“No, come back! I won't hurt you!” Culaya ran after the startled skrill, chasing it over rocks and under bushes. The blue crustacean dodged left and right, its iridescent blue shell flashing in the sunlight as it attempted to thwart her with its erratic movements. She chased into into the brush, which snagged on her hair and raked her cheeks. But she was having too much fun to care. She almost caught the scuttling critter when her foot caught on a rock and sent her to her knees.

Tears welled up in her eyes. However, she stifled her outburst to a mere whimper. Monu would make fun of her if he caught her crying again. She massaged her bruised knees with her hands while wiping her eyes on her sleeves. After a few minutes she got back up and looked for the skrill before spotting it perched neat the base of a boulder, only a few feet away from a hole in the dirt which she assumed was its home.

Culaya held her breath and moved with gingerness, avoiding twigs and small rocks. Stealthily, she circled the boulder, staying low to the ground. Whenever the critter twitched, she stopped and held her breath for a few moments, then moved when she felt it wasn't paying attention. When she reached the back of the boulder, whose height came to her chest, she slowly reached a tentative arm over it, sliding her hand bit by bit toward the burrow in the ground.

Her plan was to block it off so the skrill could not hide in it. The skrill turned toward her and she froze, willing it to believe she was part of the landscape. I am just a tree, she thought, just a tree. It stared at her with its black, teardrop eyes, mandibles clicking slightly, then it darted toward its burrow.

She shot her hand toward the hole in the ground and grasped the critter just in time, flinching at the creature's grating shrieks. She had to resist squirming as it dug its jagged legs into the backs of her fingers. Once again, she found tears coming to her eyes, but she did not let go of her squirming prey. Her sense of pride overcame the discomfort of the creature's frenetic struggle. She moved her hand to its upper shell where it could not get at her and ran through the woods toward camp. The helpless skrill vibrated in her hands as it continued to cry out.

“Monu! Monu! I caught one!” she called out as she neared the clearing, “I caught one! A big one too!”

She stopped when she saw what her brother was doing. He was busy stacking branches frt her fire. He looked up at her and gave her a bearded smile. She did not like his beard, it made him seem weird, like he became too grown up to be her brother. He looked at her, then at the wriggling skrill in her hands! “Whoa!” he exclaimed, “That is a big one! How did you catch it?!”

“I...I went very slowly, like...like a hunter!” she said excitedly, “I chased it under a bush and...and it almost got away. I fell on my knees but I didn't cry! And then...and then, I went around a rock it was on because the rock is its home. Then I got...then I got between it and its home and I grabbed it before it could run into its hole. Want to hold it?” she reached the skrill toward him.

“N-nonono!” Monu said, making a show of cowering away, “That thing is scary! It might eat me! How did my little sister become such a fearsome hunter?!”

Culaya laughed at his antics. She knew he was kidding, he trained to become a village guardian. There was nothing that could scare him. She sat down and looked at the skrill she had caught. It was beautiful, the shiny blue carapace looked like dyed metal and shimmered like polished jewelry, letting occasional gleams of green show up beneath the blue. The creature began to ease up on its squirming. Maybe it knew that she wouldn't hurt it. But just as the thought crossed her mind, it let out another shriek and began to wriggle again.

“Can I keep it?” she asked.

“As a pet?” Monu asked, “Or as food?

“Ew! Why would I eat it?”

“I was beginning to think you were a trolon in disguise, the way you devoured the snacks we brought.” Monu smiled as he began to sharpen his knife, sending small sparks to the ground. “They snack on skrills.” After a few swipes, he walked over to the fish he had been hanging between the two trees. Culaya winced and looked away as he ran the knife's tip down the fish's stomachs.

“I am NOT a trolon!” she said indignantly, “I want to keep him. Asher needs a friend.”

“Asher will eat him.” Monu said.

“He will not!” Culaya insisted, “I will train him not to.”

“Asher will eat it. Racors prey on little scurrying animals. Asher has been hunting skrill since he was a hatchling.”

