Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read my story!

First and foremost, please note that this is the first rough draft of this story, so there are a lot of rough spots - I repeat a lot of words and ideas, and there are lot of things that still need fleshing out and explaining. For right now I'm really looking for feedback on the flow of the story, the characters, and whether or not my ideas come across clearly. I greatly appreciate any who take the time to read and give feedback!

- Thaddeus Grey

~~~~~

 

Akuda gazed down her dark snout at the grazing sawbok. She could hear his powerful teeth grinding the thick, tough, waxy leaves of the dark green tarrowheather bush. The big bull sawbok shifted his weight, his huge hooves clomping in the grass, big, solid thuds on the ground that was still thawing from the long winter. 

 

Akuda rolled her shoulders, her thick, dark mane bushing out as she breathed in the night air. The sawbok male well outmatched her alone, and normally she would not consider such a hunt in solitude. But she was too close to sing for help without startling the sawbok, and she dared not lose such game on such an important night. 

 

The entirety of the grasslands packs gathered once a year as a show of faith and kinship to the gods of the plains. While Akuda's people of the wolves, known as bauduka, or bushhunters, were strongly territorial by nature, for the yearly gathering they set aside such things to learn from each other. If there had been any widespread sicknesses, if the rivers had dried or flooded, whether all the herds of the hoofbeasts would return now that the long winter was over, and if any new packs were forming and required the rite of Rukdahl-Kai. 

 

The event was organized by the shamans of the larger packs, and certain customs and the location could change from year to year. But one thing always remained the same: any who could hunt were expected to bring some offering of food. There were always young pups and some elderly or battle-weakened who could not hunt for themselves, and so, tradition provided. 

 

Tradition provides.

 

The words echoed in Akuda's head, and in the silence of the grasslands. It was what her father often said. He was always faithful to custom and his patron goddess Arys, the Erth-mother, and he had every story of bauduka lore memorized. Akuda's father lived his life by tradition, which her brother Orako often scoffed at, politely. But Akuda believed in her father, if only because her mother did. Her mother, stoic, hard-tempered, and as practical as rocks, supported her father's stories of gods and legends. How could Akuda doubt them in the face of that?

 

The sawbok had caught his antlers on the bush he was grazing on, and he jerked violently to wrest it free. Akuda tensed, sliding forward through the long plains grass on silent paws. now was her chance. It was pure foolishness to try for such prey alone, and she knew it, but she was desperate. She'd seen not one tail flick of any other game since she had split off from her family pack hours ago. The plains were unsettlingly dead tonight, their usually windswept, grassy tresses still and lifeless. Even the crickets were silent. And the light - despite a clear night of stars overhead and the Three Sisters glowing full - was weak, as if it were being stretched thin through the air. 

 

The sawbok wrenched his antlers free as Akuda neared and his head snapped up high, throwing his antler set into sharp relief against the largest of the three moons. His antlers forked across the bright yellow globe like black lightning, mighty, huge, and...old.

 

 

Akuda stopped dead in her tracks. The sawbok's huge set had been concealed among the gnarled tangle of tarrowheather branches before, and she had not realized their size - and thus, his age. The bull sawbok's antler tines were as thickly clustered atop his main set of horns as trees in a forest. He was anient, old enough to have seen the skies above when the Sisters used to quarrel and send shooting stars across the night to pock each other's bodies. Old enough to have seen the days her father spoke of, when the sun would rise in a sky as clear as glass, and all could see the gods moving behind the curtain of the world. 

 

Her father had warned her of such ancient beasts. They were more than prey and more than people, he would say. They could be ancient shamans of their own peoples, or immortals, or children or vessels of the gods. Unless you were a shaman, there was no way to tell. It was safest to leave it be rather than risk the wrath of a powerful deity. Her pack would understand. 

 

                        ***

 

"You too?" asked Bolhaun, pack leader, and Akuda's mother, as the dark, silver-grey bauduka approached empty-jawed. Akuda's tail dropped between her legs as her heart sank, and her near-black neck mane lay slack on her shoulders in disappointment. 

 

"No one?" Orako asked, coming up behind his sister. Akuda brushed her nose through her brother's mane as he passed her, and he acknowledged her with no more than a flick of his ears in his distress. "No one found anything?" Unlike his sister, Orako's fur stood on end when he was unhappy, and his thick, dark grey mane was bushed out like a startled bush-lemur's tail. 

 

"The plains are deserted tonight," rumbled Bionwraut as she trotted up with her sister, Dornhau. The two sisters were their parents' packmates, a pair of dusky, dark-pelted bauduka that had been born to the river packs of the West, their fur a dull reddish grey. They had left that region behind when they and Akuda's parents had requested Rukdahl-Kai, the rite of passage all bauduka performed when they came of age and split off from their family pack. Dornhau was the darkest of the two, and like all darker-furred bauduka, she rarely spoke or stepped forward in any sense. Bionwraut, not much lighter than her sister, was of a similar quieter, shyer nature, but she would speak for both of them when it was necessary. "And the air has a smell to it that twists my fur. We should move on quickly to the gathering. It is not safe to be few in number tonight." 

