To Save a World Ch. 05

One - two - three - and then he came; pouring his seed inside of her as she clung unto him like she had no plans at all of letting him go.

After a few moments of deep, labored breathing, the two shared a lusty grin.

"Moooore." Lydia ran her hands on his trembling arms, and then to his sweaty chest. He had a lot of good reasons lined up to refuse her - lots of work needed to be done - but what he found himself saying was "You're going to have to do most of the work, though."

The young woman giggled and followed the twist and fall of his body fluidly, so that now he was lying on his back under her and she was straddling his prone form, their joining never having been separated by the complicated movement. Miraculously, he was still hard inside of her - an opportunity that she heartily capitalized on now that she was on top. She looked glorious, framed by the blue skies, her small but perfectly perky breasts thrust out into the heavens as she undulated languidly. Their joining was slick with their combined juices, a froth of his white cum slowly being created by the writhing woman on top of him.

They did eventually finish their bath - although it would be more accurate to say that the bath finished them.

It was already well towards noon. The sun was already high in the sky, beating down at them with its increasingly oppressive rays. The din of life was well alive, a constant, gentle white noise. Aaron's body felt simultaneously battered and satisfied as they traversed back into their camp from their small excursion, Lydia strolling along beside him as innocently as you please. Only Trasnu was waiting for them when they arrived back in their camp.

"Finally!" the old hunter exclaimed, standing up in a jump "I've been waiting for you for hours! I thought you wouldn't stop fucking each other!"

Aaron sputtered an incoherent response as Trasnu teased him about his sexual prowess, while Lydia laughed along with them.

"Well, what are we waiting for, then? Off with Old Hunter!" Trasnu started walking back into the direction of the river. "We have much to do today, much to do indeed!"

"Where are we going?" Lydia wondered.

"I actually only thought of this during our fruitful discussion this morning. The Sky Treader Clan has a... tradition, of sorts."

Aaron and Lydia looked at each other. "Is this the part when you tell us about the coming of age ritual where the both of us have to fight each other to the death?"

"Not quite so gruesome," the hunter laughed good-naturedly "But it does have something to do with killing."

"I think you better explain before we start running for our lives, Trasnu."

The old hunter was silent for a bit, before casting a glinting look at the pair. "I can do you better, young master-lad. I'm going to tell you a story of the Sky Treader Clan after the Escape."

"Does that have anything to do with where we are going?"

"Yes, it has everything to do with where we are going, my master. For in the earliest days, several centuries ago, when there was yet no Sky Treader, when there was yet no Heart Trees, and all there was was the cold of fear, the hotness of rage, and the bitterness of betrayal - in those days the rabble of the beastfolk which was the last to have fled the human lands awakened to their new realities." Trasnu resolutely waded through the thick sea of greenery, his pace sedate and mindful. The pair followed him silently, realizing that they were about to learn more things about his people. The old hunter slipped into his story as easily as a fish glided through water.

"They numbered all of a thousand, according to the songs. Those whose hearts genuinely held out hope peace, yes, but also the vain who desperately clung to their old ways of life until the end. And also the simply foolish ones, the cynics, and finally the old and frail and wounded. Old and young, men and women, families, tribes and smatterings of clans; when the last of them had scaled the Hanging Path and reached the safety of the other side - they all began to realize. 'We have nothing,' they thought, 'we have put ourselves in this faraway, foreign and hostile land only to be doomed yet again.' "

Their surroundings seemed to turn just a little bleaker. Trasnu's words resonated deeply with Aaron, as he drew a parallel to the story and their own current experience; lost in the vast, ancient woods.

"Hope was slowly dying out. Fragile as a candle's light dancing in the dark of the raging winds," The way Trasnu moved his body - how he was walking slower, and even the strange stillness of his tail and the slight droop of his ears - somehow communicated the gravity of his words.

"And who could blame them? Their futures have been snatched away from them. Neighbors cried for their death and torched their homes. Communities spat them out and hunted them down like pests. Children were killed, entire Clans were mutilated.

The very hope that made the Beastmen the last to leave the human lands became the hope that allowed them to be brutalized."

Aaron swallowed, suddenly apprehensive. The seething history delivered to him deadpan made him uncomfortable for being a human being.

