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‘’I think you should consider something before doing anything permanent husband." Vuyo says placatingly with our recently born son yawning in her arms.

I sigh, ‘’Vuyo you more than most knows I’ve been patient with her, I’ve spoken to her about her behaviour. If she was a warrior I would have fought her just to get her head straight again. What more is there to do but cut ties between us dissolving our mate bond before witnesses?’’

‘’There is a possibility I have been hesitant to mention due to its unorthodox and well… it’s a superstition really but my people have this belief that a marriage may be bewitched.’’

‘’I learnt long ago not to underestimate the power of witchcraft and superstition, tell me.’’

‘’Well there are customs that my people follow, rituals that strengthen a person against spiritual attacks and witchcraft. I’m not sure how it works exactly but there is a witchdoctor that we could go to, I’d like us to take the children as well if you aren’t opposed to it."Vuyo says in a quietening voice.

‘’What does it entail?’’

‘’Usually there is divination then what is needed is decided after."

I look at my young strong quiet mate and study her as I like to do at times when thinking. She doesn’t like to face my eyes with her own when I stare at her so but she enjoys my eyes on her, she’s said so. Our son Alex is only hours old and with his birth my growing concern over the contentions with Kiera have only grown. Kiera is also only here on Pangaea because of me, she has no other family here besides me, she has no one to turn to besides me, and abandoning here lost like that would a sour taste in my mouth.

‘’Let’s all three of us go through it first and after I will decide whether or not the children go through it."

* *

I sit with my legs crossed before the creepy painted faced man with the bone charms and the aura of silence around himself. Vuyo sits to my left with folded legs on the grass floor mat with her head down and her hair covered in a light shroud things made of light clothe intricately tied on her head. To my right sits Kiera also scowling for having to be ‘dragged’ here to the ‘rural’ Alderman lands with their ‘primitive’ way of looking at women as lesser beings in their society... it hasn’t been a happy trip but we all managed to come here because I do not know what to do anymore.

I’ve only been a father for 6 short years and I’m still not sure I’m doing it correctly, Andrew seems to be growing up fine to me but I try to talk to him as I do my friends than the way I see other fathers treat their sons. No one told me it would be this confusing and no one has even hinted at fathering advice as though they expect me to know what I’m doing naturally. I’m also not going to ask lest i sound stupid but I’m watching every father i know as an example, especially Damage, I feel Damage is a goo da. Though Kiera is scowling and pouting she is also wearing a head-dress with her eyes away from the creepy man.

The man looks back at me with dark irised eyes and very white pupils. His hair goes up and up and is twisted into dry knots before being held upright by twisted sticks sticking out of it though I doubt the locks would fall even without any support. He has dark caramel coloured smooth skin as far as I can see but his hands are old, thick and wrinkled. We are nearly the same height as we sit across from each other making him the tallest Alderman I have yet come across in my time knowing Vuyo’s people. We sit and stare at each other a good five minutes before he blinks and nods his head.

"You are not of the people by blood by you have been found worthy by the people to rear our sons and daughters. So I will do this that we do not do for outsiders, blow into the bones." The man sends to my mind in smooth flowing Universal that shouldn’t have been able to pass into my mind without my permission.

I look at the animal skin pouch of bones held up before me with scepticism and hesitation. There is something wrong with that nondescript pouch of bones and this man that sits across from me. I feel no threat from him directly but there is ability like ‘spirit suppression’ or something active because I feel... weak, unsure...., scared...? I’m not sure what I’m feeling but I know that it has to be from some kind of ability, it has to.

I lean forward and blow calmly into the sack of bones and I can immediately feel spirit energy surface me and flow with my breath into the pouch before it closes like a vacuum. I sway feeling unbalanced like the fluid in my inner ear is swirling around inside me. I try to keep my eyes on the man that has just basically emptied me of spirit energy, something I’ve never consciously tapped into before but never felt its lack until now.

Kiera eventually stops my swaying with a hand on my shoulder after what feels like a while and I watch the man closely as he shakes the little pouch before us thoroughly. He eyes are closed as he murmurs inaudibly and sneezing, there is a coldness creeping into the grass hut that bellies the warmth of the sun outside. The atmosphere in the room changes perceptively becoming dangerous but still non-threatening as the man shakes and chants in the darkening room.

The mouth of the pouch opens and bones of varied different animals and pieces of wood spew out between us in a canvas of a cold familiar power laced with pieces of my spirit energy and the cold darkness of the beyond. There energy is easy to feel all around us low on the floor centred on the disproportionate number of bones compared to the size of the pouch on the floor. There are even a few humanoid and some human bones scattered in the confusing beautiful mess of objects. A stick is produce from somewhere and used to tap some of the bones and shift others as though the man were solving a puzzle.

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My eyes are captivated by whatever he may be doing, my spirit energy seeping back within me but depleted, tired somehow. "You have a long destiny filled with peril and potential lose, but also potentially great gain. You are destined to walk most of it alone but there will come a time when you may walk it with a soulmate... There is fork in the road ahead that will determine where further development is for you, ahhh... here.’’ He says tapping a combination of what looks like bird bones.

‘’You have a dark spectra of death following you and feeding itself off your guilt, a blood relative you feel responsible for. We will need to severe that connection as soon as is possible, yes... You have many people that love you and you will be a refuge for them, there is much here, much death, much blood. There is a deity at your periphery watching your life but all else about it is shrouded, but beware the attention of the gods.

