Tahr - The Days of Ash and Fury, Volume One [sample]

III: G'NAATH

Oort Greykin slowly pulled away the leather curtain that hung before the private stony nook within which Shyla slept, and peered inside.

"To the brass. Again," Oort whispered to his wife Thinsel, referring to the candle Shyla was given just the day before, fully melted now, down to the base of her brass lamp. "Even knowin' what's to be comin' t'day."

"We're gonna lose 'er, Oort," Thinsel moaned as Oort let the drape fall and they stepped a few feet away to speak. "Oh, my Oort, you must do something, I canna bear it." Thinsel began to sob, tears flowing freely down her round, pallid face. Oort took her in his diminutive arms, his callused fingers drawing the yellow hair from her eyes.

"We'll not lose 'er, my dear. Not today," Oort vowed, unconvincingly. "Nuth'n fer it but to get her up then, and face th'elders." Oort patted his wife's shoulder as he released her.

"Oh, Oort!" Thinsel keened.

"Girl!" Oort thundered, "Git yerself outta bed, yer sleepin' late again, t'day of all days!"

Shyla's eyes popped open, and she immediately felt her heart plummet into terror, knowing in her bones what this awful day would bring.

"I'm up Papa, I'm up!"

"Well, git yerself down the tunnels then and quick, girl. Don't be dallyin', for yer own sake."

Shyla rubbed her eyes and gathered her wits, formidable wits indeed for a gnome, and began to formulate a plan that would get her through this ordeal, yet knowing even as she raced to pull on her breeches that she was out of excuses. She had been late to begin breakfast for the gnomes of her tribe more often than not the past few seasons, and had been warned repeatedly – she must do her duty, or face expulsion from G'naath. Two days before, as she arrived to the kitchens late yet again, she had found the Elder waiting for her, parchment in hand, with orders to appear before the Court.

There were few things, if any, more sacred to the gnomes of the Maw than the virtues of labor and duty, and Shyla had proven herself a complete failure on both counts.

"I shoulda never been a gnome," the girl said ashamedly to herself, for at least the hundredth time, as she prepared for what would certainly be the worst day of her life. "Ain't cut out fer it."

Shyla Greykin had come to understand her disparity from other gnomes nearly fourteen years prior, in a cycle that had cost the lives of nearly a dozen of her people.

While the people of G'naath were not unintelligent, indeed most were capable of reading and writing, the higher principals of mathematics and science had never been their strength. Yet Shyla had always been dissimilar from her people, and before she had reached her tenth year, she had gone missing from her own slabs within the great cavern for hours, found by a panicked Oort and Thinsel explaining to a team of tunnelers, in great scientific detail, how and why their newest branch would soon collapse, to the uproarious laughter and derision of all who had been present.