Morning dew weighs down her skirts. Fog softens the landscape. She follows the flow of the babbling brook, soaks in the sounds of nature until she is heavy, feeling peace flow out of herself and into the soil, tethering her to it. Grass and ants welcome her, as she lays down. There surrounded by life and sound, Vroizz dozes.

At first, she is blinded. White and blue. The sun gleaming on snow. Her skin feels raw from the rocks and ice. Wide, open skies push down on her ribs. Her gaze is pushed far below into the valley. She searches there for her home. Her home, kept cool by fabrics, casting colourful shadows, gazed fondly upon by the eyes in the bark of the birch trees, sung to by birds and bones drifting in the wind. She searches for the line of the brook cutting through the soil, the moss softening the blow of a fall, the tents of her kin, the laughter of the children, the music of her peers. But she finds nothing of the like. At a glance the valley blooms green, but instead of old and young lives, she finds neat rows of trees. They unsettle her. All are just a few years old. She could easily wrap her arms around any of their trunks and link her fingers. What has happened to the old oak, carrying the stories of her ancestors in their roots? She wonders. Symmetry has befallen the wood, and it is only by the song of familiar birds that she knows it is her home.

For the first time in many years, Vroizz has dreamt a prophecy this clear and abrupt. Unlike the heavy darkness she envisioned to be a winter solstice, which turned out to be a mudslide. Different to the fires she foresaw months in advance, but only understood in heat and fragments of light haunting her dreams. This scene plays out clearly in broad daylight, using all of her senses, and yet it makes no sense to her. But not to worry, Vroizz reassures herself. There is no need to rush into the tents and cause a stir.

The wisdom of her old age has taught her, to first consult those, she trusts the most. In the wind, the bones of her sister plink and rattle. She must have sensed how uneasy Vroizz is, for she skips pleasantries, remarks not on the changes in their home since they last spoke. Instead, she whispers in her ear to let the waters of change wash over her. To flow with it and let herself find a new river bank to settle into. Vroizz clenches her jaw. She wants to argue. Why and how? How do I know when to leave? There's no point in arguing with the dead, as her sister simply repeats her song. Vroizz resigns herself to listen. The branch that refuses to bend, will in time break. It must be easy to be a spirit, Vroizz muses, always wise. But the practical details of moving her kindred are below the wisdoms of those long gone. It is left to her, who remains. The old and the young tire easy. A careful balance of rations must be struck, too much food and they shall be weighed down, too little and some may fall to hunger. She had never moved their home, never had known anything but the babbling brook and the watchful birch. The mountains scare her. The icy peaks she saw in her dream look anything but comforting. She is old, after all. What will the cold do to her creaking bones? Where will she find shade and peace? There is no room for her selfishness, she decides.

To find the young and their very own wisdom, she follows the sound of laughter. Tents and dens circle the very heart of their home. Where the adults weave stories into tapestries and braid dreams into thick ropes to hang traps from. The adults sit in circles and mutter gossip among themselves, quiet enough to not attract the children to any rumors. Their hands skinning rabbits and cutting meat from bone. They grind wheat and seeds and greet her, letting her know the gossip. Two hunters have yet to return, but they are known for their relationship. Ciozni thinks they might have gotten lost in conversation out in the wood. Frillik, an adult, on the verge of still being a child, indulges their fears: Boars, bears and the tallun. Anything could have happened! Frillik worries the rope they've braided. Ciozni waves them off, nothing of concern. Tyrid says they must have gotten something big, since it's taking them so long. Vroizz is only half listening. It is the children she seeks, so she ducks beneath tarps and tapestries hung low for them to hide beneath. They barely stop tumbling over eachother to acknowledge her, but Kiarri skips over to show her a fish shaped with clay. It is littered in fingerprints. A warm relief washes down the chest of Vroizz. They can thrive wherever there is air to be turned into song and laughter. Kiarri lets her know, their dreams are filled with a future of joy. It may be hidden by fog, but the laughter echoes nonetheless.

