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Her brother rammed her head against the tree so hard the thing threatened to crumple.

"Out!" he bellowed, clawing at her mouth.

She clamped it shut and beat at his face with a child's fists.

Her brother threw her to the dirt and pinned her down by pressing a heavy forearm across the fine bones of her collar. His voice was the thing of thunderclaps. In that moment, he was Ogel the Mighty again, great hunter of their nameless tribe, and he was sobbing. "Where did you get it? Out!"

He would never raise a fist to strike her. Even as Qaram clawed silently at his arms and kicked at the hard bone of his hip, even as the new panic of seeing her brother angered poisoned her, she knew it would never come to that. Ever.

His tears fell on her pursed lips. One rolled into her nostril but she kept her jaw shut, a walnut hidden under her tongue.
 
"Please," her brother said, his voice gone now, his braided hair hanging about his head like the limbs of a burning willow. "Qaram, please, my child."

He pleaded with great pain splitting up his words, even as he reached for the stone knife in his belt. 

"Don't make me do it, I beg you. You are courting with the forces belonging to gods. Do not make me, Qaram."
 
Qaram looked up at him. Her tongue came alive and soaked up her fear. She stopped clawing and kicking, simply stopped, and the fractals in her eyes glowed dimly for the first time.

In the end, her brother's knife cut open the flesh of her cheek, in vain. Her teeth were clamped shut and all the while the crude stone burned through the side of her face, she patted her brother’s ribs in a weak imitation of comfort, as he tried to cut out her tongue.
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There was war in the village. Well, not war exactly. Where were the tents? The embankments? The scouts and the cooks and the stories to waste away the night watch? No, let us say it like this. There would be a bloodless slaughter in the village, though not the sort to get worked up about.

Qaram walked -- is walking, shall walk. Time and sight became such arbitrary concepts to her. As far as she was concerned, Qaram walked up the main thoroughfare of the hodgepodge of tents and shacks the village offered as shelter. She was not too concerned about the wide, empty square in front of her, where she would walk, or the stones pressing against her soft-soled shoes, where she walked. Her gaze was set forward but her hearing was trained to the barking of her company behind her. They broke down doors, dragged screaming families into the street.

Ogel was not a Wassa, a wicked name in which her parents cursed her with, meaning siren. He walked beside his sister but he looked back often, and each time he turned back to face forward, his shoulders were heavier and the muscles in his face loosened a little more.

“Child, this is not how you treat your people."

The bloody tip of Qaram's spear caught the midmorning light that beamed between two trees. She signed with her left hand. [i]I would never treat my people like this.[/i]

"That is not the words of a Chief, child."

[i]I am not their chief, yet. Hold your silence.[/i]

Ogel's mouth worked silently inside the woolly mass of his beard. The spike on the butt of his stone axe cut divets in the dirt every time he slammed it down in time to his steps. Qaram could smell the anger in him, a sharp thing like blood in the air, and she knew that if not for his great love, her brother would have cut her down with one blow right there. That was really the only difference between them.

Qaram had decided her name would mean darkness. In her mind, darkness was as sacred as silence. It is a void to fill with your dreams and terrors, it is a place of reflection where the silence spoke back. As such, when she had prayed, it was in silence  and the night was more sacred than the day. But when the void had been filled, it had to be purged for a river filled to the brim with water was only useful until it rained again. That is the problem with Wassa. She filled the void and then continued to pour into it, unable to purge. When it overflows, pray it is with good reflections. Pray it is not overflowing with envy, with rage, with murder. That makes all the difference.
 
...because Qaram could kill even the thing she loved most fiercely if it was responsible for a single drop in her flooded banks.

She blinked. Now she stood at the end of the thoroughfare, facing back at it. There were dozens of panicked villagers huddled together along the path. When Qaram looked at them, the hues of their dull furs and tunics blended together in oily swirls of hide. Their eyes were frightened brown studs in a sea of blurred faces and only the way they shiver separated them from the warriors at the flanks.

But their voices...

There were more than fifty but less than seventy. Each ragged breath stood out boldly. There are flashes of individual lives in each: a seasoned runner at the end of his -- her? -- her prime years, a sugar-spoiled child, an old hunter. The families of the village. They have no faces, but she heard each one.

"People," said Ogel, holding up his free hand. "Please, listen!"
 
The chaos only swelled at that, and the individual voices became a hateful, fifty, ten. One.

Qaram pushed the walnut to the underside of her tongue. "Silence."

The wind is silent, but when it is emboldened it howls. The ocean is silent, but when spurred it roars. The most serene mountain makes thunder when it crumbles. But when Qaram spoke that one, sacred word, the world obeyed.
 
