#norhi

Norhi cried for sennights, clinging to the remaining belongings of her father and mother. Her cousins around her wept for their own lost family as well. So few of their number had survived the attack. Slavers had come in the night. They fought and killed, until the outsiders lay dead. And many of their own kin were long cold. Now all that remained were a handful of traumatized children, one aging matriarch, and a number of tired and injured hunters.

Word got out to their neighboring, sister tribes. A hunter and an artisan from each tribe came. They brought food, supplies, and hands to work. The camp was uprooted and moved, leaving blood soaked ground behind. They returned to The Tree’s grove. They built a new camp. They built walls. And the matriarch decreed no outsiders. No longer would they open their arms and hearts to the betrayers, to the savages.

Slowly they rebuilt their life. They learned to repel the outsiders. They guarded The Tree. They tended their plants, trained their children, and returned to the old ways. They did not trust. They could not trust. No outsider would take one of their own from them again. No outsider would see their faces and live to speak of it. And no outsider would ever remember that the Tribe of the Lost Night Blooming Honeysuckle, was ever called Noctfleur.

Norhi grew. She hardened. She studied at her Matriarch’s feet, learning their lore and their spells. She learned to listen intently to The Tree. She crafted their poisons with a deft hand. And she surpassed her coming of age a full two years earlier than her cousins.  Not long after, she began to tend to The Tree and the tribe’s healing. As each moon passed, she took on more of her Matriarch’s duties.

Soon, after she reached her full grown height, their Matriarch fell ill. The illness of a failing body, brought by time and age. She surrendered to the Life Stream, and Norhi was honored as their new matriarch. She took the most experienced huntress as her advisor. And she honored the silent ways. The first outsider that found their hidden village grove, she slew herself.

Time passed. And they lived. They did not flourish or thrive. But they lived. Norhi took no lovers. She bore no children. She worked. And she prayed before the tree. And her heart was hollow.

When old age found her, their tribe had grown again to its old numbers. And she had a protege of her own, to succeed her. And as she lay in her bed for the last time, she whispered, “This was not what my father wished for me.”