Prompt: Non-Western fantasy

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Shay

DID NOT HAND IN

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Annie

The trees swayed in the wind. With them came the cold--an unforgiving beast that trembled and shook as the harvests grew. Entire fields shook with ripened corn, stalks short and proud, each bearing their rough seeds ready to be ground. Hauna, sister to the Eastern Sky, breathed the cold from her lips and coaxed the gentle ground to ready itself for the first chill. It was coming soon. The beast of time and burden of hunters weighed heavy upon the Silic, who had just recently begun to gather their people for the yearly spread.

"Will they be ready?" Hauna asked, her frosty lips parting once more to speak to the large woman who sat behind her. Flowers spread from her fingertips and wilted as she plucked them.

"The spread brings out many things in the Silic," Anut, born of the long plain and sweet dirt, said. "The green stalk grew too fast this year, and the ripened berries are red and plump. The mourning fowl fly fast together, and the small crow flees its friends as it readies itself for the spread. The white flowers breed yellow far too often--with them, come the delicacies found of dried fruit, hidden underground, the flatbread broke and torn, shared with others, and even there, the fat birds sing and laugh as they walk through the ground. The humans scurry like mice. They always have and always will, Hauna."

An inpatient sigh brewed, but Hauna let it drift off as the wind picked up once more. The warm, soft air lingered, not yet ready for another burst of the chill. Time would come for the Silic, but first, the spread was to be completed.

Hunters left with kisses against their lips and great cries of cheer. Their backs, coated with nothing, are eager for the thrill of hard food against them. They follow the stream, a northern beauty, who runs downhill with the fury of a thousand dreams. She is how they will bring back their prize.

Those left are eager, abuzz with fresh joy, and the children slap the fields and help their mother's carry back the harvest. Old men grind for bread, for soups, for food that must be contained. They grind and grind, backs facing the wind, faces turned towards the sun. Songs sing from their lips, gentle stories of the times of old, and--one by one--all turn towards the story of the first spread.

A young girl, only on her first year of harvest, carried fruit in her palm to the old men. Her expectant face stopped all who cared and they waved their hands to her, childing her for still wanting to hear the stories, but respecting the elders too much to complain.

"Tell me...the spread, the first one," she said, sitting at the lap of a man of a thousand suns. His feet and hands were cold but his long white hair was warm, and on his hip, the grinding rock stays still. "I will grind. You may sing."

He grinned. It was far too easy for a job to fall to one who shouldn't, but all too often, a good story needed to be told. They could not forget the ancestors. They could not forget themselves. So his fingers, shaking and crude, handed to her the grinder and she picked up a handful of the white barley, flung it onto the rock, and ground as the story weaved itself into creation. His voice wavered, a deep sigh filled in the crooks of his tongue, and the story blended itself into the air as only the spread could.

The song began with the wind, a whistle through teeth, and with it came the sparks of silver moondust. It rained from his lips like glistening snow, catching the girl by the toes and pulling her into his lyrical resonance with every tender note.

The wind calls to them. The cold infects the air as only a disease from the outside could--it comes from there, where they do not go, from up North, where the stars lead to disaster and the night sky rules. The sun is setting and Catori, mother of the flying spirits, has awoken. She smiles.

"Rise! Silic children of the woods, of the dirt and plain, of the moon and bark, of the flowing water and eastern medicine...rise, my loves." Catori waves her hands, instructing her children. Their wings were wild and free then, unfiltered by the years, and they mount themselves upon the rocks to begin their flight. "It is time, my spirits, that we travel to Anut, who awaits us in the warm region."

But as she spoke, Hauna, the sister to the Eastern Sky, rose from the ground to breathe her cold into the atmosphere.

"Catori, why must you make my children leave?"

"The ground is cold. Their feet will rot and they will freeze to their spots."

"They may burrow, just as my people do. The flying spirits are a useless people--they bear no love to the ground from which they steal their harvest," Hauna said, her hands resting upon the mountains as she spoke. Their peeks grew white with her touch and spread to the valleys below.

Father Sike, of the setting moon, laughed from his perch on the sky. "You children fight like the crows, pecking at each other like you are nothing more than scraps left over from harvest."

The creek grinned and laughed. "Sike, you stupid man, do not stop them from destroying themselves! They notice not their likeness and that is all the greater for us all."

"Do not speak so vulgar, Adriel," Father Sike said. Pinky dipped into the water, Father Sike let the fish swim around him, their bodies smooth against his. "The Silic are good people, Hauna. Be kind to your sister."

"Kind! Speak of the kind when they leave the ground, leave their harvest, their hunters killing my children, eating their remains, then fleeing this place just to return the second the sun stays long."

