[h3]Our Mother the Mountains…[/h3]
[i]Part I, Walk these hills lightly...

18th of Sun’s Height
Druadach Mountains…[/i]

He couldn’t tell for how long he’d been walking. Only that he’d felt weaker and weaker as he went on. He didn’t bother counting the hours, but another rumble from his belly and the cramps almost brought him to his knees, like a fist twisting in his guts. He didn’t deserve food, he thought. Only punishment, with no hope of atoning. Such concepts were not for Finnen Pale-Feather, the boy that had forswore his own tribe and now had hurt his only family left in the world.

After he’d realized what he’d done, Sevari’s rifle barrel yawning open in his face and ready to take him from this world, after he’d wandered alone for however long he was, he wondered if he should’ve just let the man squeeze the trigger. Perhaps that was what he deserved. But he chose a lonely escape to the trees and hills and rocks of the Reach. A poetic thing. Born here, alone. He would now die here, alone. He crouched down on the game trail and hung his head low, hands covering his face as if there was anyone else around to hide his sobs from.

Choking cries that shook him from shoulders to haunches, wet hiccups to no one. He stayed like that until it was over, heaving in one breath and letting it out ragged on the mountain air. He looked around himself, as if expecting someone to be staring yet only heard birdsong and the wind rustling the trees. No one. He sniffled, wiping a forearm over his eyes. He pressed one nostril closed with a thumb and blew the snot out the other, shaking his head as if the sorrow was only tangled in his hair to be shook away, and not twisted around his heart like thorny vines.

He looked back from where he’d come, looked in the direction of where he was going and saw no difference. Sighing, he continued on, deeper into the mountains. A lonely path, a lonely man. His careful footsteps did not disturb anything in the forest. Birdsong and wind accompanied his thoughts like an undercurrent, tickling through his long raven hair. He stopped for a bit, rested his back against a young tree and his eyes scanned the trees. Finding nothing, they went to his hands and forearms. The thin cuts of Sora’s claws, deep and open. The blood was still smeared in places and only recently dried. A lone crow’s caw took his eyes from himself and back to the trees, grating and nasally like a crone’s cough.

A lone crow perched itself on a branch, and its gaze did not leave his own. Not once. Finnen remembered what his mother had taught him of the Crow-Wife traditions of crow counting as omens. A lone crow was an omen of bad luck. An understatement, Finnen thought. “You’re late.” Finnen chuckled ruefully. He remembered that crows too were not only omens, but the eyes of the first Witch-Mother of the Crow-Wives. Watching and waiting, for reasons unknown. “Keep your watch then, Crone.”

The crow did not answer. They stood staring at each other until his smirk faded back to nothing. He was the first to break the stare and walk on...

[hr]

He walked on until the path took him to a break in the trees, a sheer cliff at his toes. The valleys were laid out before him like a painting, or more like something to be painted. His eyes scanned the low river valleys and the high peaks. A hawk circled down below and a flock of birds took flight from their perches in the trees. He took another step towards the edge. He could hear the ground shift as pebbles bounced down the cliff, their percussive fall like children’s laughter beckoning to come follow.

He swallowed, closed his eyes. His ears perked up, hearing the keening winds buffet the treetops and the sound of a far off river feeding into or trickling away from the Great River Karth. He was starting to lose balance, swaying with the winds and the pebbles fell again. He lifted the weight from one foot to step on the air and nothingness in front of him before he heard the sharp call of the crow again.

He faltered, stumbled. His foot came down, heel knocking into the loose dirt at the edge of the cliff and his breath caught as he plunged downwards. He found a strong root that his fingers clutched onto and immediately his grip tightened, the strength in them the strength to live. He dangled by one arm and looked down, the ground below nowhere near a safe distance to drop. That was the point, but not anymore. Not anymore, he thought, his mind racing with all the reasons not to.

He swung his other arm onto the root and hauled himself up, clamoring and smacking at the dirt, desperate clawing back to safety. He lay there, breath heaving and arms burning. The crow called again and he opened his eyes to it. Two crows. 

A death omen.

Something in Finnen made him smile. Then chuckle, and suddenly he was laughing. He laughed at them, “Wrong.” He giggled, the victory of living, “Wrong, wrong!”

The laughing turned darker, and each laugh bit deep in him and tore at the things he’d done for death. The victory of living while others were left with the opposite. “Wrong!” He screamed, and the laughs turned to sobs as he got to his knees. He’d almost killed Sora. He’d done a lot of horrible things, taken lives aplenty with zeal and pleasure, but Sora’s? Was he truly just a killer, made only for making dead men like his father had made him for?

Maybe. Maybe… “Wrong!” The crows did not leave him be, cawing at him now that his laughs were no more, cawing like they were the ones with reason to laugh. “Wrong!”

He grabbed up a fallen branch and tossed it like a javelin at the crows. It sailed just past them but yet they did not leave. Only stood in silence now as if they felt disrespect. Finnen stood before them, chest and shoulders rising and falling with his haggard breath. “Wrong.” He whimpered.

He turned away from them and walked on…