adult? All they liked to do was protect her from everything. They thought she was incapable of doing anything important...
For not being a lamb she was sure acting like a baby, thought Cirrus, but he forgave her. She was a year younger than him. Yearlings were really just lambs on the inside. "I apologise if I seem harsh, but you're not going to be in on this. It's not some evolution battle or journey across the field. We're planning on killing somebody."
Cirrus turned away from her as she began to speak again.
"That's what you think Cirrus! You do this without me I'll never speak to you again!"
Tulip watched him leave. He never looked back. She'd be sure to keep an eye on him...and on Tamar. Come a curse of Bangaa or an attack of the Lightless Ones, she'd be there when they went to kill him.
"Oh, Tulip," said Amurin, her mama, coming towards her. Her lamb Morgor was off playing, so that Amurin could take this time to talk to her about the whole thing. "Just let your brother go off and do what he must do. This is something between rams. He's not trying to belittle you. And I'd never forgive myself if you were hurt." She touched her flipper to Tulip's cheek looking fondly down at the younger, smaller amp.
"This is something between the two of us," said Tulip.
- - -
Clouds gathered overhead, and a strong, warm wind blustered over the grass. Maelstrom strode around the other three sheep with a shaded look on his face. "Call me... Darkstar."
"Ooooh Darkstar," said Shiri, her eyes widening along with her smile as another swath of wind whipped the grass. The coming storm pulled a few yellowing leaves off the willows that grew by the stream and sent them spinning through the air around the little flock. She reared and bounded around. "That's a good name...Hmm...I'll be Whirlflower! Ooh, Whirlflower, I kinda like that, maybe I'll name my lamb Whirlflower. When I have a lamb!" But that wouldn't be for at least a couple more years, now would it? Well, when she had a lamb, she'd have a good name for it. "I'm Whirlflower the Hoppip!"
"I'm a houndoom," said Maelstrom. "What're you gonna be?" he asked Kyaru and Tamar. Tamar was grazing, though, and didn't seem like he was going to fully participate. He was just here because they let him hang around, unlike most of the flock. Poor Tamar, Maelstrom could really identify with him.
Kyaru spoke as the sky rumbled in the distance. "I'm a Tauros...a big bull of course."
"Of course," said Maelstrom. "Well let's get started. I start out chasing you and then I corner you."
"Not me," said Kyaru proudly. She scuffed her hoof on the grass, then charged Maelstrom. In the distance, flashes of lightning seemed to bump around on the clouds as if struggling to escape them. "Leave that Hoppip alone!"
Maelstrom growled and automatically bent his head down to charge her too, then remembered he was a houndoom. "Ahhhooooooo!" As Kyaru ran past him he leaped for her. He aimed to pile on top of the ewe, but ended up landing on her running legs. Kyaru still went down. Thunder rumbled nearer. "And I'm going for the kill!"
"Ahhh no! Both of you boys stop it!" cried Shiri, prancing round the two of them. "Stop fighting and let's do something fun! Like exploring!"
"I do my exploring on a full stomach," said Maelstrom, grinning at Kyaru. "First I have to have my daily kill."
"Houndooms hunt at night," said Kyaru.
"Well pretend it's night. Grrrrrr!" Maelstrom play-nipped Kyaru on her furry shoulder. "There--pretend I drew blood. Blood comes shooting out of your veins in your neck."
"And I'm a ghost now BWAHAHA!" Kyaru reared up and started prancing around Maelstrom. "I'm putting a curse on you! I curse you to be banished to the evil cave forever!"
Maelstrom stood up and strode round Kyaru with his head high and haughty. "That's just fine. I love it there, I live there and eat my kills there."
"Ewwwww," Shiri wrinkled her nose. "Okay you're cursed in the cave, I can come to rescue you."
Thunder cracked closer overhead. The clouds split open, and warm drops pelted down on the playing sheep. Maelstrom felt the electricity in the air as the rain drummed on him; he loved storms.
Tamar stood up from grazing. The clouds were getting dark, and it was starting to rain. He checked where they were, just to be sure there were no predators. He was with lambs, and predators often went for those. There were very few predators who could take down a mature giant mountain ampharos ram, which was what Tamar was, so he had not checked too much while travelling alone, but this was different.
- - -
Cirrus led Rusamu and Drael through the rain. It was coming down hard now, but he spotted the lights of Tamar through the sheeting haze. Thunder boomed again, Cirrus's own current responded by pumping up higher. The storm would only give them greater power in their task.