"They were rabble, lost and scattered across the forest floor like ants from a disturbed hill. Their food and water dwindles by the hour, the land is unfamiliar. They knew not which way their brethren on the other side of the continent were, and wandering the primeval jungle directionless was a death sentence of its own." The old hunter shrugged. "They were, as humans would say it, stuck between a tree and a rock."

"I think you meant 'a rock and a hard place'" Aaron corrected instinctively, immediately feeling bad for his interruption, but Trasnu merely spared him a small sheepish grin.

"Yes, and the hard place are the trees. It was said that during the following months, more of the Kin died of hopelessness than there ever fell to blades and spells during the Great Escape.

At its worst, not a week would pass by without the wail and sob of mourning that could not be heard. Entire families would sleep and never wake again, seeming to have forfeited their lives peacefully in their slumber. The hastily assembled Heads sent scouts after scouts to chart the forest to no avail while their charges gave up hope in their sleep."

"That's..." Aaron's brain failed to come up with the appropriate words.

"Terrible." The old hunter looked back at him with a raised brow, "But such things happen."

There was a small silence as the group wordlessly struggled amongst the denseness of the foliage, absorbing this new information. Aaron and Lydia's mind hadn't been paying attention to where Trasnu was taking them, distracted as they were with his storytelling, showing them insight into the painful history of his kind.

"But then, enter Carlaen." Trasnu picked up abruptly, seeming to warm back up to the story. "It wasn't known when exactly it happened, but it was said that it was during one of the darkest periods of the time, when death sat beside you as an old friend and you both ran drunk on hopelessness, Carlaen started doing something remarkable.

Trasnu paused for good effect, making sure the pair was listening to his words with baited breaths. "He started setting up a fire and roasting meat by the side of it."

Aaron waited for a bit, but was surprised when no more words came. It was quite obvious that the glib storyteller was baiting them for a response - but he fell straight for it, and willingly too. "Wait, what? That's it? What was so remarkable about cooking by a fire?"

"What you have to realize was that these were not the Sky Treader Clan as it is today." Trasnu answered smugly, happy that they indulged in his verbal cue, "They were city folks, used to the comfort of magic and technology of the Age of Harmony. In the days before all Beings lived together in harmony, relying on each other and forming great cities - nay, kingdoms! - of such great magical capability that has never been matched on the face of the world. It was said that to be the lowest of plebeians of the times past was to live with a house on the outskirts of town and their worst suffering was having to draw their bathwater by themselves.

As such, they were clearly not used to surviving with their own claws and fangs.

Their Heads knew more of keeping accounts, politics, and business - and that was all well and good in the vast metropolis which they came from, but utterly useless in the world they were in now. They have had no need to hunt nor farm, for food was traded and bought in market and commerce districts. They have had no need to build shelters, for the dwellings of the lowest of them were made with finely cut stone, and the best of them resided in houses made of pure magic-wrought marble. Their Shamans were versed not in the wild spirits of the primeval natural world, but of massive farms and vast, well-kept orchards."

Trasnu suddenly spun lithely, throwing his arms wide in a grand gesture. "And that was what made Carlaen's actions so remarkable. For, you see, he made fire not with the convenient magical tools that they once had - but with flint and kindling, on his hands on the dirt, blowing for what he was worth in full view of his people.

He roasted not meat that they brought with them in their escape, but freshly hunted rabbit, or pheasant, or sometimes deer. The spear at his side was not made of the finest weapons that their blacksmiths could have forged, but a crude stick with a finely shaped, sharp stone strapped on top.

And you've got to imagine." The storyteller leaned into the frozen pair ever so fractionally, dropping his voice just so. "The effect this had on the people. Here was someone who had lost everything - the same as them! - but living on. Here was someone who could feed himself, who could survive! Here was someone who could live by his own hands!

It was a subtle, but powerful example. Little by little, the area around his fire became populated by the curious and the hopeful. And he shared with them his spoils, every time. When the group got so big that the food he cooked would not serve for their numbers, his companions then asked to be taught his methods in hunting so that they too may be able to hunt for themselves. And he told them! But not in the way they thought."

