Eris June
New Member
Still in process (:
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Don’t blink. You’ll miss it.
“Cillian.”
The sound of my mother’s voice: a stream running through a blanket of pebbles. Her scent: trees, earth, grass. Her hands: rocks and petals. Her hair: sunshine.
“Cillian, come here. I want to show you something.”
Those days were honey-gold and far too sweet that had I not carried on the knowledge they held, I would have thought them a dream. My mother, a village physician, would take me with her as she gathered herbs and natural medicine—would take me on her haunts, she used to say. I absorbed her words, her wisdom. I learned how to survive in the wild—which berries to eat, which leaves to boil. I learned how to use the stars as a compass and to measure the time with sky-light. I learned how to distinguish guardians from animals, elanam from stones. This distinguishing was a rite of passage, if you like, amongst physician’s children, or healer’s children as they called them in my village. It was we who continued the line that sought to protect our people from ailments and sometimes even the guardians themselves.
Was it common practice throughout the rest of our kingdom? At nine years of age, I did not yet know. As a subject, I was part of the larger kingdom of Naveria, yet all I knew was my own village of Talanyor. We were at the outskirts, the very edge of Naveria, and beyond us, the unknown.
“Hurry, my love.”
“I’m coming, mother.”
“Shh.” She held a finger to her lips. She was crouched behind a busy gathering of bushes, thick and green. The grassland stretched on only a little further, fingertips of the forest we lived in, before it became an explosion of browns and oranges. A savannah. I crouched down beside her and with a smile, she slowly parted a few leaves.
“The guardians of the sun.”
And there they were, great beasts of lions, with eyes of fire and claws of gold. Their undersides were red scales, catching rays when they lifted their magnificent paws. The largest one turned and I swear to the Almighty, he looked straight into my eye—