“Oh...” Culaya said, sounding crestfallen, “What does 'prey' mean?”

“Hmmm...” Monu said thoughtfully, “To prey on something means you hunt it. I preyed on these fish. And those fish prey on flies that get too close to the water. That makes me the predator to the fish, and the fish are predators of those flies. Racors are predators of skrills and other small animals.”

“Oh!” Culaya said, “And we are uh...prey to the...to the lords?”

Monu remained silent for a few moments as he continued to skin the fish. When he spoke again, he sounded almost upset. “What gave you that idea?” he asked.

“A grown-up said it.” Culaya said.

“I am going to tell you a secret, you must not tell anybody else,” Monu said, sounding mischievous, “But some grown-ups are full of walg-dung. The Nikral are scary, but they aren't our predators. They only punish criminals, like thieves, killers, and little girls who get twigs caught in their hair.”

Culaya paused for a moment, then ran a hand through her hair until she felt a few tiny sticks. She brushed them out and held one up in front of the skrill to see if it would eat it. The creature clicked menacingly but it did not do anything more than that. She tossed the twig aside and walked over to a fallen log to sit down. She ran a finger over the shimmering carapace of the creature and made funny faces at her distorted reflections in its shell. She imagined she was a trolon or a racor, trying to pretend what a skrill would taste like. But the thought felt sour to her as she looked into the creature's small, sad eyes. How could anybody eat something as beautiful as this? She was about to ask her brother this when she noticed him wrapping the fish inside of giant leaves.

“Why are you doing that?” she demanded.

“This is a trick I learned from a friend at Shonio. These are Oden leaves,” he said, “When you cook them in the fire, the steam from the leaves will give the fish a fragrant taste.”

“Fragrant?” Culaya repeated.

“They will taste good.” Monu tore a long thing strip of the leaves and wrapped it around the pouches he had made.

“I don't trust you.” she eyed him suspiciously. Sighing, he tore a section of one of the leaves, crumpled it up and brought it to her. To her surprise, it smelled tart like fresh fruit. Laughing at her expression, Monu left the crumpled-up leaf on her lap and went back to wrapping the fish. She hesitated for a moment before bending down to pick it up and smell it again. Suddenly the skrill she'd caught reached for it with its front legs wriggling in the air. Delighted, she let the creature grab the leaf from her hands and draw it into its mandibles. It made soft crunching noises as it chewed.

---

Monu grinned as he took glances at his sister feeding the rock-scraper, as if she were its mother. She insisted that it was growing to trust her, but the truth was the creatures were fairly dim. They only knew how to eat moss, lichen, and how to run and hide. It did not trust her, it had already forgotten the danger she represented. As soon as she decided to put it on the ground, he had no doubt it would scurry away shrieking. However, he didn't want to spoil her fun. It was his first trel back home and he had promised he would take his sister camping in Runak Valley despite his stepmother's objections.

“That place gets black fog!” she had said, “What if you both get caught in one?”

But the black fog was the reason he came here. It was a tradition of sorts. When Monu was young, his father took him camping in Runak Valley, entertained and scared him with horror stories of the black fog before taking him into the valley to show him the eerie clouds that frequently ran through the it. And his father's father did the same thing. And his father's father's father...well, let's just say he was simply passing on the tradition, only instead of him taking his child, he was taking his younger sister, who was almost young enough to be his child.

Monu waited for a decent bed of coals and ash to form before he dug a small trough for the fish. Then he laid them on bare dirt and covered them with embers. As they began to cook, he selected two sets of trees and began to hang the hammocks, one for him and one for his sister. Without letting go of the skrill, she hopped into hers and began to swing back and forth, singing a familiar village rhyme but messing up the words. She was only six after all, young, smart, but innocently foolish.

“Careful Aydin,” he said, “Don't fall out, you will crack your head.”

“Aydin?” she asked.

“Cuyala...” he corrected. Damn, she reminded him of his other little sister. It had been ages since they lost her, but the lingering memories still caused a small ache. He supposed that was why he had taken to Cuyala so quickly, despite how strange it was for his father to sire another child after all these years. Though Aydin and Cuyala had completely different personalities, Aydin, from what he could remember of her, had been soft-spoken while Cuyala is blunt and demanding, like a little tyrant.

