Prompt# 235 - Ombrophobia - A Quest - Tekia - original

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: A Quest
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Ombrophobia
Warnings: none
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Zoysia’s life is one full of snow and clouds in a world that knows no warmth. Now the sun has returned everything his people know is about to change.

He hadn’t known what a clear sky looked like.
The first clear sky his people had ever known happened when he was just a teen. Everybody, from the youngest toddler to the oldest elder stood stock still in the heavy winds, staring up at the night sky, marveling at the millions of tiny pinpricks of light in the black expanse. It was as if all the hardships the tribes of the earth had suffered was suddenly worth it all, just for that moment.
After decades of clouds as thick as fur, the sky was suddenly empty and vast. And so very far away. He remembered being a child reaching for the low clouds rolling overhead as their caravan made its way through the thick snows. They were grey sometimes, black others, and more often than no, a pure white that made it impossible to tell the difference between the snow and the clouds.
Now, they a had a new range of colors to describe the sky. Pink in the morning, just as the new day began. Blue as the sky opened and tiny clouds harmlessly floated by. And black with the arrival of night.
No longer did their camp fires light up the clouds, but the sun and moon gave off more light than they had ever expected.
Many went blind the first time the sun made a reappearance, so dumbstruck they were by its brilliance. Songs and dances were offered to the moon as it grew in size over the course of nights, and was mourned as it faded with time, only to reappear weeks later.
It was as if a whole new world was opened up to them.
Zoysia was no different from the rest in his awe inspired dedication to the new events of his life. He ran through the snow with his fellows as they made connections of the stars and as they found shapes in the unfamiliar small clouds of the blue skies. He basked in the heretofore unknown warmth provided by the sun. His face turned brown under its caressing rays and his fur hood.
For a few years, life seemed perfect for their little tribe, the South Goers.
Then Zoysia’s father died.
The family went into mourning and Zoysia found himself at a loss. His father had just begun to teach him the old ways. Hunting and carving a carcass. Hiding the meat from predators for later consumption. Surviving the wild cold of their homeland while alone on a hunt.
As they shoveled snow over the lifeless body of his father, Zoysia sniffled back his tears as they stung his eyes. The sun was not as brilliant anymore and the sky was crowded with clouds. The wind was harsh and the people quickly moved back inside their tents as they feared the return of the all encompassing clouds from before.
Zoysia remained behind, alone as the day crept into night, standing silent vigil over his father’s grave, realizing that the new world that had been opened up before him, wasn’t so carefree anymore.
Another man of the tribe took over his training and years passed as the small tribe followed the herd of cattle they had always followed as the beasts headed in a southern direction as winter came upon them.
Zoysia learned the habits of the beast and he learned the ways of survival and he grew into a man. He was a good hunter, not the best, but was well enough at it that his mother never went hungry. His friends drifted away from him as he found that hunting and boasting about his kills wasn’t something that he felt the constant need to do. He provided for his mother, and that was enough.
He listened to the elders instead.
He crept through the night to their tents and listened as they spoke of legends from times long past. He sat in their circle with his blue eyes wide with wonder as they spun tales of human created birds and tasting the cheese of the moon. He lusted after each word they spoke, craving for more information about the past.
He knew that most of it was nonsense, as his father had told him ages ago, but the tales were so wonderful, they gave him dreams.
He wanted to know more about the people that didn’t fear the wild beasts, but had tamed them. The ones that had taught dogs to obey and made birds carry them on their backs. He wanted to know about everything that the elders only vaguely knew of.
Then the day came that their caravan came upon a lone traveler.
The tribe quickly took the man in, giving him and his dogs food and shelter for the night.
Only a great, brave man would go alone in this snowball world.
The man entered the elders’ tent that night and sat among them. He wore goggles to protect his eyes, the plastic eyeholes darkened to protect him from the sun’s harsh glare off the snow. His clothing was different from anything Zoysia had ever seen, bright red and loud. The man made noise with his every movement of the strange fabric rubbing together. The fur around the hood wasn’t like any they had seen before and when Zoysia dared to touch it, it felt unlike any fur he knew.
The man removed his hood once out from the blustering wind and exposed his short cropped brown hair and the firelight finally lit up his dark eyes.
“I come from my tribe to warn all that I come across,” he informed them as he was handed a warm cup of broth.
More and more of the tribe crowded into the small tent to hear and see. A stranger in their midst wasn’t something to be missed. Zoysia was glad enough to know the tent well enough to find a spot that let him see and hear all that was said around that small circle of rocks that held the fire.
“The sun was once the king of the sky,” he began before taking a sip of the steaming broth. “None could rival it in its power, but humans dared. The sun grew angry and left us. Now it has returned. We humans were foolish to test the sun, and were punished by the clouds for driving the sun away.”
The tribe of South Goers shifted as they all knew the story, somewhat. It was told by the elders for as long as human history could be recalled. It was a myth.
“And now the sun has returned to us.”
The people had worried about this. If the sun wasn’t a myth, if it had left them, then what did that mean, now that it had returned?
