The title is a work in progress. Anyway, I'm gonna be posting my lai's story here too, just to get started with the forum. C:
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In many ways, my story isn’t even mine. We never really realize it, due to every living being’s natural tendency to put themselves first, but it’s more likely than not that our personal stories are only side adventures in the bigger picture. So when I say my story isn’t mine, I mean that I’m only a side character, but an important character nonetheless. It’s safe to say that I’m still trying to figure out just whose story I’m in, but whether or not I ever find out, I’ll do my best to play the character I’m meant to play.
My story, or rather, whoever’s story, begins with life and death, as many stories do. The life was my younger brother, a young brown pup with flecks of green in his fur and stunningly bright eyes. He had our mother’s eyes, an intriguing color that we shared. But for some reason the brightness stood out more against his dark fur. But with him came death, the death of our mother. I was still a youngblood, only starting to realize just how stressful an element can be. My mother had taught me everything, since she stayed in the forest with me while my father went into the human village to work. I loved the wren feather attached to my mother’s mask, the hints of burgundy adding a wonderful contrast to the bright gold and maroon of her glazed wooden mask. I don’t remember the Shinlai who made my parents’ masks, but my father often told me that he was the best Shinlai he’d ever known and that he treated me like a granddaughter. Either way, the mask he made for my mother was beautiful. My mother was beautiful.
I wasn’t there when my mother died, or when my brother was born. I had been wandering in the forests of Clipso, pondering the masking ceremony. My mother had told me all about it only the evening before. “Now, Braid,” she’d said, tone conversational and thoughtful as she raked her gentle claws through the silky brown fur of my tail, “I’m sure you’ve noticed something about your father and I.” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “You have a nice pair of ears.” It had never occurred to me, but she was right. My mother and father had no ears. “The masking ceremony is something very sacred and traditional to us Shinlai,” my mother continued. “Just like the masks themselves. The ceremony is different according to cultural and elemental traditions, but it is no doubt you are an Earth Shinlai, since both your father and I are as well. We will give you a ceremony similar to ours.”
I didn’t want to lose my ears. Certainly that was understandable? Maybe I could make a mask myself that didn’t interfere with the placement of my ears. That was possible, right? I could have more piercings in my lip to keep the mask in place.
So there I was, wandering through the trees and thinking about my ears when I came across the gravestone my father had made for the best Shinlai he’d ever known. Immediately something struck me as not right, because every day around this time my father would visit the stone. He had no work today, so he must’ve been with my mother. I was no fool, I knew she was expecting, even though my parents never told me about it. With thoughts of ears still in my head, I dashed all the way home.
Home was a small yet well-built cottage in the middle of a clearing in the woods. It was just big enough to house the three of us, and my father kept saying, over and over again, “Someday, I’ll build us a mansion.” I was still waiting for that mansion.
As I neared the gray-brick cottage, I heard a sharp mewling from around the other side. I was right; there was a reason my father wasn’t at the grave. My mother had given birth. Excitement buoyed my steps as I rounded the corner of the house. My father was crouched beside my mother, a worried and helpless look about him. My mother’s mouth was drawn back in pain, fangs bared against an invisible force tugging at her body. That was, of course, the still frame in my mind when I rounded the corner. It became very clear in the moments that followed that my father’s look of worry and helplessness was due to a lot more than childbirth, and that my mother’s intense and painful expression was permanent. I didn’t even know someone could die like that, with such a taut expression on their face.
Suddenly ears didn’t seem very important to me.
It was the first big loss of my life, and I had barely graduated from youngblood status. And even in the retched cold of that winter afternoon, I felt the world melt all around me. The trees lost shape, even my father and the mewling pup by his feet became deformed in my vision. The only thing that remained static was the cold, lifeless body of my mother, a snarl forever engraved on her delicate and lovely features. She was no longer a Shinlai, a beautiful creature with an equally attractive personality and a wonderful love for all of Elaisha; she was a still, solid form, a body with no name or purpose. In a matter of time her blood would grow cold, stiffening her limbs and fully removing her once-beautiful life-force. It seemed so unnatural, a wonderful Shinlai like her who believed in a sublime cycle of life and death to lose all her spirit. I could barely keep up with the intake of stimulus.
There’s a general knowledge that your life will flash before your eyes in your final moments before death. I wasn’t dying, but everything that had happened up until now in my life began flooding my thoughts, every memory with my mother, every conversation and every silence-filled occasion. Right from my very first memory, my little bright eyes blinking up at the form of my mother playing the most beautiful instrument I’d ever seen, a beige ceramic ocarina she bought in the village where my father worked, all the way to the conversation about the masking ceremony. But in between them was one conversation that stood out entirely, the time I asked her about her mask.
“The feather?” she echoed, blinking in confusion at the abrupt question. “The feather was only added to my mask when you were born, little one.” I asked her why. She shifted on her haunches slightly, preparing for a long story. I curled into her side, resting my head on her forepaws. “There is only so much energy in this world, Braid,” she said quietly, gazing off at a point in the distance. “And most of that energy goes into our life-force, the energy that keeps Shinlai, humans, and animals alive. This is why we must all respect the other beings of this world, because you never know whose energy you’re disturbing.” I couldn’t quite understand everything, but her voice was so soothing I listened attentively. “That is also why we must respect the cycle of life and death. Energy doesn’t die, Braid, and it isn’t born. It is merely passed onto another being, another life-force. Sometimes the transfer of energy goes wrong, and a being will die early on in their life cycle. Sometimes the energy does not want to leave, and the being outlives many of his or her companions. We have no say in the matter, only in how we treat our energy and the energy of others.” I asked again why the feather was on her mask. “The day you were born, I was walking through the forest and came across a dead bird with a broken wing. A wren, small and fragile. I wanted to do something, to bury it or hide it from scavenging animals, but you came first.” She flashed a smile at me. “Right there in the forest, I collapsed beside a tree and called for your father. He came as fast as he could, galloping through the trees until he reached me. You were born, and I called you Braid because of the wonderful way nature and music and life all tie in together. But I didn’t forget that little wren, and I didn’t forget the cycle of life and death. In honor of that cycle, I acknowledged the wren’s death by tying one of its feathers to my mask.” She paused, eyes clouding over in the memory. “The feather reminds me of you, and of why and how you are in my life.”
The memory ended there. I can never remember what I said next, or even how I reacted to such a wonderful explanation. What I do remember is that for the longest time, I thought I was nothing more than a tiny bird, but as the years went on, the full meaning of her words dawned on me.
And here it was again, exactly what my mother had been talking about that warm afternoon. Her energy had left her body and had passed onto a new life, a life that was now mewling and screeching in a mass of bloodied fur. Something about the whole thing struck me as unfair. Why couldn’t we have a say in our energy? Why did we have to succumb to such an unjust cycle?
As reality swarmed my senses once more, the figures of the trees and my dumbfounded father returned to normal. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been crying, and that my father hadn’t moved an inch. This was his second big loss, and I knew that it would be difficult for him to get back into the swing of things. But like all creatures on the planet with a tendency to think only about themselves, I could only ask my father one thing. Everyone needs to know about themselves, about whether or not their existence has left an impact on another’s life. It’s this sort of unfailing urge that we all have as living beings. We all want to be remembered, whether we like to admit it or not. So in those brief, terrifying moments, with my dead mother at our feet and a crying newborn at my father’s, all I could ask was about my mother’s last words. Did he remember what she said, and was it anything worth taking note of. He didn’t answer for the longest time and I pleaded with him, did he remember, and eventually, he did.
She wanted us to name him Story.
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