“SYSTEM INITIALIZING… STATUS GREEN… DOWNLOAD COMENCING 4%”
She sat bolt upright! She could feel her tail standing straight up behind her and the tufts on the top of her ears perked upright as she held her fists in front of her chest at high alert. Beside her, the tall woman (She had decided at some point to stop thinking of her as a thing or an it) also sat up in a panic. She could tell by the way her ears drooped and trembled. There were cries of panic to be heard from several of the other strange wooden mounds that these creatures lived in. She had been outside and seen a few of them when the woman she lived with went to help them.
Something had happened that was upsetting all of them at once. She wasn’t sure if it was the same voice that she heard in her sleep that woke them up as well. She couldn’t remember what it had said but she didn’t have to. Floating in the top of her vision in a color like she was looking at the sun through winter clouds, was a set of… Words? How did she know these were words and how did she know what they said? SYSTEM INITIALIZING… STATUS GREEN… DOWNLOAD COMENCING 18%
She had no idea what the heck was going on but suddenly the tall woman swung her feet out of from under the fur blanket and began getting out of bed… She had just begun to ponder the implications of suddenly knowing the names of so many of the things around her when the elf woman turned to her and began cooing in that voice she made to try and keep her calm. “Sweet child, I’ll need to go and make sure that no one is hurt. I wonder if you’re going to want to come with me or are you going to go back to sleep?”
The elf woman began pulling on her clothing and she considered her words… The realization dawned on her like the first stabbing rays of sun at dawn. She had understood the woman! Not just her intentions or a single noise she had come to recognize as food but all of the words she spoke! Turning her whole body and getting to her knees, she decided to try talking back to her to see if this would work. “I think I would like to go with you. You’re going to the houses of all the crying children, aren’t you?”
The woman stopped in the middle of pulling on her blouse before quickly fumbling the rest of the way into it and turning to her with her eyes wide and ears pinned to the sides of her head in what she had come to realize was a look of utter disbelief or surprise. “D-did you just speak? Can you speak Elven?”
She wasn’t sure how she knew the words and it showed in her embarrassment. She could feel her eyes widening, her ear tufts flattening and her tail curling in submission while she tried to fight the urge to turn away. “I… I guess so? This is the first time I’ve understood what you were saying at all. I think it may be because of that weird voice I heard earlier.”
Hearing what she said, the elven woman resumed putting on her clothing, finishing with the heavy fur coat. The woman had a look of deep concentration but seemed to suddenly take note of the girl still watching her and her look softened as she turned to her again before stretching out a hand to her. “Why don’t you come tuck yourself into my coat and keep warm. I need to go check on my village and make sure that they are all okay.”
She was a little hesitant but amazingly found herself a lot more receptive to things when she knew what the elf woman was saying. She got over her hesitation and crawled onto the woman’s outstretched hands. The woman brought her to her chest and she began burrowing into the layers of clothing till she found an open space and turned to poke her head back out.
She was just in time to see the elven woman’s ears, still up, begin trembling and a red blush began spreading from the tips of her ears all the way across her face. She stopped looking down at the girl nestled between her breasts and off to the right but the redness didn’t fade. “W-we s-should get g-going I g-guess.”
As the elven woman reached the door, she lifted the simple wooden latch with her right hand and grabbed the strange spherical object with her left hand. There was a sudden blast of cold air but not the absolute bitter cold she had felt before. On previous trips outside the house, she had noticed that the area that the elves lived in was perpetually lush and green, even in the dead of winter like now.
While they walked, she looked down at the strange shimmering ball in the woman’s left hand. It was absolutely mesmerizing to look at. It had a pattern of hexagons all over the surface. A surface that shimmered in rainbow colors as the light shifted across it.
She had seen this object often in the last month or two that she had been here. The elven woman would hold it and talk to the air and she swore to herself that sometimes she saw another woman, a human one now that she somehow knew what to call them, standing with her hand on the elven woman’s head. The human woman always seemed like she had the same look on her face that the elven woman had when she was looking in the girl’s direction. That was the impression she got.
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Her musings were interrupted as the pair made it to one of the houses built at the base of a large tree. The house was humongous but not to the elves. It was a rather small building to one of their kind. As they approached, she could hear the wailing of children in the house and the cooing of a pair of concerned parents, though she couldn’t make out their words.
