Prelude - The Moving, Living River

[Marunae]

A little way inland from the slate city of Kelper's Bluff, there stood a scrap of woodland untouched by the settlements around it. The trees were ancient, but defied sturdiness in ways that could repel carpenters at a hundred paces. Thin, useless branches, gnarled heartwood that snared any saw or axe that was buried in it, and bark that always seemed to be riddled with some bug or blight or another.

This did not discourage the great family.

Underneath this evening of deep red and scudding clouds and a scant few stars, they sat in a rough clearing at what could broadly be described as an intersection of paths. Flaxen tapestries of all colours, tethered to the knots and twists in the wood that could hold them, made shelters out of the twisted pathways and little spaces between the trees, leaving the clearing itself uncanopied for the firepits dotted around this great assembly of beasts, all sat quiet in this gnarled old place.

Two skunks, perhaps a father and son, sat beside one of the fires, and if a beast paid very close attention they would see the father whispering. They would see the beasts around him - more hares than any others perhaps, but still a motley bunch - picking up his whispers and passing them on, from beast to beast around the firesides and outwards until they reached the edge of the crowd and disappeared, melting into the whispers of the leaves far above.

And the words would sound something like this:

-

In the when that came before - before North, before South, before the Green Forest that separates them - there lived a coyote. And she roved her lands beside the great broad river, and she found a mate, and they made a life in their den, back in the when before beasts wrote words or formed roads, back in the when before lights spilled from the sky in the deepfrost dark.

And one night, as it did in those nights, stalking Death came for her. But this coyote was the fleetest of her kind, perhaps even the fleetest of all kinds. She felt Death coming and thought herself dreaming, weaved between its great star-night legs and darted away and caused Death to give chase to her the whole night through, until the sun came in great javelins from the sky and drove Death back.

And she awoke in the morning and likewise did her children, one by one, until only their father, her mate, was still to rise.

And he did not rise.

And she took the weight of it with a growl and a snarl, and she taught her young of grief and love and memory, and taught them how to hold a cherished one in their hearts so that they would never be alone.

And the next night, when her dreams came, she took to stalking Death. Night after night, they fought furiously. She tore at its throat, she clawed at its belly, she bowled it to the ground the moment it reached her side of the great broad river. She was Death's greatest failure, and Death's greatest mistake. For every time that Death could not take her, it took a different prize, and when Death had taken the last of her pups, she had nothing left to lose.

The next night she took a great bite of a mushroom that her own mother, so many seasons ago, had told her would bring a beast close to death but never let them over, and she embraced sleep, and when it came she flung herself at Death with every piece of fury that she had ever felt, and every piece of fury that she could ever feel. And she bowled it into the river, and they set upon each other with all the ferocity of the when that came before, thundering and churning the water, raising rocks and forming rapids and fighting on and on and on, even to this day.

And some say that the lights that spill from the sky in the deepfrost dark are caused by some other sun shining through the river spray kicked up by the coyote's eternal rage.

And some say that the beasts who would have been taken by Death must find their own way across the great broad river now.

And some say that one day, she may yet win.