 

"Bion is right," agreed Sharymwe, Akuda's father. Standing beside the dark grey pelt of her mother, shifting weight uneasily from paw to paw, his silver-grey fur seemed even paler by comparison. Orako had inherited their father's lighter colouring while Akuda took after their mother, but both of them had inherited her confidence, and their moon-pale ears and tail undersides reflected that. "Several constellations are missing from the sky tonight, and the ground is pricking like needles under my paws."

 

"What does that mean?" Orako asked. Akuda could hear him straining to keep his magic-weary tones from his voice, and she surreptitiously swatted him in the haunch with her tail, glaring when he glanced back at her. 

 

"There are gods walking the Erth tonight," their father said apprehensively, his hackles standing on end. Bolhaun nuzzled the ruff around his face gently and murmured something in his ear. Sharymwe nodded in response, leaning heavily against his mate. 

 

"We will move on then," Bolhaun said, nodding at Bionwraut. "We can waste no more time hunting. The other shamans will have noticed the currents of the night. We will not be shamed by appearing with no game. I am sure other packs will have encountered the same struggle."

 

"And if they haven't?" Orako asked, his tail lifting in disagreement. Akuda laid her ears back, tempted to cut her brother off, but she was tired, and his dispute of his mother's words was no new thing. It was tiring enough when it happened on a regular basis, without the added exhaustion of a full day hunting on and off of travel, with no fruit borne of it. "We will look like fools. We're supposed to request Rukdahl-Kai! How are Akuda and I supposed to be taken seriously by the elders - by everyone - if we haven't so much as a plains hare to show for it?"

 

"No one will doubt your independence, Orako," Bolhaun said in a firm voice. She clearly wanted to cut off the argument before it began in earnest. "Or your capability. You and Akuda have provided food to every gathering the past two years."

 

"One of those was a year extra," Orako growled. "And father is hardly a practiced shaman. We should go out one more time for game - or at least let Akuda and I hunt our way there! We have to show up with something."

 

Akuda's ears laid back again as she detected the subtle tone of accusation, and she hunched at the thought of yet more hunting that night. Technically she and Orako had been old enough to embark on the pack-building journey last year that would have ushered them into adulthood, but she had convinced him to wait to make sure they were ready - they had been old enough, but Akuda simply wasn't ready to leave their family behind. Orako couldn't wait, though. As a naturally lighter-furred baukdau, he was inclined to confidence and independence. And while Akuda bore the same pale ears and undertail, that was more due to being well fed - in proportion, Akuda's pale marks were a simple grey, bright in relation to her darker colouring, while Orako's were a much paler silver, and on their mother, Bolhaun's pale marks were practically white, a stark contrast to her dark fur and an immediate sign of her place as pack alpha. 

 

"There has been enough hunting tonight," Bolhaun snapped, and Akuda relaxed in relief. She was exhausted from the past two days of travel, and in the past day there had been almost nothing to eat. "Run ahead to the gathering if you can not contain yourself, Orako. But I will hear no more of such talk from you this evening."

 

Orako bared his teeth at his mother, and enraged at the sign of disrespect, Bolhaun snarled and lunged threateningly at her son. The younger baukdau leapt backward, snapping his teeth in response before turning tail and sprinting off ahead. 

 

Akuda stood, badly shaken by the sudden near-violence. Orako and Bolhaun had been tense the past month or so, especially the past few days, but she'd had no idea it would escalate so quickly in so short a time. Her ears dropped along her head and she instinctively cowered from her alpha as her mothered brushed by her to take the head of the pack again. It had been a mistake, she was sure now, to make Orako wait a full year longer for Rukdahl-Kai. Baukdau offspring that left their parents' packs on bad terms rarely stayed in contact with them, and she couldn't bear the thought of not speaking to her parents at every gathering after tonight. But she'd asked Orako to wait because she hadn't been ready, and she didn't want to go off and make a pack of her own. As closely as she studied tradition and practice with her father, she just didn't feel capable. And if she denied Orako's pack so she could still see her parents, then the last year, and the conflict just now, had been for nothing. 

 

"Be at peace, my love," Sharymwe murmured to his daughter, licking her ear comfortingly as they fell into gait behind Bolhaun, though at a pointedly respectful distance - the older, bigger baukdau's ears were still laid back on her head, and her body moved stiffly with tension. "They'll make it up in the end. They always do."

