The Present.
They came in the daylight, their shadows joining with those of the Ironheart ridges. Between the warm and narrow valleys, their footsteps echoed, granite on lichenous quartzen granite.
Villagers rose from their terrace-tending to see them come without walking out to greet them. The mountain hain knew Urtelem to be wiser than the sum of their stony parts, in the same way that they knew the snow leopards were guardian spirits, and the death-eye crows held hidden knowledge. Beyond this, they suspected little, though stories wandered.
It was their own herd of stonemen who uncurled to offer welcome. Invisible between the orange-grown boulders they had fed on for lifetimes without number, they walked straight through the village in single file without a moment's hesitation, striding on foot and knuckle as they do. When the two lumbering flows of stone collided at last, they butted shoulders with intimate loudness amidst a great deal of tapping and palming and waving and cheironomy.
Into the night the bass commotion continued, creeping slowly back around the round hill on which the huts themselves rested until morning found the soft scraping noises dispersed through every ledge on the far end of the little dale, mostly in clusters of fours and fives.
To their regret, the mountain hain found that none among their number had ever tried to learn the Urtelem language. They were a community that lived quietly, questioned little, and spurned the outsider, the greenskin and the fiberhead. Now their quiet kinesic conversation was almost clamorous. Would they have understood, the villagers would have seen the wealth of experience that the newcomers brought- Tales of the City where thousands of people gathered, that turned forest, marsh and meadow all into sprawling farmland. The Urtelem had mostly left that place to its other peoples. Stone-grazing and migration could not easily coexist with the farming folk.
Deaf to these stories, all the hain could do was observe.
What they saw first was the presence of the strange thing that walked with the Urtelem. It resembled something that was animal, vegetable, and mineral all at once, and yet none of these. A grinning red skull stood in its quartz skin, and the shaman announced it a thing of Jaan as soon as she laid eyes on the mysterious amalgam. It stood motionless for most of the first day, only stirring to sign with the Urtelem as they exchanged angle-riddles, as they often did to amuse themselves, and to wave at the villagers, the youngest of which ran from its unnaturally brilliant endoskeleton. By nightfall the stonemen escorted it to a higher ridge, where it sat crosslegged, and soon enough began unfolding coralline branches. It attracted faeries like a fresh corpse.
Within hours of the arrival, patterns began to splay over the granite surfaces. The villagers knew they were patterns, for there was some amount of repetition to them. Some were drawn in mud or etched. The largest and finest were twisted into the rock itself, its very crystal texture realigned to form the curves. Pretty as they were, they fascinated the Urtelem, who spent hours staring at them and signing around them. A one-sided exchange was evident. A newcomer drew the lines, conversed with the indigenous herd, and then guided them as they drew similar marks. As days became months, the exchange intensified until the patterns sprawled so huge so quickly that the stonemen had to wipe clean the cliff faces to start over.
Upon the near peak, strange happenings began to occur. Along its ridges, Urtelem were hauling boulders to the place where the rainbow skeleton sat, then splitting them into narrow menhirs with a precision that the villagers only saw in their craftshain. Rippling their fingers over the pillars reshaped them subtly, sometimes over the course of weeks, marking edges and holes into them. At last, one by one, the stonemen erected them into a henge. At dawn the next day, the elders of both herds stood in that ring, ripples of rosy and blue-grey crystal marking their age like wrinkles, and knelt with clasped hands. Such was their concentration that shards of grit jittered erratically around them as they sanctified the shrine.
After two weeks, a hermit returned, having been cast out for many decades. No eyes gleamed in his head, and his naked exoskeleton made a hollow sound as he walked, for he was of the Accursed, the Hollow Hain who rise again. The death-eyes croaked threateningly at him as he clambered over the terraces. He was only sighted once as the oldest hain remembered him- Thereafter he was only seen on what had already been renamed Henge Ridge, with a shell as blue as a dusk sky and slowly oozing glass.
Two densely tattooed adolescents decided to go and shatter both the aberrant skeletons early in the morning under the guise of gathering spike flies to pry open stream-mussels. They came within touching distance, and, indeed, they did touch the older lensling, who slept motionless, its thighs slowly flowing to conform to the shape of the rock it sat on. As soon as the axe was raised, a stoneman uncurled behind them, and it was a slow, humiliating backwards drag to the village. After that, the mountain hain only watched as Urtelem meticulously tended to the growing lens tree, clipping it, cracking its exterior, knotting it in place with woven grass.
