CHAPTER 1
I woke up to a strange feeling in the air, it wasn't quite fear or excitement, and I think it was a mixture of both. Today something monumental was to happen. In the known history of our time someone was coming, someone that we had only heard of in stories, in our wildest dreams, revered in the ages as the most wonderful healer/mage that was known on the face of the planet as it stood in the past and present and now our future.
Even before then this man this "god" was known and spoken of with tones of reverence and fright and hushed voices. Not because he was evil, ooh no, he was one, some said, of the wisest men on the planet, from times before time and for times after time to come, today the "Spirit Walker" keeper of the rainbow serpent was coming to my tribal grounds. He had no name, or rather none that we of this age knew. He would have been called "Fire Walker" I guess in past life or Dream Weaver. But anyways he comes.
As I gaze out over the lands surrounding the encampment I look upon deep green mountain range, in dispersed with small green pastures protected from the winds, and tall timbers covering the remains of the hills. Elsewhere from the immediate end of the forested area there was nothing but dust, all the timbers cleared and the soils blown away by the winds that now ravaged the surface of the land.
Surrounding the oasis of green was a barren wasteland of dirt's, shattered rocks and mountains of rubble, with the odd sick muddy caustic f low of what was water ways, rivers and creeks, leaving acid trails across the lands, and a stark reminder to all of what could yet still be our future and was.
This was our war now, a war for all tribal remnants on this planet, to find and track down all tribes and peoples who still fight for their lands, whom still kept crystals and records with tribal memories and elders and the remembered stories and sacred ways and protect what they can of their totem creatures and lands.
These family lands we now lived on, and in the barren lands beyond our immediate protection were once all our sacred lands and now little remained within our totem and family area. These tiny vestiges were guarded by all the peoples of our tribe, family groups trying to hold together the final small oasis's of good soils, fresh waters and forest all fought for and won and kept in blood.
Underneath these lands too in the layers below no mining had taken place, the caverns of water were not drained, and were clear and pure water still resided and was used sparingly and carefully, the only thing removed from the area was alluvial deposits of rare metals. These gathered resources were used now to buy more surrounding lands that we thought could be reclaimed, and that in past centuries were once ours and now devoid of life through pillage and taking of all things thought of value.
And with the rest we used it to arm and fit out the riders and other area keepers and families in our hereditary tribal areas or newly re acquired tribal lands as partners ready to protect the boundaries with more members to hold what was rarer now than any metal, soil or item on the planet.
Within these small ranges or holdings now in dispersed through what once were vast lands and tracts of forest, grassland and river, we worked once more to rebuild the forgotten tribal lands of our ancestors.
Within this area and on this day we were now to re-learn what our perfect lands were prior to the holocaust of destruction. Within this area we as tribal keepers of our totem areas having been set the task to re build, breed and replenish the flora, fauna and land, before we are wiped of the face of the planet.
This is our account of our tribe and its progress to save the most important creatures on the planet.
For I am one of a few elected keepers of memories for our group and healer as well, though there are other's far more knowledgeable than I. I stand here looking out at our small holding like a jewel of green and colour on a barren and monotone background of destruction. With sky's in the distance not clear but putrid in colour filled with the lands own dirt blown around in massive dust devils chasing the skyline.
I look back down upon this range, within its borders still were our totem creatures, in small vestiges of land tiny groups of creatures so rare they were worth billions and where ever now they were found they were guarded fiercely. Within the remaining creatures found in the holding areas was found an amazing thing. Genetics, the ability in some of the animals to regrow limbs and body parts, fight cancer and allievement of disease, in the genetics in the trees, and in the insects a myriad of things for help to peoples, the birds too in the fertilisation of trees, f lowers, grasses found still in the small hidden pockets of forest still clinging tenaciously to life.
Everyone says these gifts are newly found but they were wrong, our peoples had known of these uses and handed them down from father, mother daughter and son and family to family, caring for the totems gifts, flora, fauna and land given to each tribe and trained in their uses. Their meaning their use and speciality were hidden, most were destroyed in the massacres of tribes and lands by others not from these lands. Not knowing their significance. And thus many were lost.
But here, we were lucky, here in the latest bearing of children some were born with a "knowing", in the knowing within these gifted few were the skills to unlock these memories. A whole new generation has been now born in a few gifted individuals, with the ability to evoke the spirits of old. To read the memories in the crystals found under the soils and in the rocks, the trees and the flora and fauna within our boundaries, to re learn what was needed to re build if we can to the best we can the tracts of land we now own that are barren and seen as worthless. It is our hope with the small stock of crystals mineral rock and metal reserves as well as the flora and fauna left to try to re build the lands that we still see hope and chance in...
