Callisto

Fear to Tread

"The answer is fear, Father-Mother."

The eyebrows of the Great One rose once, and their eyes flew open to consider the thought.

"Explain this, child,"

"Fear is the greatest enemy of the Hanakh – of all who wish to survive in the wastes. Fear can kill us, should we let it cloud our mind."

"So we should never fear, Rain-Born? Should all snakes hunt without care for the size of their foe?"

She considered the question carefully, turning it over in her mind.

"No, Father-Mother," she said after she breathed in the wisps of smoke coiling around her like two serpents ready to strike. "Fear is also that which keeps us alive. It is part of us. We must know our fear and feel our fear but allow it to pass through us and over us. A mind that thinks only of fear is a dead mind without will or action. A huntress must master her fear, not be ruled by it."

Father-Mother watched her closely, inspecting the tattoos freshly inked into her arms – the chalk-white markings of the Snake, branding her a seasoned huntress.

"What of the Old Ones, Rain-Born?" Father-Mother asked. "Remnants of their corruption still exist out there in the wasteland. Are they and their evil machinations not the greatest threat to our existence?"

Rain-Born closed her eyes and thought, her weaponless right hand gathering up a handful of dust and letting the tiny orange grains spread into the grooves of her palm.

The Tale of Walking-Shadow, Rain-Born thought, forcing her mind to recall the details of one story that had caught her attention in particular recently.

She knew the music of the tale, and she knew the poetry. But what was the message hidden in the labyrinth the beautiful words formed?

"The Old Ones were children," she finally said. "They were children playing with powerful toys. The clever hunter has nothing to fear from them or their world. Everything they made was in their own image: ugly and hateful. Nothing they gave this world was good. It is we who pay the price for their ignorance."

She remembered the part of Walking Shadow's story where the little turtle threw off his shell and tossed it towards the sun for being too warm, only to have it merely fall down and crush him, ending his pitiful life.

"Even the strongest creature can be killed by blind hatred," Rain-Born said, even as Father-Mother was about to raise their hand to give their final judgment. "We must face the world as it is and think of what it could be, not what it once was."

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Father-Mother's eyes narrowed.

"This is not the same young huntress that stood before us a year ago," they said. "Whose thoughts are these that swim in your mind, child?"

Rain-Born did not hesitate.

"Mine."

She said it sincerely and even dared to look up and stare back at Father-Mother. It was an unheard-of gesture, and there was movement somewhere in the back of the room, shadowed by the black void that surrounded the Elder's tent. A slight twitch in the dark.

"You would show the servants of the Old Ones mercy, Rain-Born? You would allow them to continue their pitiful existence in this world they ruined?"

"No, Great One," she said. "I would kill them. But I would not let the hatred of their kind consume me any more than I would attempt to draw blood from the air."

Father-Mother leaned back, breathing in the incense of the burning azure flames that flanked them.

Confidence without arrogance. Awareness of history without nostalgia. Anger without hatred.