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The Message

Author: Jake-Rabbit

https://jake-rabbit.sofurry.com/

Twitter: @DamnDirtyFurry

http://damndirtyfurry.tumblr.com/

Miniature green leaves of watercress struck her bare feet and ankles as Yiari ran, the small pads of leaves touching and caressing along her bare fur as if a thousand small hands, begging her to slow down and grasping onto her in a futile, wet embrace. She ran swiftly, beating out a fast, staccato beat upon the ground beneath her, the royal blue of her dress held high, the elaborate fabric tattered and spackled with fetid mud. Soggy, earthy marsh beneath her sucked and pulled at her feet, and her flesh streaked red where her delicate feet met the sharp rocks just underneath the muddy surface. On occasion, she fell forwards, barely catching herself with outstretched hands that then caught against more jagged rock, leading her to cry out into the cold night before picking herself up again, leaving behind one of her many golden bracelets in the path, bent and twisted.

Yiari could hear the trackers behind her, their words barked angrily and their beasts braying loudly. She felt a tightness in her chest, barely holding back grief that sat in her soul like a ghoul, waiting for her to be safe in order to strike. She swallowed and ran for everything she had, eyes trained ahead, ears trained behind. Her tear ducts ran thickly, and through the refracted vision of her tears, saw opportunity and changed her path, making for some new growth hedges, recognizing the deliberate landscaping, and clearing just beyond.

"Tanja, I sure hope you know where you're taking us. My father would absolutely strangle me if he knew we were out this far." Duna shouted out towards his friend, whom was quite far ahead of him, holding her plain, earth-toned green dress high while she minced her way through a particularly wet patch of earth. She carried herself like someone whom had been raised in the outdoors; and as a woodcutter's daughter of Corush, she had plenty of access to the forests outside the village.

"Of course I do! Just cause you never get past the city fields, you're all scared that we'll end up in the Calibri Wastes or some nonsense!" Tanja gave Duna a mocking grin, a gesture that, on her ink-masked racca face was easily just as playful as it was unsettling. She was short and lithe, her grey fur and banded tail having seen better days, but she kept her wavy, black hair in a tidy braid which often was marked with a mix of dried and fresh alpine flowers.

Duna flicked his ears; the mus boy having one black ear and one white, his body a mottled concoction of the two tones, resembling a blank white page that had the dark ink spilled onto it haphazardly. His fur was well-kept, and he was clothed in opulent red silks that flowed with his movement.

Duna was an urban dweller, living in relative comfort with his father, an architect, in Corush. He'd met Tanja when accompanying his father out to the lumber mill to oversee the cuttings of new timbers for cathedral in town. They'd initially disliked each other, but quickly found that they were both able to offer the other something they'd been missing where they'd been living. Duna had taken Tanja on trips into the city to see the new stone buildings and glassworks, and Tanja would often take them out for long treks in the woods to get a better vantage point of the bay, where they'd watch the giant sailed ships come into port. Her trips usually ended up going quite long, she having little sense of time.

Duna shot an incredulous look back towards her. "Alright. Fine. You just had better be right, cause I didn't bring enough food for breakfast, too. Sirri nearly caught me smuggling out what I have, and you know she'd just as soon beat me about the ears for pleasure, right?"

Tanja stopped dead in her tracks and abruptly turned right back around, prancing playfully right up to her friend and immediately trying to thrust her hands into his pockets, her dextrous fingers making short work of sorting through their contents before starting to fuss with the satchel he carried. "Yeah? What did you bring, huh? I hope you snuck out some cake. Or rolls. Anything sweet." She stopped and stared at him accusingly. "Or maybe you brought vegetables. Again. That would be like you, huh? Something raw and nearly inedible....cause Twins know, you never cook, wouldn't know what was worth nipping...."

Duna pushed her back and smiled widely, hands quickly buttoning back up anything she might have undone. "It's a surprise. Now go on. I want to get there before it gets dark." He grasped Tanja by the shoulders and spun her about, giving her a pop to the behind which elicited a shrill squeal and laughter from her.

"Fine, fine! But if it's raw vegetables again, then I'll leave you out to starve!" Tanja stuck her pink tongue tip out between her inky lips, then started making her way through the mash again ahead of Duna, fruitlessly holding her skirt up against the wet marshland. Duna smiled widely to himself, thumbing along a possession in his pocket she hadn't found.

