14. The Aurealians were a musical people

The hunting grounds were alive with music.

This was actually not uncommon. The Aurealians were a musical people. Their language is as much song as it is speech. It was more important for them to hear each other than to actually see or touch; long silences were unhealthy and filled the head with bad thoughts. The lessons they teach each other, and their children, are passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation, changing slowly or quickly or not at all.

That is why Stargazer hates the false songstress so. She sings to the young of the heavens and the wonderful things that are up there, and how when the children are ready to go out into the world they will learn how to claim their part of the heavens for themselves. But it is not so. All that is waiting for them is the hunting grounds, and the Others who Hunt.

That is why her duty as Eldest of the hunting ground was so important. She knew the true songs, the songs of defiance, and more importantly the songs of lamentation. Often, she would sing those songs from places where she could be heard. When she died, the next Eldest would sing for her. The songs would change with the singer, but the duty remained.

The Others never came silently. Not the ones who hunt. Not the ones who killed. It was safe to sing, until you heard the sounding of the horns. Then all went silent, except for those who were fighting for their lives.

Stargazer often wished that she could help them. That she could seek out the hunters and do battle with them to protect the kips who had not had time to learn. To fight side by side with her sisters, spear and planning against claw and speed and cunning.

She was forbidden. That was the betrayal of Strongarm. Strongarm was very brave, but also selfish, for she had been Eldest. It was her duty to survive, and to sing to the young. Only when she was already dead was her duty to survive and pass on her knowledge set aside.

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But tonight, the young sang to her. She had told the young, the kips and the trainees and the veterans, that there were humans in the sky. She had told them that the humans gave her hope for tomorrow. And so they sang to each other, and to the humans who could not hear them, and they sang to Stargazer.

For if Stargazer had hope, then they had hope as well. She had sung to them of her hope, and now they sang back their own Songs of Hope. It was her duty as Eldest to listen.

She struggled to keep her emotions in check. To listen to the kips foolish dreams of thirty feet tall human’s with six arms that breathed fire and galloped with the speed of a song. To hear the veterans suggest that, if there were humans in the sky, then perhaps not everything the false songstress had told them was a lie.

Stargazer listened, and although her hopes did not vanish, her fears grew.

If the Moon of False Promise signaled their destruction, and the humans could not prevent it, then that was not so bad. Even if they could and chose not to, then the Aurealians in the hunting grounds would know know different, for they would be dead. That would not stop the hunts, but all of their songs would be forgotten and lost. That was terrible, but Stargazer accepted that it could happen. That it likely had happened many times.

But if they were not destroyed, and the humans did not help them? Oh how Stargazer feared that possibility. For then there would be a second false songstress for the kips and the trainees and the veterans to curse until their dying breath, and her name would be Stargazer.

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