“The stop’s ahead!” The voice of mister Harris, who was usually leading the caravan, sounded. It was quickly followed by a collective groan of relief by the tired people, they had been going pretty hard today.
A year had passed slowly.The big colourful carts of their caravan had seemed to crawl through the forests, plains, and mountain passes. Their caravan like many others followed the old paths, the paths that the Readers had laid down very many lifetimes ago. There was a problem with traditions like theirs Renni often observed. Namely they were not very adaptable. The Readers that had first established the paths had planned routes that both followed the constellations as their faith dictated and that passed through many towns, villages, and hamlets where their caravans could stop, trade, and resupply at. This meant that the Readers were not the only traders that used the paths. But with the changing times hamlets shrank or disappeared, while others appeared in different places, and by Renni’s time the paths had long fallen to disrepair, and completing one of the simpler cycles took an entire year. The older folk often said that years seemed longer for the young but at twelve years old Renni really did not feel all that young. Still she anxiously waited for their group to return to a particular resting place of the cycle they had followed the last few years.
So far she hadn’t told anyone the reason why she was in such a hurry to get to this place. It was not easy after all to explain that she wanted to talk to a tree. She did know for a fact, that the huge tree she had found a year ago had moved to help her, and she was pretty sure that it had talked to her somehow, not in words so much but the wind, and birdsong, and light of the clearing had somehow seemed meaningful for a few moments.
“Renni! Come to the back, I have a task for you.” Anne’s voice, somehow melodious even when shouting, pulled Renni from her thoughts. She smiled to her Da who was sitting next to her holding the reins, guiding the white peshmies that pulled their cart and when he nodded to her, his lips also curving in a smile underneath a greying twirled moustache and not quite shaved beard, she hopped off of the driver’s seat.
“Coming!” she waited as the wagon passed her by, it was bright blue and the doors, wheels, and details were a deep maroon making it the prettiest of the two dozen or so wagons that made the long slow line, at least Renni thought so.
The maroon door was open making the surprisingly large, almost unnaturally large, interior of the cart visible. Standing in the doorway and holding a large basket on one hand and a walking stick on the other was Renni’s sister Anne. She didn’t really look much like Renni, they both had the light brown hair typical of Readers but Anne’s nose was a little hooked, where Renni’s was small and a little pointy, her cheeks on the other hand were sharper than Renni’s rounded features and most obviously while Renni’s eyes were a blue streaked with pink, Anne had eyes of a beautiful deep bronze with bright golden flecks
“Remember those blueberries you found around here last time?” Renni flushed a little at that before she nodded. She had never mentioned exactly where she had found them, Bran had been very angry, but thankfully the older boy, although sometimes cruel, was not one to hold a grudge.
Anne went on talking “I want you to find some more while we make camp if you can, Sam and Troy Green really liked them. Besides, I think giving you tasks that you enjoy is the only way you will actually do anything before nightfall.”
“That’s not true! I helped da more than you did last time!” Anne could be really unfair.
“Just do it, ok? We will be here for a while, so there’s lots to do.”
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Not wanting to argue for fear of her da hearing Renni silently took the basket and her walking stick, the stick was unusual in that it was not worked wood but rather a somewhat straight branch with all the smaller sticks and leaves removed. It was actually a little taller than Renni and she’d tied blue, green, and grey ribbons to it to make it prettier.
Renni jumped off of the cart again but couldn’t resist poking her tongue out at Anne before she turned and started running into the calm early summer woods.
-
The everpresent fog in his mind seemed to thin and waver. The forest was brightening and coming alive once more, and where light fell, shadows were born.
-
Renni was once again walking the trails near Redstone-stop. The woods seemed brighter this year, more alive somehow, the colours more intense, then again it could just as easily be a trick of Renni’s mind, she was not being hunted this time after all.
Naturally she didn’t know where exactly the blueberries had come from, but she reckoned that it wouldn’t take too long to find a few, Bran had found some after all and she was twice as smart and thrice as pretty, so she walked in a sort of twisty pattern intend on ending up near her “friend” after she’d found what she was looking for.
Within forty minutes Renni happened upon a thick bush in the shadow of a large oak tree, it actually looked a little like her friend with its thick trunk and myriad branches.
As Renni started picking some of the berries, she pulled on one of the branches a little harder than necessary, and when she let go the entire bush stirred as the plant returned to its original shape, a thousand small white lights appeared as if startled by the motion. Renni flinched and instinctively covered her face as the lights rushed past her. After the initial shock she giggled and turned around watching the group of everlights go, throwing light and creating dancing shadows as they flew between branches and leaves and around trees. The soft buzz of their insectile wings died quickly as it came, as the everlights hurried to find a new hiding spot until nightfall. “Sorry for scaring you!” Renni yelled before she turned back to her task.
-
The sting of winter had barely left when I woke up once more. What was it that stirred me? I remembered that I had wanted to wake up to talk to that little human “Renni” but she wasn’t here yet so why did I wake?
I pushed myself to think harder, to truly wake and enter the world of the walkers. It was not an easy task, outside of a short conversation with Renni I did not think I had truly had to wake in a long time. I tried to count the years as a mental exercise but it was futile. My younger friends around me seemed curious but I ignored them for now, none of them were able to hasten their thoughts like me so by the time they were able to express their curiosity I would more likely than not be back beside them.
I sensed around myself through the clearing and then a little further looking for the thing that woke me. A group of everlights was rushing through the trees nearby, a small rodent was biting on my roots, and.. there! Just out of sight of my clearing Renni was walking a trail. I could not understand how she could possibly have alerted me from that far away, maybe the everlights woke me as she happened to be walking by? That would be lucky indeed, even though I had started the process a year earlier I probably would not have stirred unless the glowing insects had been particularly annoying.
As the girl neared I decided to prepare myself for a prolonged period of wakefulness. It was a strange feeling after so long, it was already tiring but in a good way, the further I climbed out of the quiet and peace of sleep the more curious I got about what all the walkers, and flyers, and crawlers had been doing while I was not paying attention. I was particularly interested in learning of the nearby humans, they were usually the ones to wake me every so often and keep me aware, but it seemed they were gone or had forgotten about me. Hastor and Helen were the last people to talk to me, others referred to as the twins, but obviously a long time had passed. I hoped they were still close, it was hard to recall details from so long ago but I liked them, they were polite.