‘’You fear your own power, you have been holding yourself back for as long as you have had an inkling of how truly powerful you are, you have now placed most of your power into that thing.’’ He sends pointing at my hammer by the door outside. ‘’The consequences of that action are interesting... yes. You have already diverged from your predestined path; you are an anomaly not bound by fate... That is all I can accurately interpret from everything I see, but we must speak further. I will now do the women.’’

I look up from the bones blurry eyed as though coming up from a trance, how does the man expect me to remember everything he’s said? There are a number of things I find interesting in what he said and might pursue further but I just look at him and nod before indicating to Kiera, might as well get to the point.

The bones are collected with practiced ease and I notice the little markings drawn on them as he collects them. He speaks to Kiera directly mind to mind and I frown having expected to be included in the conversation but I don’t really mind. Considering how private the things he told me are maybe its best I doth know the path Kiera’s life is likely to take, and what’s this ‘spectra of death’ thing that has apparently been feeding off me.

Kiera blows into the pouch as I did and the shaking commences but it doesn’t feel like it did when he did mine as he mutters to himself again. There is a depth and seriousness to the ambience in the room but I can feel none of the power I felt when I did my reading, there is no cold or movement of spirit energy, no deepening shadows in the hut. At least from my perspective, but looking at Kiera I can see something is definitely happening with her. She looks about ready to puke and her hands are trembling slightly.

Then the bones are scattered on the floor before us and Kiera sighs a loud sigh of relief for what I’m guessing is the return of her spirit energy. The man barely gives her a glance as all his attention is on the bones before him, bones that somehow seem different to the ones I had and I don’t just mean their arrangement. He looks at her in the eye for the first time since we’ve been here as they communicate silently. She looks like she is tempted to respond but doesn’t, only listening to what he is saying with his stick going from bone to bone. Finally she nods her accent to something and the bones are collected again before the entire process takes place a third time now with Vuyo as the subject.

She takes it better than either Kiera or I, testament to the fact that she’s done this before. Her reading is quick and before I know it we are standing outside the hut with the man carrying an assortment of strange objects and vials in his hands. ‘’You must all be naked.’’ He sends to all of us.

I look at Vuyo who nods, then at Kiera who is looking down on the floor thoughtfully and I start undressing. I might as well get this over with, and anything to do with deities and shit feeding off me is urgent enough on top of the reason I came here to begin with. My mates follow my example and we are instructed to face towards the sun as the tall lanky man circles first me then my mates studying us carefully. Its unary and I’m starting to lose my patience but he stops and comes back to me.

"Come.’’ He says and starts walking, we follow.

I’m uncomfortable openly walking naked this way, I feel unarmed, exposed and we have never been naked together at the same time Kiera, Vuyo and I. We don’t go far though as we come across a little brook from a natural spring bubbling from the ground.

"Wash.’’ We are again instructed with a finger pointed at a little area where the water is allowed to collect.

The man bends down and starts adding concoctions upstream of where we are to ‘wash’ without preamble. I star wit splashing my face and head and my mates follow suit. The water is pleasantly cool and rejuvenating to the skin, I’d be tempted to drink it if the man wasn’t adding disgusting ingredients to it as we washed ourselves. I feel a hand on my back and am surprised to find Kiera washing my back with her hands; I missed her hands on me. I don’t get to enjoy them for long though as other instructions are shot at us from the man.

We are instructed to drink foul concoctions that have us shitting in a ditch by the hut in the most foul and embarrassing manner possible, I’ve never been more red from both embarrassment and laughter at how uncomfortable both of my mates are at the entire ordeal. I find us laughing at each other for the first time in months. The smell that comes from our faeces is atrocious and the shit we leave behind unwholesome sticky, strongly coloured things. ‘’Let's not drink anything else he gives us.’’ Kiera advises and I grin at her humour finally coming out again.

From that unpleasant experience its back to the little brook for another bath with the tall painted man mutters as he adds things to the water up stream. Then its wit a sharp honed knife and a stinging stinky substance that small wounds are cut into areas of my body and the foul substance added to the cuts. This is done from my head to my feet at specific places throughout my body before he silently moves on to Kiera and then Vuyo. They endure it stoically before we are instructed to dress then come back tomorrow. I’m not sure what that was but it felt like a rush job to me.

‘’How did you fell about all of that?’’ I make myself as we walk casually through the veldt. Vuyo is up ahead with her spear in hand excited about being home and able to hunt where she knows the rules, where she is a predator. Disappearing into the grass like a ghost and coming back carrying a large rodent for me to store in my ring.

‘’Honestly I don’t know how to feel about all these changes and new things and exposure to so many different peoples.’’ Kiera finally says. ‘’I thought trying to adopt the city life of Paradisum was hard with exposure to all these cultures for the first time. Now here it’s even elves and beastmen and other strange things I’m not yet sure I can name, I’m just a village girl you know.’’

I nod, trying to see it from her perspective and extending the silence between us. Filling it with as much understanding, patience, love...

"I don’t know what that seer did but I feel more clear headed than I have in months, maybe years.’’

‘’Me too, me too.’’ I say feeling as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I will get a good night’s sleep for the first time in years.