Thoughts? Anybody?

Part 3: [spoiler]“They were the forewinds that preceded the black fog.” Monu said, “They came ahead of it. When you feel the forewinds....you know black fog is coming your way, you know it is time to run...” he paused to let the tension build. “But we were brave...terrified, but brave. Not a single one of us ran. And then....I saw it! I saw my first glimpse of the black fog! It was terrible, like night and shadows pouring across the ground! It was coming for me, faster than any cloud of fog I have ever seen. I wanted to run, I want to get away, but it was too late! It came over me! When it did, I thought I had been taken away by the spirits. I could not see anything except a strange purple light. But then I heard my friends whis-pering nearby and knew I had not been taken by the spirits. I was no longer afraid, I had my friends with me. I began to walk along the trail we had been waiting on, though I could not see anything. I used my arms and legs to feel around, until I could find the rail. Our goal was to make it to the end while the black fog remained upon us.” “You...were playing a game in the black fog?” “Not a game...well, I guess it was.” Monu said, “We had to conquer our fear and reach the end. That was the game. And now that I knew I had my friends with me, I was no longer afraid of anything except for tripping. But, I thought my friends were still being cowards. I tried to say something to them, tell them to follow me, but they kept whispering to themselves. A few of them sounded like they were crying. I nearly jumped when I felt one of them grab my arm.” “Why did he do that?” his sister asked. “It was an accident.” Monu said, “We could not see each other, we only saw this purple light all around us.” “But...I thought the fog was black...” “It was until we were inside it.” Monu said, “Anyway, my comrade was too afraid to speak, so I lead him along the trail, finding my way by moving my hand along the rail, feeling the trail with my feet for any rocks and holes that might trip us. I asked my friend who it was, but he did not answer. That was when I began to notice something strange about the whispers that belonged...that I thought belonged to my friends. They were speaking in another language. And none of the voices belonged to anybody I knew.” Monu had to stifle a grin when he saw how still Culaya became. “The voices....” he continued, “they were echoing all around me. I knew then they were not my friends. Those voices...they belonged to the fog. I did not know what happened to my friends, only that one of them was still holding onto me, both of us too afraid to speak. Knowing he was there gave me courage, so I continued along the trail, with my friend's footsteps following behind. I was so terri-fied that the stories were true, that I was listening to the spirits of the dead, that I would become one of them.” “We traveled in this purple darkness with whispers following us, walking for what seemed like days. I heard strange things, footsteps running past us, children...or things that sounded like children giggling. But I knew we had to be close to the end, I could not see how far we had come, I knew be-cause we crossed a bridge. A bridge that was very close to the end of the trail. I wanted to run, to finish it off and be done with it. But...what if...what if I reached the end and I was still trapped in the fog? As I was thinking these things, I felt something wet...wet and slick with saliva run up my arm. My friend...he had licked it.” “W-what..” Culaya said, her voice soft. “I was about to ask him why he would do such a thing but the next moment I was blinded by sunlight. I put a hand over my eyes and watched between my fingers like this.” He placed his hand on his face and peered through his spread fingers. “We had reached the end of the black fog and I was watching it retreat. At the same time, I felt the grip that held my arm disappear. And my friend...the mysterious one who I thought had been holding it...he was nowhere to be seen. None of them were...” He waited a few good long moments, letting the implications sink in, letting her little imagina-tion work up its own explanations. Then he let a devious grin spread across his snout. “CUYALA!” he abruptly bellowed, causing his sister to scream “I made most of it up!” The next few minutes involved him laughing as he attempted to calm his crying sibling down. It also involved defending himself as his sister threw angry, terror/rage induced punches at him. “Okay, okay! I'm sorry!” he laughing at the feral half-sob, half-snarling noises Culaya made. “I made most of it up!” “What do you mean 'most'?!” she demanded, sniffing. “Do you want to hear the real story?” “No!” “We did enter the black fog, we could not see anything, but there were no whispers, no phan-toms that gripped me, and nothing licked me!” he said, laughing. It was not completely truthful. There had been whispers, strange whispers, phantom footsteps. The grip on his arm had been real, but it had been his leader, pulling a joke on him. The “wet tongue” had actually been a rag soaked in bag of por-ridge that his leader had somehow kept hidden on his person. But Culaya did not need to know about the whispers. He had already done enough damage. [/spoiler]

Part 2: [spoiler] Monu grinned as he took glances at his sister feeding the rock-scraper, as if she were its mother. She insisted that it was growing to trust her, but the truth was the creatures were fairly dim. They only knew how to eat moss, lichen, and how to run and hide. It did not trust her, it had already forgotten the danger she represented. As soon as she decided to put it on the ground, he had no doubt it would scur-ry away shrieking. However he didn't want to spoil her fun. It was his first trel back home and he had promised he would take his sister camping in Runak Valley despite his stepmother's objections. “That place gets black fog!” she had said, “What if you both get caught in one?” But the black fog was the reason he came here. It was a tradition of sorts. When Monu was young, his father took him camping in Runak valley, entertained and scared him with horror stories of the black fog before taking him into the valley to show him the eerie clouds that frequently ran through the it. And his father's father did the same thing. And his father's father's father...well, let's just say he was simply passing on the tradition, albeit instead of him taking his child, he was taking his younger sister, who was almost young enough to be his child. Monu waited for a