| Current mood: |  accomplished |
Granny Grim: Prelude
Humans, by their nature, like to name things. I've been called oread, nature sprit, guardian, one of the 'little people'… any number of things. I tend to think of myself as an avatar of the living spirit of this world, who is, herself, an avatar of the living spirit of this universe. What? You thought humanity had a monopoly on life or spirit? That's the trouble with needing a name for anything. Anything you don't experience doesn't have a name and anything without a name doesn't exist for you. But I do exist, and not only in ways that can be given names.
When I sleep, I am less avatar and more a part of the whole. My dreams are the dreams of others like me. While as myself, I was mostly bound to my mountain, as a part of the whole, I remember the whole of the world as a dream.
It's need that calls me to become a discrete entity. Sometime it's the need of the rivers or the trees, but it is most often human need that calls me to be as humans are. The first humans only passed through. They called for good hunting or for shelter and I obliged them or not according to their need, and how nicely they asked, and my own whim. Later came those who wanted to pile up my rocks, divert my streams, and burn my trees. I liked them less and mostly encouraged them to do someplace inhabited by a more sociable spirit. Some of them had learned the trick of asking nicely, or remembered it from the places the came from. Those, I allowed to hunt, or even summer over from time to time. Some passed through, needing safety from those who hunted them and passage to "freedom". Those, mostly, I obliged, until the flow of them stopped.
There was one family I allowed to stay for a time. It was not just their need that made me relent, but that one of my kind across the ocean dreamed well of them. When they expressed their need for shelter, I lead them to a clearing that would suit and suggested to the wolves to leave them alone while they built. They were good people, who understood courtesy. When they realized, in their way, that I was there, they left things for me, and took my hints when I guided them away from thing I wanted left private.
One of their girls had a rambling nature, and wandered over my mountain however much her people would have preferred her to stay in. I felt her need to explore, and allowed it, and after a while recognized a need she never expressed - for companionship. For her, I took a closer form to hers, and we spoke, always understanding that I was a secret. She brought me books from the town below, about how the world looked to human eyes and we read them together. In time, she found a mate, and needed me less, and I returned to sleep. She woke me from time to time with small needs and I obliged her for our old friendship. She woke me again when her children had left for the town below and her mate passed on. She was the mad woman of the mountain, then, visited sometimes by grandchildren and folk from neighboring mountains seeking her wisdom and cures. The visitors never saw me of course, and the grandchildren never understood how an old woman could live alone without fear. Finally, the grandchildren made her come down to the town to die, unwilling to believe her when she explained the mountain would look after her.
After that was a lonely time. I could have walked down off my mountain - we're territorial but not truly bound - but the town had hard ground that hurt my feet and people who needed every stranger to have a name, and I retreated back. I pulled down the wall with vines and weighted the roof with moss until it fell. I didn't want some other people to come in and think they could live there and take the memory of my people. Once I'd torn down what traces I could, I passed back to sleep.
I was woken by an intense need, nearly a prayer. It wasn't aimed at me, so much, but I've never been too concerned about to whom a need is addressed, only the sincerity and courtesy of it. The prayer ran "Come on, baby, start back up, just another mile… come on…" It was aimed at a little bus that was never going to move again. It had never been meant to travel over rock trails, and had broken something underneath.
I took my form according to the boy praying to the car. Young, but adult. Female, because I preferred it. I fashioned my clothes according to my old friend and what I'd seen on my visit below - flowered dress and walking shoes. "You're lucky you got that car this far up. You'll be hiking back to town."
He jumped nearly a mile, and the folks inside stared. I waited. I can be patient. Finally he got his breath back. "What town? It's the end of the world down there."
My dreams had been a little disturbed before I woke, but not in any clear way. "Don't know what you mean."
"It's World War Three. Don't you watch the news?"
I shrugged. "No tv, no radio. Never needed 'em."
A girl in the bus laughed. "Well, we sure are in Appalachia, aren't we?" I didn't think she meant it as a compliment, but I decided not to take offense. There was something about the boy I liked, and there was enough fear in all of them to explain a little rudeness. The boy waved at her to be quiet.
"And I expect you meant to be. Why is that, then?"
"My family owns this mountain. My nana had a place up here. We were hoping to hide out the fighting up here."
"Well, I reckon this mountain owns itself, but if you mean Althea Grim's place, it's about a mile or so up that way." I waved up the slope.
He sighed. "We could hike that, I guess."
"I suppose you could, but there aren't two stones standing on top of each other up there. You'll be mighty wet when it rains."
"Well, where do you live?"
"Me, I don't mind getting wet when it rains."
He seemed a little frustrated then. Humans aren't so good at patient. But he spoke softly. "Look, I get that mountain folk don't like company much, but it really is the end of the world down there, and we've got nowhere else to go."
He had enough manners to be quiet while I thought. He was right that I didn't much want company, but he was my friend's kin, and he had asked nicely enough. "Well then, you folk better get on your backs what you can carry, because you will be hiking."
I'd only ever let the Grims build, but there were some who came in and hid in the caves. There'd been some bootleggers who'd set up a hidey hole until I convinced them to be elsewhere. I took the bus people up a ways and then down into the cave system. They were soft, city people. It seems that they'd all been college students together and when things got bad, the boy remembered his great grandmother's place and convinced them to make a run for it. From the way they described things, it wasn't such a bad idea.
I stayed with them the longest I'd ever spent time in human company. Even my old friend and I only passed parts of days. They just had so much need, and were so helpless. I set them up as best as I could. They insisted I name myself, as is their way. I chose Montana, although I doubt they made the connection. I'd originally planned to get them set up and then fade away.
After a week, their war came even to my mountain. As I sat in the cave, there was a blast of heat. I could feel my trees burning, streams turning to vapor, rock shaking and cracking. The bus people were deep enough to be protected, but it was like being burned alive to me. Even though I'd been wearing human form, parts of me had infused the mountain as a whole, and it was being destroyed. I started to let go, to return myself to sleep and my energy to the earth and discovered it was not only my mountain. Gaia herself was being burned and torn apart. Many of my siblings were dying even as I reached out to them. I don’t know if I would have died with them if I had let myself go. I might simply have lain in healing sleep.
I was willing to go, but need called to me.
This was aimed at me, and only at me, with a depth I’d never expected. He leaned over the body I'd made for him and begged me not to die. I couldn't deny it. I closed myself off from the dead parts of me and consolidated into the human form.
My human body was ill for some time, but the bus people nursed me. It was strange to me, to be the one cared for, and by creatures that had so more often been nuisances than friends. When I recovered I was more a part of them than I had been.
Eventually, our supplies ran low. They had brought supplies on the bus, and the bootleggers had put in a winter's worth of provisions themselves, and we had water enough, but it could only last for so long. We hadn't dared to venture out after the firestorm, but finally there was no choice. When we emerged, the world looked dead. The fires were out, but even after the seasons that had passed, the mountain was covered in ash and the skeletons of forest. The air smelled acrid, but did not kill us outright.
Finally, we made our way down and past the crater that had been the city. Some animals had survives in valleys and we were able to hunt and scavenge somewhat. Human scavengers had clearly been through before us, taken everything of use, and left. We traveled south, and encountered another group of refugees who had heard of a place in the Caribbean that might be safe. It was not an easy voyage, but several years after the end of the world, we came to the Ship…
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glimmermir) wrote,