When Orako was a pup, yes. But he was a grown bauduka now, he'd made that clear, while Akuda still felt herself floundering every now and then as if she'd still not grown into her paws. She felt certain it would take nothing short of a miracle to bring Orako to apologize to Bolhaun, and Bolhaun would never forgive without some gesture of repentance. Akuda had a brother from Bolhaun's first generation of pups she'd never met because he'd contested their mother over eating first from a kill once and she'd run him off from the pack for it. The only reason Akuda even knew he existed was because Sharymwe had used his name to warn Orako once about contesting their mother. 

"It wasn't just you, fa," she murmured distractedly as they trotted on.

"Mm? What's that?"

"Bion said it too. He just ignored it because he was angry."

"I'm sorry, love?" Sharymwe said, prodding at the issue. He worried about Akuda, sometimes. She could make herself so difficult to understand, and she never seemed to realize it. 

"About tonight, fa. The night." The first wind since dusk blew across the plains, and Akuda stopped dead in the grass as a shudder coursed through her fur, standing every hair in her pelt on end. "Something's wrong with tonight."

 

Orako saw it as soon as he trotted into the gathering alone. He drew stares, but he didn't notice them in lieu of the sinking feeling in his stomach. He was staring too, but it was directed at the shamans. 

Baukdau shamans he always thought of as sickly. Their stronger tether with the incorporeal plane made their tie to the material world weak, and it was reflected in their physical bodies. Their fur was pale, as they were always kept well-fed by their packs, but despite this their ribs always showed, and their fur hung limp on their boney frames. Their manes were thin and never covered their necks fully, usually petering out halfway down their necks. Most of them couldn't run for more than a few hours a day, and they always had to rest for at least as long afterward. Some packs arranged for them to be carried by one or two of their members most of the time, slinging them along their backs like a baby bush lemur clinging to its mother's shoulders. 

But at the gatherings, they stood - or more often, sat - apart from all other baukdau. And tonight they sat close in a huddle, their heads all bowed, murmuring fervently in hushed whispers. Orako could see by their pricked hackles and twitching ears that they were very upset about something, and he had a feeling it had to do with his own father's words earlier that night. 

Impulsive fool.

It was a phrase often uttered by his mother in regards to him, and echoed by Akuda, though usually in her own kinder words. Part of him knew they were right, but most of him insisted they were just overcautious. And the rest of him was a mess of conflicted beliefs - he had respect for the shamans of their packs, and he had seen them...seen them do things. But at the same time, he couldn't take his own father's ideas seriously. He spoke of huge, terrible creatures, things that should be impossible according to the rules of the world Orako had grown up in - and yet if he believed the shamans and their power, where was he to believe their power came from? The air? The rivers? The sky above? All things said to be ruled by the gods, and this was supported by the shamans themselves. He had to believe in what his eyes had shown him of the shamans' abilities, but his faith fell short of anything beyond that. It was a tangle of thoughts that he couldn't make sense of, and every time he tried, it seemed to get worse. 

For the most part, he ignored it when he could. But tonight...tonight, he could see, the shamans had something to say. And he had a feeling it was not going to be good. 

 

His family didn't arrive long after him, and Akuda was actually carrying a plains hare in her jaws. It was a scrawny thing, pathetically thin, but it was something. Orako felt the fur between his shoulders prickle in embarrassment, itching furiously. He had already seen the offering pile in the center of the clearing was despicably low, and after all his bluster - his outright challenge to his mother - he hadn't found any game on the way after all. 

 

But Akuda had. Akuda. The second-best. She couldn't catch her own tail for fear of her shadow, but she'd found a hare on this scarcest of hunting nights? 

 

Orako felt his hackles rising as he trotted over to intercept his sister on the way to the gifting pile, and he knew it was unwarranted. She'd gotten lucky. She could hardly be blamed, and she shouldn't be punished. 

 

But his blood was still hot from the encounter with his mother, and he was frustrated, and frightened about whatever the shamans were still murmuring furiously about, and he didn't want to admit any of it. 

"Where in gods' names did you find that?" he demanded as she turned away from the pile, which was now one pitiful hare richer. Akuda quailed away from the unexpected confrontation. In the massive mingling of baukdau scents in the clearing, she hadn't smelled him coming. 

"B-Bion caught it when we were a mile or so out," she stuttered quickly. "She flushed it and killed it. She just let me bring it in."

Orako leaned back from his aggressive stance, relaxing at her explanation. 

"So you couldn't catch it yourself?" he asked, one more barb needed before he could soothe his pride. 

Akuda's ears pointed out to the side, but not fully backwards so as not to imply any challenge. 

"I could have caught it," she said quietly. "If I had been the one to flush it."

"But you weren't," Orako confirmed, turning away with a dismissive flick of his tail. "Where's fa and mar?"

"They went over to speak with the shamans."

"What?" Orako exclaimed, whirling back around. "Why?"

"Something happened with fa on the way here. Mar says he had a vision."