decent bed of coals and ash before he dug a small trough for the fish. Then he laid them on bare dirt and covered them with embers. As they began to cook, he selected two sets of trees and began to hang the hammocks, one for him and one for his his sister. Without letting go of the skrill, she hopped into hers and began to swing back and forth, singing a familiar village rhyme but messing up the words. She was only six after all, young, smart, but innocently foolish. “Careful Aydin” he said, “ Don't fall out, you will crack your head.” “Aydin?” she asked. “Cuyala...” he corrected. Damn, she reminded him of his other little sister. It had been ages since they lost her, but the lingering memories still caused a small ache. He supposed that was why he had taken to Cuyala so quickly, despite how strange it was for his father to sire another child after all these years. Though Aydin and Cuyala had completely different personalities, Aydin, from what he could remember of her, had been soft-spoken while Cuyala is blunt and demanding, like a little tyrant. “You're going to make your friend sick.” Monu warned playfully as he draped a net over his hammock. Cuyala looked at the skrill in her hand and continued to sing louder. “I am serious, he will vomit on you.” Monu continued. She gave him a look that clearly said “You are an idiot.” As the sky dimmed, the fire began to cast dancing shadows along the trees. A few three-eyed yiks began to slither up the trunks from their burrows to catch the various starpieds, the glowing larvae which began to poke from the wood. Cuyala released her captive skrill and began to poke at the yiks while the crustacean skittered into the brush. When she got bored of harassing the docile serpentine crawlers, she began to gather starpieds and collect them in her shirt. Soon she had several handfuls of the glowing wrigglers and dumped them into a glass jar which they had brought for the purpose. Monu remembered fondly collecting those when he was a kid. “I'm hungry.” his sister blurted out. “So am I.” Monu admitted, “Let's see if they're ready.” He used a small spade to sweep the coals and ash aside, then he lifted the charred pouches from the dirt and set them aside. “Ooo, that's hot!” he exclaimed as he delicately unwrapped the fish, releas-ing a cloud of steam. “But that smells amazing...” “Yeah...” Cuyala added, entranced by the smell. “Now we'll let it cool down, then we'll eat with our hands.” Monu said, “How often do we get to do that?!” “Never.” she grinned He cut each fish to help it vent and soon they were tearing white chunks off the bone. It was perfect, the outside was slightly seared, the inside was flaky to the touch and the Oden leaves imparted the meat the perfect amount of citrus-like tang. Cuyala almost seemed to devour the fish. With all of the energy she spent earlier, running around, jumping in rivers and chasing skrills, climbing the various weaver trees that threaded the area, it was no wonder she was left famished. He suspected she would fall into a deep slumber as soon as she climbed into her hammock. But, he planned to terrify her first. “Do you want to hear a story?” he asked her. “No.” she said defiantly. Though a mischievous smirk curled the corners of her snout. “Oh come on, I know you want to hear a story.” Monu insisted, “It's a true one too, because it happened to me. It was about the time I traveled through a cloud of black fog.” “You did not.” she said. “I'm not lying.” Monu cleaned a bone off in his teeth, then threw it into the fire. “It was part of our training.” Cuyala was looking at him while still wearing a smirk on her face, though it seemed a bit more subdued by worry. He could almost see the conflict in her little mind: Is he lying? Is he telling the truth? Finally she said “Shara says black fogs are haunted. She says the dead will take you away.” “Maybe they are.” Monu said, “But I wasn't taken away, neither was anybody else in my class. Maybe we got lucky.” he grinned. After a moment, his sister asked, “Were you scared?” “I was.” he said seriously, “In fact it was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life. But I had to do it. Guardians cannot be afraid. Our fear is our curse. We cannot fight if we are afraid and so, to conquer our fear...we had to risk being taken away, we had to risk the phantoms of the black fog.” Monu picked up a stick and prodded the fire, sending up a flurry of embers. “I am going to tell you a story of the first time I ventured into a cloud of black fog.” But instead of starting immediately, he let the fire crackle and closed his eyes. He listened to the sounds of the forest, the silence between breezes, the treetop dwellers that occasionally called to each other. He remembered the night his father took him here and told him stories. “It was a valley just like this one.” he began, “The sides had fewer trees and bushes, but in all other ways, it was just like Runak Valley.” “Did it have weaver trees?” Culaya interrupted. “No, weaver trees do not grow in that region.” Monu said, “Even if there were weaver trees, we guardians would not be allowed to play on them as little kids do.” “Guardians are boring.” his sister said. “You are ruining my story, kid!” Monu chastised, “Anyway...we were standing in a valley much like this one, waiting for a cloud of black fog to come. It was hot and we were sweating in our armor, waiting for word from some scouts ahead, who would let us know when they spotted a cloud of black fog. We acted tough, but the truth was we were all hoping it would not come. We told jokes to each other to give us more courage. It was...” Monu paused, “around evening when one of the scouts came down and told us a cloud had been spotted and was heading our way. So we waited silently...waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then suddenly, everything became very quiet.” Monu stopped and lowered his voice to a whisper, “The birds in the trees stopped singing to each other. The animals around us began to scurry into their burrows, then the birds took flight.” “Why?” Culaya asked, worry and fascination in her voice. “The animals...somehow they always know it is coming.” he said, “They know the black fog is coming and they are terrified of it. The left us standing in silence. We waited....and waited....straining to see the first glimpse. Suddenly, a wind began to pick up from the valley, gentle at first, but growing stronger by the second. But we this was no ordinary wind...” Culaya saw that she was supposed to ask, so she did.“What was it?” [/spoiler]