“You're going to make your friend sick,” Monu warned playfully as he draped a net over his hammock. Cuyala looked at the skrill in her hand and continued to sing louder. “I am serious, he will vomit on you.” Monu continued. She gave him a look that clearly said “You are an idiot.”

As the sky dimmed, the fire began to cast dancing shadows along the trees. A few three-eyed yiks began to slither up the trunks from their burrows to catch the various starpieds, the glowing larvae which began to poke from the wood. Cuyala released her captive skrill and began to poke at the yiks while the crustacean skittered into the brush. When she got bored of harassing the docile serpentine crawlers, she began to gather starpieds and collect them in her shirt. Soon she had several handfuls of the glowing wrigglers and dumped them into a glass jar which they had brought for the purpose. Monu remembered fondly collecting those when he was a kid.

“I'm hungry.” his sister blurted out.

“So am I,” Monu admitted, “Let's see if they're ready.”

He used a small spade to sweep the coals and ash aside, then he lifted the charred pouches from the dirt and set them aside. “Ooo, that's hot!” he exclaimed as he delicately unwrapped the fish, releasing a cloud of steam. “But that smells amazing...”

“Yeah...” Cuyala added, entranced by the smell.

“Now we'll let it cool down, then we'll eat with our hands.” Monu said, “How often do we get to do that?!”

“Never.” she grinned.

He cut each fish to help it vent and soon they were tearing white chunks off the bone. It was perfect, the outside was slightly seared, the inside was flaky to the touch and the Oden leaves imparted the meat the perfect amount of citrus-like tang. Cuyala almost seemed to devour the fish. With all of the energy she spent earlier, running around, jumping in rivers and chasing skrills, climbing the various weaver trees that threaded the area, it was no wonder she was left famished. He suspected she would fall into a deep slumber as soon as she climbed into her hammock. But, he planned to terrify her first.

“Do you want to hear a story?” he asked her.

“No.” she said defiantly. Though a mischievous smirk curled the corners of her snout.

“Oh come on, I know you want to hear a story,” Monu insisted, “It's a true one too, because it happened to me. It was about the time I traveled through a cloud of black fog.”

“You did not.” she said.

“I'm not lying,” Monu cleaned a bone off in his teeth, then threw it into the fire, “It was part of our training.”

Cuyala was looking at him while still wearing a smirk on her face, though it seemed a bit more subdued by worry. He could almost see the conflict in her little mind: Is he lying? Is he telling the truth? Finally, she said “Shara says black fogs are haunted. She says the dead will take you away.”

“Maybe they are,” Monu said, “But I wasn't taken away, neither was anybody else in my class. Maybe we got lucky.” He grinned.

After a moment, his sister asked, “Were you scared?”

“I was,” he said seriously, “In fact it was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life. But I had to do it. Guardians cannot be afraid. Our fear is our curse. We cannot fight if we are afraid and so, to conquer our fear...we had to risk being taken away, we had to risk the phantoms of the black fog.”

Monu picked up a stick and prodded the fire, sending up a flurry of embers. “I am going to tell you a story of the first time I ventured into a cloud of black fog,” But instead of starting immediately, he let the fire crackle and closed his eyes. He listened to the sounds of the forest, the silence between breezes, the treetop dwellers that occasionally called to each other. He remembered the night his father took him here and told him stories. “It was a valley just like this one,” he began, “The sides had fewer trees and bushes, but in all other ways, it was just like Runak Valley.”

“Did it have weaver trees?” Culaya interrupted.

“No, weaver trees do not grow in that region,” Monu said, “Even if there were weaver trees, we guardians would not be allowed to play on them as little kids do.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Guardians are boring.” his sister said.

