Sci Fi & Fantasy / Tales of an Offbeat Time - part 2

Tears welled up in her The crows were gathering above his head, wheeling and circling in the late summer sky, their cawing striking down at the barley fields. Life was moving. The deer were fleeing, the fish were swimming. Life makes room for life, and it was leaving this place.
It’s not a dead place. Perhaps this is what it’s like to be a child in the belly? Witness to the feeling of life about to begin. Calm before storm. Life before life? Or maybe this is the feeling of death? He pulled his hair from his face and the world seemed slightly less confusing.
And if it is? Then the curse of death is knowing the feeling of life. Best if you live for ever, or don’t live at all.
“Haaska!”
He turned at the sound of his sister’s voice, and there she was, running to him, her hands brushing the barley tops, her harvest-gold plait swinging behind her.
“Haaska, can you feel it?”
“Only those who have never lived can’t, I imagine.”
“Something is stirring. Nyesta says it is the birth of autumn, but I think she is wrong.”
“And what is it then?” He looked back to the sky; knowing she would not have an answer.
“I do not know,” she said absent-mindedly, rolling a stalk of wheat between her fingers.
Neither do I, but it is the birth of something. He sighed. “Are we to stay?”
She shook her head. “The caravans are being packed.” Sadness was etched on her face as she gazed out across the barley fields, her voice sweet with melancholy. This was her home. It was her brother‘s home, too, but it did not mean as much to him. She remembered the day she had chipped her name into the Namestone; Mara, after her mother. Her real mother.
“Nyesta says we will follow the deer. They know the way east.”
“I’m sure the deer know nothing.”
“They know the way east,” she said adamantly.
“I believe you,” he smiled, brushing past her. “We should be back. Father will want things packed, and Nyesta, too. I should take the dogs out for one last hunt, a deer will fill us the first few days, or else a brace of rabbits. When do we leave? First light, no doubt, Mara? Mara?” He looked back at her standing there, shrouded in silence.
“Haaska?”
“Yes?”
She stared up at him. He could almost smell her sorrow. Almost taste it. She does not want to leave, he told himself. Of course she doesn’t. These rolling fields are her home, and the craggy mountains and the forests. What will she find east? What will I find east? he wondered. Must we go? Can we not gamble a life here?
“I do not want to go.” Her voice was a breathy whisper.
“We have to.”
eyes and she threw herself round him, sobbing into his shoulder. Soon, the sky was a fiery orange expanse and dusk was falling across the land. Brother and sister, they took the dirt path back to the village, hand in hand.