Just a path
(Variation on the story contest nr.2 in Fangorn area.)
About 20.000 years later…. H32.021, unspecified time.
They had fought and lost so long ago, and still endured. Twenty-thousand years ago heavy debates had erupted in the main western lands, but it had taken a few centuries that a given fact had been accepted. That something as the Melankovitch cycles had existed since the creation of the starsystem, but had been discovered in H19.020 and the causes all along why every 41.000 years there was an ice-time and after almost a jungle world. Against this background had evolution shaped life on the planet, and was the birth and death of species an ongoing process, and all had a place in the history and the future of the planet. And on return of a tropical interval, life was return to what another little ice-age would be. Eyótan and Eyeetah would not live to see that day. They just saw the days that one time more, in the most eastern corners of the country grew once more vines. As the climate was growing colder, the vines were not as best as they had been in the last fifteen millennia. They were much smaller. They had travelled from the south, on horseback. The spotted horses had once been brought by a foreigners to the continent, and quickly adopted by the native peoples. Eyótan and Eyeetah belonged to one of the main branches, the Iroquois peoples.
A little existed still of the vibrant society that knew the continent. Legends existed that all seasons had legs and could walk like humans. Three generations could see the differences, when each season came always a tiny bit later. Westerners had never paid much attention to what his people knew in legends and myths, until it had been almost too late, and the language had gone lost, including the script with it. They had their lands and freedom again, but with the upmars toward a jungle world, many who could afford, had chose a life between the stars, and turned the once commercial cruises to fringes of the atmosphere into a reality. Of those left, their descendents had always been unable to return. With higher concentrations of oxygen, dioxide and methane in the air, life on the planet had evolved further. And there was an issue of the immune system, who had left, was never exposed to the newest viruses and bacteria that ruled the smallest levels of the planet. The strong had to walk longer on this earth, the weak were allowed to join the ancestors and tell on how the lively world was faring. Death was for them another path of life. There was no need to be afraid of death, you lived on in the thousands beings born in the future.
And the very skilled could talk with those who had passed on. Council was often asked, if the plain reality offered no answers. However it was a skill, feared by the non-natives, and the mysteries were that scary it got a connection to darkness. Eyótan knew how to connect with the elders living on the eternal fields. A path was more than one going through a forest. A walk you chose for life could be called a path too. And there was also the pathfinder, who in times of dangers knew the route for the tribe to get to safer waters, and so cared for survival. Ever they walked the Berengian Bridge and entered the continent, they had followed such paths, and trusted their world of spirits to guide them. The continent had healed after ages of destruction, but even after fifteenthousand years not all traces had vanished. In some places, where once forests abundant grew, still nothing had returned. The grounds were too toxic for any form of life, even it was tiny. And even his people was responsible to some level in these catastrophes. They lived as their ancestors, but they had more knowledge than ever.
His sister Eyeetah could be recognised by the shape and features, but for the rest she wore the same dress of clothes as her brother. She had two braids she wore them on her back, as her brother wore them over his chest. The differences between men and women were there, even those were tiny. From the horse she jumped on the ground and walked between the last trees towards the sandy beaches. Treasure hunting had become quite popular in the last generations, because as sea levels were dropping slowly, lots of lost lands were given back. That was okay in their time, but not for the future. Species made their way towards the south. But the ground species that walked on fours never travelled thousands of miles north and south, and were adapting to the cold in winter. Eyótan joined her on the beach, their horses attached toward the lowers branches of a beech. She just looked down on the sand and crouched when she saw something entirely black, and shaped in curves. It had weathered severely, but was not yet gone. She frowned when she scratched some sediments of it and it something like a T-shape with a faint leafy form. She dropped it in the hands of her brother. “What can this be?” she spoke in the tongue of her people. The few languages that had survived the slaughter of their kindred, had melted once more, just as they had at the beginning of the Holocene branched out. Now it were daughter languages of the mainly old Iroquoian, Siouan and Algonquin branches. “Hmmm, something silver on the edge I think… some kind of mixed metal. And something what could be glass,” he spoke. He scratched over the surface and revealed a spot of green.
“Cleaned that could be quite beautiful,” said Eyeetah, when she joined looking at the found metal object. She took it over again and turned it around, and see what was on the backside. It was much smoother, but also curved in the negative version to the topside. Something dawned on her. “Must have some kind of clip, you fasten your clothes together. “ “In leaf form?” asked Eyótan. He sounded doubtful. The waters of the sea had given more unspecified items price. The tiny spot of green screamed against the deep copper of Eyeetah’s hands. Their ancestors had once a much fainter taint. Their brown eyes met each other. A trinket from another lifetime. How old it was? To that was an answer, if you were to read a printed date in what was known as the Ancient European Script. Neither could, though there was way to know by chanting.
“Whee-hee-heyo-lo,
whee-hee-heyo-lo…
Ta tanka ho,
Yo hey heya ho
Yo hey heya,
Whee-hee-heyo-lo…”
It had given millions of people across all millennia the creeps. When Eyeetah stopped the chant, she nodded. “From the times this beach got vanished under the waves,” she said. In what century or even what day it had gotten in this place, she could not tell. Back in the village of twenty tipis around the trinket was very carefully cleaned. The glistering beauty of once before didn’t return. It was a weathered brooch. The fastening pin on the backside had eroded away. The rest was intact. It was silver and green glass together. The form was clearly beech, but as brooch much bigger than a real leaf. It might have been once just a nicety for a woman. It was added to the many other founds. As Eyeetah was looking at them, she admitted the leaf was quite exceptional. Eyótan nodded. However they couldn’t imagine the times of great festivals, the sharing spirit of imaginations beyond the normality of life and see that expressed in music. And that someone just had lost in the crowds and it fallen on the grass, and feet had tramped into the ground, leaving it buried for centuries to come. Eyeetah looked at it once more. She changed her mind. “I found, I keep it,” she said. Eyótan said nothing. It was a nice thing. But not for him. The sea would give more in the time to come.
1358 Words.
>>Aikari Edit: Removal of all the Buts for better reading<<
(I liked this one always 
)
Hello Aikári! Welcome back! This is Drifa! 
And yeah Mandos Brown never leaves me... 
It kept me in contact with the core of the Plaza, and also bridged to this place. I wouldn't have known this would be here, if Rivvy and Ennora hadn't put up that site. Posting there keeps it alfloat and I know from Rivvy, he wants to stay it on. Finally gotten on with Mantle of Darkness? I recall it was your dream to get on with it. 
