The Reddening - Part II
Deaths in Moose Rock
The hex map above was generated with rules from Atelier Clandestin’s Sandbox Generator and with the Windows Paint.net freeware.
Conventions used:
? a line starting with a question mark signals we’re asking the oracle a question.
→ a right-pointing arrow indicates the oracle’s response
> a right-facing angle-bracket shows PC action
=> shows consequences/outcomes
{ It is I, the Star Spirit, speaking in Stenn’s mind. }
Italicized text without curly braces denote Stenn’s private thoughts.
The above symbols are sometimes omitted when I choose to indicate the same info in longer-form narrative.
Scene: The Reddening, Part II
IGDT: Tuesday, November 7th, 35,386 B.C.
Moose Rock
Stenn got to his feet slowly, painfully. His knee joints popped loudly. Even with the central firepit and the two charcoal fires, the frost-den was rimed with ice crystals all around its base, from ground level to a height of more than three boh-arms. Stenn’s breath plumed white with each exhale.
Surprisingly, Chief Hrowaka had survived the night of intense cold after three solid hours of Red Snow fell. Unsurprisingly, Norda — Stenn’s mother — had not.
Stenn moved gingerly to the central firepit and added another hunk of peat, then he went and checked on Jenkla. For a moment, his heart lurched within his massive chest, but then he saw that she was breathing, after all.
He had suffered considerably through the night by insisting that she wrap herself in his bearskin in addition to layers of skins she already wore. He’d slept not at all, sitting as close as he dared to the central firepit and rotating on his buttocks every half minute in order to warm another quarter of his torso. He would be lucky if he did not contract Frost Lung. If he did, perhaps Uta come minister to him.
Jenkla stirred, and Stenn turned his head to look at her. As she came up through layers of sleep and registered her external environment, Stenn saw her brow knit and her mouth form a moue in reaction to the intense cold. { It is far colder than this, outside. } The Star Spirit had been his companion since he was twelve years old and had brought home his first elk to his clan.
His mate coughed, and Stenn turned concerned toward Jenkla. { She is hale, as is the child. } Stenn arched an eyebrow at this; this was new. A child? But he felt certainty in his chest. It would prove true. The spirit was never wrong, not that Stenn had ever noticed. The knowledge of the child lit a warmth in his heart that the cold of the frost-den could not quench. Emboldened, he moved to check on the chief.
“Father…” Stenn gazed down upon the chief. He scooped up a pelt from the floor to cover the chief’s bare feet.
“No…” croaked Hrowaka.
“You will get Frost Lung,” Stenn remonstrated.
“Cover my feet if you wish. I mean ‘No, I am not your father.’”
Stenn blinked and glanced over at Jenkla, but she was heating water for tea in an animal skull used as a bowl, and didn’t seem to have heard.
?Is he right?
→ Yes, and…
{ You have never seen nor met your real father. }
=> “That may be, but you are my father in my beating heart…”
=> I must seek out the Oracle. There are mysteries here…
“Fath— Chief, Norda is dead.” Stenn’s head sagged.
“She is walking with Gray Coyote,” came the phlegmy reply.
“Yes, she is. I will prepare a place in the Wall of Grandmoth—
“The Reddening has already provided, my son…”
Stenn turned to see that it was true: even as he looked, Norda’s body continued to break down into a rusty particulate, Sand of the Departed. Jenkla followed Stenn’s gaze, then she set aside her tea, rose, and went to Norda.
For a moment, Stenn was very still and hung his head. Then he turned back to the chief. “I thought you said you are not my father?”
“Perhaps,” said Hrowaka, “but you are the son of my heart. Now come kneel beside me, that I may impart my blessing and your vision journey.”