All Creatures Great And Small [Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv]
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2022 12:03 am
Searing 19, 122
Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv is built, in essence, on three shores; a northern bank, a southern bank, and the central isle rising out of the river, just before the waterfall. These are undifferentiated in many ways, mixing residences and buildings with various utility, belonging to all (though individual families dwelt in specific sets of rooms for reasons of convenience). The island in the center, which the Orks called the “heart” of Gihah, however, was an especially communal space.
In the Gihah, all rites are conducted in the heart, and the most important are done in the sanctuary of the Chief just below the water. This symbolized many things to the people- it was the heart of the village’s defiance to the great fire forest below, a direct connection to the ancient blood of Gihah Vonae’uvi, the great monitor which ruled the rivers in the day before the great heroes of old had felled the lizard. Perhaps at one point the spirit of the dead primal would have been adverse to children of its slayers, but they were all united against the ever-present threat of the Vonaoid Koid.
But there were more practical advantages, too.
“Now, Imogen, I have described the initiation to you. Once we begin, the Rune will reshape your body, and your body will reshape your mind. It is the provenance of your soul to find the way back to shape and mind.”
”That part, I get. Now… why do you want me to eat this?”
Imogen held up the small carved bowl of unidentifiable mush which she had been handed. It was pea green, except it was also covered in little pink and yellow spots, and the entire thing smelled a little bit like hibiscus and piss.
“If you cannot find your way back, this will inhibit you so that you cannot get far. The paste will keep you from escaping, so that we may guide you back.”
Imogen grunted, unconvinced. She was sitting on a wooden platform which had been placed over the deep pool in the center of the ritual chamber, and was entirely nude. There were only a handful of people in the cave, and she wasn’t a prude, but it certainly didn’t help her anxiety. She pushed through and dipped a finger into the paste, bringing it to her mouth before any second thoughts could overtake her.
Ugh. It tastes like piss too. Not that she was especially familiar.
“Lie down, please. We’ll begin in a moment, after the paste has had some time to work. Please note that this will hurt.”
”Eh.” Said Imogen, remembering how she’d been beaten to shit to earn her Reaving.
Chieftain Coid Ong Oping drew the Deepwater Vein and brought it down toward Imogen’s left breast.
Now, if you’ve ever been a lemur, this next part should be easy for you to imagine. If you haven’t:
First off, it’s like you’re bundled up in a thick fleece coat. It doesn’t lie heavily on you; it fits perfectly, since it’s your own skin. But except for your face, your hands, your feet, everything in the world is at an inch remove. Even when you’re used to it, it can get hot and itchy; if you’re not used to it, well, you might find yourself longing for a shear.
(There’s also a lot of fur in your ears, but that’s not as bad as you’d think, much like how humans often don’t notice how much wax is in there)
Next, your legs have a lot of joints, and it’s kind of hard to say how many you were expecting. Your knees stick out half the length of your body, and are like steel springs, ready to propel your entire body across a space long as a dozen of you. This makes walking awkward, inclining you towards movement which is half a crawl and half a spring.
Your hands and feet, of course, are confusingly intermixed, and your digits are long and spindly and strong. You find yourself grabbing onto things instinctively, part of the adaptation which prevents the lemurs from falling from the sunny kingdom of the high canopy, where they prefer to dwell.
Lemurs are large and fast enough that they’re prey animals for few beasts, but you don’t get that way without proper paranoia. Throughout the lemur’s skull are constant, finely-tuned bursts of warning. Danger. Danger. Danger.
Lemurgen Ward found herself racing through the streets of Gihah, no larger than the feet of the villagers on every side. There was something she was supposed to be doing, right? Wasn’t there?
Villagers looked down curiously as she passed, then moved apart, heeding shouting behind her. Was she running from something? Was she supposed to be running from something? She opened her mouth to ask-
”Whaak whaak Whaak???”
Well, that wasn’t going to help, was it?
She looked up as she ran, feeling a great desire to get higher, but there was nowhere to go. Unless she could cross one of the bridges…
That was a nice word. Bridge. She couldn’t remember how she knew it.
The sky was full of lemurs, huge lemurs. They were so big, but they still stayed up in the sky because they were made of clouds, which are light even if they’re big. Even lemurs knew that. Even Imogen knew that.
The world was spinning a bit, but that didn’t matter as much as she seemed to recall. Lemurs have extraordinary balance, for reasons which are plain with a moment’s consideration. Even if she was listing to one side, you could never tell given how fast she was flitting from side to side. The perfectly-developed muscles of the lemur, while small, could fling her across space with speed which might astonish a cat.
She reached the “bridge” and was forced to stop for a moment, swaying as she looked down into the water below.
The river was also made of lemurs, and the lemurs made of water. They were doing backstrokes, and butterfly strokes, and whatever you call the move where you simply wriggle your entire body and somehow that’s also swimming.
