If anyone had told her, Bestla thought in wonderment, that she would see her little moon alive… She would have had them committed. Or possibly punched them in the throat for being needlessly cruel. But as she sat in the center of the little grove that sang to her heart as home, the tall eternal had to admit that everything was alive. Amazingly, wondrously, beautifully alive. She didn’t know how. She wasn’t sure she cared. She knew it wasn’t anything to do with Chaos. That could only warp and twist.

For now, it was enough to know that much.

Besides, she had her own entire world now to explore and gloat over and worship. From where she sat, ringed by blooming trees and glowing mosses, Bestla felt at peace. Things weren’t quite the same as the visions she’d had. They couldn’t be given the length of time lost and the lack of other people. But the little, dimly lit moon with its lovely bioluminescence was very close. Even if the trees couldn’t bear fruit and the fungi she’d found was definitely not of the edible variety, it was okay. She didn’t need growing food for herself. And the little bugs and critters she’d spied wouldn’t need the same sort of nourishment she would anyway.

And speaking of… a soft whirring of wings caused Bestla to look up. It moved fast, but she managed to spy one of the little fairy-like lizards zipping through the air. Peepling, her brain supplied absently, drawing on visions and dreams from the past. Her old memories told her that there should be a multitude of the things in varying colors and sizes. So far, she’d only seen a few and never close enough to really study them. They seemed nervous about her, which… fair enough. She probably read as a predator to them. Time and patience would win them over. If that didn’t work, well, there were the tiny piles of seeds and bits of fruit she brought to snack on. She didn’t mind sharing if it meant making friends.

But that was for later. Right now, she just wanted to relax and enjoy her world and listen to all the little sounds of life surrounding her. Even that would have to wait, though. She’d spent so much time working on this one little bit of her world. She needed to wander and see other parts, other groves and glades. Thus, with a wistful sigh, she pulled off her heeled boots and then stood up, wriggling her toes into the cool loam. Then, wadding the boots up into a backpack she’d brought to hold water and trail mix, along with a notebook, Bestla began to walk at random.

As she explored forgotten trails and pulled down overgrowth, she had little flashes of past memories. A whisper here, a shadow there. At one point, she had to stop and lean against a tree as a vision of wolf-like creatures filled her mind. They’d been… mildly aggressive, but had backed away after hearing something large in the trees. Bestla had heard it too. She knew those sounds. She’d felt herself bowing to the forest, giving silent tribute to whatever was in there.

As she emerged gasping from the memory, Bestla had to close her eyes for a moment and center herself. Holding the memory tight, she considered what she’d seen. The not-wolves (gmork, her mind whispered) hadn’t acted fearful of whatever had been in the trees. They’d acted… deferential? Respectful? Like they knew their place in the world and the limits of who or what they could annoy. For a moment, Bestla felt annoyance. It was great to catch glimpses of things that had been. But they were always glimpses, never anything long or detailed enough to give her the context that she craved so badly.

She heard a tiny buzzy, chirping noise and opened her eyes to find herself staring at one of the little lizards. The tip of its tail curled up and flashed out in little bursts of light. As it hovered in the air, watching her, Bestla began to laugh softly. Not a single thought behind those eyes. It had a purpley tinge under its green hide and looked very much like the one she’d glimpsed earlier. Maybe the critters here were starting to get used to her after all.

Holding up a careful hand, she held her breath, wondering if she could coax the cute little thing into landing on her finger. Head tipping this way and that, the tiny lizard thing’s tongue flickered out, just grazing her fingertip. It didn’t land on her, but chirped again and sped off into the trees. Well, she thought, it was progress.

Straightening up, she adjusted her backpack and began to walk again. She didn't get very far before another vision swept her up and swallowed her whole…

The world was burning and freezing all at once. From the trees came hoarse, shrill cries of fear, of pain and loss. She was moving, running. At times, she was high up in the trees before something seemed to jump and she was deep within the undergrowth. But always, she was running, running. Desperate rage and fear goaded her on. All around, the tree died, some fell. The air was thick with screeching, harried peeplings, dashing and darting about, trying to escape whatever calamity had come upon their world. She watched them fall, sometimes singly. Sometimes in clusters.

