Chapter Text
Transforming What Home Is
Chapter 1 - Two Months in a Tent
“Come on, come on… how long’s it been already…”
The sunset’s grown a bit darker since you lowered your net in the stream, and you still haven’t gotten a catch. On a normal day, someone else could sigh about you not doing your part but hand you a salmon anyways, but the last “normal day” was two months ago.
“Alright, I know you’re out there somewhere… just c’mere and make this easier…”
You don’t want the water to make your boots soggy, or else they’ll have to sit by the fire you’d started and leave your feet bare for a bit, so you get on your stomach and elbows to try to reach the net out farther. It’s crude and hadn’t been built with the idea of using it every night, but it hasn’t let you down yet. Eventually, it’s gotta…
“Ah! There you are!”
The familiar twitch in the net. Your night’s saved!
“Lemme get a good look at ya now…”
Bringing the net out of the water, there’s indeed a salmon, flailing and unable to escape. The first of the salmon traveling to spawn a couple weeks ago made things much easier than having to search for berries and edible plants that wouldn’t take you too far from your little base. Your headache from the lack of protein has mostly gone away.
“This won’t take long. Thankful you’re here to keep me fed.”
Taking the long stick with two pointed ends, you wrap the salmon’s mouth around one side and impale it, bringing it to a quick end. All that’s left is to carefully set the stick on some rocks you’ve set around the fire to hold it up, and your dinner’s begun cooking into something edible.
“There we go. Again, thank you.”
The salmon can’t hear you, but something makes that feel like the right thing to say.
“Alright, self, what else needs a lookover…”
You wander around your ‘base’, which just consists of the fire, a little tent made of branches, the emergency rations you’ve kept for if things ever get completely desperate, and a stone where you’ve left a scratch every morning, but everything’s where it should be. It makes you wish a bit that something wasn’t; it’d change the night up a bit.
“...Well, dinner’s gotta be ready soon.” Returning to the salmon, you rotate it a little to let it cook more thoroughly, and when it’s done, you take the stick and begin to gnaw at the fish once the brisk breeze has cooled it enough.
“Mmmmm… not very big, but it’ll do…”
With no one to share the salmon with, some of it will inevitably go bad, but you’ve had a superstition that if you chuck the rest back into the stream when you can’t finish it, the spirits will think kindly of you. If that isn’t the case, hopefully they aren’t accusing you of being wasteful.
“Mmmm… alright, that’s all I can do. Sorry, salmon, off to the birds with ya.” You stand up, stretch your back, and give the rest of the toasted salmon’s corpse a toss, watching it splash in the stream and get carried away by the current, made faster by the strength of the breeze. A strong gust doesn’t give you much time to dwell on the salmon, as you’re now worried it could kill the fire before it’s time to drift off, so you throw another bit of wood in to keep it roaring.
“Whew… guess it’s time to, uh…”
Time to sit down and think. It’s too dark to do any scouring, or looking for a possible way home. Talking to yourself might seem a bit silly, but it’s the best way to rationalize your ideas, and there isn’t anyone around to judge what you’re saying, anyway. The sunset soon turns to night, and your best, and only, option’s to sit near the fire with your knees close to your face, rubbing your hands by the flames.
“Hello, night number… 58, I think…”
It had been about two months since the day everything literally went downhill. You’d been returning from the warmer pocket of land you, your family, and everyone else of your people would spend winters at to return to the more robust, fruitful land for spring and summer hunting and gathering. The route seemed safe, until a need to relieve yourself came at horrible timing with a snow squall that no one had expected. As you tried to frantically return to the others, you tripped over yourself and went tumbling down a snowy hill, then another, and then another, with the landing knocking you out cold. When you’d woken up, you’d discovered that the snow remarkably kept you from destroying either of your shoulders or knees, but your lack of being awake meant you hadn’t been able to shout to the others. Unable to have any idea where you’d gone, the fifty or so of them had to keep going, and now you have no clue if or when they’ll return. It’s unclear where a path to home is, and without others to follow you, there’s no way traveling alone in these woods would be safe. Your best option’s been to stay here and keep yourself physically and mentally alive until someone possibly returns.
“...I’d like to imagine they still care, and it’s just that the travel wouldn’t be worth it. If I could somehow know one of them tried to find me and got themselves lost, it’d feel all the worst. Maybe it’s better this way for… I don’t know how long. Near wintertime, when they travel that way again?”
There’s no one you’re talking to; for a moment, you imagine you’re talking to the spirit of that salmon you’d eaten, as silly as that may be.
“C’mon, you, the land and water’s given plenty of resources. Just-”
Footsteps can be heard above the rocky hills behind you. For a moment, you wonder if someone’s come by, but the pattern can’t be human feet. No, it has to be…
“Bear”. It’s been long enough for you to learn what any animal that’s walking by sounds like, and the sound of two large feet striking the grass above at the same time, followed by two more feet, is unmistakable. It doesn’t sound like it’s on a hurry, but you can’t let the base draw any attention. There’s a bucket of water you keep full just for this reason, and gingerly grabbing it, you slowly pour the water over the fire to douse the light as secretly as possible. Once there’s no light to draw the bear your way, you hide under the tent, waiting for the steps to stop. They grow quieter, aside from some rustling that sounds like it’s stopped to grab fruit from a tree, and then the steps grow quieter still, until you’re confident it’s gone and return from the tent.
“...Whew. Well, there goes my warmth for the night.”
That stinks. On a night as windy as now, you really didn’t want to quell the fire, and it’s too dark to try to set another one up. Your nerves are too far spiked to want to sleep just yet, so you curl up again by the embers of the fire, hoping to pick up a bit of warmth from them.
