The Shaman

This is day 2 and I hope with a better story.

The New from Poughkeepise Day # 72

Scenes Thursdays:

I went out to visit the prayer grove yesterday. It used to be a prayer tree, a holy yew where we hung our wishes to the gods. But ever since the local youth were conscripted to go to battle, the tree has expanded to the grove that surrounds it. I saw the shaman there, yesterday, on her knees, weeping. I stood to the side respectfully as she wrote her prayer on the parchment and kissed it, whispering a prayer. She’s unmarried and childless, so I don’t know who she was worried about, but as she’s usually the calm one, blessing our prayers as we hang them.

She left the grove without seeing me, and I went in to hang my own prayer, next to hers. Curiosity got the better of me, and I read what she wrote.


The Shaman


"Molly, get the kids we have got to go!" Dennis said shaking his wife awake.

"What? What are you talking about? Go where?" She said rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Never mind where, we just need to go and now." Dennis ran around the house picking up things and stuffing them in a bag. "Come on we have to go."

"Dennis, you are not making any sense. What's going on?"

"Look Molly, we have to go! You need to get the kids up and ready to go or we are all going to die. Now come on!" Molly stood up and walked into the other room and roused her kids. She had never known Dennis to act so odd, but he was not one of those people that gave into panic so something must be really wrong. She got the kids up and dressed them in their traveling clothes.

Five minutes later they were all standing in the main room of their three room home when Dennis burst in.

"Good, you are all ready to go now lets get out of here." he picked up his daughter and walked out of the house. Molly and their son followed close behind. They were halfway to the village square when Molly grabbed him by the arm.

"Dennis, you have got to tell me what is going on. I am not going to take one more step until you do." She planted her feet and waited.

"Molly we don't have time for this, and I can't talk about it right now. It is too dangerous."

"Where did you go this morning?" She asked still not moving.

"The prayer grove."
"Did you see an invading army coming or something? Because if you did then we should warn the..."

"No, please Molly, we can't stop, and we can't talk about it here. We have to get out of town." She could see the anguished look on his face, and decided that for the time being that she would follow him.

"Dennis, you better be right about this, it is market day and we are going to loose our spot and not have enough money."

"Market day will not matter." He said walking faster. Ten minutes later they cleared the edge of town. The sun was just coming up and they could see a few people trickling into town.

"Ok, that is it I go no further without some kind of explanation." She said when they were a hundred yards past the town wall.

"Alright, alright, but keep your voice down. Their still might be people around."

"Dennis what is this about?"

'Look Molly," He said putting his still half sleeping daughter down on the ground. She groaned softly but then rolled over in the grass. "This morning I went to the Prayer grove and Abby was there."

"Abby, you mean that red-head that sells the candles, Dennis what did you do? You know her father will kill you; I will kill you if you..."

"No! Not her, the shaman, please keep your voice down, look we could all get killed if others find out."

"What? If others find out what!" She demanded.

"Look, Abby was there, she was leaving a prayer, but she was crying, you know like the widows or mothers who lose their sons, but she is not married and has no children so why would she be crying like that. She left her prayer, left the grove and she acted like she didn't even see me. It was so weird. I mean more weird than she normally acts."

"So you were there to leave a prayer, what's the problem?"
"I was so startled by the way she was acting, and... and I just glanced at it."

"What did you do?" She asked fear welling up in her for the first time. "You looked at her prayer? That's not allowed! They could stone us if they found out." She grabbed her daughter from the ground and pulled her to her feet.

"Look Molly, I'm sorry but there is more."
"What more could there be, you read someone's prayer! You put us all in danger. We've got to go!" She said pulling the two kids behind her as fast as she could walk

"That is what I have been telling you. But it was what her prayer said that has me worried." He picked up the little girl and helped Molly pick up the pace.

"I don't want to know what it said. If you read it was bad enough."

"Molly you have to know."

"I don't want to." She was almost running now tears steaming down her cheeks. How could he have been so irresponsible. Even in the next town they might be found out and they would still be stoned to death. And then there was the war going on. They would have to run from that too. It was likely they would die no matter what they did.

"Molly!" He said grabbing her arm. "Listen to me. It said, 'Save us!'" Molly stopped dead in her tracks.

"Save us?"

"Yes."

"You did the right thing. Now lets go." The both walked as fast as they could without running until they saw the the light behind them. Then they ran. As the light grew brighter they found a place to hide, and prayed that they were far enough away from the town.

The heat was intense even a mile away, but she had to take a look, The fireballs rained down from the sky hurled by the gods. They obliterated the town and everyone in it. The last person standing was Abby. She stood in the middle of the town, arms raised to the heavens in thanks. then a fireball came down and incinerated her too.

