Just Another Day

"Does it look like I'm going anywhere soon?" Shanku smiled sadly. If he knows my people, he probably knows what I've done.

"Follow me," Shaman Onami stood and dusted himself off. He led the cub to his nearby tipi and invited her inside. "Draw it behind you, please. The others do not need to hear this story."

"What's so special about me then?" Shanku asked suspiciously as she did as she was told.

"Your breed," he said simply. "Now sit down."

Shanku once again did as she was told. Shaman Onami reached into a leather pouch and revealed a glittering dust. He threw this over the fire before him. The flames burst and began to twist as the smoke thickened.

"Long ago, the Sylvans were a very different people." Shaman Onami waved his hand through the smoke and it began to change. Images of kurach began to form in the twisting smoke.

"Nomads, who travelled as far as their wings would take them." He waved his hand again. "Then, Men came to our land." The smoke swirled and formed an image of a kurach and Man standing beside one another on a broad land.

"Tempers raged as our children mingled. The Sylvans stopped visiting us of the plains and sought to destroy the men." The shapes of the kurach and Man multiplied, and the forms clashed with one another.

This is better than the puppet shows back home! Shanku thought excitedly as the smoke puppets vanquished one another.

"For many years, they fought one another. By the time a truce was made, many lives had been lost." Funeral pyres and graves formed as the kurach and men disappeared.

"The Sylvans blamed the losses on their nomadic life. They reclused into their forest and made us swear not to tell of their existence to outsiders." Shaman Onami waved his hand a final time and the smoke returned to its trickle.

"So that's why they won't leave the forest?" Shanku asked.

"Yes," Shaman Onami nodded solemnly. "It would appear that you still have their Wanderlust."