When Qaram spoke that holy word, no sound came out of her mouth. The truth of it simply manifested. Mouths moved, bodies shuffled, people jostled, but there was no sound anywhere on the path. The people grew frightened at that and their panic doubled, then the madness struck them. Several went down to their knees, clutching their ears as the rush of their own blood suddenly became deafening. Others swallowed great gulps of air and clawed at their chests, where hearts pulsed with claps of thunder. It was a passing madness, and soon it would fade and simply leave them all frightened and weary. While she waited, Qaram let her attention drift.
 
[i]Will you translate for me?[/i] Qaram signed to her brother. 

A tentative nod.

Having granted permission to Ogel, Qaram leaned on her spear as she faced the villagers. Ordering silence had banked the fire in her eyes and left her drained, but her voice was still soaked with power, and the walnut in her mouth was close to burning with the effort of containing the simple huff of her breathing. In this state, a cough could have killed hundreds. She raised her left hand and Ogel spoke in a whisper.
 
"Citizens. Do you know who I am?"

Some opened their mouths then closed them again, brows creased. 

"Nod if so."

They all did, a blur of bobbing heads. A lie.

“Know that I have not come as a reaper, but as an executioner. Who is the most senior among you?"

There was much head swivelling. With her power slightly dimmed, Qaram could focus enough to pick out the face of the middle-aged man and woman who stepped forward from the crowd. 

They both stepped forward and Qaram frowned. Bare feet poked out of their tunics. They had been dragged out in the middle of prayer.

Qaram exhaled in her direction, a breeze cutting mist, and the couple’s heartbeats gave the midmorning air a pulse. She signed again and Ogel whispered.

"Who are you?"

“Atal.” one said. “Amari.” said the other. 

“Please do not harm us.” the man called Atal cried, the chief. “I beg you, for all the grace in your father's name do not--“

Qaram grabbed Atal’s hand and squeezed like an iron vice until she felt knuckle bones shift. Atal's scream knocked every other person on the path to their knees, clutching ears, some with blood between their fingers. Tears pearled in Atal's eyes. Qaram's own had a sheen of anger brighter than flame.
 
[i]My father's name is not yours to invoke,[/i] Qaram signed and Ogel translated, nearly choking on his own words. 

Atal nodded, breathing rapidly through his mouth.

“It was you Elder, who called your hunters to arms and chased my people out of the heartlands. It is you who stand upon the grave of my father and build up like a tree with deep roots leeching off the corpse of my mother.”
 
Atal had shuffled away from Qaram now, long since being let free and sought refuge in the arms of his beloved. 

[i]I will not kill you,[/i] she signed with her left hand. [i]You only inherited the nature of the gods, as have we all . But you must live with your sins.[/i]
 
They both visibly relaxed. Inside, Ogel's heart broke, because he knew his sister.

[color=DodgerBlue]"Flesh of Atal, flesh of Amari”,[/color] Qaram said. [color=DodgerBlue]"Painlessly so you will never know: live as the sea when together. Live as the air when apart. Forever."[/color]

Amari's face changed first. She winced as her body lurched as though taken by hiccups. Then she frowned, and her frown deepened, then her lips started to turn blue. Atal's eyes bulged as he put his long fingers to his throat. Amari's arms tightened around her beloved as both their legs began to tremble, and the veins in their faces stood out like angry blue worms. Ogel knew the signs of suffocation, but he could not even move his mouth to scream.When Amari's head started to loll and the focus went out of her eyes, Qaram stepped forward. She planted a heel on the side of Atal's head and kicked him a few steps away.

As soon as he hit the floor, he sucked in a big gasp of air and hugged his chest as breath came back into his body. A few feet away, Amari did the same.
 
[i]You have often found comfort in each other's arms. Now you must know what it is like to always have that comfort just beyond your reach,[/i] Qaram signed. Ogel's nostrils filled with the stench of char and ash and cooking blood. [i]When your bodies touch, your minds will tell you that you are deep underwater. You will drown even when there is air around you, even when all others around you are breathing. That is my curse for you. Thank you for mine.[/i]

Qaram rubbed Atal’s hair while he was still gasping on the floor, then she stood, and stared at Ogel, her eyes rivers of fire. The scar on her lip twitched. If Ogel were a mountain, he would have crumbled then.

The entire village was silent. 

In one swift motion, Qarum whispered into her spear and tossed it into the opposite direction. It rode the wind like an eagle and disappeared into the horizon. 

[i]Gather the people.[/i] she signed. [i]Where the spear lands, we will settle. None will bare my name upon the blood of their ancestors.”[/i]

[i]Oh, Qaram. What god did I so sorely offend, that they made me incapable of turning you away from this path.[/i]

“As you wish, Chieftess.”

[hider=Summary]
Long ago Qaram’s brother tried to cut her tongue out, fearing her uncontrolled power. To present time, they occupy the raider village, and find the chief. The chief and his wife organized the raid on her own village. In response she flexes her sick power and then curses them eternally instead of killing them. Then she chucks her spear like a boss and says where it lands, that is where she will settle and lead the village as she said. 
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