Exile
Picture a blade of grass. It is not green. It is yellow- dried and crackling in the breeze.
Now, Imagine that blade of grass, but million fold. Everything you see, is grass. The sun beats down upon the ground; glaring and unwelcoming. There are trees- only a few, tall and thin, with small black leaves. Deer graze on thorny berries in the shade, ever wary of danger.
Then a shout breaks through the silence. The thumping of hooves on dry, cracked ground, and a pride of blood lions are desperately fleeing from a small group of mounted Hunters. The Hunters wear thick, wooden, tight-fitting masks that come round to encircle their head, and overlapping plates of varnished wood specially embalmed to be strong and light. They call this Armour.
One of the Hunters give a call, and a group splits off. They urge their steeds past the blood lions' and cut them off. Quickly, they surround the dusky red beasts, and they each remove a long ash-hardened javelin from a quiver. Ready, in unison, they cock their arms back, and throw.
Many centuries later, we come across a similar scene. But there is one difference. As the Hunters rally the lions and prepare to surround them, a lion falls, wounded. Then another yowls in pain as it falls to the ground. Many others follow the same pattern. And they have one thing in common; long, thin sticks of wood, carved straight to metal points, tree heron feathers ending its form. A man, also masked and armoured, sees his handiwork and smiles. He looks at the source of his pride, a curved and oiled branch with a string made of deer-gut fibres, and is pleased.
But the Hunters are not pleased. They are Angry.
At the Man With The Curved Branch's village, many men and women are gathered. People from miles around have come to hear him talk. Even Hunters have come to listen to him, to let him tell them of their god. How he is not the god of stories, as the other Priests say, bit the god of fate. And most importantly, he does not believe in the other Priests most fundamental teaching. He does not believe that the ancestors of the story god's people should be worshipped. He does not believe that things should be done because that is how they were in the stories. And this is why he uses his Curved Branch instead of javelins.
But this is heresy. And though his followers believe him, and though they have seen that with stagnation extinction walks hand in hand, many others cling to what they are used to. The Other Priests have influence. And so it is that another crowd of people joins, flaming effigies to hand- led by the Hunters from earlier. And they rush in, and they beat the Man With The Curved Branch. They tear his Branch away from him, and they break it. Then they execute him, and exile his followers to the northern deserts which they call Solara. For the sun never sets in that land- not truly, as the moon beats down nearly as hard as the sun for these people. And so the Listeners, weary and tired, most of them bloodied, are forced out into the wasteland.
Whether any of this actually happened,