Orako felt his lips pulling back over his teeth, but it was in fear as much as anger. 

"And they're speaking directly to them? They'll get us laughed at! The shamans don't speak to anyone aside themselves until they address everyone at midnight!"

"I know that," Akuda replied, a touch resentful. Orako liked to make broad statements when he was upset, like everyone else was too stupid to see the obvious. Tonight she was tired, afraid, and concerned for her father's well-being. She was in no mood to endure Orako's usual over-the-shoulder insults. "But it's important. You have to admit, Orako, something is wrong tonight - "

"They're going to get us kicked out of the gathering," Orako hissed as he watched their parents heading determinedly for the fussing huddle of shamans. "We'll have to wait another year for Rukdahl-Kai!"

"No, we won't - "

"You don't understand how important this is for me!" Orako turned on her, hackles up again. "You're practically still a suckling pup!"

Akuda stared at her brother, and this time, her ears snapped all the way back.

She knew she was cautious. She was wary. She didn't want to leave the safety and assurance of their parents' pack. She didn't want to strike out on a journey through the pack lands with all the other members of Rukdahl-Kai in search of other packmates. She wanted to go back home with their parents to their den where it was warm and safe and familiar, where she knew every inch of dirt underpaw and every blade of grass that waved in the air. 

But her brother had gone too far. He had gone from callous to outright disrespectful, and after what she'd seen her father go through that night, she simply could not endure his sleight. 

Akuda stepped towards her brother, a snarl on her lips. He was still watching their parents, unaware of her approach - 

"How dare you." 

A huge red paw slammed into her brother's neck from his other side. Orako yelped like a pup with a pinched scruff as he was bowled over flat on his back. Orako writhed on the ground as the paw pinned him by the throat, twisting around to stare up into the burly, rust-coloured face of Dornhau, her thick-furred brow knitted tightly together in anger over her dark-brown eyes. 

She didn't say anything else. It wasn't like Dornhau to say more than three or four words at a time when she did speak. She glared down at Orako a moment more before she removed her paw and stalked off to join her sister where she was visiting their own family pack by where the river packs usually gathered. 

Orako scrambled back to his paws and opened his mouth to say something, but Akuda's tail flicked him in the nose on her way by as she trotted over to be nearer their parents. 

"If I'm such a pup, you won't want me in your pack," she spat over her shoulder as she left him there, his jaw hanging open in her wake. 

 

Akuda felt her legs shaking as she left him behind and the weight of what she'd just done hit her. She didn't care if she'd angered Orako, even if it was enough to bring them to blows later. But she'd just effectively removed herself from a future with her brother as a packmate. Akuda had been having a hard enough time with the fact that she was going to be leaving her family behind that night when they requested the rite of Rukdahl-Kai. She couldn't even comprehend how she was going to do it now, striking out completely alone. It was unheard of. Baukdaus never left their family packs alone - and when they did strike out on Rukdahl-Kai, they usually had at least one or two friends from other family packs they'd met at gatherings as pups to start out with, even if they didn't end up solidifying a pack with them in the end. 

 

But Akuda had never been outgoing enough to strike up any base relationships as a pup, and Orako had been too overbearing, often driving away shyer baukdaus and starting fights with those confident like him. He'd effectively isolated both of them, and it was only now that she found herself left alone that she allowed herself to resent him for it. 

 

Her mother and father were in heated discussion with the shamans now. She'd been watching them since they had broached the circle, seen the initial astonishment and anger on the shamans' faces melt away as Bolhaun had spoken quietly and urgently to them about her father's vision. 

 

Sharymwe's vision had struck shortly after Bionwraut had flushed and killed her hare. It had come on him sudden and violent, throwing him to the ground and into convulsions. Akuda had watched in terror, still shaken from Orako's rebellion, shaking with her tail tucked tight between her legs. She watched her father wail and twitch on the ground for several minutes before Bolhaun finally laid down on top of him, tucking his face into her thick, burly mane and forcing him to stillness with the weight of her body. 

Akuda had never seen her father taken with such a vision before. When it was over, he had spoken only in broken sentences that made no sense, and he'd kept staring at her like she'd grown a second head. 

Your brother and you, he'd whispered over and over, his eyes tearing up. Your brother and I. Your brother and you. Your brother, your brother. Your blood must be strong. The blood of your mother. Your brother and you. 

 

Bolhaun had refused to tell her what the vision had been of. But she'd pushed her pack to an all-out run the rest of the way to the gathering, her father draped limply on her mother's back. He'd insisted on walking in on his own four paws. Akuda watched them fretfully now. Her father was sitting hunched over, and with his pale fur and body exhausted from the stress of the vision, he almost looked like he belonged with the rest of the shamans. He was talking now, probably describing the vision in his own words. Akuda had never been an eavesdropper, but her ears burned now with the desire to hear, to know what was going on.