One of the lemurs looked back at her and winked.
“It’s not every day you get to be a lemur, but you can’t exactly stop once you start!”
Except it wasn’t common, or even Ecitherese, it was just lemur chatter. Just lemur chatter.
“You can be Orkhan every day, but why not take a break sometimes?”
Then the lemurs began to dissolve into one another- it made sense, they were all just water, after all. It made sense, but it was upsetting. The lemur had been so nice to Imogen, and now he was returned to one-ness with the great wellspring of all water. A single, sparkling tear welled up in Lemurgen’s eye, and tumbled into the frothing waters below. The lemurs fought over who got to keep it, but in the end it was all of them.
”Is that how life is, too?” Imogen asked aloud, though what she said wasn’t really words, ”Are we all just momentary faces on the water?”
Suddenly, there was a snarling noise, and Imogen snapped back to her body. Her lemur body.
The Chieftain had caught up to her, but he was wearing the skin of a great cat, a fast and agile predator. It was a great cat, and not a fossa like most of the sifaka’s predators, but the instinctive alarum was just the same. She hardly even noticed the bare-chested Orkhan men following the huge cat up.
”No!” Lemurgen shouted, stifling her instinct to run. The lemur raised her tiny lemur arms above her lemur head, and argent fire blossomed in the night. Silence filled the village heart, and then one of the villagers shouted:
“Dragons preserve us, that monkey’s got a sword!”
Behind the buildings of the Heart of Gihah, just before the waterfall (and also, nowhere near Ecith, in some ways), two of the water-lemurs pulled themselves onto land and resolved into the lumpy green shapes which lie hidden in the unexplored bit of everyone’s DNA.
“Shit.” said one of the Nodlins, still shimmery because the Chieftain’s drug produced only waking dreams, and this bubble was wobbly and wrong. “That monkey’s got a sword. We didn’t do that, did we?”
“Absolutely not.” replied the other, “And if anyone asks, that’s our story. Now let’s scram.”
The two hurried out of the dream as fast as they could, exiting the narrative.
Now, the sword in question was ten or eleven times larger than Lemurgen Ward, but unfortunately for everyone involved she was an excellent Reaver. Held up more by will than muscle, the sifaka stood at the entry to the bridge, swinging the huge flaming sword back and forth to keep the orks and feline from advancing.
“Imogen.” the huge cat said, voice deep and dark and full of violence, “Put down the sword and come back to us. Imogen.”
”Shh!” the lemur admonished him, ”You’re so loud, I can’t even think!”
“Think. Yes. Lemurs don’t think like that, Imogen. They don’t. What does that mean?”
”I said, shut up!” She pointed the oversized greatsword directly at the cat, who eyed it warily. The Chieftain was older, and dragon-trained, and stronger than Imogen, but the argent fire of her weapons gave him pause.
“Lemurs don’t have flaming swords either, Imogen.”
”They do now!”
Chattering with her anger, the lemur raced across the bridge, dragging the greatsword behind her as though it had no weight to it at all.
“Is she still up there?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Any more injured?”
“Not too badly, thankfully. Her aim seems to be getting worse.”
As if to illustrate, an ornate golden partisan sailed out of the high tree next to the bridge, limned with silver fire, flying majestically into a rock before it bounced off and tumbled down the waterfall.
”Whaak whaak Whaak!!!”
It had only been a few minutes since Imogen had scampered up the tree, only to find that there was nothing in leaping range from it- in fairness, the paste’s effect had been gradually increasing, and at this point she could only see the world in terms of blurs of color and hallucinated lemur forms. A dozen villagers had surrounded the tree to prevent her escape, and only a handful had gotten donked on the head by the magic weapons.
“Any luck talking to her?”
“None. She’s in her head bad.”
“Maybe more than you think.” the Chief said, trying not to sound annoyed. She had definitely gotten caught up in the lemur-form, but he’d never heard of anyone simultaneously losing themselves to the initiation and remembering how to use another Rune. Whatever was going on in her lemur-head, it wasn’t… very lemurish.
“Perhaps… the paste was a mistake in this case.” Coid conceded. “But she must be tiring. We should be able to catch her, and then we just need something that can pull herself back to herself. She wore a-”
“Wait!” gasped Fioh, “I have an idea!”
The young Orkhan girl took off at a sprint, heading for the nearest house. The Chief watched her go with bemusement, stepping aside to avoid a huge sword careening out of the tree.
“Imogen!” he called out, “Remember who you-”
”Whaak whaak Whaak!!!”
Yes, she had only come to the village days ago. Nothing he could talk about was likely to call her back to herself, so-
“Look!” Fioh shouted, “Imogen, look what I’ve got!”
The lemur looked down, and her eyes grew as big as saucers.
Fioh was holding up a mop.
Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv is built, in essence, on three shores; a northern bank, a southern bank, and the central isle rising out of the river, just before the waterfall. These are undifferentiated in many ways, mixing residences and buildings with various utility, belonging to all (though individual families dwelt in specific sets of rooms for reasons of convenience). The island in the center, which the Orks called the “heart” of Gihah, however, was an especially communal space.
In the Gihah, all rites are conducted in the heart, and the most important are done in the sanctuary of the Chief just below the water. This symbolized many things to the people- it was the heart of the village’s defiance to the great fire forest below, a direct connection to the ancient blood of Gihah Vonae’uvi, the great monitor which ruled the rivers in the day before the great heroes of old had felled the lizard. Perhaps at one point the spirit of the dead primal would have been adverse to children of its slayers, but they were all united against the ever-present threat of the Vonaoid Koid.
But there were more practical advantages, too.
“Now, Imogen, I have described the initiation to you. Once we begin, the Rune will reshape your body, and your body will reshape your mind. It is the provenance of your soul to find the way back to shape and mind.”
”That part, I get. Now… why do you want me to eat this?”
Imogen held up the small carved bowl of unidentifiable mush which she had been handed. It was pea green, except it was also covered in little pink and yellow spots, and the entire thing smelled a little bit like hibiscus and piss.
“If you cannot find your way back, this will inhibit you so that you cannot get far. The paste will keep you from escaping, so that we may guide you back.”
Imogen grunted, unconvinced. She was sitting on a wooden platform which had been placed over the deep pool in the center of the ritual chamber, and was entirely nude. There were only a handful of people in the cave, and she wasn’t a prude, but it certainly didn’t help her anxiety. She pushed through and dipped a finger into the paste, bringing it to her mouth before any second thoughts could overtake her.
Ugh. It tastes like piss too. Not that she was especially familiar.
“Lie down, please. We’ll begin in a moment, after the paste has had some time to work. Please note that this will hurt.”
”Eh.” Said Imogen, remembering how she’d been beaten to shit to earn her Reaving.
Chieftain Coid Ong Oping drew the Deepwater Vein and brought it down toward Imogen’s left breast.
~~~
Now, if you’ve ever been a lemur, this next part should be easy for you to imagine. If you haven’t:
First off, it’s like you’re bundled up in a thick fleece coat. It doesn’t lie heavily on you; it fits perfectly, since it’s your own skin. But except for your face, your hands, your feet, everything in the world is at an inch remove. Even when you’re used to it, it can get hot and itchy; if you’re not used to it, well, you might find yourself longing for a shear.
(There’s also a lot of fur in your ears, but that’s not as bad as you’d think, much like how humans often don’t notice how much wax is in there)
Next, your legs have a lot of joints, and it’s kind of hard to say how many you were expecting. Your knees stick out half the length of your body, and are like steel springs, ready to propel your entire body across a space long as a dozen of you. This makes walking awkward, inclining you towards movement which is half a crawl and half a spring.
Your hands and feet, of course, are confusingly intermixed, and your digits are long and spindly and strong. You find yourself grabbing onto things instinctively, part of the adaptation which prevents the lemurs from falling from the sunny kingdom of the high canopy, where they prefer to dwell.
Lemurs are large and fast enough that they’re prey animals for few beasts, but you don’t get that way without proper paranoia. Throughout the lemur’s skull are constant, finely-tuned bursts of warning. Danger. Danger. Danger.
Whaak whaak WHAAK
~~~
Lemurgen Ward found herself racing through the streets of Gihah, no larger than the feet of the villagers on every side. There was something she was supposed to be doing, right? Wasn’t there?
Villagers looked down curiously as she passed, then moved apart, heeding shouting behind her. Was she running from something? Was she supposed to be running from something? She opened her mouth to ask-
”Whaak whaak Whaak???”
Well, that wasn’t going to help, was it?
She looked up as she ran, feeling a great desire to get higher, but there was nowhere to go. Unless she could cross one of the bridges…
That was a nice word. Bridge. She couldn’t remember how she knew it.
The sky was full of lemurs, huge lemurs. They were so big, but they still stayed up in the sky because they were made of clouds, which are light even if they’re big. Even lemurs knew that. Even Imogen knew that.
The world was spinning a bit, but that didn’t matter as much as she seemed to recall. Lemurs have extraordinary balance, for reasons which are plain with a moment’s consideration. Even if she was listing to one side, you could never tell given how fast she was flitting from side to side. The perfectly-developed muscles of the lemur, while small, could fling her across space with speed which might astonish a cat.
She reached the “bridge” and was forced to stop for a moment, swaying as she looked down into the water below.
~~~
The river was also made of lemurs, and the lemurs made of water. They were doing backstrokes, and butterfly strokes, and whatever you call the move where you simply wriggle your entire body and somehow that’s also swimming.