“You are ruining my story, kid!” Monu chastised, “Anyway...we were standing in a valley much like this one, waiting for a cloud of black fog to come. It was hot and we were sweating in our armor, waiting for word from some scouts ahead, who would let us know when they spotted a cloud of black fog. We acted tough, but the truth was we were all hoping it would not come. We told jokes to each other to give us more courage. It was...” Monu paused, “around evening when one of the scouts came down and told us a cloud had been spotted and was heading our way. So we waited silently...waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then suddenly, everything became very quiet.”

Monu stopped and lowered his voice to a whisper, “The birds in the trees stopped singing to each other. The animals around us began to scurry into their burrows, then the birds took flight.”

“Why?” Culaya asked, worry and fascination in her voice.

“The animals...somehow they always know it is coming,” he said, “They know the black fog is coming and they are terrified of it. They left us standing in silence. We waited....and waited...straining to see the first glimpse. Suddenly, a wind began to pick up from the valley, gentle at first, but growing stronger by the second. But we this was no ordinary wind...”

Culaya saw that she was supposed to ask, so she did. “What was it?”

“They were the forewinds that preceded the black fog,” Monu said, “They came ahead of it. When you feel the forewinds...you know black fog is coming your way, you know it is time to run...” he paused to let the tension build. “But we were brave...terrified, but brave. Not a single one of us ran. And then...I saw it! I saw my first glimpse of the black fog! It was terrible, like night and shadows pouring across the ground! It was coming for me, faster than any cloud of fog I have ever seen."

"I wanted to run," he continued, "I want to get away, but it was too late! It came over me! When it did, I thought I had been taken away by the spirits. I could not see anything except a strange purple light. But then I heard my friends whispering nearby and knew I had not been taken by the spirits. I was no longer afraid, I had my friends with me. I began to walk along the trail we had been waiting on, though I could not see anything. I used my arms and legs to feel around, until I could find the rail. Our goal was to make it to the end while the black fog remained upon us.”

“You...were playing a game in the black fog?”

“Not a game...well, I guess it was,” Monu said, “We had to conquer our fear and reach the end. That was the game. And now that I knew I had my friends with me, I was no longer afraid of anything except for tripping. But, I thought my friends were still being cowards. I tried to say something to them, tell them to follow me, but they kept whispering to themselves. A few of them sounded like they were crying. I nearly jumped when I felt one of them grab my arm.”

“Why did he do that?” his sister asked.

“It was an accident,” Monu said, “We could not see each other, we only saw this purple light all around us.”

“But...I thought the fog was black...”

“It was until we were inside it,” Monu said, “Anyway, my comrade was too afraid to speak, so I led him along the trail, finding my way by moving my hand along the rail, feeling the trail with my feet for any rocks and holes that might trip us. I asked my friend who it was, but he did not answer. That was when I began to notice something strange about the whispers that I thought belonged to my friends. They were speaking in another language. And none of the voices belonged to anybody I knew.”

Monu had to stifle a grin when he saw how still Culaya became.

“The voices...” he continued, “they were echoing all around me. I knew then they were not my friends. Those voices...they belonged to the fog. I did not know what happened to my friends, only that one of them was still holding onto me, both of us too afraid to speak. Knowing he was there gave me courage, so I continued along the trail, with my friend's footsteps following behind. I was so terrified that the stories were true, that I was listening to the spirits of the dead, that I would become one of them.”

“We traveled in this purple darkness with whispers following us, walking for what seemed like days. I heard strange things, footsteps running past us, children...or things that sounded like children giggling. But I knew we had to be close to the end, I could not see how far we had come. I knew because we crossed a bridge, a bridge that was very close to the end of the trail. I wanted to run, to finish it off and be done with it. But...what if...what if I reached the end and I was still trapped in the fog? As I was thinking these things, I felt something wet...wet and slick with saliva run up my arm. My friend...he had licked it.”

“W-what..” Culaya said, her voice soft.

“I was about to ask him why he would do such a thing but the next moment I was blinded by sunlight. I put a hand over my eyes and looked between my fingers like this.” He placed his hand on his face and peered through his spread fingers. “We had reached the end of the black fog and I was watching it retreat. At the same time, I felt the grip that held my arm disappear. And my friend...the mysterious one who I thought had been holding it...he was nowhere to be seen. None of them were...”

