The village was built to a scale never meant to accommodate a change-eater, in an environment foreign to her preconceived ideas of nesting. Nevertheless it was obvious from many miles away what Whisper was approaching: A place to roost, a place to live and raise young. A home.
The huts clustered like gaian coral, varied in size and somewhat in shape, too, and still clearly all of a kind. They were built of clay and sticks, but well, tidy domes and cones of arid brown. Acacias shaded the village and its surroundings, and a river quietly journeyed nearby, where fishing boats and crocodiles alike lazed on a sun-warm bank and waited for the night.
There were more houses than there were hain, for though this place was one of fishing and baobab fruits, the lands around belonged to the human herders of cattle and goat, and it was custom in this land to give shelter to wanderers; even if they are tall, and arrive with their children and children's children, and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and four hundred head of cattle beside. So this place was well-travelled among the Golden Barrens; Indeed, there was even a road, of sorts, to the glass grove where the people of all these tribes brought their dead if they could not rest.
This road had been worn by the feet and knuckles of the earthen folk, who were also among the wanderers of this land, and when the giant being of once-gaudy bubbles and far-too-colourful eyes arrived like a bark painting made real, it was the slumbering tribe of Urtelem that assured the hain not to run. Instead they hid in their huts and looked on uneasily, for though a storm means no harm it is no less frightening for its power, and the eyes of the stone men do not open at the passage of leopards and mambas, who mean no harm and yet are no less dangerous to the likes of visiting humans.
Whisper knew why she was received as she was, for the history of the gods had been taught her long ago and she remembered well why hain do not stare long at the light of the Woven Moon, and exile those who turn their face from family for the sake of toys and bruises. How much more so would they shy away from a living weapon, a hunter larger than any elephant or djinni they had yet seen?
So she was patient, and did not stray too close to the little town but stayed at its edge, much like, had she only known it, a certain king had done in a different place and a different time not so long ago. And she did not stay in her resting form, nor condense to the war-stance of the Fourfold Fish, nor dissolve into smoke, but pulled herself with great skill into the shape of a Galbaric mortal.
It was not a perfect imitation, or even a passing one. Nothing could hide her size, nor her colour, though stretching herself into limbs agitated the dripping flow of darkness in her body. Her flesh remained a collection of vessels and bladders of fluid, with two stilted legs, two trailing arms, a slouched back and an oversized head-bulge with five huge circular eyes. She might have been a hain or a human or an urt, or a baboon, even- She was a painting, a symbol, far removed from physical reality. But it was all she could do and it strained her. Entropites are not shapeshifters by choice but by instinct, and poor mimics. Each set of stances is unique to its owner. It would take a lifetime with mortals to truly be at ease walking among them, and surely no change-eater had ever lead such a strange life.
Whisper stood there as midday came and went and her body began to drink sunlight and air, aching for sustenance other than the raw energy of Jvan's curse. And she did not wait in vain.
For the Second Hatching is strong, and its children are many. When the cruel spirits came and struck out at them for following the ancient ways, the hain did not yield, for no being can destroy a culture by threat alone. Yes they hid away in pits disguised as porcupine burrows and in the reeds where crocodiles watched, but there was no more shame in this than there had always been, and the wilderness had always been on their side, in its way. No, if anything, a strange breed of sympathy came over them in the wake of Basheer's passing. For what was more monstrous, in the end- Their childhood fears, or those that demanded they retain them for selfish cause?
First an elder, who feared little from death, leaning on a staff as she went to wake the stone matriarch. Two heads are ever better than one, and oftentimes an urt's is quicker than a hain's. Together they greeted the stranger, and offered her shelter, as was custom in these parts. And they conversed.
Whisper spoke in the Fae Tongue, and signed it, too, her gestures as bizarre as her voice. She said she had come to seek wisdom, and to hear the voices of all the world. With patience and curiosity she listened to the story of the tribe, and inscribed every word upon her heart.
Then others came, and Whisper greeted all who would come, bidding them to speak, so that she may hear.
Vec
Timemaster
