[piosenniel]

Aylwen's post:

“It hasn’t rained in four months,” Jasara’s grandmother spoke, from behind the tent’s curtain. A young Jasara lay scrunched up, under warm sheets that protected her from the night’s deathly chill. The memory was so real; Jasara felt she could almost touch the silky curtain that separated the areas of the tent.

“It will rain in two days. It will flood, or almost,” little Jasara whispered, repeating what something inside the girl had told her. Quick as lightning the curtain flew back, and her father’s worry-wrinkled face was visible.

“What did you say?” Her father grumbled, and the younger Jasara repeated the prediction. Her father dismissed the crazy ramblings of his tiny daughter, and returned to his meeting with the most important leaders of their large nomadic tribe.

Suddenly, Jasara woke from her dream, sweating. The sky was above her, and in the sleep-bag next to hers belonged to her ‘second-in-command’. All around her laying strewn about the short grasslands were the younger members of the nomadic tribe. They had long ago refused to use tents, justifying that they would rather ‘be eaten by the hungry beasts of the Eye than sleep in the way of the elders’.

Jasara remembered the outcome of her memory. The children of the tribe praised her and worshipped her like she was some deity when the rain came two days later. The leaders of the tribe dismissed the prophecy as though Jasara had never spoken up that night. Jasara would not forget that time; the time she had first seen the Eye in her dreams. It had a voice, this lidless eye did, and it haunted her. Whispering to Jasara in her dreams, it would tell her things…things that Jasara would not know any other way. Jasara told no one what haunted her so many nights and days.

The tribe was split in two. The children and the young adults of the wandering barbarians rarely listened to the pride-stricken elders. It had brought fury to the minds of the younger generation that the wisest of their kin would not believe a vision when it hit them in the face. They all thought it was because they were the young, the hopeless, and the stupid. All the young despised the elders, who believed that the young were so stupid that they’d need to be protected forever.

Jasara had become the appointed leader of the Young, and they worshipped Jasara and her ideas…or at least the ideas she conveyed. The girl had become their leader. Jasara did not return to sleep, and sat to watch the sun rise.

“Something wrong, Jasara? We can sleep for almost an hour still,” A boy nearby spoke raptly, and rolled over in his sleep-bag.

“Nothing is wrong. I just can’t sleep.” Jasara got up from under her blankets and pulled on the boots she had stolen from one of the old warriors, who had died shortly after the theft. Jasara rolled up her sleep-pack, and carried it with her as she walked towards the nearby creek. The short, dry grass crunched under her feet as she neared the creek.

Another day begins, I see. A hoarse, deathly whisper sounded in Jasara’s mind. Jasara nodded grimly, and went on to wash her face in the cool, clear stream.

[ June 05, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]