He waited a few good long moments, letting the implications sink in, letting her little imagination work up its own explanations. Then he let a devious grin spread across his snout. “CUYALA!” he abruptly bellowed, causing his sister to scream “I made most of it up!”

The next few minutes involved him laughing as he attempted to calm his sister down, who was punching him.. “Okay, okay! I'm sorry!” he laughing at the snarling noises Culaya made. “I made most of it up!”

“What do you mean 'most'?!” she demanded.

“Do you want to hear the real story?”

“No!”

“We did enter the black fog, we could not see anything, but there were no whispers, no phantoms that gripped me, and nothing licked me!” he said, laughing. It was not completely truthful. There had been whispers, strange whispers, phantom footsteps. The grip on his arm had been real, but it had been his leader pulling a joke on him. The “wet tongue” had actually been a rag soaked in bag of porridge that his leader had somehow kept hidden on his person.

“Listen...listen...” Monu repeated, “Father took me here when I was a kid, terrified me with stories of the black fog. And his father took him here, told him stories too. I do not have a kid, but you are the next best thing. And we are going to get to see it tonight!”

“No!” Culaya snapped.

“Yes!” Monu said, laughing, “Runak Valley gets black fog almost every night during this season.”

“Then I want to leave!” shedemanded, anger hardening her voice so it resembled his stepmother's...her mother's voice.

“We will be fine!” Monu reassured her, “It stays low in the valley. We are far too high up for it. We will go to the nearby cliff and watch it from there.”

“I do not care, I want to leave!” She began to stomp in the direction of trail which led back to spot where they tethered Dinin.

There were a few smoldering embers left when they got back to camp. She had attempted in vain to climb Dinin's head, saying she would take the warg home herself if she had to. As Monu predicted, the story left her shaken just as his father's story had left him shaken. But through some gentle coaxing, he convinced her to return with him to camp. Her spent energy finally began to catch up to her, exacting its toll for all the running around.

When he tucked her into her hammock, all it took was for a few minutes of gentle swinging. However, he found that as soon as he stopped, she would stir again and complain, insisting that he stay and sleep under her. Relenting, he stayed until he was absolutely certain she was deep asleep. Then he retreated to his own hammock, kicked off his boots and swung into it. He strung a piece of stormcrest to the ridgeline and laid back.

He had traveled into black fogs so often since then that the thought of them did not frighten him anymore. No, it was not true, they were still eerie and they filled him with a sense of unease. But the phantoms whispers had become little more than natural phenomena to him. Storms had lightning and thunder, winds howled when they passed through certain passages, and rain turned the dirt into mud. Black fogs enshrouded you in a world of bodiless whispers. Instead, Monu's thoughts drifted to the comment Cuyala made earlier about the lords. “We are prey to the lords?” “A grown up said it.”

Had news of the retribution feast already made its way to Inshod? He did not know the details of the protest that incurred the wrath of the Nikral, but it had been years since the last feast. It was a punishment they usually did not carry out lightly. But according to Athu, more and more villages were beginning to question their right to rule. Perhaps spies from the south were secretly spreading propaganda? He knew very little about the land on the other side of the Grand Spikes. Though it was his dream to someday travel and see the divide for himself. Not to cross it, but to stand in awe at the majestic upheavals. His thoughts slowly became incoherent as his hammock swayed. Soon, he was asleep.

---

He knew black fog was in the valley, or at least close by, when the stormcrest he had strung from the hammock's ridgeline began to shimmer. He sat up, planted his feet on the ground and went into the woods to relieve himself. Looking around by the dim light of the stormcrest, he saw that the yiks which hang from the branches all around him were already beginning to slither toward their burrows even though it was still plenty dark. The tree-leapers, the barklings, the kulkain would all be doing the same. This too, was something he did not make up in his tale. Even the animals were afraid of black fog. Only insects remained, perhaps too stupid to know fear. Monu returned to camp, picked up his lantern and whispered a gleaning to it. The wick immediately flickered to life. Then he approached his sister's hammock.

