...we found evidence of other travelers. Our tracker examined the artifact with care and claimed that the Dog-Folk had passed this way only half a moon before. Our goats, the few we have left, would not go near the object. They cried in fear, rolling their strange slit-irised eyes and skittered wide of it but the horses were not perturbed.
I found this reassuring for all the world knows that the Dog-Folk have a special wisdom in way-finding and all the world supposes that they too have felt the call. I also found this reassuring because the Dog-Folk are half a moon away.
The tracker too appeared content but the sage, who takes it upon himself to be ever contrary, announced that the land would be despoiled should the Dog-Folk reach it first and thus we must accelerate our progress. I cannot see that this is possible, not without more horses or fewer of the old and the young. I saw the sage look, sidewards, at the small children and wondered what his wisdom would dictate. I for one will not agree if he suggests we leave them.
This place is barren enough and would be miserable living for those unable to dig deep for water and run fast to catch game. We have had little enough in the last days of our passage. At least there is some forage for the horses and the goats, but not the plants that we humans are able to eat.
I looked at my precious cargo and considered. It has been my life. I have spent years developing these things, making sense and beauty out of chaos. These are the meaning-making objects which turn the miscellany of existence into the quest for purpose. Our people love them, not as I love them, for I am their creature, directed by their inner essence to shape them into what their spirit wills, but they too feel the deep and loving connection to these objects and what they signify. They are what makes our people unique and special. We are granted the love and blessing of the world-spirit through the transcendent beauty of the objects I am directed to make. Without them, what are we?
And yet, with them, can we make this journey?
The sage was speaking with the travelers on horses and I saw self-interest ignite in their subdued faces. The tracker watched, his hooded eyes unreadable. The mothers, though, sensed something, hustling their youngest into their arms and grabbing their aged parents by the hand.
I think three things: we need to reach the land to have a future; we need to go together to have a present state that is bearable and not tainted with the evil of sacrifice; we need the precious cargo to hold our connections with the past, for without our past, who are we?
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