When it was over they stood and looked at the remains of the town. Not a blade of grass was left standing. They turned their backs to the rubble and walked to the next town. All the could do was hope that theirshaman was not looking to be saved as well.


The Shaman by Jeffrey Hite is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at greathites.blogspot.com.

The Mediator

This is day one of the News From Poughkeepsie Challenge. Just 29 more to go. This one was a little bit of a surprise when I checked Murverse this morning and found this topic I knew it would be a bit of a challenge. It was fun to write, but don't expect me to start writing scripts for the My Pretty Pony cartoons any time soon.


The New from Poughkeepise Day # 70
Settings Tuesdays:

The world of My Pretty Pony is one beset by war and strife. Their society started innocently enough, with the branding of the young ones with cute icons, but later those brands became akin to gang signs, and the ponies would group together based on nothing more than signs. Astronomical signs vs water signs was a particularly bloody war, and the heart signs vs rainbow signs was tense, but stable, until recently. It breaks my heart to look at them and know the bloody past. The gang members keep branding new foals to keep the cycle of violence up, and it will take a talented mediator to end the decades-long hatred.

And if you are looking for a shirt to complete your pony Collection look no further



The Mediator Audio.


********


Five sets of ponies stood in groups around the forest glen. In the center was a table, that was what the mediator had requested. But as of yet he had not showed and he was over an hour late.

"This is getting old," Surefoot said, shaking his purple blue mane.

"The only thing old here is you," Came a shout from the astrosigns group.

"That is right hide behind your friends, don't bother to show our face. You astro's have always been cowards." He spat the words out and swishing his ultra long blue tail.
"We came here to make peace Surefoot and you know it. Now stop." Rightfeather said, his mane was long and green but streaked with gray.

"That is right old man," Surefoot said moving a little more into the clearing lifting his tail so that it would not drag on the ground. "You would not want that young foal to get blood all over this pretty table."

"Enough!" Rainbowcloud said stomping his fore hoof and tossing his blue mane "We have come here for peace and you do nothing but fight."
"Oh great the rainbows think are in charge here."

"Not in charge just level headed. If we are to make peace then this is not going to help us."

"What do you know of peace Rainbowcloud," This time from the Heart camp. "You led the massacre in the glen three years ago. You killed innocent ponies as if their lives meant nothing."

"Hearts are never truly innocent. They are born with the sins of their fathers on them."

"And the Rainbows are any different," Another voice from Heart camp. The two groups drew so close to each other that their flanks touched.

"You Hearts are all the same, you talk but are not brave enough to show our face." Rainbowcloud said stomping his hoof.

"I am not afraid of you Rainbowcloud." said a voice from behind. A pony pushed his way to the front. He was no bigger then then rest of them but they all gasped as he came forward. His tale was almost completely cut off and this mane was tattered. He had a brand but it was obscured by dark lines.

"Goldheart, we thought you were..." Rightfeather trailed off

"Dead, no I was not dead, but I have been among the gods. I was once the most beautiful of all of you, and the first to go to war. But the gods have punished me for my vanity and my lack of respect for their creations."

"You are the mediator?" Surefoot snorted.

"Yes."

"But you are a heart how can we trust," He was cut off as Glodheart charged him knocking him down and pining him under his front hooves. Several of the Hearts cheered but, Goldheart rounded on them and kicked and bit several of them.

"You can trust me only to kill those who are not here to make peace." He said panting over a heart pony that he had knocked to the ground. "My life is over. The gods have so proclaimed it, but it does not have to be the same for you. Come all of you, gather around the table and we will talk peace."

"But, Goldheart, why a table, ponies have no use for tables?"

"Because this is the way the gods do it. They gather around a table to discuss things of importance. And this is of the greatest importance." They all moved around the table and began to discuss a peace deal.

Then all was frozen, as Suzie reached down and picked up Goldheart. "Oh poor Goldheart. You were so pretty." She said petting what was left of his tail. She walked out of the room holding her beloved pony. "Mom Timmy has been in my stuff again!"




The Mediator by Jeffrey Hite is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at greathites.blogspot.com.

End of Days.