“Culaya,” he whispered, nudging her shoulder gently. “Get up, I want to show you something.”

A soft whine escaped her lips as she stirred. “Go away...” she whimpered, turning away from the lantern's light.

Monu walked to the other side, set the lantern on the ground and got to his knees so that he was level with her face, grinning at her through the weave in the hammock. “Come on, you don't want to miss this, I promise. I want to show you something really neat!”

“What?!” she demanded, a child's protest lacing her voice. “Is it blafog?

“Blafog?” he repeated, “I have no idea what that is, child. But I do want to show you black fog. It is the perfect night to see it because the clouds are blocking the moons.”

At this, she hid in her blankets and refused to come out. That was until he bribed her by promising to buy her any toy she wanted from Waren's shop when they got back to Inshod. She sat up, hair frayed, fixating him with a tired glare that she also must have inherited from his stepmother. Then he eased her down as she climbed clumsily out of the hammock. He helped her put on her shoes and threw a blanket over her shoulders, then picked up a second lantern and whispered another gleaning to it. Like the first lantern, this one also flickered to life.

“Careful you don't burn yourself,” he warned. All he got in response was an undignified grunt. “Okay, come on, if we're lucky we'll get there before the fog passes below us!”

They followed a trail away from camp, casting dancing circled of lantern light in front of them. To their left and right, the yiks continued their rapid descent, their slithering brown forms, camouflaged against the bark, made the trees look as if they were melting. Dozens of ground-crawlers began to scurry across the path to find their homes, fleeing the low-dwelling storm they felt coming. The whole woods around him seemed to come to life with the noise of scuttling, hopping, frantic creatures.

He felt Culaya clench his hand. He returned the grasp affectionately, reassuring her. She clasped to his side as a flock of bird suddenly launched directly above them, squawking. But soon the noise began to subside as its denizens found their shelters. Eventually, all noise, save for the occasional whine of an insect, disappeared, leaving silence draped over the forest like a pall. The woods around seemed to be holding its breath and even the trees themselves, in the flickering lantern light, seemed to clench the ground with anticipation.

“Okay, we are approaching the cliff,” Monu said, “Be extra careful and do not leave my side.” He did not get a response.

The forest parted around them as they walked out onto a peninsula of stone overlooking Runak Valley. Though they could not see it in this darkness, Monu knew that Runak Run, the river which ran through the valley, came toward their peninsula from the North before taking a sharp turn away from them to the East. He did not know the direction the black fog would come from, it could be either. He kept a firm grip on his sister's hand as they proceeded further and further onto the narrowing peninsula, cliffs dropping on all sides. If his stepmother had known he would be taking Culaya here, where a fall would most certainly kill her, she would never agreed to let her daughter come.

“Good!” Monu said, looking around, “Looks like we beat it. We got here before the fog did.”

“How would you know?” Culaya asked, her olive skin looked bronze in the flickering lantern light.

“Hmm?” Monu asked.

“How would you see black fog at night?” she asked.

“It looks different at night. You will see. Now we just wait.” He sat down a few feet away from the cliff. She reluctantly did the same, setting her lantern down with a “clink” and curling inside of her blanket. They did not have to wait very long before the wind picked up, blowing from the North. It was a smooth constant breeze that seemed to increase in intensity by the moment...the forewind. The leaves of the forest behind them whispered nervously, as if smelling ill on the wind's eddies. Then Monu saw it, a faint violet glimmering.

“Here it comes.” He whispered, pointing in its direction.

The look of nocturnal black fog was unmistakable and indescribable, memorizing and confusing. That they were clouds was only implied by the shape of their silhouettes alone, pouring quickly along the floor of the valley. But they appeared to have no depth nor dimension. They glowed faintly with a deep purple, mottled with flickering black spots. They were similar to the spots he saw when he received a blow to the head, and they did not move with the clouds. Instead, they all stayed in the same place, as if the black fog were simply a window into their world. Monu knew from experience that if he approached the fog, the spots would appear to grow in size as they should. Instead, they would remain the same size and more spots would be revealed at the cloud's edges.