Yiari's orange and white furred legs carried her quickly; if there was any advantage she had over her pursuers, it was speed. Felin had always had been runners, and today she was going to put that to the test. Her lungs still burned with acid, and her side felt as if she'd been stabbed with a spear, but she shut the pain out as best she could, making a line towards the hedge row.

When she finally reached the hedges, her feet found more stable footing, trading the subtle fondling of watercress and reluctant grasp of the wet bog for dry soil and crackling fall leaves, crushed underneath her frantic pace. The bare, cold hedges scraped against her calves like a million rakes, and tore at the woven linen of her dress, leaving tattered pieces behind her in a trail, hanging off the stiff, angry claws of the hedgerows like so many blue flags. She caught herself on a particularly stubborn and heinous branch that grabbed onto her dress and gouged the skin underneath, sending her careening forwards with a loud tear of fabric before she landed flat on her back, half out of the malevolent hedges, their arms still seemingly grasping for her.

She brought herself to her feet, tearing off a good half of her skirt in the process; at least she wouldn't have to hold it to run anymore. The clearing she was in was decorated with giant stone cairns, alternating granite, marble, and onyx. Three of them arranged at the perimeter, with a large stone altar in the middle, blackened with oily soot and fine ash from past ceremony and the occasional execution.

Her father had the altar built, and he'd told her to run here. That he'd meet her here, before he went charging towards the town center, shield and sword in hand to meet an angry mob. She darted frantically between the cairns, feeling the atmosphere turn from a dry warmth to a humid cold in seconds, the night air from the marsh she'd come from washing over the site in alternating bands of warmth and humidity that transitioned with a frightening quickness.

She didn't see anyone; not her father, and not her mother...not even any of the guards, whom, while she generally despised them for their lecherous looks at her, she would now have gladly welcomed for their spears and muscled arms in the face of those behind her. But there was not a soul here, and if she stayed any longer, hers might be at risk. She hadn't an idea where to go from here; perhaps towards the Eye of Calibri? Would her family go to the lake? Or hide in the mountains? The thought passed her mind that perhaps they were already dead, and blind panic took hold. The mobs took hold of Corush quickly, and while running from the lodge, she'd seen a number of dead slave soldiers and felin guards.

Her mind quickly took her on a tour of all the possibilities, and she let grief settle in for a moment; only long enough for that ghoulish pain to surface, dead eyes staring her down; conjuring a knot in her belly. The sound of voices at the edge of the clearing snapped her back into reality, and she quickly hid in between a colossal cairn and boulder, her black ears perked, listening to what was behind her. The white spots on the backs of her ears were like eyes, seeing with sound behind her, while she focused her sight in front of her, waiting for any movement.

Duna followed Tanja out of the marsh and onto more sure footing, the girl letting her skirt down again, then turning towards Duna, flashing him a supremely confident smile.

"See? Told you I knew where I was going. It's just past these huge bushes."

"Hedges, you mean." Duna corrected her.

"Hedges. Whatever. Big bushes. Same thing...they are all around this place like a circle. Like someone planted them here. But I found a way around, you see. Some big, old tree fell over, crushed a bunch of them, and made a nice little bridge." Tanja led Duna around the hedges and towards an ancient tree, or rather, what was left of it now; an ancient stump, weather worn wood stained orange, brown, and grey, and with its giant trunk freshly snapped off and fallen onto the overgrown hedge. It made an easy bridge past the greenery and grasping branches.

"See? Must have fallen in the last big windstorm we had." Tanja gathered up her skirt and started to make her way across the trunk.

"Yeah, probably did! Course, looks like this old tree was about to fall over anyways. Has to be hundreds of years old." Duna thumbed along a craggy branch, then followed his friend across the trunk and into the clearing. The green, tall grasses inside were broken by giant, flat stones on the periphery; a couple of them stacked one on top of the other in a peculiar fashion. The middle of the clearing had a giant flat boulder, cracked down the center.

Duna looked around. "So, what...you brought me all the way out here for a bunch of boulders? If it was rocks you wanted to see, we could have gone for a hike into the Calibri, you know...."

Tanja shot an incredulous look back at him. "No! Not just stone-...ugh, come on, then..." She darted back towards the mus and grabbed him by his pink, bare hand, pulling him towards the massive boulder at the center. She yanked him bodily into place and pointed upwards, her slender arm and delicate fingers motioning towards where the stone was split. "Look! There!"

