Prompt# 216 - Heavy Hearted/ September Inanimate Object Challenge - Huntsman’s Bow - Tekia - Origina

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Title: Huntsman’s Bow
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Heavy Hearted, September Inanimate Object Challenge
Warnings: I don’t even know. I was watching a film on Mesolithic Britain and this sprouted from that. Also, I don’t know if I’ve done this month’s challenge correctly. Is this the bow’s POV?
Rating: G
Summary: A bow is the heart of a tribe of hunters and gatherers.

The huntsman created the bow with his bare hands. He had made the bow out of yew and had spent hours on the supple wood, turning it from raw material to the fine piece of workmanship. The stick was cut from a young tree, and carved with a tool made from his own hand. He etched on the bow the prey he hoped to catch when the bow was finished. He sanded the bow with leather and sandstone and created arrows to shoot straight and true. He threaded the bow with deer sinew and painted it red.
Once the bow was complete, he created a offering to the spirits and asked for a blessing to be put upon the bow. Something to make the bow aim true and always hit its mark. He asked that the bow be blessed with a soul, a life, a spirit. Hope. Pride.
His father was proud of his son’s skill. His brother’s jealous. He noted none of it, for he had his sights on the future. The hope of a brighter future the bow would bring him. After he finished the deadly tool, others of his tribe envied him his skill and offered many items of worth in trade for the bow.
He refused them all, for he had built his bow for his own motives. He used it for his own profit. With the impressive bow in his hands, he brought down the stag and the boar. With the horns of the stag he created a headdress that spoke of his prowess in the hunt, his strength of soul. With the meat of the boar, he let his tribe feast healthily through the winter.
With the bow in his hands, he grew from a young man to an adult, strong of body, and attractive to the women of his tribe. So he found a mate and sired children, a son that followed in his footsteps and became the head hunter of their tribe. The boy quickly learnt all his father had to teach and, when the time was right, the bow was passed down to him.
With the bow in his hands, the boy out hunted every other man in their tribe. With the bow in hand, the boy grew and followed his father’s path, creating a healthy tribe and then a family of his own.
The bow was passed from father to son for several generations until suddenly, as the original hunter’s son, six times removed, was hunting in the early blush of spring, the bow snapped in his hands. The crack of aged wood was loud in his ears and he flinched as the bow shattered in his hands. The twine whipped his fingers and the bow folded in on itself and the prey he was hunting tensed in fear. Then the bow was broken and the prey was gone and the man cursed his luck.
He didn’t throw his broken bow away, but carried it with him back to where he and his family had wintered. Long ago, his father had given him the bow, and long ago he had learned that his father’s father had given it to him. It was a powerful bow, full of soul and life. It was the pride of his line and it was ill luck that the bow broke.
He honored the bow with a ceremony. He gave the ancient bow blessings for it’s journey to the afterlife, as if it were a living thing. Which, to his family, it had been.
The bow had been their center. It had been their world.
The bow was gone and the hunter sought answers. Heavy hearted with the loss, he sought the wise men of the tribe and asked for answers. They gave him none. They gave him riddles and they gave him half reasons.
He wondered, then he mourned his loss. Then he set about making another bow, because his family could not go hungry. Forever the bow was buried in his past, a part of his family that had been a blessing, then a great loss.
The twin curved sticks that had once been a great bow were buried in a pool of dark, thick water. It was the holy water that both housed the ancient souls and the hope for the future. To honor the afterlife, the soul, things were given to the pool. To honor both the family, the soul of the family, and the bow itself, the bow was given to the pool.
As quickly as the man’s children’s children was the bow forgotten.
Forgotten was the blessing of the bow and the pride of the family. The hunter’s family was quickly lowered to the level of the average hunter, and their pride was removed.
The bow sank to the bottom of the dark pit, sealed away from all light, broken and rotted. The magic of its life was forgotten.
Days passed, followed by seasons, then years. Then decades, followed by centuries, then millennia. The pool shrank, grew, disappeared, then changed time and time again until the pool itself was forgotten under ice, then fields of grass, giant trees, and wild animals that the bow had once hunted with pride.
The bow’s spirit slept rather that remember its pride. The bow longed for it’s proper place in human hands. In the hunter’s family’s hands. After so long, the soul forgot its dream, and the broken bow became just that, a broken soul.
The ground ate at the bow, changing it from wood to something else in the dark underground grave. And the bow settled into its new home.
It forgot humans and hunting and spirits. It forgot its longing, until sunlight suddenly poured down on it.
The dirt was removed and there were human hands on the bow and the bow woke and thrummed with life. It remembered humans suddenly and remembered life.
It was held firmly and delicately in human hands, washed of dirt and placed in a spot of honor. Humans touched and petted and stroked the bow and loved it once again. They treated it with loving touches. They treated it with honor.
Pride.
Humans didn’t repair the bow, nor did they use the bow, but they came and looked at it. They talked about it, over it. They worshiped it, and the bow’s soul thrived on that.
Pride.