As the fog rolled across the valley, it looked less like fog and more like the paint left behind by the brush of some invisible giant artist. Only at its edges, which outlined its shape could Monu see the hints of churning clouds and twirling whisps. Everywhere else seemed to be a constant, depthless dance of indigo and ebony phosphenes. Grinning, Monu blew out his lamp and watched the eerie, yet beautiful glow of the phenomenon illuminate the valley. Soon, it passed their peninsula and turned East. Tendrils of fog reached up and swayed like arms, revealing more hidden black-upon-purple speckling, before collapsing upon themselves. These were quickly replaced by new tendrils, which also collapsed.

“It’s reaching for us...” Culaya's whisper was barely audible. Monu pulled her close.

“We will be fine, we are too far up,” Monu said, “Well, what do you think?”

Cuyala did not answer for a while. They continued to watch as pillars of the black fog continued to twirl upward and engage each other in a dance before twisting themselves into nothingness.

“It's pretty...” she said, softly. Monu grinned in the darkness. It was beautiful. It was mesmerizing because of its disorientation. If people were not so terrified of it, perhaps he would see more fires among the trees. But they had reasons to fear it, reasons that began to manifest themselves as Monu and his sister watched. They began to hear beneath the rustle of leaves, the faintest hints of the black fog's whispering. Hushed voices, both male and female seemed to lick at their ears from below. The fog breathed with a subtle constant seething, echoing with the chittering of unseen creatures.

“I don't like it,” Cuyala said, raising her hands to her ears. “I want to go. I thought you said the...you made it up. The voices...”

Monu felt a pang of guilt, “Did I say that?” he said, “There is nothing to worry about. They mean nothing. Look...watch this,” He stood up and stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. Then he bellowed out into the valley “You better not scare my sister, black fog! Or else you'll have to suffer my wrath!”

“Monu...stop...” his sister pleaded.

“You hear that?!?” he continued to shout, “She wants me to stop because she knows what I can do to you! I will come right down there with my sword and hack you to a thousand pieces! You hear that fog?! I will say a single word and set you on fire!” He stooped down to pick up a rock and threw it as hard as he could. It arced through the air and fell until it pierced the violet miasma below. A few of the fog's whispers rode the wind but nothing happened.

“Are you still scared?” Monu asked.

“A little...” Culaya said, but she seemed less afraid than she had been a moment ago.

“Should I go fight it?”

“Yeah...” she said.

He turned back to the valley “You hear that fog?! She wants me to fight you! You made her angry and now she has no more sympathy for you! I am going to start climbing down now fog! You better get out of here before I get to you! Here I come!” Then he turned toward his sister. “You ready to go?”

“Are you really going to fight it?” she asked tiredly.

“Do you really want me to?” He asked.

“No.”

“All right, then we'll head back to camp and get some sleep.” He whispered a gleaning to his lantern and it flickered back to life. Then he helped his sister to her feet and began to head back toward the forest. He saw her dragging her feet, so he hoisted her onto his back and began to piggyback to the trees. There, the tradition has been fulfilled, in a way.

Maybe when he had kids, he would take them here as well, or perhaps Culaya would take her kids here. Now he only hoped his sister would be able to get to sleep when they returned to the camp. These thoughts were interrupted, however, as a chilling noise arose from the valley behind them.

There arose a sound resembling a loud wail, the cry of a person wrought with despair. Monu stopped, spun around just in time to see a dance of light beams pierce the sky, bright enough to be frozen lightning bolts. They stayed for a few moments, illuminating every tree for miles, before vanishing into night.

He set his sister down, told her to stay and ran back out onto the peninsula. He scanned the valley below where he noticed an opening in the black fog, a circle on the shoreline from which it seemed to retreat. Dimly lit by the fog's ambiance was the silhouette of a man lying on the ground, holding his torso. Then the black fog washed over him.