In the long, long ago, before the New Age dawned, when we had newly been chased under the Earth there lived a stag named Lleuad.
Lleuad’s pelt was as white as Gealach’s feathers. Some fawnlings believed that Lleuad’s coat was made of moonlight and that he had been blessed when he was born, for it shone shone so brightly that even in the dark of the Underplaces he wore no glowing paint.
Lleuad was a shaman and his magic was strong, and all who saw him knew in their hearts that he would become the Oracle. Fawnlings would come to Lleuad and beseech him to find them favour with the god who had so clearly blessed him - and if t
Caelan
Snorting Caelan did his best to shove forward the large log he had chosen for training. He had focused on his magic lately, but eventually realized that magic wasn’t everything, to have an able mind, you’d also need to have an able body. Starling had told him that and he assumed the nomad stag was probably right about it. He was a wise leader, even though Cae always had a bit of a hard time, what would make a fawnling decide to rather stay with a small nomad band than help the Allied Herds.
The same time, he was in no position to judge and since he knew the loyalty of Starling and his band still belonged to the Allied Herd
The world had been very still, these past years.
Here in her shaded glade in the hollow, with her son curled at her hip and her daughter draped across her shoulder, she should have been happy. She should have been in a dream of love and delight to have her children, her beloved ones, so close at hand, so safe, so secure… but now, there was nothing to fear. Nothing to hide from. No breath of wind to catch a leaf, no bolt of lightning to set a heart aflame...
Before, all about her had been in motion. Her daughter, the wind, the storm, the herds - all moving, all in turmoil, all tossed and turned and tumbled about by the hurricane. There
Roxanne
Time had been passing strangely since they had arrived back at the Hollow.
It seemed that the world was somehow frozen, holding its breath for Tzilan’s inevitable return from wherever he had run to that awful night; and yet things continued as though he was not gone. The day they had arrived, she had stood with the other Stormbringers on the rocky slopes of Sorghum, guarding against the storms that might come. The life he had left growing in her belly still grew, still made her quiver with apprehension and excitement. It were as though this was a strange dream - that she had never been woken by the explosive crash of thunder, a
Her heat was early, dammit. It was barely the first day of Autumn and they weren’t quite over the mountains on the way back from Westhaven, and here it was. And, of course, it was raining.
A day ago, Ro would have welcomed the cooling drops, but now as they fell each one angered her more. She was stressed and now she was soaking - and it didn’t even have the decency to be a real thunderstorm! The rain was just persistent, the kind of rain that can keep going all day and all night, and right on through the next day as well. It didn’t matter that the drops were small and that there wasn’t much wind to blow them about - t
Roxanne hadn’t believed what she’d seen. She’d asked her daughter to show her again, and she still hadn’t believed it.
Perhaps the strange way her hair was falling - though rising might have been a better word for it - should have made her think more. For some reason the Thunderhead had put it down to her daughter growing older. She recalled having an unruly mane at that age - though it’d be fair to say she didn’t recall having tail hair that went up instead of down.
“Shall I move some more things, Momma?” Illy asked.
There was a wobble of uncertainty in the sooty filly’s voice now, and Ro
The migration was about to begin.
It was strange, it was the first time it had happened for the new Allied Herds, going from Gumtree Hollow out to the summer grazing of Westhaven. Before, last Spring, they had already been at Westhaven, Gumtree Hollow too broken and battered after the great battle to be occupied to the end of the winter. Now, they had spent the Autumn and Winter in sheltered, quiet groves, the Stormbringers standing above them on the peak and protecting them from the storms.
Tzilan had stood with the Stormbringers. What else could he have done? To have a fawnling some saw as a storm incarnate not standing with them against
Life was better now.
Of course it was, it had to be, didn’t it? The war was over, the children were safe… some of the children were safe. The bodies; she would never forget the bodies, nobody who saw them could ever forget the bodies: battered and broken by hooves, burnt and blackened by the fire. Bodies broken by fawnlings she now had to rely on to protect her, to protect her family.
She understood why it had to be this way. They could not divide the island more than it had already been divided; they had to grant the cooling breeze of forgiveness. All the same…
At least the Stormbringers had not been involved in that hor