"Maaaaalstrom!" Thalenes' contralto voice peeled out through the pounding rain, as she called her son. Cirrus passed the flock and marched on towards the playing lambs. As much as he hated that little ramling he would be careful not to hit him, to only get Tamar. He knew that the ewes would probably thank him for this.
"Yeah Mamaaa!" Maelstrom bleated through the storm towards his mother's call. "Reeepu, she's probably gonna want us to play closer."
"We are kind of far for them to see us," said Tamar. "One never knows what can spin out from these storms on the fields, too."
"Like the torukië?" said Maelstrom, meaning twisters; those great tall beings that were born from the storms and only appeared during them. "I saw them before yeah."
A flash of lightning appeared overhead. Maelstrom reared, excited by the show of the rain spirits.
Cirrus and the other two rams were coming up fast behind Tamar but Maelstrom was closing his eyes. He wanted to catch a bolt of lightning, let the current run fast into him and bring him the feeling that he was gûndah of the world. A great strike of lightning made his eyes flutter back open; it had struck right in front of him. But the lightning was not that of the sky. It was an electric attack striking Tamar.
Tamar took the bolt into his tail, but that left him with no room in himself for the next one. It hit him while Rusamu grabbed him round the neck.
"NO!" Maelstrom lunged at Rusamu and butted him in the haunch. As Rusamu tried to kick at him, he heard the bleating of a ewe further off.
"I told you!" Tulip was racing towards them. Thunder banged close overhead. "I told you I will be here!"
Tulip came running charged up for battle. She saw that the three rams had already involved Tamar in the attacks, so she'd do her best to make sure she made the killing blow. A bolt of lightning began to well up, coiled inside her tailball. She only had to release it at the right moment.
Cirrus ignored his sister and focused more on the task in front of him. Tamar was struggling in Drael and Rusamu's grasp. Maelstrom was attacking on the side...
"Maaalstrom!" Thalenes saw the flashes of light. She heard the booming of electric attacks, a sound she knew well. The huge ewe took off towards the fight, praying to the ancestors that her son had not gotten into any more trouble. If older sheep were in the battle too, then it must mean a predator or predators were attacking. "Muyyy bebbeeee!"
Cirrus prepared to release a Thunder attack right onto the struggling amp. All he needed was the right moment...
Tamar threw one of the rams off him with a good kick. The electricity siming at him he took into his own denki, storing it for his own use. That which did he did not absorb went spilling out around him, weakening him some, but he knew he would survive. It was when the other ram threw his flippers round his neck and started strangling him that Tamar became scared. He struggled in desperation as the two rams dragged him to the ground.
Shiri ran in between Tamar and Cirrus. "No! NO!"
"You!" Tulip shoved her brother, trying to get him out of the way. She released her own strike onto Tamar while he struggled with the other rams in the whipping wind.
The jolt caused Cirrus to release his pent-up electricity. A huge white bolt lanced down in front of Tamar. Maelstrom felt it strike ground. Someone was bleating, then the sound blasted in his cone ears, which were shaped the way they were so that the sheeps' own attacks did not deafen them.
Kyaru was crying for them to stop as the rams strangled Tamar.
Maelstrom opened his eyes and saw the rain pounding on a mareep. Half a mareep. Shiri's body lay torn open and scorched by the lightning, split like a tree branch. Another bolt from the great storm alive above them split the sky. Shiri...
He turned from the scene and ran as fast as he could. He did not know where he was going. He just had to get away...fast as he could run...he had only blinked his eyes and then it had been too late, too late...
- - -
In the chaos of many lightning strikes, the death shrieks were unheard by Heero-ki. The great seven foot mountain ram was busy catching lightning bolts with his headgem, one of his favourite pastimes. If sheep had been dumb enough to go get themselves hurt or killed, that was their loss. He only hoped no ewes had died! That would mean one less ewe to mate and have a lamb by in the spring.
Brelanda heard Thalenes bleating for her lamb and sighed at the foolishness of young ramlings who wandered off too far from their mothers. Maelstrom and the other lambs born this past spring were older now--a few of them had even evolved into flaaffies already--but they were still lambs, and very vulnerable. She could only hope that Thalenes found her son--right now, she could not leave the flock.