“...Why do you have to be so cautious around those things, me? It- it’s the right thing to do, but they’re your spirit totem, and yet you can’t let yourself anywhere near one...”
It was a few years ago that you’d received the bear as your spirit totem at your spirit ceremony; in some ways, it feels like ten years now, and in other ways, it feels like yesterday. Today’s felt more like a ‘yesterday’ day.
“...Heh. The irony, I guess. Spirits give me this totem, and now I’m wearing something I need to stay hundreds of feet away from.”
It’s been a while since you’ve actually taken it off to look at it, not wanting to risk losing it, but there isn’t much else to do without a fire to roast your hands around. You take it off around your neck and handmade coat, looking at the little carved bear under the moonlight. Carved just for you when you turned sixteen, and meant to represent ‘love’…
“...Love…”
Ugh. Thinking deeper than you meant to. These nights never turn out fun.
“...Why’re you mocking me? I don’t feel loved right now.”
It’s about as unloved as you’ve felt; not by your people, who may have every good reason to not come rescue you yet, but unloved by fate. Surely something could’ve intervened to keep you from taking that pee break before the snow came in, or something could’ve made you not trip and fall down those hills, or something could’ve at least helped you not pass out so you could call for help while they were still nearby.
“I don’t feel loved at all. I guess you’re supposed to be a representation of my spirit, not other people’s, but… isn’t love supposed to work both ways? I’ve done everything right.” You stomp at the dirt; it feels childish right away, but it’s a natural sort of revenge on the earth for letting this happen to you.
“Can you give me a light to lead me where a safe way home is? Some better food? A better pillow? Anything?”
Part of you expects some kind of sign, like the moonlight piercing through a tree to show you a way to go to one of these things, but there’s nothing.
“How am I supposed to ‘love’ anything like this??” In a fit of anger, you ball up the necklace of the totem in your fist and throw it to your right, letting out a shout as it leaves your hand. It clunks against a rock in the dirt and bounces a couple times before stopping face down. For a few seconds, you breathe heavy, wishing this was some test in a dream, even if what you just did meant you failed it.
Soon, though, you gain your composure and realize how dumb that would’ve looked if anyone you know had seen it. It’s your spirit totem, but the totem itself is just a carving. It didn’t do this to you. It takes a bit of searching, but you find where it rolled off to, picking it up and holding it back in the moonlight.
“...Ugh. I shouldn’t have done that. There’s a chip in your snout now. I’ll get the mud off you…” You begin to push the dirt off its stomach with your thumb, revealing another tiny chip…
...As well as about the last thing you would’ve expected a totem you wear around your neck to do.
A flash of orange light comes out of the hole, pushing you onto the ground and making you let go of it. When you come to your senses and lift yourself up a bit with your elbows, you see the sky fill with an array of amazing lights, much like the place you go in winter to see the northern lights touch the earth… only these ones are surrounding you in a perfect circle.
“What. What is…”
The skies proceed to give you more questions than answers; suddenly, silhouettes of armies and families of every animal that there’s a spirit totem of come running along the lights, like they’re giving them a path to follow. They all make their respective calls, and the noise is deafening, making you cover your ears until you give up, realizing it’s not helping a thing.
When you get to your feet, you try to run, but every time you’re about to leave the circle, the colors shoot down to the ground, making a barricade and sending you back. You don’t know what would happen if you push through, but you’re not about to find out the hard way; every time you try to find a new way out, though, the colors keep making their blockade.
“What’re you doing?? If- if this is about the totem, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I… I just don’t know what I’m doing here!!”
Like everything else you’ve said since you got lost, you aren’t expecting a response, but this time, you get one.
“...Connect… connect…”
It echoes down from the center of the circle, seemingly coming from nothing. You can’t tell if everything around can hear it, if only you can hear it, or if nothing’s happening at all, and you’ve finally gone nuts and started imagining things.
“Connect?”
“Connect… you have parted too far from your spirit, and you need… an intervention.”
None of this makes any sense, and neither does the sight of some of the colors removing themselves from the corner and making the head of a dark brown bear, much like the shape of your totem. Having nowhere else to go, you slowly step closer to the bear head, not having any better idea of how to get your point across to the spirits.
“What do you mean, ‘intervention’? I just wanna go home! I wanna feel safe!”
“You will feel safe, and you will find your home. Just let love lead the way.”
The spirits then appear done with your questions. Before you can ask anything else, something lifts you off your feet, sending your hair swaying around your head. You shout in panic, not being able to stop this no matter how much you jerk your arms and legs, but soon… something keeps you from shouting more. It’s not a sense of calm, but whatever it is, you don’t feel compelled to resist. Powerless to what’s coming, you’re risen into the shape of the bear, and the sound of a bear’s roar revolves around you. Suddenly, the colors begin to swirl closer to you, like a shrinking tornado, and you’re flooded with a tingling feeling that’s too encompassing to comprehend. Your eyes close as you spin around, and feeling a warmth from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes, that warmth extends outward, your clothes rip off, everything expands, and…
ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!
If you had any energy left, you’d be asking yourself how you just made that noise, but you have nothing to give. Eyes still closed, the spirits gently lower you back to the dirt they pulled you from, and once you flop onto the ground, unable to move anything, the spirits return in a loud flash back to the totem. Nature acts as if nothing happened, and the glow of the moon returns. The change in the lights gets you to open an eye and see its bright white casting down on you… and that’s the last thing you comprehend before passing out.