#nkaeshashek/feressnukora

[lerrengwesten]

Feressnukora

“He'd sworn he'd seen someone like them before, with the same ridged tail, the same wide serpent head, the same small feet and scarred ankles and long claws on their feet.  Only their legs were far longer than he remembered, their angles more extreme-

He remembered what Bygovir had said earlier and he looked up into their eyes.  The two locked into each others' gazes.  He knew that narrowed stare, those faint yellow eyes.”  

[lerrengwesten]

Nkaeshashek

"It's for the good of us all that we wipe this place free of the memory of our past failures.  That we eliminate and forget the cursed lot of creatures made only to live in pain and planned obsolescence that we all may turn to the light and blot out the darkness of nostalgia."

[lerrengwesten]

The Peninsula, Chapter 7

Honestly, I’m kind of glad to be getting back to action again after spending the last few chapters futzing in the Woodlands.  I’ve been losing track of some of the more important elements for the littler stuff going on there.  Anyways, enjoy.

General assholery as usual, frank talk of death and the like, the usual, really.

The one on the left cocked its head as it looked up at him.

"Is there anything you want from me, stranger?"

"U-uh no, no, I just mistook you for someone else."

"Yeah, that happens sometimes.  We're awful generic.  It's always heartbreaking when they're looking for Thendru and Swepeday and we have to tell them what happened to those two.  We look near identical, I suppose."

"Oh, no, that's not who I thought you were.  Nevermind."

"Oh well, I hope you find whoever that is anyways."

Teltra slowly backed away, trying to avoid eye contact again.  Unsure how to exactly feel about that encounter.  He still had no answer to the fate of his Thendru and Gillorn. But he hurried off after Bygovir as the party continued on towards the approaching mountains.  The woods had thinned out again and the path traveled grew gravelly, winding around lakes and soggy meadows with only scatterings of trees around them.  Small purple flowers bloomed in a dip in the ground, and he couldn't help but stroke them.  He hadn't seen them in so long but the memory of them came back with a sudden clarity as he felt their smooth petals and glanced over the small veins of white.  He had spent a while laying in dips like those in his first few weeks and months as he waited for the spirits to work out small issues.  It wasn't a particularly good or bad memory, though, just a memory.  The whole area actually looked roughly the same as it had 10 years ago.  Or maybe it didn't and that's just what he wanted to convince himself of.

He turned back to the Fsemacea and gave them a weak smile.

"I know you two don't think much of my kind, but you have to admit it's beautiful here."

They seemed unimpressed.

"It's cold."

"Too tight, needs more openness."

He felt Bygovir stretch a hand to his shoulder in attempts to assure him, but it could only reach his lower back.

"There, there,  I like it here.  It's a nice change of scenery from my usual haunt.  Shame my subjects don't gather here like they have that lake."

Teltra let a little smile creep across.  At least someone sort of cared. 

There seemed to be a sparkling of visiting spirits ahead, meaning surely someone, or multiple someones was near.   As he got closer, he saw that there was a huddle of brown, shaggy creatures mulling about, crowded around a rather short vaguely blueish but mostly grey one.  Most curious to him was how it was so incredibly desaturated compared to the handful of blue beings he'd seen in the Woodlands, yet it was too dark to be one of the hybrids.  The strange color lured him aside.  He felt himself drawn to one of the barer patches of the circle to get a better look at whatever this was.  They were fairly small and were covered in a mix of fur and hard plates, with floppy ears loosely wrapped around their neck and a head like an armored helmet.  From afar they looked like any other creature other than the odd shade of grey and bright orange markings, but as he got close he saw three small horns on its head.  And the limbs bent at extreme angles.

  "Dirty thing."

He felt a hard hand on his shoulder, this time from a creature nearly his own height.  His breath hitched.  An airy, medium-high voice whispered in his ear.

"Don't you ever wish to be free of that shaggy, disgusting body and be greater than you inferior kind could ever be?"

Well, that was new.  An offer to go along with an insult.  He wasn't sure how to feel or react about that and was too scared to turn around and see who it was.  There hadn't been many others close to his height back his early days and none of them particularly fancied him besides his siblings.

"Someday you'll be shaking and shivering and lonely and the visitors will never touch you because they hate you.  It's how all you big trees are.  You all think you'll live on forever like that Nyoccel, but none of you were built to last and you'll be lucky to last half her lifetime.  Accept the truth, only conversion will save you and make you whole."

He wasn't sure how he should respond.  Better just to play dumb and hope they left him alone.  He gulped and tried to flood his mind with the memories of asking Dagnakki all those questions just a few days ago.  Wow, he was far from there.  He really shouldn't have been here right now.  He had no idea who this was or what they were talking about.  He turned around with the most innocent and baffled expression imaginable.

"What's a Nyoccel?"

The speaker was taken aback.  How could someone NOT know who Nyoccel was?  They gaped as they stared intently at him, trying to figure out if he was some kind of imposter.  Nyoccel was easily the most famous creature in the Woodlands, and perhaps on the entire peninsula. 

