[WP-005] Seeing Unseen - Bite of Passage

[Dizzy_Kat]

[imgleft]https://www.matope-swamp.com/images/max ... uncert.png[/imgleft]Sleep crept up on him faster than he was used to. Bite of Passage enjoyed the night hours when the soft pulsing of insects and frogs replaced the frenzied and chaotic voices of kin around him. To feel himself overcome so early in the evening felt like a punishment and for what crime, he did not know.

Cold winds tore at his skin. The sharp burning pain reminiscent of his own naming dream and the bloody bite of the caves walls into his flesh. Though instead of crushing darkness he now found himself in a void of swirling white. Snow He had not yet actually seen snow first hand. He fought the dream briefly, his conscious locking onto the question of how he was seeing something he had never seen and nearly pulling him back to the waking world. A high keening cry broke his concentration as a great shape dove through the endless white.

Bite ran, his surroundings revealing themselves in small flashes barely giving him time to dodge as kin and creature emerged from the snow from all sides. None seemed to see him as they fought each other. He could make no sense of the battle he was witnessing. Kin fought both kin and creatures that in his experience had no conceivable right to life. One, an eaglehound, looked worse on it’s feet than the remains of the sacrifices he made at his grandfather’s request on the altar of the Harbinger.

The Harbinger. Was this their doing? Bite of Passage, for all the work he did for Night Father in supporting and framing his worship, had little interest in casting his lot with the creature. He felt no great pull towards the MotherFather to sway him away from his family’s cause. If he were forced to really explore and put his feelings into words, he might say he felt repulsed by both. He had no interest in playing the either or game between entities he couldn’t fully comprehend.

The wind shifted, finally revealing the awe-inspiring scene in its entirety. A great battle waged through the blizzard. Blood, dirt and snow stained the combatants in a sludge of pinks and browns all lit by the glowing aura of the great shards that littered the landscape. A circle of calm seemed to find him, removing him from a sense of personal danger but allowing him to remain and witness. One by one he watched as kin were slain by a massive eagle in its grounded fight. Why did they not try to slay it? They had it on the ground. It was gravely injured but none seemed inclined to go for a deathblow even as it decimated their numbers.

Was this the MotherFather? Is that why they were willing to throw their own lives away instead of removing the threat it posed? None of this made sense to him and that, more than anything else, angered him. Rage boiled, far more than was normal or reasonable for him and before he could see how the battle played out he snapped back into his own body, awake and panting in the dark muggy swamp. The cold remained, sharp and aching in his bones.