When they reached the door, the elf woman knocked on it and the voice of the mother could be heard. “One moment Atha!”
She wondered about the words she heard. Before, all she got was the noises and the general feeling of emotions through their tone and body language of the elves. Now, however, she was hearing actual words but what was that last one? Did her ability to hear words stop as suddenly as it had come? She really hoped not. She really liked being able to understand the elven woman.
She got her answer a moment later when the elven mother opened the door for them. “Thank you for coming shaman Atha. Come in, come in.”
After the two of them were escorted into the house by the elven mother, the woman turned to them with her face downcast and ears drooping in resignation. “I fear that we have been beset by an evil spirit. Our whole family heard a voice and now we see a phantom in our vision.”
The elven woman that the other had referred to as shaman Atha, spoke in a calming tone. “Does the phantom consist of golden words that say system initializing, status green, download commencing *the elven woman moved her head and she could tell that the woman was looking up at the same words she was seeing, It was confirmed a moment later when the woman spoke the same number that she could see* 87 and then a strange symbol?”
At the words of the shaman, both of the elven parents turned wide-eyed faces of shock with ears held tight towards the shaman. The three children seemed to have quieted down at some point and when she looked at them, she spotted three pairs of eyes staring back at her. The children seemed to be far less interested in what the adults were talking about than they were in gawking at her. She waved at them and they began giggling and the smallest waved back.
The shaman continued in a calm authoritative tone. “Losa, Clothe the children and we will head to the fire circle. Sanu, go from house to house and tell everyone else to meet us at the fire circle. We will begin building the fire up and then I will try to commune with the deities.”
When the six of them reached the fire circle under the large pavilion, one of the men was already there working to rekindle the flames in the center of the village. After only a few minutes, the elven man, two women, and three children had several logs placed atop the slowly building flames.
Several other families began to arrive and brought some things to prepare for breakfast. Breakfast was to be sabu-sabu, a dish of crushed dried berries, ground roots, and leaves. The resulting paste was put into bigger leaves and rolled up before being cooked in the fire. The result was a bar of something that had a very odd texture like the most brittle nuts. The flavor was really good though very hard to describe.
Before everybody had even finished arriving, the shaman elf woman, Atha she supposed, began singing a slow reverent song. The song was about the grace of the gods and how they protected the people and supposedly warned them of coming change at some time in the distant past. After several moments, the people around the fire began to stamp cadence and Atha began dancing around the fire with the orb held above her head. Every eighth beat she would pause in the song to kiss the orb but it was part of the song and didn’t detract from its beauty in the slightest.
After the song had been repeated four times, something happened. There was a shift in the air, as though it felt like water but not. She then noticed the inhales of several of the elves but just then her eyes were drawn to the fire. Something had moved in the fire and was still standing in the middle of the flames.
When she turned to look, she recognized the human woman immediately. The woman was standing in the middle of the flames but not being burned. She had black hair and eyes, whitish skin, and a clothes of black. She was standing there watching Atha dance with a smile on her face and her hands clasped behind her back.
The moment Atha realized that the goddess was present, she kneeled with her head bowed and the ball raised above her head in both hands. As the elven woman did that, she got a glimpse from her vantage in the woman’s cleavage that all the rest of the villagers were bowing. The glimpse was brief because for no reason she could put a finger on, she felt the need to bow her head as well.
Kaori stepped out of the flames and looked at the countdown timer ticking over the 99% mark and began her speech. She had avatars appearing all over the populated portions of the world. Anywhere she found the inhabitants praying about the system initialization, she appeared to them. “Be calm my children. The world greets another change but know that I am here with you. I have brought you a great gift this day. I will leave one gift with you always and the other, the gift of speech with all, you shall have only till the seasons come full circle again. Use it well while it lasts. Those that I see fit as my chosen I will leave the gift of speech to many.”
Most of Kaori’s avatars disappeared but the one in front of Atha remained a moment longer. Kaori leaned down and lifted the head of the woman with the squirrel girl in between her breasts. Truth be told, she wanted to squeal at how adorable the sight was but managed to hold herself back, barely! Instead, she leaned down and placed a kiss on the forehead of the trembling woman and then with a gentle smile ruffled the hair of the adorable girl before fading away… Only then, when she could no longer be seen or heard, did she allow herself to squeal at the absolutely heartwarming sight.