Duna studied carefully for a moment, then grasped Tanja's dark-furred hand in his, looking it over. "Ohhh, I see. Mmm...have you been polishing your claws, Tanja? It looks very good on you!" He cast his friend a smile, hoping to catch her in a blush.

Instead, all he seemed to catch was her other hand, clamping down on his murine nose and pinching hard enough to cause him to go crosseyed. "No, you lunk. Look. At the stone. There's a marker. See it?" Tanja let go of the boy's pink nose, leaving him to rub it soothingly, though neither broke the embrace of their hands, fingers laced together.

Duna sighed and looked up at the stone. His eyes widened some, and he moved in to get a closer look, Tanja joining him. The granite had been marked with a symbol, two triangles with dots at the very top, surrounded by five claw marks set into a sort of halo. His hand tightened around hers.

Duna looked over at his friend, her blue eyes shining brightly behind the black band about them, and her pointed teeth shone in a quite pleased smile. "See? Pretty weird, huh? You know what it is?"

Duna bit his bottom lip, feeling his stomach sink, and an animalistic instinct take over. "Yeah. We, uh, shouldn't be here." He stood up quickly and led Tanja from the boulder and towards the edge of the clearing, tugging her along in such a fashion that she stumbled before planting her feet into the ground and pulling back to stop Duna from going any further.

"What? Why not? C'mon, what's it mean? You're the one who got sent to school and all!" Tanja pulled him back towards the center stone.

Duna's heart reached out to Tanja for a moment before he gathered himself and walked back towards her. "It means Retribution. Specifically, a karmic death."

The voices were closer now, and Yiari could tell that they'd determined that she had made her way into the clearing. The leader of them barked urgent orders as his asudai mount hissed and trilled into the crisp fall air. She could hear a group of them pushing past the hedges and outside of the humid clearing, branches snapping underfoot like a crackling fire.

More orders were barked, and she realized it was a language she couldn't quite make out. Certainly not Ing, and not even the Mother's language, which she'd had to study as part of her schooling. This was something far different; it sounded like the leader was singing as much as he was talking. Her mind wandered even now; the girl an academic even while fighting for her life.

Manrin! That's what it is!

She smiled faintly, and thought of her father after he'd been talking to a mus merchant who cursed at him in Manrin. "Yiari, I want you to grow up to be a smart girl. I want my daughter to be as fierce a warrior as she is an academic. But Manrin is a mongrel's language, and we'd all be better to ensure it dies a quick death. It assaults the tongue and the mind, and just speaking it is an affront to the purity of our souls. It's the language of slaves, and I won't have any of us defile our tongues with it." He'd made quick work of the merchant's neck, leaving the limp body for the guards to dispose of. She could still recall the way his head hung to one side, as if completely disconnected from his neck.

The powerful trill of the leader's asudai snapped her back into reality, and she tried to shrink into the space she'd found even further, attempting to hide within the large rocks, to become one with them, and in doing so, avoid detection. She heard more crackling of dry branches being trodden, then the muffled gallop of the asudai's feathery-furred paws as it was led away from her. The area went silent, save for the rattling of leaves along the ground, pushed along by a gentle breeze.

Yiari stayed where she was, shaking in her hiding place and thinking about what came next. She knew that the mob would be back here soon, but she also heard her father's voice, telling her to meet him where she now was. She looked to the altar, the stone burned black with a post hole in the middle of it. She wondered if they'd string her to a post, herself. Leave her for the birds to pick clean, perhaps. Her eyes focused on the seal of her family, set into the stone, vigilant ears, and swift claws, surrounded by a halo, marking holy purpose. She knew then that if she were to live, she'd need to run. None of the options available to her were good, but staying here when the mob figured out she hadn't left the clearing was surely the worst of them all.

She peered out from behind the towering stone, looking towards the ragged border of the hedgerows, through bands of humid mist and clear, crisp air. Everything around her looked clear and quiet, and she saw a path through the hedges that she could quickly take and not leave any trace. Her legs still ached from the sprint here, and the raking she received stumbling through the hedge row nagged at her. She gathered herself, swallowed her pain again, and edged out into the moonlit clearing.

