Extremely Distressed, part 1, 1 NSR

VT says: First story post of the new Kulo Seeri is here at last! Warning: heavy on text and background exposition. :)
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Ice Quarter, 1 NSR. Mahali zan-Ku is 31, Rivadya zan-Carmela is 25, Yoshan zan-Li is 6, Daran zan-Ku is 1.

The first moon of New Solupian Reckoning could have started out much better, in the opinion of Rivadya zan-Carmela.


Just before the new year had begun, a young woman in northerners' clothes, calling herself Nita zan-Avira and claiming to be a granddaughter of the late headwoman Abina from some alternate future, had arrived, bringing a warning about Rivadya's nephew Dalos and the evil deeds he would grow up to do. Nita managed to prove the truth of her story, and was allowed to stay, but her arrival was followed by a massive storm that devastated the tribe's territory and killed two-thirds of its population - including Nita's future mother, Molris, still a child. That was weird.

Nita called it a time rage. She'd said it was caused by all the jumping in and out of alternate dimensions and timelines that had happened recently, including her own arrival. As a result, Headwoman Etan had announced that there would be no more expeditions into TS3- or 4-era SimNation, so that it wouldn't happen again.

Clearly something about all that had made Time even angrier. The morning after New Year's Day, Nita had been killed by a huge rock falling from the sky. They'd given her a proper Nuidya funeral, but there had been a lot of whispering about dark omens.

Rivadya knew there had to be something going on. His wife, Mahali, who'd been... very affectionate with him following Nita's burial, had been acting strange since the day after. She'd always had a fiery personality - too much like his own, the elders said, far too unbalanced to last - but she'd never dropped everything to attack him for no reason before.

It had left his son Yoshan, Mahali's stepson, extremely distressed... and the cats extremely annoyed that the fight had disturbed their beauty sleep.

It wasn't even just him, either. Over the next few days, Mahali attacked Moli and Sholushra zan-Zade, Sparrow zan-Ace, Rivadya's twin Chase, and even their grandmother Serendipity, the chief elder.

That was bound to have severe consequences. Nobody disrespected the elders and got away with it.

Not to mention the equally strange things that had been going on with three of Mahali's brothers. Jethro in particular had been hiding in his tent under the sleeping furs all day, only going out after nightfall. His wife, Medeia zan-Shola, had been telling everyone how some kind of spirit contained in a dusty old lamp had granted him wishes.

She wasn't sure what kind of wishes he'd made, but - as so often happened in the lorekeepers' tales - they'd obviously come with a curse attached. He'd been transformed, or replaced, or possessed, she was sure of it.

She'd even seen him tending what looked like a bright blue cooking fire once, when she'd woken in the night. Something was wrong, she'd said. Jethro was no cook.

Rivadya could see how unsettling that was, but he was far more worried about Mahali's sudden aggression. Watching Daran sleep, he was reminded that today was the day of their little boy's formal introduction to the tribe. Come evening, Serendipity would divine his elemental affinity and give him an auspicious new name, one that would mark the end of his infancy.

Mahali, as Daran's mother, was supposed to lead the naming ceremony. Would she cause any more chaos at the celebration?

Yoshan had brought it up at breakfast that day. He'd admitted that he was scared, that some of the other children were saying she'd attracted a demon to her during the time rage, and she wasn't going to hurt anyone else, was she?

"I don't want any blood on my hands," Mahali had said. Rivadya could see fear in her eyes, too, fear that maybe she wasn't completely in control of herself?

They had sent Yoshan to fetch one of the shaman trio. Hanis zan-Ave was the one who arrived - a charming, pleasant young man, but perhaps not the sharpest spear in the hunting party. Still, he was the only one of the three with the necessary people skills for the role - Pel and Dill were both utterly awkward in social situations.

Hanis told Mahali that there had been no signs from the spirits about any of this. (However, Rivadya privately thought that Hanis wouldn't know an omen if it bit him. He was the fast talker; Pel was the one with the magical talent.)

"There has to be something causing this," he'd told her, "a rot demon or... something. My sister Karatla had something like this happen to her at Teal Camp. She didn't survive it, and I never knew her, but it might not be too late for you..."

Mahali didn't seem too relieved by that news.

"So it's some kind of evil spirit?" she asked, nervously. "We... never had anything like that to deal with back home." From what she'd said in the past, Mahali's distant homeland didn't seem to have nearly as much trouble with demons or bad omens.

Was she trying to retain her self-control... or was Mahali, or whatever was inside her, acting?

As he played with his boys, Rivadya noticed her glaring at Hanis' back, an intense rage on her face.

Sena Yuleng, he thought, Daran's naming is going to go so smoothly tonight.

To Be Continued...