No animosity remained from this event. In time, as the henge was completed and the spiral-drawings became so refined that no one could tell whether the old or new herd had made them, the stonemen took interest in their exoskeletal companions.
Over the course of only a few days, the hain saw their narrowest gravel trails hewn into wider, more stable paths through the cliffs. The stream from which they drew water was dammed into a pond deep enough to bathe in. Broken terraces were reinforced. All these things Urtelem did. Some said they were being compassionate. A more perceptive few looked at how only the most colourful stones had been chosen for the dam, and quietly supposed that they were simply amusing themselves. Solving riddles the village had unwittingly posed.
One morning the mountain hain awoke to find that the ridges empty. By the communal fire pit, the risers found an unusual bouquet. It was an arrangement of crystal- Tiger-eyes, obsidian, agate, jade and jasper, washed and unguarded, all in abundance. Later in the day, the grey herd of newcomers returned to the Henge, unaccompanied. The orange lichen they had accumulated in their stay made them look almost like the Urtelem who were missing.
The community's age-long protectors had left, without a word. Their farewell had been given in other ways. From the valley they strode, on foot and knuckle, on to seek out a place and a way to share what they had learned, as their own teachers had, not so long ago.
The future.
It is the sixtieth year, say the Makers, since Spiral Palms first dictated the Script to them. Sixty years- The years a lensling needs to spread to its full height. The age of an elder among the other peoples. The number of stonemen in the largest herd. The first number to be made from halves, thirds, quarters, fifths and sixths. On this day, in the early spring of the north, the Urtelem mark that first gift, and with it mark the new year.
In forests and shores, plateaus and tundras, the decade-long winding migrations of stone folk are winding down, converging into a mere handful of places. These places are not random. They have been whispered of on the slates of the lens groves for many seasons. Herds have come and gone before this day, preparing them. They are the sites of old lenslings and grand henges, with broad open spaces and running water, and gravel in abundance, quarried from the surrounding regions so as not to strip the land. Sonorous slabs have been arranged into huge lithophones, their slate keys awaiting players.
Here the Urtelem are coming together, and they are coming to celebrate.
Days in advance the herds arrive. They pull stout wagons and wear ropes, carrying ores, bloodstone and obsidian, marble and malachite, a glittering, iridescent feast. These they arrange around the Holy Stones, awaiting the day. Stars and moons slowly spin into the position they know marks the hour.
On the eve of the new year there are hundreds of Urtelem gathered. Lenslings walk among them, and Makers have come. Herds have built bonfires simply to light the occasion, and they mingle freely. Signs flicker quickly and long. Everything thrums with anticipation.
Dawn.
Motionless. The Earthen Folk watch a sun rising, their hands curled in the mark of Spiral Palms. This is its festival. This is the day where they remember that there is something strange in the world, something grand, and it watches them still.
Then celebration begins.
Makers become Singers and primeval chords are rung from abhuman throats and too many hands. Urtelem percussionists begin to ring low lilting melodies on the arrangements of resonant metallic stones. Almost no training has been given, and none is needed. The can visualise the wider intervals of the song like a map, and their timing is perfect. The very ground moves with the heartbeat of the gathered Urtelem, their magic amplifying tremors of sound that other ears can hardly even hear.
Minerals from the surrounding lands are broken and shared hand to hand. Bales of glass curls and rivulets from the lens trees are shared, already regrowing in the shadow of the Makers' fae.
Geometric riddles of epic complexity are drawn, debated at length by dozens, solved, and left intact to be admired. Many have stories worked into them, of journeys and changing landscapes, for the Urtelem do not savour intrigue or emotional turmoil. Talented stone-twisters gather, their combined efforts crystallising white sand into perfect marble imitations of flowers, animals, one another. Others weave grass rope and garlands. A corner is set aside for discus. Pebbles skip merrily upon the lakes, and projectiles fly hundreds of paces, sometimes meeting one another in the air. Names are recited at length, often in several dialects.
Adventurers bid their families goodbye and are embraced into the arms of other herds bound for distant regions. Long-estranged wanderers meet their cousins again. Thoughts become ideas, which harden into plans. Things to build, places to go, times to meet. Maps sprout like weeds. Memories are recorded.
The matriarchs watch, and remember. There was a time when none of this was, or could be. The Urtelem have changed, and they change still. Once there were many herds. Now, there is one people.
A joyous people, carved from the same stone.