“What do you know of its return?” Someone dared to ask.
The man put aside his empty cup and took the time to look around at the many faces looking at him. He sighed and lowered his eyes, but not before many could see the fear and sadness in his eyes.
“You know that many lost their sight to the sun.” Nods all around. Those that had lost their sight in their tribe had moved on to less nomadic tribes, but they all remembered their missing loved ones. “The sun took their sight because they dared to look directly upon it. We must learn to respect the sun, once again. But that’s just the beginning. Soon, the sun will give us our own punishment for our foolishness.”
There were cries of fear and a massive shiver went through the tent. Fear suddenly became a living, breathing thing in their midst. The man looked around and worry etched his brow, twisting his eyebrows into a tangled mess.
“The clouds have parted, but they will return at the sun’s bidding. They will open and pour upon us.”
“They’ve always poured upon us,” someone dared say and the man nodded.
“And we know that the snow is safe after we boil it. But with the sun’s return, the snow will turn to rain.”
The people in the tent crowded forward. “What’s rain,” they asked.
“Rain is water that will fall from the clouds.”
“You mean snow?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s water.” He reached forward and touched a finger to the handle holding a small teapot over the fire. “Not snow. This water that falls from the clouds is called rain and it will harm us in ways the snow has not yet. We know to boil the snow so it cannot harm us as water, but rain is already water, and we cannot boil what is falling on us.”
There was a gasp of fear and a woman cried out, “It will kill us all!”
The man turned and Zoysia saw the passion, the dedication in his eyes. “When the rain returns, hide! Fear it! Do not let it touch your skin and boil it before drinking. We know this from the snow, but learn to know it from the rain. Our people from the past brought this upon us, and we must learn to suffer their actions. The rain can be overcome, but until then, fear it!”
The man stayed with them for many turns of the moon and Zoysia made himself known to the man. His name was Bahia and he knew many of the legends of the past that Zoysia so desired.
The spoke often, and Zoysia learned much from the man. He learned that Bahia believed the legends as truth and even knew more about them than the elders. He was a strange man that spoke in a strange accent whose origins he would never admit to. He often said phrases that Zoysia didn’t know, but remembered. Phrases such as glaciation reduction, ceeohtoo replenishment, and ombrophobia seeding.
When pressed with questions about these strange words and phrases, Bahia would brush him off with his own questions about the tribe and customs.
Then Bahia began to cough with the onset of winter. The snow returned and was worse for the sun’s return. The winds blew harder and the cold was colder after the warmth of the sun.
As time passed, his cough turned into an illness and the tribe was ill equipped to heal the man. They were too far south to seek help from others.
Bahia was growing worse and he faced the fact that his time was drawing to a close. Zoysia found himself wondering at the strange man that had quickly become a mentor and friend to him.
In their short time, Bahia had taught him about the sun, moon, stars and earth. He had learned more about the climate and elements from him in their short time together than he had in all the years his father and fellow men of the tribe had had to teach him. He somehow now felt different than the others, not smarter, but wiser.
Bahia was a wise man unlike any wise man he had ever know of. He thought that maybe Bahia was a wise man like the humans had been in the legends. Perhaps that was why he so easily believed the legends, because he was one of them.
Bahia was dying from a simple illness that even children were apt at recovering from. His body grew weak and his eyesight blurred. He was cared for and as an elder, for had he not gone out in the snow on his own, just to warn them of the dangers of disobeying the sun? He was to be honored in death, the elders decided and Zoysia mourned before the man was even dead.
“There’s so much you haven’t told me,” he said one night, holding a cup of warmed cattle broth to the man’s pale lips.
He sipped carefully and tried to focus his eyes on Zoysia. He gripped the younger man’s wrist and pulled the cup away from his lips. “I don’t have much time, friend.”
Zoysia shook his head and set the cup aside, eyes on the dark shadows of the tent. The wind outside howled, but Zoysia knew that the winter was nearly over and the herd of cattle would start to return to the north. Bahia said that’s when the rain would begin, with the turn of the season. Zoysia shivered as he wondered what the return of the rain would really mean for them.
The grip on his wrist that he had forgotten about tightened and he returned his eyes to Bahia’s thin face. “I have to tell you, before its too late.” He paused to breath, to steady his voice. “The past cannot be changed, but the future is still malleable.” Another breath. “We cannot fix our mistakes, but we can those that suffer for them.”
“I don’t understand, Bahia.”
He shook his head where it rested on the pillow made of cattle skin. “My name is John. John Bahia, Ph. D, geophysicist and climatologist.”
“I still don’t understand.”
He panted for breath and his hand on Zoysia’s wrist grew weak. “You have to, Zoysia. I’m giving my confession to you.” His dark eyes turned to a corner where his pack lay heavily in the shadows. “When I pass on, you take my things.” He licked his dry, cracked, lips. “I’ve taught you the basics of reading, so you must learn the rest. The things in my bag will help you.”
His voice was growing faint and Zoysia frantically clutched at his hands. “Wait, explain to me. I can’t learn this on my own.” He didn’t even know what these things meant.