A half dozen careful, stealthy steps into the cool grasses, and still nothing. She was in the clear. She turned and set her foot to make a dash for the path out of the clearing, feline toe claws digging into the soft soil as her muscles loaded like springs for the sprint ahead.

A whirring whistle broke the darkened silence, ending with an abrupt, meaty impact as an arrow found its target, plunging deep into the muscles her right calf, the shrill whistle coming to an abrupt stop. She immediately felt the meat in her leg rip and her tendon pulling up quickly along the back of her leg as it was severed. She was flung forwards, landing on her side and snapping the stone tip of the arrow against the ground, leaving the broken, splintered end to dangle from her leg. A blinding, red-hot sensation crawled up her lower leg like liquid fire, and her screams and snarls were accompanied by a loud whistle from a racca bowman, whom had come out of the shadows of an adjacent cairn. She cast her furious, green eyes towards him and made to get back up on her feet, only to find her right leg completely useless, collapsing painfully under her.

"Tut. I'd stay where you are, else I'll put another one in your other leg, and make sure it twists this time." He had already notched another arrow by the time a mus spearwoman had joined them, alerted by the screams.

Yiari snarled at them, baring her sharp teeth in warning and defiance, though even trying to drag herself forwards was a display of her hobbled state. The spearwoman moved in closer, only to stop and stand above her, muscled physique shining in faint moonlight. She reached out with the tip of her spear and prodded Yiari firmly in the thigh with the sharpened tip; not enough to pierce, but enough to show she meant business. Yiari found herself about to spit obscenities when she again heard the muffled paws of an asudai approaching from outside the clearing.

"What do you mean "Karmic Death? Retribution?" Tanja prodded Duna in the side with a bony finger. "Sounds like superstitious nonsense."

"Well, in a way, it is." Duna scratched behind an ear and studied the insignia again. Tanja had talked him down from leaving the area. Duna's family was part of the high castes, and he was afforded more time to get familiar with some of their culture. Tanja, on the other hand, didn't have much time for education, though she was intensely curious about everything, and right now, wanted to understand what had gotten under his skin.

Duna sat down and pointed towards the symbols scratched into the stone. "Many ancient artifacts and lore have some sort of symbolism or superstition attached to them, it's how they held power over us through the ages. Stories told through generations that get embellished, twisted, revised, translated...a mundane event can turn into a story about glory, honor...a catastrophic event can be twisted into a moral play that serves as a lesson..."

Tanja moved inwards and sat across Duna's lap, turning to him to run her fingers through the puff of fur exposed at the top of his silken vest. "OK...but what does THIS one mean?" She waved a paw at the insignia, and upon turning to see his intense expression as he thought, leaned in, pecking him on the lips to comfort him.

Duna smiled, and supported Tanja along the small of her back. "Well, this is one of the oldest symbols. The triangles with dots atop them are ears. They symbolize watchful eyes and ears. The halo itself represents karma, and the claws within it, death."

Tanja looked up at the stone, hooking her arms about Duna and holding him close. "You've got spotty ears like that! But...I've never seen those sorts of claws. Not even Mujina claws look like that."

"Surely not. That's because they're from a race long since dead."

Tanja's fur rose up slightly. "Dead? What race?"

Duna smoothed his hand down along Tanja's puffed fur, petting it back into place. "We think, in this case, they were called the Felin. They're older than any other race. We've only ever found bits of pieces of skeletons, or the occasional intact skull handed down. My father has one, maybe I can show it to you sometime...."

Tanja shook her head dismissively. "Too creepy. I don't like looking at dead things. How old are we talking, anyways?"

Duna thought about it. "Probably about five thousand years, we think? There weren't many of them, and we can tell that from how few bones we've found in the earth when farmers till the fields."

Tanja laughed and pushed at Duna, a playfully disbelieving expression crossing her face. "Oh come ON. Five thousand years? You want me to believe that they lived back when we were all throwing stones at each other still?"

Duna nodding to her and set into explaining. "Actually, yes. Though it's not quite as primitive as you might think. Our scientists think we were all either nomadic, or just barely settling down into towns then. Of course, that far back, history is lost to everyone but the gods; there wasn't even writing back then. No one to leave a record for us. Just the occasional altar or crude drawing.

"We think that the Felin were, despite their numbers, a powerful force on Noa at the time. Judging by sites like this, we're pretty sure they practised some sort of ritual magic.

