Night Seekers

The ground was springy with fallen pine needles, the air redolent with rich green life, chill and damp around him. Now, at least. Next time it may be desert. Such was the way of things when one lived in dreams.

Hi-ya had been a beautiful boy, strong of mind and body, his talent at moulding the darkness would have been great if he had been given the chance to grow. But he hadn't. He had died, as had the rest of the Pale Ones, as had so many of the Dark Ones, all because the Others could not stand the truth.

Once the Pale Ones and the Dark Ones had lived in the real world, had roamed the sacred mountain, a mountain so big, so all encompassing, that its ends could never be seen. It was their whole world and they had lived in harmony with its tides, birthing only the children the land could support, feeding from plants and seeds, game won in the chase, sharing the knowledge they acquired over the years. The nocturnal Dark Ones were the first to discover how to mould the darkness inherent in all things, a magic that could be used to shape mind and matter, to enhance life. This they had learned from the spirits of their ancestors and the Old Wise Woman of the Bones who, unlike the Pale Ones who looked to the sun and the stars for their guidance, they worshipped as a goddess, in the form of both moon and earth. They had many powerful shamans in those days, not just the one they had now in Sahla, and they had passed this knowledge on to the Pale Ones, who combined it with their machine magic to great and wondrous effect. Soon the two races intermarried and a new race was born of their union. The Others.

Humans.

Kai-ya stopped at the rim of the crater. It was always the same, despite the many different journeys to reach it. A vast gouge of rock that sheered away below him, blackened and jagged from unimaginably old eruptions. Hundreds of miles across, the trees stopped abruptly at its edge, as though their thick expanse had been cut away by a mighty sword. Only air filled the crater, its bubbling heart long since gone, yet often Kai-ya fancied he could see the smallest of flames in its depths, flickering defiantly, full of remembrances.

Like he could see it now. Like he could see it rise slowly from the pit, eager to greet his arrival.

"Hello, my friend," Kai-ya said, long since past feeling foolish for talking to air. He was the only one who knew of this place anyway. "And how are you today?"

The flame shivered in answer. He thought he saw a face, eyes full of sadness.

"Thank you for your grief, my friend. Only you can know how much I will miss her."

And so he would. Dil-ya and he were the only ones to remember the war all those years ago. They were the only ones to know the true horror of seeing children killed by their human siblings, Pale and Dark parents murdered by human offspring that could not accept such mixed heritage, could not accept the dark magic that gave them the land they lived upon.

"And for this," Kai-ya slumped to the ground at the crater's edge. "For this we live on only as dreams. Perhaps it would have been better to die. And yet what could we do?" He clutched at his hair, wailed his pain into the air.