Catori shook her head. "My Silic are strong, fevered people. They care for the earth just as much as your bendlings do. Ask Anut, they care for the plains just as they do the forests. They cannot survive in the winter. Your bendlings are the hatred of the Silic. They attack at night, with no care to the world. Their eyes are yellow and their hands are claws, hardened and cold."

Tala rose from the ground and sighed. "Father, is there not some way to stop their fighting? Catori and Hauna are worse than the crows--they are like the pecker, attacking the trees for their food. There is use to them, use, but their incessant noise has woken all the night birds, who cry for the silence to stop." She pulled from one tree two large yellow fruit and bit into them until the seed was all that remained. "Let them each have one seed. The Silic will stay here this winter and cultivate it, and the Bendlings will stay here as well, neither attacking one another, both there to cultivate. Whoever's tree sprouts shall have the winter lands."

Hauna grasped one seed with joy. "And the cold may still come to this plain?"

"Just as it does every seven moons."

So the Silic's wings carried them not to the far plains of sweet dirt and easy skies but to the dirt they had kept all summer long. The cold stretched over the plains. The Silic took to the seed as they did to all their seeds--they dug into the earth with their hands to break up the cold. They dug deep to make large fires to keep the earth warm. They watered it from Adriel, their blessings breaking through the ice as their knives did to reach the unfrozen liquid, and they wrapped the land in moondust. Their blessings were strong and the ground soon gave way to fertile love. The seedling grew.

With every passing day, though, the light grew weaker and weaker and the cold grew ever stronger. The night was strong and lasted for days at a time. Sike was their only hope for any light, yet even he hid the moon from them.

The Bendlings worked at night. They gathered sap from trees and wrapped the seed in it. Then they threw it onto the ground and dug deep, burrowing into their homes as they did every year. The Bendlings bodies kept the ground soft and fresh and they ate the worms and bugs they lived there. Their sapling too began to grow.

Soon, it was nearing the end of the season.

The wings of the Silic were brittle and broken. They walked rather than flew and their bodies had no feeling. There was no way to keep the fire warm. Snow fell thicker than moondust and coated them. Shivers captured their bodies. The Silic were dying.

"Please," the Silic cried to the Bendlings, "help us survive!"

The Bendlings were wicked creatures though. They knew that if they helped the Silic, they would lose their winter home. So they told the Silic to hide under the ground just as the Bendlings did.

But as the Silic began to burrow, the Bendlings snuck over at night, when they slept with leaves over their bodies to keep warm, and piled their sapling with snow and frost until it became cold and brittle just as the Silic's wings were. One touch and it broke, billowing into the night sky as dust.

The Silic awoke too late. They shivered and hid in their half-dug burrows.

When Hauna finally stepped back, and the sun returned once more, the Bendlings had a large sapling.

"Well?" Father Sike asked his wife. "Is it time for you to decide?"

Tala nodded to him. She turned to both tribes. "Bring forth the saplings!"

The Bendlings brought theirs with pride and joy, carrying it in their claws. The Silic stayed in their burrows, unable to fly up as they normally would.

"Well?" Tala asked, "where is your tree?"

Catori was furious. A fire grew in her eyes. "The Bendlings cheated!"

"My people would never," Hauna said, standing firm in the North. "You have lost! Abandon this land and never return!"

But Tala had a glint in her eye. She turned to Hauna and said, "There is a wicked in your nightfall, and there is a naivety in their sun, but the land will wilt without the Silic to cultivate it in the summer, and the land will break if the Bendlings do not keep it soft with their burrows. For this, the Silic must leave this land every winter. The Bendlings too will leave Anut to come here. For their eyes were closed and they did not watch the land at night, they will never be allowed to grow during this season. But as the Bendlings use not the sunlight, they cannot be there to heal the land when it grows too hot for their cold bodies."

"This is why we have our Spread, every year," the old man finished. The young girl handed him back the grind, but there was nothing left for him to work with. He chuckled. "It is almost time now."

"My wings will return?"

"As they do every winter, dear child." He patted her back and led her back to the harvest.

Their feet glided across the land. In the center of a great circle, the elders gathered. All the children lay on their bellies, their sharp backs pointed upwards. With the rising of Father Sike, they cried out their great prayers. Sweet fruit dripped from the trees and a blossom of cold filled their spirits. As the prayers ended, each elder placed their hands in the middle of the children's backs.

Their wings spread.

Tala smiled and turned to her husband. Father Sike was ready to return to the age of the moon, where nightfall ruled and the sun wilted like Anut's flowers. "They are ready, my husband."

Hauna kissed Anut on the cheek and bid her sister goodbye. Catori rose the Bendlings from their hollows and Silic gathered and awaited the hunters to return.