"The historians all seem to agree that they were taken out by some great apocalypse. Almost every single skull they're found has been crushed as if the hand of god just came down and swatted them from the earth. One of the ancient stories even lines up with that, calling out a race of great magical warriors whom got so powerful they took over the world. They caused so much misery that it angered the gods, and when they dared to use their magic against their own subjects, the gods were angered, and smote them from the world, all of them. Thus, a karmic death. Retribution for deeds most foul..."

Yiari was bleeding out, and her whole leg was on fire while the rest of her started to feel cold and her head heavy. She snapped to when the leader of the mob rode up, a ragged and bettle worn but muscled mus male, with sandy brown fur that was pockmarked with scarred-over whip marks and the branding of a slave on his cheek. He was barely clothed; like the rest of them, he too was a slave, and was barely afforded enough clothing to even protect from the sun's moods. The most basic of cloth wrappings, and gloves if you were lucky, along with clay and wood piercings along his ears.

She recognized him; a field worker by the name of Erud. He often broke some of the most stubborn asudai for her father when he wasn't working the fields himself. His steed's giant furred paws came to a stop in front of her, and it trilled down at her as he dismounted. The giant, blue-hued and muscled beast was watching her, it's elongated head dipping down, tendril-like whiskers reaching out towards the puddle of cooling blood near her leg, a curious gleam in its eyes.

Erud walked up to her and knelt down next to her, reaching for the arrow in her leg and twisting it roughly in an effort to get her to cry out. She denied him this pleasure, her eyes attempting to burn him alive. The rest of his band was returning towards the scene, a dozen sets of eyes looking at her; Mus, Urso, and Racca, at least. All bearing the marks of slaves, and a couple of them bearing the mark of livestock as well.

That large hand let go of the arrow, and he spoke up. "Yiari Angelica. Daughter of Alson, son of Urd. I'm glad we found you. I was afraid my little band here would be chasing you all night, and not be able to celebrate our freedom with the rest!"

Yiari spat at him and pulled her leg in closer, hoping to prevent him from pulling at the arrow again. "You'll celebrate in the pit when my father gets hold of you. He'll use your filthy pelt as a rug for his bloody feet."

Erud's eyes went wide, and a giant smile cracked his lips just before a loud, bellowing laugh ushered forth from his broad chest. "You...you think daddy's coming to save you? That chief Alson-" He waved over towards the hedge rows "-is going to ride over those hills right now to save your pretty striped hide? I think not. Unless daddy's going to haunt us out of here. Because, you see, my dear, delicate little Yiari, he's burning in a pyre in the middle of the village. He took out a good number of us with his magic, but I managed to get close enough to crush his skull." He hefted a large stone hammer, the blunt end of it bloodied, with stray golden fur tangled in with the stone's face.

Yiari felt her heart break, and also simultaneously felt rage like she'd never felt before. She dug her claws into the ground and snarled at him. "Do you know what you've done? Do you have any idea what the gods will do to you once they've uncovered your sin? Once they return, and discover what you've done to their chosen? They'll bring down death a hundred fold. You've no idea. You're all ignorant chattel. A curse on you and your kind. That's what you've done. They'll see that we've gone silent, and they'll come looking for answers. A thousand years, and your descendants will all die because of you. You fool."

Tanja clung close to Duna, rubbing her cheeks against his. "I don't much like this story. I was hoping you'd tell me it was a good luck totem, or some sort of ancient rite of whatever that ensures a good harvest or something. Not, you know, death and destruction and angry gods and my oh my... Them's stories you tell to children, to keep them from getting all cheeky."

Duna kissed Tanja on the cheek. "Mmm. Well, it could very well mean that, too! Our knowledge of what happened back then is so very cloudy. Truth be told, I think most of the historians are just making wild guesses. They never seem absolutely certain. They'll stay up all night studying a skull; burn out all their lamp oil, only to come to the conclusion that the Felin brain was smaller than ours. Why? Because of some little bump on the back of the skull. I think they hit the ale too much."

Tanja giggled and reached behind Duna, fingers rubbing about the base of his skull. "Hmm hmm. I think....judging by..ooh..this little bump here...mm..and this little ridge....I think you're just as much a bullshitter as the rest of them. Yup. Certain of it. It's in the bones," she surmised with a playful nudge. Duna just rolled his eyes, and she laughed and kissed him on the lips, holding it for a few lingering moments.