The hunter paused, and at that moment he tore free of the entanglements of the undergrowth into the clear space beyond. Aaron and Lydia realized they were back at the riverbank, although they were a little further upstream from their - er, bathing place. This bank was full of smoothened, round stones, black and heavy, shining wetly under the glare of the morning sun. The river flowed sedately from left to right, and off a little more distance to the left the group could hear the dull roar of some sort of rapids.

"Why? How?" Lydia returned to Trasnu's story with a gasp in her lips and wonder in her eyes, barely even acknowledging their location.

Trasnu laughed, but continued, strolling along the riverbank now. "Whenever someone would ask him for how he did it so that they may learn, all he would say is 'The Spirits of all things taught me. It will teach you too, if you will listen.'

He did this every time, much to the disbelief and annoyance of honestly frustrated people who wanted to learn. At one point, a companion exclaimed at him in understandable exasperation 'But we all know the spirit is merely a philosophy!' to which he replied not at all and just stared at the man until things became so uncomfortable that he left.

Eventually though, he caved. Or at least seemed to. One day he brought his companions with him, and then taught them how to fashion a rock into a spear tip. He taught them how to make weapons, how to set up traps, which plants they could gather for what purposes, and which plants to avoid.

But he still hadn't abandoned his talk of Spirits. He taught them only at their exhaustive assurance that they would heed the advice of the Spirits - which was to say, his own advice, as far as everyone knew - but luckily his companions consented, and even luckier still, Carlaen never abused his authority. He used his influence to prevent overhunting, or over-gathering the bounties of plants. His talk of spirits was eccentric, but his advice was sound, and it was mostly followed.

Besides, it didn't help that he would have 'premonitions', or that day by day he would disappear to the forest for certain amounts of time. Stories would say that he came back glowing as if with the blessings of the forest itself!"

"And was it true? Did he really have the blessings of the forest?" Aaron asked, as the smooth, rounded pebbles of the riverbank was slowly being replaced by larger and larger boulders.

"Who knows?" Trasnu laughed, "Some say he was, and credit the new era of spirit-magic philosophizing to his words. Some say he was not blessed of the forest, but was an unarguably intelligent man, and partly credit the grandeur of the current Sky Treader Clan to him. Yet some say the stories were tail-hairs dancing in the wind."

"And what do you think?" The young man questioned, now only noticing that he had begun to pant with exertion from their efforts.

"I think it doesn't matter. It makes a good story, it teaches a lesson, and it is full of valuable insights to the psyche of the Sky Treader Clan."

"That's... An unexpectedly pragmatic view of things."

There was a few minutes of silence as the young man caught his breath, and then the dull roar of the rapids buzzed on the edge of his hearing. They were basically hopping from boulder to boulder now, each step of the way requiring greater efforts to navigate and equating to greater risks of failure. Finally, the beastman stopped a little ahead of them, turning to the group with an expectant gleam in his eyes.

"And so that brings us to the reason why we are here." He raised his arms as if indicating the world around them. Aaron and Lydia looked at the huge, black boulders of the riverbank, the frothy surface of the churning water to their right, the chaotic green of living things to their left, and finally back to the upright, mottled brown, wolf with the shit-eating grin on its face.

Aaron turned to the girl beside him. "I think he's probably going to kill us off, after all." Lydia nodded tiredly in agreement.

An hour later saw the trio... breaking rocks, of all things.

"I have no idea-" Aaron grunted, bashing one rock into another. He raised his arms, bringing it down as hard as he can to the other rock right beneath him "What the fuck-". He raised his arms to do the same thing again, "We are doing."

Beside him, Lydia grunted in agreement. Although uncomplaining, she silently questioned the sanity of what they were doing.

"Ha!" Trasnu, the architect of this current craziness, yelled in front of them. He held a large, thick chunk of rock ahead of them. The pair looked at each other before excitedly rushing to the hunter. "Years and years later after the story of Carlaen's subtly amazing deeds took place, it became a tradition for the early Sky Treader Clan to revisit the dark times and put emphasis on how they overcame it.

When a pup becomes of age, they are sent to the forest floor in a ceremony called Ch'Frea Taris."