Prompt from Creative Writing Prompts

Describe a man who leaves no stone unturned. # 257

End Of Days Audio


Everyone in life has tasks that they feel are insurmountable. Some of them are, some of them are not and some are only impossible because of the person they are put in front of. Still others, though the task may be impossible or nearly so, relish in the task and will toil away at it no matter what. John was this last sort of man.
When he was young he read about the great “accidental” immortal, and the impossible task of insulting the universe from A to Z that the immortal set before himself. Now there was a man that knew what an impossible task was.
Though he was not immortal, John set about spending his life looking for the tasks that others believed were impossible. His mortality was only one more hurdle that he would have to over come. At first he had found a few tasks that everyone agreed were impossible but most of those turned out to be paperwork errors. Dividing by zero was just a matter of using unusually large values of zero. Faster than light travel was simple once you thought about it. Some light traveled slower, like that from a flashlight with nearly dead batteries, surely that could be overcome. Solving for pi and world hunger turned out two ends of the same problem. But, as he got older he began to despair that he would never find that impossible task that would he his life's work.
Then one day after realizing that the problem of the counting all the people on earth one at a time as merely a matter of getting them all to count themselves, the idea struck him like a rock, or in this case a stone. What about the man who leaves no stone unturned? That is what he had been doing in his quest to find the prefect problem to solve, why not literally leave no stone unturned?
The first thing of course was to determine what the quest meant. Was it no stone in his hometown, the state, the country, the whole world, or the entire universe? Since John, unlike his boyhood hero, was not an immortal he would have to settle on one of the choices that he could accomplish in what was left of his lifetime, and so he settled on leaving no stone unturned on the planet. Next was the need to determine what was a stone, and what did it mean to turn a stone. He defined a stone as an object made of rock no larger than his self and to turn the stone simply meant to rotate it beyond one degree out of from where it had originally rested.
Now having the logistics settled he set about his task. He started on his own street, and began moving stones. At first he used his feet, but then discovered quickly that he would not be able to keep track of which ones he had moved and which ones still needed to be moved unless he could see them more clearly. So he began to crawl. Three weeks later he crawled out of his town along the road to the next one. That took him two days, for many times cars kicked up stones and he would have to go back and move stones to be sure the he had moved them and not the passing car.
It was three years later when he crawled to the gate of a nuclear facility in North Dakota. It was his first real stumbling block. By that time his quest had gain some fame, still the leaders of the military tried to turn him away. To appease the public they even offered to have the soldiers of the base turn the stones and even to count them for him, and let him know when it was done. But this would not do. In the end, he explained that he would be looking at nothing but the stones and he would accept a posted guard to go with him so long as the guard didn't try to help, and he was allowed to go on.
His next major setback came during the San Francisco earthquake fifteen years later. He had been working steadily for nearly twenty years. With the deserts of the southwest behind him and the arctic cold of the north before him he was enjoying the mild climate when the quake hit. Suddenly millions of stones were turned before him and he had to go back many hundreds of miles to be sure that he had moved them all himself, and with the quake came the breaking of many stones he had already turned, so he had to go back turn these new stones as well, that cost him nearly a year.
In his eighty-fifth year he reached the outback of Australia. Here he was nearly defeated. He had managed all of Africa and the mighty Sahara, for although the heat was intense and there a great plains of nothing but stones to be turned, the people of Africa had an honor about them, and though few understood his words and even fewer understood his quest, they would stand guard around him and make sure he was protected from the wild life. But in the Australian outback, there was often no one that lived for hundreds of miles of backcountry. He was bitten by a spider and nearly died, had it not been for the quick thinking of a very daring young man who came upon him. Still it took him nearly a year to recover and when he did he had to begin where he had left off and the fear of the spider and its bite nearly drove him to call off the whole thing.
On his one-hundredth birthday he reached the boarders of Portugal, the last country on his quest. His entire body was racked with pain at nearly every movement, but the crowds behind him cheered him onward every day so he never faltered. They brought him water during the day and young women proud that their country was chosen to be the last one would rub saves in to his hands and knees at night when he would collapse from exhaustion.
Finally, one hundred and three years from the blessed day of his birth, he crawled along the last beach and turned the stones that he found there. This year had been the hardest yet, as his strength had all but left him and the days had been short. This day the wind from the sea as especially cruel, and it cut into his sparse frame like freshly sharpened knives through paper. The people had tried to form a line down near the sea to block the wind from him, but he told them that they were disturbing the stones and that he must make sure that he and he alone had turned very one of them. It was nearly nine thirty when he prepared to make his final pass as the tide had gone out exposing more stones to be turned. John Turner as he had come to be called slid his way along the beach turning each stone with great care though his hands shook and eyes refused to focus. The crowds screamed with delight as he neared the end of the beach an hour later. His heart pounded from the excitement. He reached for the final stone on the beach knowing that he had done it, he had turned every stone. His heart failed then; as he fell his hand hit the final stone and turned it.
The stone at his head reads simply, “Hear lies John Turner, yes he turned this one too.”



End of Days by Jeffrey Hite is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at greathites.blogspot.com.