This is set in the New Mexico Territory in the 1870s. I needed the location for some of the story points and a couple of now-extinct animal species. I hope it's as enjoyable to read as it is to write.
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He slowed his pace as he neared the rim of the dale. He'd been on the road for so long that the prospect of an actual arrival now felt strange to him. He stopped and looked over the valley. It didn't look like all that much, he thought. He'd seen many more inviting places. But this one was where he'd felt himself being drawn to for so long.
He'd never been here before, but he knew that this marked the end of his long pilgrimage. This was where it had begun for his kind. This was where the first of them had come from on this side of the world.
He took off his pack and set it down with his bow. His large equine friend sidled up to him to nuzzle his hand. Turning, he smiled and rubbed the great jaw, though inwardly he was a little annoyed with himself. He'd forgotten about the horse. What he'd do about him hadn't come to mind yet, but he hoped that something would soon. There was no reason to hurry now, no matter what faint urging he felt in his heart and he had no desire at this point to sever the only friendly relationship that he'd had with an animal since he'd become what he was.
He sat down by a tree and rested as the large horse began to forage. It didn't matter much whether he arrived today, tomorrow, or ever, really. It was difficult to get a sense, but he was fairly certain that she wouldn't be here. He hadn't heard her call in his heart for such a long while. He pulled out a piece of dried meat and began to chew on it absently as he thought back to the dark agony which had culminated in more of a beginning than the end that it really should have been.
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A great deal of time and so many journeys detached him from where and how he'd begun. The only child of an unwelcome man and a chief's daughter, he'd never been allowed to fit in, as much as he'd tried. With the death of his maternal grandfather, the right of his mother to lead had been usurped by another and they'd been forced out of the band, leaving with not much more than their few things – and the daughter of the new chief who'd torn herself from her own family because of her love of him. If her father could have accepted it – and that plainly could not have happened - they might have made it, he remembered sadly, but that act had likely sealed all of their fates.
Whenever one assumes the mantle of leadership, one of the primary requisites is the ability to care for one's followers and look forward for the common good. It was a quality which the new chief had no cognizance of. While he seethed with ever more hatred toward the outcasts, he failed to recognize the threat to his band from one of their traditional enemies. The band which he led had never been large, and their numbers had not increased enough to replace the losses from the unfortunate conflict with the men who'd come in longships a generation earlier.
While Stormfeather took his mother and bride far from where they'd grown up, their tribe lost two key battles with their enemies and ceased to exist, other than the relative few who were taken as captives.
It was only a matter of time before the outcasts were discovered as well.
While he was off hunting to keep the three of them fed, their tiny camp had been discovered and his mother's identity as the former chief's daughter took little time to ascertain. As traditional enemies, the two women had been tortured before they'd been murdered. It had caused his return the next year to exact the vengeance that his mother's spirit had pleaded for when it had spoken to him on his return from hunting. When she'd shown him that he possessed this ability years earlier, he'd never thought that he'd have used it to learn who had done these unthinkable things, though he wasn't surprised.
With the last of the killers dead, he'd almost crawled back to the ashes of the women. He was torn, badly wounded and wanted only to pass on himself, but it had only marked the turning of another page in his long and strange life.
A traveler had come to him then and cared for him, holding him back from death's door. He awoke in something of a dream state. Nothing seemed solid or real to his fevered brain, nothing but the beautiful woman who was there with him. She told him that she'd known of his struggles over the winter and the spring. She'd watched him as he mounted his campaign of vengeance for those who had been taken from him. Stormfeather thought that she must have been a goddess of some sort, but she smiled and shook her head.
"I am only another traveler," she'd said in her strangely stilted speech that left him calmed but missing at least some of the meaning, as she held his head up to feed him some hot broth. "I believe that you are one who is being sought because of a foretelling. If so, then someone like you has something ahead of them to live for. I can see this in you. But to do this, you must go on. I need to know if you want to."
He shook his head, "What is there to go on to? The only ones who loved me are dead. The ones who I grew up with hated me. There is nothing... no one..." he said as he lost consciousness again.
Awakening the second time, he found that it was night, and he was covered with a fur. He looked around as far as he was able to in his weakness, and peered in the direction of the quiet sounds that told him of the coming of someone. What he saw a few seconds later was more of a two-footed animal than a human. There was some sort of beast who walked upright. When it – she – saw him, she came nearer and knelt on one knee to touch his forehead. Stormfeather wasn't afraid. He didn't care for his survival, but he was taken by the wonder of her and tried to sit up.
"Lie back and rest, warrior," she smiled, "you are still caught in the fever from your wounds."
"You-you are..."
The face smiled, "Your eyes are clearer, though you see through the sickness. How do I look to you?"