"To take root?" Aaron translated, the word sounding archaic even to his ears.

"Yes, in the older version of our tongue. The name of the ceremony is an analogy of the early history of our people, how they 'took root' in the midst of the ancient forest. Staking their claim on the rich, dark earth by directly living out of the land.

After the rituals and ceremonies, the whelps would be sent down to the forest floor, with the instructions to return only after they have made a knife, a spear, and a bow and arrow; using only their bare hands and the tools that nature affords them."

"That's pretty hardcore." Aaron marveled, thinking of himself when he was ten years old. He couldn't remember anything, of course - which always gave him a pang of sadness and anxiety - but he thought no normal human would be sent into the great wilds in that condition. "I suppose it would be a great way to teach them about survival, as well."

Trasnu nodded. "Yes, that is true. It is why Ch'Frea Taris has endured for so long. And which is why-" he hefted the large chunk of rock on his hands, "We are going to perform our own Ch'Frea Taris."

Everything suddenly made sense to the pair. "Oh!" Aaron uttered, uselessly. But then he had a thought, "But why didn't you tell us in the very beginning?"

"And where would the fun in that be? Watching the both of you bash rocks together for apparently no reason was hilarious."

Aaron scoffed as the hunter laughed his mirth at the ignorant teenagers. Even Lydia, the most cool-tempered and considerate person of the group, made a sound of disgust and threw a handful of loose pebbles at the offending Rakan beastman.

"Well, I've had my fun." Trasnu sighed contentedly, "It is time for me to teach, and it is time for you to learn. Get yourselves a piece of rock such as mine, and two more besides. One has to be as big as you can fit in your palm, the other much smaller, about half the size. Here's what we're going to do..."

The next few hours passed by in drudgery and a fair bit of frustration, although Lydia was too considerate to admit it out loud. Lydia could tell that even Aaron, through his mask of intense concentration, was starting to lose his patience over his stone tool. He bashed the rocks more vindictively rather than carefully, as if they'd personally offended him and he was trying to punish them.

And perhaps the rocks had offended Aaron. Lydia knew they offended her, to some degree - she had no idea that shaping stones would be so hard, as Trasnu made it look so easy. The hunter has already instructed them to shape their rocks by "Whacking it until it looks right." He seemed to demonstrate just that, whittling his main load of rock with the smaller one almost carelessly, removing significant clumps of rock as if he was shaping butter. The lesson in his instruction seemed to not be composed of words, as he would greatly exaggerate his movements in order to make it visible to his audience.

From observing the beastman at work, Lydia deduced that he really wasn't just mindlessly hitting the rock with another and hoping a spearhead comes out, but that he seemed to know where to strike so that the most chunks of rock would be removed, in a way that made the shape he desired emerge. This was a happy revelation to the young woman, but she immediately came into problems the moment she tried to imitate what Trasnu was doing.

She couldn't control the strength of her blows, for one. Sometimes they felt light, as if she was striking the hard rock with a feather, and yet sometimes her arm might as well be a club. She also didn't know where to strike, or even exactly how to strike it in the proper way. Compounding the problem was the fact that her arms were weak as a week old baby - they had already started to numb from working the stone for just about two hours.

The young woman knew that they couldn't expect the activity to be so easy; after all, learning things does take time. But she couldn't shake off feeling incredibly stupid with the inert objects she held in her hand. Perhaps it was because the gap in experience was just so... obvious. Trasnu has already finished one deadly-looking spearhead and is about halfway to another, while both Lydia and Aaron actually had to do theirs all over again, because they broke their own chunks on their first try!

Trasnu's work sat in the middle of their small, triangular workplace ring. They were all spaced more or less evenly apart; Lydia sat on a flat boulder facing back the way they came, with the river to her left. Aaron sat in that direction, hunched over his piece of rock in the middle of his spread legs, while Trasnu sat jungle-side, cross-legged to Lydia's right. His newly crafted spearhead shone like a thing of beauty in front of her. She estimated that it was the length of her palm and half again, cut so expertly that it appeared almost delicate, the gentle leaf-like curve ending in a vicious point. The other end curved back into notches that she recognized would be where the ties would go, after it has been attached to the stick that will turn it into a veritable weapon.