[center][h1][b][color=black]❚█══[/color][color=red]Tribxor[/color][color=black]══█❚[/color][/b][/h1][/center]



Tribxor watched the deity vanish into the sky, the last traces of Alechior’s presence fading fog. The group of mortals around him blinked up at the empty air, already forgetting the shape they had just witnessed but not the strange feeling it left behind. Tribxor felt it more sharply than the rest, a pressure in his chest that wasn’t fear or hunger, something like knowing he had been given a task. 

He looked at the others as they poked at the grass and wandered aimlessly and something inside him got triggered, an understanding that their safety was his burden now.

Tribxor glanced at the ooga-booga mortals who now stared at him with half-curious, half-confused eyes, and began to move among them. He guided them with simple gestures, gentle nudges, a presence that kept the wandering ones from straying too far. The Happy Flowers hummed around them, keeping every spark of anger harmless. 

Tribxor didn’t know what leading meant, not yet, but he knew he was supposed to keep them together. And as he watched them shuffle and grunt and follow his path, a thought began forming in his mind, small but persistent. There had to be a way to do this better.

Tribxor stood still for a long moment. Thinking and thinking. There had to be a way to do this better.

Keeping everyone bunched up was good, sure, but it wasn’t enough. They wandered, they drifted, they forgot where the others were unless he physically herded them back. He didn’t know the word for pattern, not yet, but the concept started clicking into place. The others needed something to follow, something to copy, something they could understand without him pushing them every five seconds. He scanned the grass around them, then the scattered stones, then the trees. Shapes. Things that stayed put, that didn't move too far.

He moved to a clearing and began arranging stones in a circle, obvious enough for barely thinking minds to notice. A place to gather. When a couple of the mortals wandered too far, he guided them back to the circle, tapped the stones, repeated the motion until they blinked and understood just enough to linger. Then he took the fallen branches nearby and broke them, setting them in lines pointing toward the nearest green patch of edible plants. He didn’t have words for “road” or “direction,” but he had hands and enough intelligence. 

The others imitated him clumsily, dragging sticks and piling rocks in ways that were wrong but close enough. Tribxor felt something loosen in his chest. They could copy. They could learn. They just needed shapes to follow.

But then something happened. Something that'd prove quite problematic. The sky darkened.

Tribxor didn’t know what the sky was doing, only that something was wrong. The air changed, it got cold, and the ooga-boogas began to whine and fidget. A drop hit his cheek and he flinched, swiping at it like it was an insect. More drops followed, then more, until the whole sky felt like it was spitting on them. The others panicked immediately. Half of them tried to swat at the falling water. One fell over while looking straight up. Another started trying to fight the sky with his fists. Tribxor had no idea what this strange falling stuff meant, but every instinct screamed that being out in the open was a bad idea.

So he looked to the ones who did understand. A bird darted into a bush, vanishing into the leaves. A fat creature waddled under a bent tree root and huddled. Tribxor didn’t know why they hid, but hiding felt smart. He imitated them. 

He guided the mortals toward the thickest tree trunks, nudging them beneath the roots where the ground formed natural hollows. He pointed to a creature sheltering under a rock, then pushed a confused mortal beneath a similar one. He grabbed broad leaves and placed them gently over their heads, showing them to crouch low so the strange falling water hit the leaf instead of their faces.

And slowly, the frightened group followed his lead, tucking themselves into the natural shelter the land offered, trembling but safe from the sky’s sudden temper.

It looked like being a tribe leader, even if he didn't know that he was one yet, wouldn't be easy for Tribxor.