Once the embrace was broken, Duna traced his fingers along Tanja's back. "What do you read into it, then? What do you want the meaning to be?"

Tanja pondered this and thought it through. "Maybe it's not so much the story that has to change, but our interpretation of it?"

Duna tilted his head in curiosity, then gingerly shuffled her off his lap, standing and then taking her by the hand to look at the symbol again.

"Maybe it happened just as you said. Powerful warriors, got cocky, gods smote them for being insufferable, right?" Tanja held Duna against her side. "But maybe the interpretation of the symbol is too harsh. Death, Karma, all that...what if it simply means 'Behold our mistake, and learn from it?' This one event serving as a reminder to us that we need to heed the lessons of the past, that it's a wound that won't ever heal until we prove we have grown beyond it? That we treat each other fairly, and don't cause misery such that the gods come down and smite us, too?"

Duna thought about that for a good moment and nodded. "I suppose that's a very balanced, and even forwards-looking way of looking at it."

Tanja turned towards him, both of her hands resting on his chest. "Do you suppose they approve of us now? How we treat our own?"

Duna sighed. "Maybe. I hope so. We've come a long way." He wrapped his arms about her, pulling her in warm and close.

Yiari clutched her leg, snarling and panting as the pain took her over, her head starting to swim from the loss of blood. Erud had stood and turned about, talking to a large Urso.

"Oni, I want you to ride on to Corush. Tell them we found and killed the last of the highborn Felin. Tell them to cast any captives they have into the wilderness without posessions, and that will gain them freedom."

Oni nodded and mounted a stocky asudai, kicking it in the sides and making haste for Corush, just to the west.

Erud turned around and regarded Yiari. "As for you. Well...we have no use for you. Or your kind. You've enslaved me...my father...his father...and his father before him. Enslaved the strong, eaten the weak. Did you ever find it odd that, out of all of the races on Noa, yours is the only one that cannot sate their hunger without flesh? That none of us can eat the flesh of the animals, but the plants are food to everyone but Felin?"

Yiari looked him in the eyes. "Never. It's the natural order of things. You lesser races only serve our purposes. It's as they wanted it. As they designed it; and they gave us the power to enforce it before they left."

"It's a weakness, Yiari. It makes the rest of us your food source. And by doing that, links your fate to ours. And should we choose to cast you out of our lives now? Then you shall fade, forgotten. Starved of food and power."

Yiari looked Erud in the eyes, and saw the resolve in those emerald orbs. She saw in him a burning hatred, honed over centuries, cultivated through the actions of few upon the many. In spite of that, she could not bring herself to feel anything but contempt for him, for these mongrels. They had no idea what they were going to set in motion.

Erud re-mounted and held onto the asudai's mane. "Tell your father, when you see him, that his asudai always rode rough with him because they understand the difference between those that seek to use them, and those that seek their help." He ran his large, scarred hand along the creature's neck, and one of those thick, blue whiskers reached back from its snout and along his hand.

Erud looked upwards and nodded to two Urso whom then levered themselves into the topmost rock on the cairn near her, rocking it back and forth, before finally pushing it forwards, sending it toppling towards Yiari, whom could not move fast enough to escape, and only had a brief moment to curse them.

Duna turned his eyes towards Tanja, studying the gentle features of her face, and she caught him in the gesture, a cheshire grin passing over her lips. He laughed and took the racca woman into his arms, wrapping himself up in her, drinking in her scent. Her face turned slightly rosy, and she lidded her eyes, the both of them embracing each other, lips touching and cheeks pressing hotly against the other until Tanja drew her head back. "Sooo.....did you bring something good for lunch, or am I going to have to kick you right in the turnips again?"

Duna fell back and laughed, then turned to dig about in his pack. "No, I didn't bring turnips again. When will you let me live that down, Tanja?"

"When you've brought me enough pastries to make me sick with sugar,and you'll have to stay at my side while I sleep it off." Tanja nodded, matter-of-factly.

"That doesn't sound like such a bad deal, really.....maybe we can make that happen someday." Duna reached into his bag, pulling out a set of steel canisters, which he laid out in front of her, opening them up to let their still-hot contents tease their savory, heavily spiced aroma across her senses. He smiled up at her, watching her reaction as he laid out some rolls of bread as well.