They came in the daylight, their shadows joining with those of the Ironheart ridges. Between the warm and narrow valleys, their footsteps echoed, granite on lichenous quartzen granite.
Villagers rose from their terrace-tending to see them come without walking out to greet them. The mountain hain knew Urtelem to be wiser than the sum of their stony parts, in the same way that they knew the snow leopards were guardian spirits, and the death-eye crows held hidden knowledge. Beyond this, they suspected little, though stories wandered.
It was their own herd of stonemen who uncurled to offer welcome. Invisible between the orange-grown boulders they had fed on for lifetimes without number, they walked straight through the village in single file without a moment's hesitation, striding on foot and knuckle as they do. When the two lumbering flows of stone collided at last, they butted shoulders with intimate loudness amidst a great deal of tapping and palming and waving and cheironomy.
Into the night the bass commotion continued, creeping slowly back around the round hill on which the huts themselves rested until morning found the soft scraping noises dispersed through every ledge on the far end of the little dale, mostly in clusters of fours and fives.
To their regret, the mountain hain found that none among their number had ever tried to learn the Urtelem language. They were a community that lived quietly, questioned little, and spurned the outsider, the greenskin and the fiberhead. Now their quiet kinesic conversation was almost clamorous. Would they have understood, the villagers would have seen the wealth of experience that the newcomers brought- Tales of the City where thousands of people gathered, that turned forest, marsh and meadow all into sprawling farmland. The Urtelem had mostly left that place to its other peoples. Stone-grazing and migration could not easily coexist with the farming folk.
Deaf to these stories, all the hain could do was observe.
What they saw first was the presence of the strange thing that walked with the Urtelem. It resembled something that was animal, vegetable, and mineral all at once, and yet none of these. A grinning red skull stood in its quartz skin, and the shaman announced it a thing of Jaan as soon as she laid eyes on the mysterious amalgam. It stood motionless for most of the first day, only stirring to sign with the Urtelem as they exchanged angle-riddles, as they often did to amuse themselves, and to wave at the villagers, the youngest of which ran from its unnaturally brilliant endoskeleton. By nightfall the stonemen escorted it to a higher ridge, where it sat crosslegged, and soon enough began unfolding coralline branches. It attracted faeries like a fresh corpse.
Within hours of the arrival, patterns began to splay over the granite surfaces. The villagers knew they were patterns, for there was some amount of repetition to them. Some were drawn in mud or etched. The largest and finest were twisted into the rock itself, its very crystal texture realigned to form the curves. Pretty as they were, they fascinated the Urtelem, who spent hours staring at them and signing around them. A one-sided exchange was evident. A newcomer drew the lines, conversed with the indigenous herd, and then guided them as they drew similar marks. As days became months, the exchange intensified until the patterns sprawled so huge so quickly that the stonemen had to wipe clean the cliff faces to start over.
Upon the near peak, strange happenings began to occur. Along its ridges, Urtelem were hauling boulders to the place where the rainbow skeleton sat, then splitting them into narrow menhirs with a precision that the villagers only saw in their craftshain. Rippling their fingers over the pillars reshaped them subtly, sometimes over the course of weeks, marking edges and holes into them. At last, one by one, the stonemen erected them into a henge. At dawn the next day, the elders of both herds stood in that ring, ripples of rosy and blue-grey crystal marking their age like wrinkles, and knelt with clasped hands. Such was their concentration that shards of grit jittered erratically around them as they sanctified the shrine.
After two weeks, a hermit returned, having been cast out for many decades. No eyes gleamed in his head, and his naked exoskeleton made a hollow sound as he walked, for he was of the Accursed, the Hollow Hain who rise again. The death-eyes croaked threateningly at him as he clambered over the terraces. He was only sighted once as the oldest hain remembered him- Thereafter he was only seen on what had already been renamed Henge Ridge, with a shell as blue as a dusk sky and slowly oozing glass.
Two densely tattooed adolescents decided to go and shatter both the aberrant skeletons early in the morning under the guise of gathering spike flies to pry open stream-mussels. They came within touching distance, and, indeed, they did touch the older lensling, who slept motionless, its thighs slowly flowing to conform to the shape of the rock it sat on. As soon as the axe was raised, a stoneman uncurled behind them, and it was a slow, humiliating backwards drag to the village. After that, the mountain hain only watched as Urtelem meticulously tended to the growing lens tree, clipping it, cracking its exterior, knotting it in place with woven grass.
