Welcome to Gaia! ::

Russet sat astride his horse, amidst the rest of the Anjt tribesmen. Like the rest of his tribe, his eyes were fixed on the stars by which they navigated the great southern plains they wandered. Behind him in the saddle was the weight and warmth of his son, Gale, slumbering gently at his father's back. Normally, this would have brought a smile to Russet's face, though tonight he was greatly preoccupied. Tonight, he watched the stars for a different reason.

The Anjt had always followed the stars. It was their religion, and each star had its own story and mythos. It was thought imposisble for any one person to have full knowlege of these myriad stories, though Russet was trying. Much of the religious tradition of the Anjt was being lost these days, with a growing secularist atmosphere stemming from the conflicts with Freretris. Some of the younger ones knew only of the stars as navigational tools, and not as gods. However, Russet was far from concerned about this loss of culture. Of course it weighed on the back of his mind, as it did on all of his generation. No, he was more concerned with the star god's powers, which had long been held as true. Nobody could possibly dispute this. They had all seen the power of the stars, and many had actually seen their ghostly servants wandering the plains. Russett knew that if somehow these star-fallen, as they were called, could be put to proper use, they could become invaluable weapons against Freretris.

This was why Russet barely reacted in time to catch Gale as the ten year old boy began slipping out of the saddle. He turned his gaze fixedly towards the east, where the sun was begenning to crest over the horizon, causing the black sky to glow a warm gray. That way was Tok, home of the dragon bound. If he could just find a way to apply that binding principle to the star-fallen, he knew he would have something great.

He was suddendly distracted by two things. The first was inspiration, which hit him squarely between the eyes as he watched the Morning Star wink out. She helped the sun up in the morning, but was largely regarded as troublesome due to her occaisonal demand for sacrifice, a rite that had not been performed for many years. But what about the Evening Star, her brother and the harbringer of night? However, he did not have much time to think on this, as the Anjt's column was called to a halt. The rest of the day would be devoted to setting up a temporary village, hard work for a week's home. He would have more time to think later.

Russett's thoughts were again interrupted, this time by Gale's enthused shouts. He was running towards the growing campsite, wearing a sun-bleached horse's skull as a hat. Under his arm he carried a strange object, rectangular in shape and strangeley familiar. With a flutter of excitement, Russet realised that his son was miraculously sprinting towards him with a book. A real, material book. Anjts turned and watched Gale run through the construction, holding the skull on with one hand as he leapt over bundles of clothing and saddles that littered the ground. Russett dropped what he was doing and went to meet him.

"Gale! How did you get this?" he asked breathlessly.

"I found it. There's this old burnt up farm, with all these bones and stumps and stuff. Anyway, I didn't look inside the house, but this was under the horse skull." He held out the skull and book to demonstrate their relative positions at their discovery. Russet took the tome with reverence, and opened it, realizing with absolute relief that it was relatively undamaged and, even better, it had illustrations, all depicting a relationship between a human and a dragon. He couldn't believe his luck. The stars had foretold that they would have a sucessful hunt, but this was beyond his wildest hopes and dreams. His face split into a manic grin as he thumbed through the unfamiliar pages, a tingle running down his spine. He initially though this was some sort of informational text, like the stories the Anjts sang. However, he slowly came to realize that this was very different. This was a record of research, as denoted by the many repetative anatomical diagrams and charts. They slowly tapered off as the writer appeared to become more and more hurried and frustrated. He could understand very few of the specifics, but he knew this much: Somebody have been experimenting with dragon bonded people, and he was holding the culmination of that research in his hands.

"But..." Russet began to protest, but paused. If there really were dangerous people in the area, then it wouldn't be worth endangering his son, let alone the rest of the cell. "Alright then. We'll be on our way then."

The woman nodded, and pulled a small, polished stone out of her pocket. It was a prayer stone, left out overnight to allow the fallen spirits of the stars to permeate it, thus making it a link to the heavens. Many Anjt carried one on them. She rubbed it with her thumb nervously as she walked away to repack her own belongings. Gale waved at her retreating back, somewhat oblivious to the seriousness of the situation as he'd been capering about with the skull on his head. Russet simply stared. The sight of her hand rubbing the stone stuck with him. He thought about it as the tribe rode towards the mountain, and it grew inside his mind as he dreamed about it. It wasn't until noon the next day that he finally realized what this idea of his meant. Still on horseback, the realization nearly unseated him. If it weren't for Gale, he would have fallen and broken something. The boy really was unusually strong for his age.

As soon as they stopped traveling, Russet made straight for the cell's leader, ready to present his fledgling project. "I want to bind the star fallen to an Anjt. This can be done. I know it can be done, because men from Tok almost suceeded in doing the same with their dragons. I ask for permission to try."

Russet could not bring himself to part with the tribe. No matter how badly he wanted, even needed to learn about dragon bonding, he knew that he wouldn't last long away from the Anjt. More importantly, Gale was getting along marvelously with the other children, who were somewhat less prone to draw him into fights than the young ones in other cells had been. So Russet instead applied himself to the text every night, poring over the detailed diagrams and impossible writing until he was too exhausted to work any more. Gradually, he made progress. Over a course of weeks, he began to really understand the sketches. It took months after that for him to develop any kind of understanding of the shorthand used in the book, an understanding developed by marking the repetition of words in conjunction with the diagrams. It was nearly half a year later, during a time of rest for their cell, that Russet finally figured out how to do it.

He had fallen asleep over the book, as usual, nearly half a mile away from the rest of the cell. He was awakened, in a state of great confusion, by a sudden gust of wind that caused the yellowing pages to whip up and hit him about the face. For a moment, he thought that the sun had risen due to the bright light in front of him. However, the sky was still inky black and scattered with stars. It took a few drowsy moments for him to register that the light was emminating from a Star-fallen, standing not ten feet away from him. He gave a hiss of surprise, and staggered to his feet. The star fallen, a wizened old man with dreadlocks and a fox pelt draped over his back, regarded him with a polite interest. Russet plunged his hand into his tunic for a prayer stone, and withdrew it tentativeley. He held it out to the shining man, who took a step backwards, a look of horror creeping over his features. Without really realizing what he was doing, Russet leapt forwards, ramming the stone into the star-fallen's leathery chest. The old man gave a cry of anger and pain, and Russet felt the stone heat up in his hand for a split second before the man forced himself away and disappeared in a flash of light. Russet clenched his fist around the stone in his hand. He knew that, impossibly, he held in his hand a part of the essence of the Fireplace god, the old fox-man who watched over cooking. And he knew what to do with it.

((will post more later, bored now))