“In my bag, there’s a map.”
He shook his head. “I can’t read a map.”
“Learn. You’re good at that.” He coughed into Zoysia’s shoulder as the younger man clutched him by the shoulders. Tears began to trail down Zoysia’s face as he realized that the man wasn’t going to live through the night. When he laid him back after the coughing fit, there were specks of blood on his lips. Zoysia carefully wiped them away and waited for him to catch his breath.
“Follow the map back to where I came from Zoysia, you won’t regret it.”
The man’s voice faded into unconsciousness and Zoysia was left alone with the howling wind.
In the morning, his mother entered the tent and found Zoysia bleary eyed and solemn over his dead friend’s body.
The funereal was eerily similar to that of his father’s and Zoysia found himself once again left without a guild. He was once again alone on his path to knowing and learning. Only this time, there was nobody to take him in and teach him.
His mother sat with him after dark and he held warmed water in his hands as his eyes refused to shed anymore tears. He mumbled, “I only wanted to learn what ceeohtoo was.”
“I know, dear,” his mother said. “You always want to know. Everybody else accepts, but you want to know why.”
They left the snow grave behind as the cattle turned to the north and life resumed its everyday path. Zoysia hunted, he set traps, and he brought home his prizes and still he found no pride in the actions. He felt no pride in his kills and he felt no urge to join in the challenges the hunters set each other.
The weeks passed like they always do until one day the clouds thickened and with a boom of thunder, they opened and water poured from the sky.
The people huddled inside their tents, clutching at each other in fear as the rain fell from the heavens and drenched the snow around them. They sobbed as a sound they had never heard before drove many crazy with fear. The rain was heavy as it fell on the treated leather of their tents, rapid and loud and nonstop.
Panic clenched their hearts as they remembered Bahia’s words of warning of the sun’s punishment. They sat with no fire, for to have a fire, they had to open the flap in the roof of the tents and none dared least they get a drop of rain on them.
Zoysia sat in his own tent, staring blankly at the dark walls, listening to the rain and finding it calming rather than frightening. Bahia’s dogs were sleeping on his legs, giving him a warmth that he didn’t feel on the inside. His mother sat at his back, her arms tightly wrapped around herself and shivers coursing through her body. He tilted his head to one side, brushed the fur of his hood away from his face, and sniffed the air.
“Mother?”
“Yes, heart?”
“Do you smell that?”
She sniffed, then frowned. “What is that?”
Zoysia made a decision. “It’s the smell of rain.”
She flinched and he fell silent, and let the night pass without rest. When the sun finally returned, the people exited their homes and carefully stepped out into a new world. The snow was no longer drifting about, but was frozen solid. A thick sheet of ice overlaid the snow and many people slipped and fell hard.
But they laughed, because they had survived the rain.
Then there was an outcry of panic and everybody rushed to the source to find horror. A few dogs had been left out in the rain and it showed. Their furs were matted with ice chunks and one had even died in the night, his pink tongue hanging out and pockmarked with something unknown.
Whispers spread and Zoysia knew that Bahia’s words were true. The rain was dangerous to them. Zoysia left the group and returned to Bahia’s dogs, hugging each one gratefully.
He remembered Bahia’s pack then and pulled it to him with the dogs surrounding him. It took him a moment to figure out how to open the bag by grasping the brightly colored clip and pulling the teeth apart by dragging the clip between them.
Inside the brightly colored bag were many objects that Zoysia couldn’t place a use for, but he did find the map Bahia had spoken of with his last words. Zoysia clutched the map and tried to think of who could read it and teach him.
Further in the bag, he found something that left him marveling at the discovery. A book. With wide eyes and gentle hands, he pulled the book from the bag and traced his fingers over the cover. Books were things of legends as well, and he had never thought that he would ever see one. They simply didn’t exist. Nobody knew how they came to be, or who made them, only that they were great sources of knowledge.
Bahia had one in his possession. Bahia was a great wise man lost to them.
Carefully, Zoysia opened the book and struggled to read the words that Bahia had tried to teach him by carving letters in snow.
He didn’t know the words, nor what the many numbers meant, but he continued to read and smiled when he stumbled upon a word he did know. Words that could teach him the things Bahia knew.
Near the end of the book, Zoysia found his name and he suddenly knew that the voice of the book was Bahia’s. He had written this book and he had mentioned Zoysia.
The final entry of the book Zoysia could read clearly, as if Bahia had written it with Zoysia reading it in mind.
“Zoysia, I am dying and before I die, I want to give you what you so want to know. Take the map and follow it to my home, New York City. There, everything that I own will become yours. Find a man by the name of Dr. Cal Bermuda. He will take care of everything until you adapt to my home. I beg that you do this. You will learn so much, and you will help your people where I could not.
You’ve been a son to me, Zoysia, and I want you to live and know the world as I know it. It’s a beautiful place.
Yours, Dr. John Bahia.”
His mother joined him then, and looked at the things he had scatted about him. He looked to his mother with tears in his eyes.
“I want to go on a quest.”