Tanja's eyes lit up. "Are you kidding me? This...this is a real meal! Fit for...for a queen! Hah! Wow! No wonder you had to sneak this out." She clapped her hands and made to tear into the bread.

Duna watched her, then sat back. "Well, to be honest with you...I may have been lying about needing to sneak this out. I might have also been lying about my dad not knowing whom I was going out to see."

Tanja stopped in her tracks, having just dipped a piece of bread into one of the cannisters, sopping up a mix of chickpeas and spicing. "You...he...he knows? Duna, I'll get in trouble, my dad doesn't much like yours, and the feeling-" She was stopped short by Duna taking her hand in both of his.

"I'm quite aware. But I don't care about the feelings of two old men right now." He let go of Tanja's hands and dipped his own into a lined pocket, pulling out a weathered, ancient bracelet; gold in color and with intricate carvings that wrapped about it, twisted along the band in spots as if it had been bent severely in ages past.

Tanja's breath caught, and Duna simply took her hand back, slipping the bracelet over her wrist. "This has been in my family for generations. And I want you to have it, if you'd have me."

Tanja studied the bracelet; some of the designs were added in the last couple centuries, and some earlier still. She looked up to see Duna's eyes and simply nodded before lunging forwards to take him into her arms.

Erud guided his mount out of the clearing and back across the marsh that they'd chased Yiari through. With her died the last of the royal line, and the last that could yield any sort of magic upon them in order to enforce their slavery. The rest would be cast out into the wilderness, and if they lived, it would be a harsh existence, but one they'd have to negotiate with the gods. Ever since the Masters left, the Felin had installed themselves in place, holding onto a sort of power that didn't befit the world they'd inherited.

Erud's steed plodded through the marsh, its large paws seemingly floating over the soggy ground, despite the asudai's giant size. He was lost in thought, unsure of what to do now that they'd earned their freedom. His attention was drawn to a faint, moonlit gold glint on the ground, causing him to halt the beast and dismount. Kneeling down, he picked up a golden bracelet out of the cold, decaying marsh, twisted and turned, one of the many bits of jewelry that a female felin often wore, to show her ruthlessness and power. He grasped the ends of the bracelet, and with effort, turned it back into shape before slipping it over his own wrist. It would make a good gift for his mate, he thought. Perhaps better as a symbol of devotion and equality than what it represented before. He'd carve her name into it.

Erud re-mounted and looked towards Corush, the bayside village lit up with both celebratory bonfires and funeral pyres. A gently pull of the mane, and his mount turned towards the city, the mus pausing to look back at the hedgerows where he had come from, then up towards the sky. The night was clear now, and he could easily see the stars, and even pick out the Messenger's Star, which he could see move across the horizon even when every other star was still. He wondered - what message might it carry tonight? Would it tell the gods of their sin? Or celebrate their emancipation?

Tanja and Duna shared each other underneath a quickly darkening sky. They ate and watched the stars come out from hiding. Their two bodies lay, naked. intertwined, and sharing warmth and affection. Duna pointed up towards the stars, naming them one by one for Tanja. He described how their ancestors had navigated by them, and seen their seasonal changes as omens in the past. But scientists understood now that they were entire worlds to themselves, and so far away that it would take an eternity to reach even the nearest one.

The Messenger Star made its pass across the horizon, a bright, quickly moving light that didn't take a trained eye to spot.

Duna pointed upwards, gesturing quickly. "There! That one! That's The Messenger. Our ancestors, they thought it a star. A messenger to the heavens. We know now that it isn't...but we're pretty sure now that it's a small moon. Very tiny. Circling the earth."

Tanja's hand lifted and took his, pulling it down, her fingers lacing with his own as she gently kissed along his delicate hand. "What do you think it will tell the heavens today?"

Duna smiled and thought about it. "I hope it tells the heavens that we've done a good job down here. That we're a good people."

Tanja's hand tightened around her mate's and she curled her body around his, both bathed in moonlight. "That we've learned the lessons laid down by history?"

"We can only hope so."

Overhead, The Messenger passed over the Northern continent, its clear, witnessing eye long since closed. The last voice from below was millennia ago, and no one answered its calls anymore. It had seen all that it needed to, and the rest was a story best told by those living it.