One of the lemurs looked back at her and winked.
“It’s not every day you get to be a lemur, but you can’t exactly stop once you start!”
Except it wasn’t common, or even Ecitherese, it was just lemur chatter. Just lemur chatter.
“You can be Orkhan every day, but why not take a break sometimes?”
Then the lemurs began to dissolve into one another- it made sense, they were all just water, after all. It made sense, but it was upsetting. The lemur had been so nice to Imogen, and now he was returned to one-ness with the great wellspring of all water. A single, sparkling tear welled up in Lemurgen’s eye, and tumbled into the frothing waters below. The lemurs fought over who got to keep it, but in the end it was all of them.
”Is that how life is, too?” Imogen asked aloud, though what she said wasn’t really words, ”Are we all just momentary faces on the water?”
~~~
Suddenly, there was a snarling noise, and Imogen snapped back to her body. Her lemur body.
The Chieftain had caught up to her, but he was wearing the skin of a great cat, a fast and agile predator. It was a great cat, and not a fossa like most of the sifaka’s predators, but the instinctive alarum was just the same. She hardly even noticed the bare-chested Orkhan men following the huge cat up.
”No!” Lemurgen shouted, stifling her instinct to run. The lemur raised her tiny lemur arms above her lemur head, and argent fire blossomed in the night. Silence filled the village heart, and then one of the villagers shouted:
“Dragons preserve us, that monkey’s got a sword!”
~~~
Behind the buildings of the Heart of Gihah, just before the waterfall (and also, nowhere near Ecith, in some ways), two of the water-lemurs pulled themselves onto land and resolved into the lumpy green shapes which lie hidden in the unexplored bit of everyone’s DNA.
“Shit.” said one of the Nodlins, still shimmery because the Chieftain’s drug produced only waking dreams, and this bubble was wobbly and wrong. “That monkey’s got a sword. We didn’t do that, did we?”
“Absolutely not.” replied the other, “And if anyone asks, that’s our story. Now let’s scram.”
The two hurried out of the dream as fast as they could, exiting the narrative.
~~~
Now, the sword in question was ten or eleven times larger than Lemurgen Ward, but unfortunately for everyone involved she was an excellent Reaver. Held up more by will than muscle, the sifaka stood at the entry to the bridge, swinging the huge flaming sword back and forth to keep the orks and feline from advancing.
“Imogen.” the huge cat said, voice deep and dark and full of violence, “Put down the sword and come back to us. Imogen.”
”Shh!” the lemur admonished him, ”You’re so loud, I can’t even think!”
“Think. Yes. Lemurs don’t think like that, Imogen. They don’t. What does that mean?”
”I said, shut up!” She pointed the oversized greatsword directly at the cat, who eyed it warily. The Chieftain was older, and dragon-trained, and stronger than Imogen, but the argent fire of her weapons gave him pause.
“Lemurs don’t have flaming swords either, Imogen.”
”They do now!”
Chattering with her anger, the lemur raced across the bridge, dragging the greatsword behind her as though it had no weight to it at all.
~~~
“Is she still up there?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Any more injured?”
“Not too badly, thankfully. Her aim seems to be getting worse.”
As if to illustrate, an ornate golden partisan sailed out of the high tree next to the bridge, limned with silver fire, flying majestically into a rock before it bounced off and tumbled down the waterfall.
”Whaak whaak Whaak!!!”
It had only been a few minutes since Imogen had scampered up the tree, only to find that there was nothing in leaping range from it- in fairness, the paste’s effect had been gradually increasing, and at this point she could only see the world in terms of blurs of color and hallucinated lemur forms. A dozen villagers had surrounded the tree to prevent her escape, and only a handful had gotten donked on the head by the magic weapons.
“Any luck talking to her?”
“None. She’s in her head bad.”
“Maybe more than you think.” the Chief said, trying not to sound annoyed. She had definitely gotten caught up in the lemur-form, but he’d never heard of anyone simultaneously losing themselves to the initiation and remembering how to use another Rune. Whatever was going on in her lemur-head, it wasn’t… very lemurish.
“Perhaps… the paste was a mistake in this case.” Coid conceded. “But she must be tiring. We should be able to catch her, and then we just need something that can pull herself back to herself. She wore a-”
“Wait!” gasped Fioh, “I have an idea!”
The young Orkhan girl took off at a sprint, heading for the nearest house. The Chief watched her go with bemusement, stepping aside to avoid a huge sword careening out of the tree.
“Imogen!” he called out, “Remember who you-”
”Whaak whaak Whaak!!!”
Yes, she had only come to the village days ago. Nothing he could talk about was likely to call her back to herself, so-
“Look!” Fioh shouted, “Imogen, look what I’ve got!”
The lemur looked down, and her eyes grew as big as saucers.
Fioh was holding up a mop.