Origin of the Smokethief
Even after all the years he’d walked the earth, he never considered himself truly born until the night he stood under those red towers, the natural desert monuments in Bisti. Thousands of years of compacted sand laid bare by wind, rain and time. He stood there long enough to watch the stars and clouds scud across the sky in nature’s infinite sluggishness, long enough for the desert cold to caress his extremities to a minor numbness as if the stars were stealing his heat away to fuel themselves.
After that he lay down on one of the sandstone monuments. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as laying down considering the monuments stretched so far upward, reaching for the sky like red claws. He barely registered the climb, he only remembered that the rock was warm and rough under his hands and bare feet, and that it drank his sweat--and his blood, from cuts he could not recall--with a thirst only the desert could muster. More than the harrowing path upwards he remembered finally lying down with the heat of a day past at his bare back, and the cool of space pressing down on his chest. Gravity held him at the wrists and ankles, and the dome of the sky pressed down on his throat until he wept.
In that moment, the desert sky was so big, so infinite…
It broke him.
He cried out into the solitude, into the intricately carved spires of the Painted Wastes. Only creatures and wind through grass and sage answered his echoes.
The sun peeled back the night long after he had collapsed from exhaustion. It was not until the sun burned him that he woke.
Days passed in a blur as he stumbled into ravine after ravine, drinking stagnant water and catching mice to survive.
He wasn’t sure how long a time he had spent among the red towers since nature moved at its own pace. People there still tell of the Wildman with green fire in his eyes, the man who would hunt poison snakes and fleeing outlaws alike, the man who would lead lost children to the edge of the Painted Wastes, close to home.
Eventually, as all things, that legend ended. On that day, he found himself on the edge of a dirt road pointing back to the country that had rejected him, the nation he’d wandered from with few qualms. Truly, though, the road pointed to the end of “Wildman”.
Civilization. Home.
Home? He didn’t know what that was anymore. The fire behind his eyes pushed him forward, stoked old memories of speaking and being human.
There was no choice. The time of being a child of nature after his rebirth had passed, and the Copperbright sparked, became excited, lead him forward leaving no room for argument. Callused feet met gravel again and again and again in movements that had propelled him forward for more years than men were ever allotted.
At last, in the dry warmth of Bezalkand night, he stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking a sprawling city. Long ago he remembered when he was a boy, a time when the lights that pooled at the center of the basin but now they filled the gorge from wall to wall, as if the stars had come to earth in hues of bright blue, pale green, beer brown, shocking white and angry red. The air was strangely acrid. Thick. Not unpleasantly so. He smelled people, sun warmed dust and the ozone of approaching storms that would soon sweep the gorge.
His bare toes pawed at the earth of the cliff, idly carving divots in the fine powder atop the slate as he considered how best to thrust himself into a world that he realized he had forsaken for longer than a lifetime.
The Copperbright answered. It thrust a new name into his hands, and the old mental trappings of his priesthood were draped again to square his shoulders and straighten his spine with quiet pride. Only then did the green flames quiet behind his strange eyes, leaving him to descend the footpaths down the gorge walls to the city alone.
After that he lay down on one of the sandstone monuments. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as laying down considering the monuments stretched so far upward, reaching for the sky like red claws. He barely registered the climb, he only remembered that the rock was warm and rough under his hands and bare feet, and that it drank his sweat--and his blood, from cuts he could not recall--with a thirst only the desert could muster. More than the harrowing path upwards he remembered finally lying down with the heat of a day past at his bare back, and the cool of space pressing down on his chest. Gravity held him at the wrists and ankles, and the dome of the sky pressed down on his throat until he wept.
In that moment, the desert sky was so big, so infinite…
It broke him.
He cried out into the solitude, into the intricately carved spires of the Painted Wastes. Only creatures and wind through grass and sage answered his echoes.
The sun peeled back the night long after he had collapsed from exhaustion. It was not until the sun burned him that he woke.
Days passed in a blur as he stumbled into ravine after ravine, drinking stagnant water and catching mice to survive.
He wasn’t sure how long a time he had spent among the red towers since nature moved at its own pace. People there still tell of the Wildman with green fire in his eyes, the man who would hunt poison snakes and fleeing outlaws alike, the man who would lead lost children to the edge of the Painted Wastes, close to home.
Eventually, as all things, that legend ended. On that day, he found himself on the edge of a dirt road pointing back to the country that had rejected him, the nation he’d wandered from with few qualms. Truly, though, the road pointed to the end of “Wildman”.
Civilization. Home.
Home? He didn’t know what that was anymore. The fire behind his eyes pushed him forward, stoked old memories of speaking and being human.
There was no choice. The time of being a child of nature after his rebirth had passed, and the Copperbright sparked, became excited, lead him forward leaving no room for argument. Callused feet met gravel again and again and again in movements that had propelled him forward for more years than men were ever allotted.
At last, in the dry warmth of Bezalkand night, he stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking a sprawling city. Long ago he remembered when he was a boy, a time when the lights that pooled at the center of the basin but now they filled the gorge from wall to wall, as if the stars had come to earth in hues of bright blue, pale green, beer brown, shocking white and angry red. The air was strangely acrid. Thick. Not unpleasantly so. He smelled people, sun warmed dust and the ozone of approaching storms that would soon sweep the gorge.
His bare toes pawed at the earth of the cliff, idly carving divots in the fine powder atop the slate as he considered how best to thrust himself into a world that he realized he had forsaken for longer than a lifetime.
The Copperbright answered. It thrust a new name into his hands, and the old mental trappings of his priesthood were draped again to square his shoulders and straighten his spine with quiet pride. Only then did the green flames quiet behind his strange eyes, leaving him to descend the footpaths down the gorge walls to the city alone.