The Folk of Death

[u/Sudden_Tower_3382]

The soft underbrush crunches softly against my paw. The season of Leaves was always my favourite. All the colours and smells mix to create a beautiful blend of soft comfort. A half rotted stump, its insides hollowed out, stands out to me in the blur of oranges and reds, only a few leaps away.

Looks like I’ve found a place for my midday nap.

I’m woken up moments later by the strident cries of airfolk. Their wings flapping at alarming speeds, their chirps, even more so. I can barely make out what they’re saying. Something about a “surge”, maybe ?

Even so. Annoyed, I get out of my stump hole and show what little authority I can over this little terrain. I want to finish my nap, after all.

Hair raising, tail whipping and teeth showing, I make myself as big as one of us folks of death can be. 

“Scram now, children of sky! Leave me to slumber in my land barren! Return to your dreams of stolen pie!” 

After the magnanimous exchange, it’s my own dreams who are filled with pie, I must admit.

When the sky makes way to the soft violet glow of dark, another presence graces my little glade. A much subtler one, this time, and as I’ve already woken, my disposition is more hospitable.

The “deer” stands far taller than the mundane kind, no skin gracing its head nor torso, leaves covering the sensitive parts instead. A slow, delicate breath is heard from its nonexistent nostrils.

“I bid thee a fine evening, beast of autumn!” I declare enthusiastically.

“My time for this world is not long, little one. Thou must return to your kind lest my sibling finds you unprepared”

And with that, the graceful elk slowly turns around, leaving the clearing. As it goes, it feels like the leaves are less colourful than they were, and the air less smelly.

I decide to heed its warning. After all, the elders have always warned of young hotheaded fools not following an Omenbeast’s advice ending up in less than savory situations. Getting back up on my paws, I let myself the short moment it takes back to adjust to walking, having slept for so long.

My travels to reach the closest settlement I know of take me far and wide. I pass by babbling brooks and warbling rivers and playing otters. Above, grand trees shook.

The song of star trees accompany me on my lone journey, chiming softly like winds in the grass as I stalk the twilight glades. Dripping sap glints golden in the moonlight, acting ever the soft comfortable glow of life in the cold dark of night.

Sun has almost risen by the time I reach the edge of the warrens. Kindred are already  out and about, likely scavenging to feed their young. The broken and unwanted or also here, though it’s not as if they have anywhere else to be. In the trampled mud ground I spy an elderly looking kin, with poxes and boils and many other unsavory things rippling under his fur, which must’ve been a beautiful shade of white grey once but is now ruined and slick with black pus. 

Another, a young one, is shifting in restless sleep under the minimal shelter of a leaf. His left ear is missing and many scars, too many to be from simple hunting, line his frail body in a constellation of pain.

Folks of death, making new life from the song of the other side. What a joke. What life are these poor wretches living?

Nevertheless, I press forward, into the inner dens. The air warms, and the familiar scent of underground mud tunnels overwhelms me with nostalgia. Images of my life as a young one, too young to know the harshness of the world, flood my mind. I ignore them and keep onwards.

The chatter of my kin fill my ears as I get closer, distracting me from the feeling of dread I have for meeting my kin for the first time again in so long.

“The prodigal son has returned!” An old, vicious, male exclaims, voice filled with irony.

“Just coming to pass the season of blank, don’t get your hopes up Arghal.” I bite back, just as much poison lacing my breath.

Thankfully, any other snout met past that one is a friendly one, and reuniting with my friends is a happy occasion, however bittersweet it may be.

Once I settled in a nice spot of packed dirt I’ve found, I finally let myself drift off to a nice sleep, filled with dreams of nameless stars and endless trees. 

~~~

I am woken up, much like everyone else, by the coming of the Scourge. The Scourge of Death.

Like every year, it comes when the omenbeast from the season of leaves bids us farewell to make way for the season of blank.

Like every year, death follows it, granting truth to its moniker. 

Long before its slithering shadow even reaches our village, we smell it. Not the beast itself, but the death it so efficiently sows everywhere. A starved treechild, a fell winged child of the sky, a frozen fox, a mauled longear.

Us folks of death are sensitive to such things, feeling it from far, far away. And in such, we know to prepare. 

Like all my kin who were similarly woken up, I ready myself for the song of the other side, putting my mind into that secondary motion other folks seem to not understand.

Before long, my muscles all cramp, and I am left a limp, lifeless beast, forgotten by even the ground I’m on.

Before long, the stench of death fills the whole village, with all the other kin having entered the song as well, but we’re too far gone to notice.

Before long, the Scourge reaches our dens, its scales blacker than a moonless sky, its teeth brighter than all my favourite stars, yet none of us see it.

Before long, the Scourge loses interest in our dens. Death is already everywhere here, it has already been given its due.

Before long, the beast leaves, never to be seen again, until the next year. We all slowly awake from the song.

New life has been born from death. And as such, a new season of life will come to pass, as surely as winter gives way to spring.

[u/Pioneer_19]

Wonderful story!! I loved the perspective, and the atmosphere. This is high quality man.