Our Little Gods 2: GOLDRAC, Of the Old Gods.

Chapter 16.

Maasil woke up with a start. The creature that had crossed the portal from Rabatea with them was sitting right against the side of his cot watching him. The boy tried remembering the name. Yorn, of the Braugaraf kind. It had left their company as soon as arriving in the new world, running away as if it had caught a scent. Maasil was not used to the proximity and the steady stare of the beast unsettled him, he sat against the side of the tent and pushed back the white strands of hair falling in his sleepy eyes. The beast cocked its head to the side. That position put in evidence the short scaly flat horns at the back of its skull. 

"What do you want?" He said softly.

The beast's fur turned from dull grey to pure white. 

"Yeah, you got that right. But I can't change them back to black as you do."

The fur turned pitch black and the outline of the beast got lost in the semi-darkness of the tent. 

"I liked them black. Does this make me look like an old shrunken up monk?" 

Yorn stuck its nose into Maasil's face almost to touch it and sniffed a couple of time. It cocked its head again to the side and nuzzled the boy's ear. Maasil's giggled and put his arms around the animal's neck, he could barely feel the fingers from his other hand so large the neck was. Yorn put its head on the boy's shoulder and Maasil started crying silently. They remained like so a while until the boy pulled back and looked at the warm brown fur wet where he had pressed his face against it. The head of the boy and the braugaraf were levels and the little novice only stood one head above the beast when standing cutting the oddest of pictures as they walked out of the tent together.

"I have to go to the city of the Rebuntes. Gerrek and his kind are going to awake one of the oldest sleepers  and the Rebuntes claim that the oldest sleepers are the more difficult  to understand, that is why I told them they must be speaking an almost unaltered version of the original GodWord." Maasil told his companion as they walked together to the edge of camp. "I guess I am the only one who has heard true GodWord around here and studied it from the transcript of the ravings of the Starwanderer, back home."

The boy and the braugaraf picked their way across the cold windy plateau to the track that leads to the entrance of the Rebunte city of ice. Just before the path plunged between the rock face of the Solidus and the ice wall of the glacier they met Farenn sitting on a boulder. 

"Hey! Maaz! Was Baalbek not supposed to come along with you?"

"I  chose to let him alone for the day. He is still out of sorts."

"You came on your own?"

"I can walk for a day on my own, you know. And I had Yorn here with me, so I wasn't entirely alone you see."

Farenn looked at the animal squatting by the side of the boy looking at him as if it understood all that was being said.

"I guess. You must be famished."

"We had snacks for the midday meal, don't worry. Have they woken the sleeper yet?"

"They are melting the ice as we speak but he is very deep so it is taking some time. Maaz, tell me if Gerrek is one of them and if they are around since before the birth of the Daughters why can't they just remember where the Tetrahedron is?"

Maasil gave him a perplexed look. "Oh, that's right, you were not in Agardi's tent when he explained it. Well, it goes like so. The Rebuntes, short of being immortal and genderless are pretty much like us, their head is not set up for unlimited souvenir storage, so they forget in order to be able to live in the present, all the most ancient things. That is why their language has evolved and that is why they have sleepers."