And their befuddlement gave him a chance to study them as well.  They were covered in a mix of scales and fur, mostly a brownish grey with red and silver markings similar to the blue-grey creature.  He'd sworn he'd seen someone like them before, with the same ridged tail, the same wide serpent head, the same small feet and scarred ankles and long claws on their feet.  Only their legs were far longer than he remembered, their angles more extreme-

He remembered what Bygovir had said earlier and he looked up into their eyes.

 The two locked into each others' gazes.  He knew that narrowed stare, those faint yellow eyes.  They glared at him in increased frustration and confusion.

"What the fuck even are y-"

"Nkaeshashek, is that you?"

Their brow lowered and tail rattled.  Their voice suddenly grew harsher and whispered.

"Never repeat that heathen name again Nkaeshashek was a miscreant who died years ago and everyone cheered when they euthanized her and cut her up shut up shut up shut up."

"Y-You're a Tanonuim now."

"I've always been a Tanonuim."

"But you-"

"It's for the good of us all that we wipe this place free of the memory of our past failures.  That we eliminate and forget the cursed lot of creatures made only to live in pain and planned obsolescence that we all may turn to the light and blot out the darkness of nostalgia."

All he could do was begin to mouth something before they whipped around and glared at Bygovir and the two Fsemacea.

"YOU TOO SHALL PERISH SOON, THE RAVEN HAS PLANS TO REPLACE YOU OVER-COMPLICATED ANTIQUITIES WITH A NEW SORT OF BEING AS WELL!"

Bygovir's eyes went wide and he ran off into the woods, utterly terrified of the possibility that they recognized him.  As the Tanonuim berated him further for trying to outrun the inevitable, Teltra slipped from their grasp and tried to bury himself in the crowd in hopes that that Tanonuim thought so little of him they wouldn't be able to tell him apart from the others.  But soon, he noticed them swarming together, then falling into a run and a hand reached out to drag him into the pack.

"Keep moving, keep moving, she'll lose interest in those outsiders soon and come after us, but Feressnukora can't keep up with us for long and once she's tuckered out she'll leave us alone.  Let's get a head start on her while we can and maybe we can embarass her again like last time."

"Last time?"

No answer.  Teltra didn't understand what was going on, but easily kept up with the pack of smaller creatures.  So did Feressnukora once she realized the "heathen trees" had run away and swiftly caught up.  In fact, she easily hung directly behind them.

"It's not hard far an ascended being such like me to catch you sluggish relics.  You'd be faster if you turned to the light as well.  All of the converted have sped up considerably.  Embrace the Raven's touch."

Her breathing was heavy against the back of the small crowd.  She hit the ground firmly with each footstep to make them all acutely aware of her presence and persistence.  Despite their reassurance, Teltra felt unsure.  The Nkaeshashek he once knew could run on and on forever without tiring when chasing down someone who slighted her, albeit with an unremarkable pace and wobbling gait. 

"Come on, come on, pal,  we'll prove her wrong and leave her in the dust.  Show her just how superior she really because some magical mountain freaks polished her turd of an existence."

Once the group entered the woods, they began to take sudden sharp turns.  Ones that their pursuer had to take more widely and gracefully than them, forcing her to weave between trees to get back on their trail and waste her energy.  But as the others had claimed, her endurance was poor and while the group raced onward, she suddenly slowed down and stopped, hissing and kicking a tree in frustration as her Far Spirit forced her to stop and rest.  The group kept on running until they could not longer see any red poking between the trees. 

Once they too had stopped, the one that had been at the head of the pack turned to Teltra.

"Those grey freaks never seem to leave me alone.  Ever since the Banenhaxers started doing that to their bigger Woodlanders those guys and the Ehtstunisa haven't shut up about how I'd be next."

They dismissed the rest of the group to go about their own business again.

" Well, it's been a couple years since they started going on about that and I'm still here, and  I may be an asshole but I like myself the way I am.  Anyways, don't think I've seen you before.  Where'd you come from?  Wrong time of year for you to be a new one."

"Erm, you ever hear of a guy named Teltra?"

"Yeah.  Ran away years ago and I don't know what happened to him afterwards but the Ehtstunisa won't shut up about how great he is.  I was a dick to him back then like everyone else.  Might have been a bit too harsh, though.  He was just too damn happy and it pissed me off."

"That was me, you know."

"Oh.  Fuck.  Sorry.  If it helps, I couldn't give a shit about you anymore.  I've moved on to tormenting visitors and Tanonuim since they're the only ones left that actively annoy me."

"It's been so long I forgot you were even one of those guys who went after me.  You all just sort of blended together, honestly. Except Vitabre."

"Heh, I don't think anyone could forget Vitty.  Worst of the worst, he was. But yeah, a lot of them are dead or got converted now.  The blokes here are some of the ones left, we've banded together to gang up on those Tanonuim when they come to bother us and have been hanging up north here because they don't seem to come here as often.  They like it down south better, right near the desert.  So, what's your business here?"

"I'm just passing through here to help some outsiders to a place beyond the mountains.  Thought I knew this place well enough from back then, but I guess I forgot a whole lot."