She stays with them a while, plays a song on the flute whittled of the bone of an old companion. As the tune fills the air she feels the warmth of its breath on her shoulder, the heavy footfall of its hooves next to her in the grass. How she misses it. The beautiful coloring of its coat, the splotchy horns upon its head. A stubborn bull, the last to remain standing out in the storm, refusing to come inside the dens for the chick between its hooves needed protection from the rain. A kind soul and a kindred spirit. The children sit around her, enamored by the beast. They too bask in its warmth.The two hunters have not yet returned when the stews are cooked, it would be a shame to not eat the bread when it is hot. So they start without them. It is then, when they all sit gathered lit by the warm glow of their fires that the tallun come. Their skin is hairless and pale, they stand tall above their largest. They must have been related long ago, for they both stand on two legs, their heads perched above their shoulders and hands draped down to their knees. They are different from her people, their tongue is sharp and cool, they wear metal befitting their speech and attempts at connection have been fruitless. It would be unkind to not invite them to eat however. Vroizz knows little of how they live. In settlements she assumes, just like her kin. She approaches their oldest, their leader she presumes, and offers them a bowl of stew. As she draws closer, their hands drift to their swords and staffs. Some of her own stiffen and jump, scared of the hairless giants. Vroizz means to calm them, but her motion to turn is misunderstood, and she is struck and knocked prone by another tallun. The stew spills, nourishing the ground rather than their guests. Or intruders. For it takes mere seconds for her kin to rise in anger. A battle breaks loose. Vroizz tries to do anything, but she can only scramble and watch as her own struggle against the tallun. They are artists, weavers and singers, not fighters. She attempts to console, to prevent damage. But her words fall on deaf ears, they have too little in common. Her hands shake, she tries to grasp the end of the staff close to her, to stop an attack on one of the adults, but she is kicked, taken and tied with the very rope her kin had woven this morning, alongside the children. Mercy, she assumes. The battle is lost.

By the time night falls, there are no adults left, other than her. The tallun have left her tied with the children. The past hours she has spent reassuring them, speaking kindly and softly. They fell asleep under her watchful eye. Only she is left awake in the ruins of their home. Surrounded by shattered artworks, tents knocked down and their past ripped out and laid in the dirt. The windchime sings with the spirit of her sister. Flow with the waters of change. The ground smells of metal and is soggy with blood. There is a tallun at a fire, but its breath slows and head falls forward. Their own dead, the tallun have laid out in rows, covered in white fabric and laid out. Hers received no such care. The many slaughtered adults and elders are laid in a pile. She is scared of what will happen to their spirits. She fears the tallun won't carve their bones and preserve their mind. She fears, they will be fed, burnt or buried. It breaks her heart, but she needs to resist breaking with it. Regardless of how inviting sleep is, how comforting tears would be. She must bend. She cuts her wrist with a shard of pottery, uses her own blood to slicken her wrists, slips out of the bind, careful not to wake what the sleeping tallun. She cannot help but wonder what its dreams might tell the tallun. If it will jump from sleep to tell the others of her escape?

She wakes the children, unties Kiarri first. He is after all the oldest among them. Kiarri helps her untie the rest and whisper a plan. Together, they sneak past the tents they pitched, past the figures of clay of her kin, past the bone flutes and woven tarps of her kin the tallun tossed carelessly into piles. She plays with the idea of setting the tallun camp ablaze. To avenge and destroy. But it is out of love for the babbling brook and the singing birds she leaves them be. She will miss them. However there is one thing she cannot leave without. She climbs the tree from which the chime of her sister hangs. Carefully unties the string that fastens her bones. But her own body forbids a graceful descent, her hand locks and she cannot grasp the branch, and plummets loudly into the underbrush. It is Kiarri that catches the chime and helps her up. The tallun startles awake, and starts to scream something. They all come hurtling from their tents. Dressed in fabrics, not unlike those she's woven with her kin. Their similarities disgust her and she runs. Through the underbrush, skipping over roots they know all too well and ducking under low hanging branches. Breathlessly they start for the mountains she dreamed of this very morning. During their journey she questions and doubts the dream. Barely a root of grass peeks from the rock but Kiarri picks dandelions and rations out what they can find to eat. Her body screams for rest but only when the sun rises and glimmers on the snow does she allow herself to stop. To gaze down into the valley of her home, to feel the ice and the rock and hear in the distance the birds she knows all too well.

From the mountains they watch the trees of their home be felled and replaced with young ones, barely thick enough to lean on. The wood is carried out of the valley, smoke rises from the horizon every day. Among the snow they must build a new home, a home she is afraid, she will not live to see. But as she lays in the caverns of the mountain, listening to the hum and whistle of wind, she hears the soothing song of her sister in her ear. The children play and sing, weaving stories of their previous home into tarps. They hunt with her and when she grows weary and her vision blurs and hands weaken they bring her stews and soups. In her dreams, she sees a grown up Kiarri. His hair is long and tied in braids, his skirts decorated with colourful beads. He cuts fish with rocks they whittled together and sings to children she doesn't yet know. Her sister whispers, urges her to let herself flow with the waters of change once more, and so she passes into the land of endless sleep, ready to join her sister and the rest of her kin.