No animosity remained from this event. In time, as the henge was completed and the spiral-drawings became so refined that no one could tell whether the old or new herd had made them, the stonemen took interest in their exoskeletal companions.
Over the course of only a few days, the hain saw their narrowest gravel trails hewn into wider, more stable paths through the cliffs. The stream from which they drew water was dammed into a pond deep enough to bathe in. Broken terraces were reinforced. All these things Urtelem did. Some said they were being compassionate. A more perceptive few looked at how only the most colourful stones had been chosen for the dam, and quietly supposed that they were simply amusing themselves. Solving riddles the village had unwittingly posed.
One morning the mountain hain awoke to find that the ridges empty. By the communal fire pit, the risers found an unusual bouquet. It was an arrangement of crystal- Tiger-eyes, obsidian, agate, jade and jasper, washed and unguarded, all in abundance. Later in the day, the grey herd of newcomers returned to the Henge, unaccompanied. The orange lichen they had accumulated in their stay made them look almost like the Urtelem who were missing.
The community's age-long protectors had left, without a word. Their farewell had been given in other ways. From the valley they strode, on foot and knuckle, on to seek out a place and a way to share what they had learned, as their own teachers had, not so long ago.
* * * * *
The future.
It is the sixtieth year, say the Makers, since Spiral Palms first dictated the Script to them. Sixty years- The years a lensling needs to spread to its full height. The age of an elder among the other peoples. The number of stonemen in the largest herd. The first number to be made from halves, thirds, quarters, fifths and sixths. On this day, in the early spring of the north, the Urtelem mark that first gift, and with it mark the new year.
In forests and shores, plateaus and tundras, the decade-long winding migrations of stone folk are winding down, converging into a mere handful of places. These places are not random. They have been whispered of on the slates of the lens groves for many seasons. Herds have come and gone before this day, preparing them. They are the sites of old lenslings and grand henges, with broad open spaces and running water, and gravel in abundance, quarried from the surrounding regions so as not to strip the land. Sonorous slabs have been arranged into huge lithophones, their slate keys awaiting players.
Here the Urtelem are coming together, and they are coming to celebrate.
Days in advance the herds arrive. They pull stout wagons and wear ropes, carrying ores, bloodstone and obsidian, marble and malachite, a glittering, iridescent feast. These they arrange around the Holy Stones, awaiting the day. Stars and moons slowly spin into the position they know marks the hour.
On the eve of the new year there are hundreds of Urtelem gathered. Lenslings walk among them, and Makers have come. Herds have built bonfires simply to light the occasion, and they mingle freely. Signs flicker quickly and long. Everything thrums with anticipation.
Dawn.
Motionless. The Earthen Folk watch a sun rising, their hands curled in the mark of Spiral Palms. This is its festival. This is the day where they remember that there is something strange in the world, something grand, and it watches them still.
Then celebration begins.
Makers become Singers and primeval chords are rung from abhuman throats and too many hands. Urtelem percussionists begin to ring low lilting melodies on the arrangements of resonant metallic stones. Almost no training has been given, and none is needed. The can visualise the wider intervals of the song like a map, and their timing is perfect. The very ground moves with the heartbeat of the gathered Urtelem, their magic amplifying tremors of sound that other ears can hardly even hear.
Minerals from the surrounding lands are broken and shared hand to hand. Bales of glass curls and rivulets from the lens trees are shared, already regrowing in the shadow of the Makers' fae.
Geometric riddles of epic complexity are drawn, debated at length by dozens, solved, and left intact to be admired. Many have stories worked into them, of journeys and changing landscapes, for the Urtelem do not savour intrigue or emotional turmoil. Talented stone-twisters gather, their combined efforts crystallising white sand into perfect marble imitations of flowers, animals, one another. Others weave grass rope and garlands. A corner is set aside for discus. Pebbles skip merrily upon the lakes, and projectiles fly hundreds of paces, sometimes meeting one another in the air. Names are recited at length, often in several dialects.
Adventurers bid their families goodbye and are embraced into the arms of other herds bound for distant regions. Long-estranged wanderers meet their cousins again. Thoughts become ideas, which harden into plans. Things to build, places to go, times to meet. Maps sprout like weeds. Memories are recorded.
The matriarchs watch, and remember. There was a time when none of this was, or could be. The Urtelem have changed, and they change still. Once there were many herds. Now, there is one people.
A joyous people, carved from the same stone.