Now her perspective changed again and she watched a pack of gmork ringing something big. Backs toward whatever was moving through the burning woods, she saw sparks and flashes as fire licked at the gmorks’ dark fur. Felt them die as they tried so hard to defend whatever was within the trees.

Bestla screamed with the gmork as they fell. Screamed with the one they had been protecting as the trees thinned and the Lord stood, illuminated in strange, freezing fire. Surrounded by strange, hazy shapes that tormented and tortured the colossal beast. All around she could see and feel death and destruction, though it was like looking through a strange veil. She shuddered as the Lord threw it’s stag-like head back, roaring in pain as blood burst, flower-like from a wound upon it’s chest. Watched as it threw out scaled and furred arms, claws spread, trying to defend itself.

Then, the world seemed to turn incandescent for a breath. She could hear terrible things, could feel the shudder of the ground as the Lord fell, but she couldn’t see anything. By the time her vision cleared, she was on the ground, booking up through the charred and blasted remains of the undergrowth. Above her lay the maimed and mutilated body of the Lord of the Wild, mouth open and slack in death, tongue lolling as mingled saliva and blood dripped down into the churned soil beneath. Vision blurred then as she saw the Lord from many angles: a single gmork pup, howling in anguish, who could not understand why she was so suddenly alone, a family of peeplings that were dying on the wing and dropping to the earth like rain, tiny bodies twisted and burned. All around her the trees and plants she loved shriveled and died. The Lord, once proud and mighty lay on the cold earth, body deflating as those who would have mourned it’s passing lay dead and dying around it.

Bestla screamed in sorrowful rage before she, too, grew cold and still.

Scrabbling at the dirt where she’d collapsed, Bestla’s senshi screamed until her throat felt raw and she tasted the coppery tang of blood. Then, as suddenly as the vision had claimed her, she could feel the dim sun upon her back. Could hear the rustling leaves in the trees surrounding her. As normal vision returned, she lay on the ground for a time, shivering with reaction. How long she stayed there, she couldn’t have said, but she needed to be there and feel everything to be sure that she wasn’t still trapped in that dreadful memory. Finally, she felt strong enough to sit up and take a bottle of water from her backpack. Cracking it open, she drained it in less than a minute. Soft chirruping nearby showed her a tiny peeling family clinging to the bark of a tree, all watching her unblinkingly. One detached itself and came to her, alighting on her shoulder as she carefully reached up and stroked it’s tiny noggin with her fingertip.

That seemed to release the others and they swooped and circled around her. The peeling on her shoulder took off and the family sped off to do whatever it was peeplings did. At least they seemed less leery of her now.

But now, she thought, jaw tightening as she carefully wobbled to her feet, I have something to do. The vision had burned itself into her brain and seemed to overlay itself with her surroundings. Moving as swiftly as she could, she followed the paths she’d seen in the vision.

When she reached the area that she’d seen in the memory, Bestla went still. The ground was lumpy and uneven. One of the lumps was much bigger than the others and she approached it carefully. Running her hand over aeons of dirt and ruin, she dug and scraped until she could see the greyish white of ancient bone. Aligning what she was looking at with what she’d seen in the vision, she moved to where the Lord’s skull would be.

Where it should have been and, very obviously, was not. Working away at the dirt, she found the Lord’s spinal column. The bones that should have connected to the skull. And there simply wasn’t anything there.

Gnawing at her lip until blood ran down her chin, Bestla tried to puzzle this out. As she circled the fossilized skeleton, her mind wandered, drifting to that day in the museum out in deepest space. She’d caught sight of something there that day. Something that had felt very close to her soul. In the midst of all the chaos, she hadn’t gotten a good look. She only had an impression of something big and bone white. Something that, at the time, had felt very… skull-ish to her.

“Mother ********,” she hissed suddenly, ideas clicking into place that she didn’t much like. Getting to her feet, she placed a gentle hand on the mound that covered the remains of the Lord. Almadel had some explaining to do. And reparation to make. She would have called the Merchant then and there if she’d had his stupid little calling card handy. But that was locked up safe back on Earth.

Forcing herself to breathe and calm down, Bestla decided that she would hike back to her little grove. It would give her time to think. But once she got back to her apartment, she was digging that card out and calling in her favor.

Word Count = 1839