She was looking at the clouds nearly overhead. A whirlpool seemed to be forming within the clouds as they started to spin round each other. Brelanda knew well what that meant.
"Thalenes!" she called. "Cirrus! Tulip! Amurin!"
The eyomah of the flock flashed her lights in alarm, signalling to the whole body of sheep that they were on the move. Lightning was enjoyable, but a -toruku- was not.
Äym gettin' mai bebbee farst!" cried Thalenes, running through the rain. She ran straight towards where the battle had been. "Maaalstrom...Maaalstrom!"
Before she could get there, Kyaru met up with her, the mareep nearly smacked into the big fat ewe. "Oh--Thalenes! Thank Phos! You--It's terrible! These rams..." Her voice blurred as she tried to get out what she wanted to say and emotion obscured all of it. -Weak-, she thought, -you're being like a weak ewe. Stop crying now, stop it.-
"Mai bebbee Maalstrom--"
"He's okay but he ran away, I don't know where!"
"What wey ded he goo?"
Kyaru pointed the way that Maelstrom had run.
Thalenes herded the eweling towards the flock. "Get noow tuh the flock!" She ran on towards the scene that had been a battle only moments before. In the rain lay two bodies. Tamar and Shiri, lying side by side as the rain poured down on them. No one else was there.
"Maalstrom!" Thalenes jogged off the way that Kyaru had pointed. Nothing else mattered now but finding her son alive.
Brelanda welcomed the frightened eweling to the flock and gave her her most reassuring words. She looked up at the rotating mass of clouds and saw a cup deepening within their center, lowering itself towards the ground. A -toruku-, that great being of the storm, was being born.
"...and they killed Tamar and I tried to make them stop but they wouldn't get off him," Kyaru was sobbing to Brelanda. "They kept on holding him by the neck and then that Cirrus one was stomping his throat out..."
- - -
Maelstrom ran through the thunderstorm, as mad as the whirling clouds out behind him. He heard only thunder and rain...he saw only clouds and lightning.
There was a roaring coming up behind him, a loud drumming like a great motor eating the ground. Revenge...Justice... Maelstrom's thoughts drowned it out to the back of his mind until it became too loud to ignore. He looked behind him. The clouds had turned into a long black funnel and it was tearing up the ground behind him.
"Mama! Mamaaaaa!" He bleated into the storm, but he did not hear his own voice.
"Maaalstrom!" On the other side of the twister, Thalenes called for her lamb. The rain and the -toruku- blocked her view of her little boy's light.
"Mamaa!" Maelstrom watched the creature of the storm destroy the grass, the ground, sucking up everything in sight. He tore away from it, galloping at his top speed towards the rocky peak of Cloudspin. But it was a long way off, and the twister was growing closer and closer...
Maelstrom stumbled and sloshed through a rain-swollen stream. The water was muddy and moving rapidly. Maelstrom felt the pull on his legs as he struggled through it. Behind him the -toruku- loomed huge, roaring so loudly he heard nothing else.
Across the stream he went running, as branches and stones and other debris kept smacking into him. He squinted his eyes almost shut and ran on almost blindly. A great force was beginning to pull him backwards, until he was running in place. Then his hooves could no longer grip the ground and he was pulled up bodily into a violent vortex.
Debris kept smacking into the poor lamb as the winds threw him all over. He curled in a ball and put his front hooves over his face, knowing he would die. The wind pulled on him, rain wet him through, he felt little pain only because so much greater was the face of his fear.
- - -
"Mai bebbeeee!" Thalenes watched the toruku disappear down the field and head around the rocks. Once it hit the rocks it would dissipate...but her baby would be gone. Wherever he was, he was unable to come back to the flock. Something had angered the spirits for one of the twisters to appear and try so hard to destroy their flock.
"Thalenes, come on!" called Brelanda, afraid that the ewe would lose her own life in the search for her son. If she lost her lamb, she could still survive, rebuild her life and have another lamb.
Thalenes turned away from the twister and followed the rest of the flock to safety, bawling loudly for her son. If she had only gone after him sooner. Then the killings would not have happened and caused the ancestors to unleash their fury on the flock.
- - -
The -toruku- threw the lamb into the air, hurling him far away. Maelstrom bumped rudely into something solid and unmoving. The lamb struggled to latch onto it--it was something not taken by the wind. Full of bruises, cuts and pain he scrambled in among the rocks and lay there, panting, feeling pain and resignation. He was ready to die.