"Things have changed a lot here lately.  Moreso down south than here, though, it's still largely the undying old farts that live here.  Though a couple of them have still gone and died anyways.   Nobody could have expected Roramajus would have gone.  Everyone seemed to love him.  Didn't stop the Spirit of the Peninsula from more or less absorbing his Far Spirit and leaving him and a couple other creatures to rot so they'd eliminate a bit of competition.  And he got the absolute worst of it, too.  They never actually disposed of him until he'd been decaying for almost a decade.  Good thing you didn't come back last year or you might've had to see...that."

The stranger was oddly distant and calm talking about something so morbid. Time had hardened him and nothing really affected him much emotionally anymore.  His callous tone was unsettling to Teltra, who tried to change the subject.

"Yeah.   Say, you know where I could find a Thendru and Gillorn?  Been wondering what they've been up to, I remember seeing them a bit in the old days andnever really talking to them."

"You're in luck.  Nah, you're not.  They're dead too.  It was a bit odd, really.  They've got to be the only of us the Banenhaxers have actually killed these last couple years. I wouldn't be surprised if some though they'd get converted after they went dormant.  But obviously the Great Banenhaxer... had no need for them."

The other creature decided to leave it at that.  Truthfully, he knew Teltra was most likely to blame for their demise, as he filled his spirit's need for a large, energetic woodland creature and that a Tanonuim would have been redundant. It felt unneccessarily cruel to mention, though.  Teltra was bigger and faster than him anyways and he didn't want to risk retaliation.  Though he'd also heard that their physical condition was fairly poor due to neglect.

  Teltra's ears pricked up as they heard a roaring voice from a distance away.

"IS THAT YOU?  PLEASE DON'T RUN OFF LIKE THAT."

Loreaft was slowly stumbling between the trees, inadvertently clearing the way for Vlevetsi behind her when she bent and snapped them with her bulk.

"Oh, dear, well... I'm sorry stranger, but I guess I've got to go.  Nice meeting you, though.  Might try visiting again since you guys seem decent enough and it's a shame I know so little about where I actually came from.  Tell your buddies what I told you, if they're willing to forget about the past I'll gladly do the same.  I hate leaving loose ends and grudges around like that.  Farewell!"

"Ask around for Dhechnoaho if you come back.  Hopefully I'll still be around then.  Take care and don't listen to Tanonuim, pal."

Vlevetsi was swaying with mild irritation as the two Fsemacea waited through the final farewells, but relaxed they finally set off again, reunited with Teltra.

"How did you go astray?"

"That greyish guy started chasing a group I got tangled with and I ended up carried away by that little crowd.  My bad."

"Good thing you smell good."

He stopped and gave Vlevetsi a strange look.

"I smell good?"

"All your outdated kind smell wonderful in your own ways.  We followed that to find you."

"Well isn't that sweet.  Where’d Bygovir go?  I never got to say goodbye."

“I do not know. He ran and did not return  I feel more secure when free of his presence.”

---

It was late in the afternoon and it had been a long, tiring day, but there the northern range was little more than foothills and the trio made quick progress. At this point, they were certainly beyond the range of Teltra's knowledge and Loreaft now led the way, her black eyes invisibly scanning the landscape for markers- large footprints from four-legged forms, wide trampled paths unnecessary for smaller beings, and most of all, anything related to the number four, a number treasured by the Fsemacea.  Here and there she would suddenly turn as she noticed four rocks placed in a row, a square carved in a tree, two hoofprints a bit too close together to have come from someone walking on two legs, or for seemingly no noticeable reason at all.  Teltra couldn't tell what Vlevetsi thought, but Loreaft's silence seem to indicate some measure of confidence in her decisions.  He was personally a bit worried that they would end up horribly lost again, but he also remembered that they would probably just try to find their way by following his scent, since they seemed to find it so remarkable. However that worked.  He'd never really been one to notice scents besides those of the Lbutra.

The sun was setting as the woods thinned out and they found themselves out on a grassy hillside.  Their shadows stretched long in the dying light and the nighttime lull in activity was in full affect, the floating lights around them steadily flickering out as spirits departed their world.  Wind whipped through their fur. As the light slowly died, a sense of loneliness, uncertainty, and exposure began to come over Loreaft.  What was she even gaining  by running off like this?  A less ideal home where crowds were fewer and she'd only be weaker for it?  The loss of the shelter of the scattered woods of her homeland?  Freedom.  It was freedom.  To escape from the relentless gaze of Dheroratera and her creators and breathe for once.  To clear the haze of mediocrity that hung over the minds of her and the other large Fsemacea in their vain attempt to conform to their high standards of grace and neutrality of disposition and give herself a life worth living.  To break free of her gradual, arcing motion and be as agile as the elder Fsemacea rather than so calculated and overly graceful all the time.

Well, no.  She could never hope for that last thing.  That was truly hopeless.  That was a simple fact of life for larger Fsemacea.  They weren't created to do that.  Maybe she was doomed to live in mediocrity after all.  There was no escaping one's unfortunate design.