Cerulean Cape a world within a world

Did other living beings have the same questions about life as Esma did?

She wondered this, having settled down atop the only rock on the long sand dune, and observing curiously the bustling life beneath the water. It had happened a short while after - small fish were the first to appear, swimming first cautiously then curiously around her submerged forepaws. Some were so brave to nibble at her nails and fur, but scurried away the moment Esma moved her limb. Then she caught sight of a little crab, crawling on the seabed and she leaned closer to inspect a rock that was covered in green sea-weed and mussels. Small air bubbles were rising up to the surface. 

She had always been aware that there were lives lived paralell to hers, but never had she been so aware of, how universes could take different shapes and sizes. The fish certainly did not worship the bear gods - for them a creature of that size was nearly unimaginable. But, what did they have instead, then? Esma closed her eyes and hummed, trying to imagine this. But the only thing that came to mind... or ather person was John. He had told her that his God was looking over him. Could it be akin to this? His god being the giant Esma was now and his faithful servants as tiny as fish and other life appeared to her in the pools?

She made a not to ask him this the next time she met him. But for now - she opened her eyes again and continued to observe. 

a yearling. she appeared as sobeille’s contemporary in terms of age, a lithe limb dangling in the water.

for a time sobeille just studied, listening to the soft sound that spilled from the girl’s humming throat. when that ended, the air seemed a little colder — and a wind drew up against her topline.

sobeille inched closer. she could make out silvery threads of fur, peppered with brown and tans — but from this distance was hardly more than a curious observer.

mini cameo!

The curious observer was curiously observed by a flickering pair of inharmonious eyes belonging to a boy whose provisional bed had been made of the bracken woods while he awaited the reappearance of John. He stares tentatively, gaze studying each mainland yearling in a sort of controlled absorption.

It was just that, he’d scarcely seen others his age interact. Now Judah felt he was learning the words of language he’d never heard spoken.

Esma would often get lost in her own thoughts and detach herself from the world around her. Sometimes a very vivid or particular image would consume her so much that it would feel just as real to her as the dimension she actually lived. This also meant that she would sometimes get into a near-dangerous situations and only the survival instinct kicking in the very last moment would save her.

Therefore no wonder that she did not catch sight of the cinammon coloured potential threat sneaking up on her. She noticed her only, when the sound of movement momentarily snapped her out of the daydream world and made her look around. Briefly her gaze met with that of the stranger's and then she yelped and jumped. Hackles raised and in a defensive position she eyed the other girl distrustfully, completely unaware that another pair of eyes was observing them from the distance. 

as sobeille looked after this girl, she wondered what it was that had her so preoccupied. it was a strange game to her to see how long before she was noticed; every passing second was another mounting tic of excitement.

engrossed as she was with this mini game, she did not know a second pair of eyes watched them both.

at last the solemn girl seemed to wander back from her secretive world of thoughts into the world of the present. she did so abruptly, her eyes snapping to sobeille with a jump and a yelp.

sobeille did not react to this stimuli the way most would. she blinked, tail tip flicking up like a cat's. what you be t'inkin' of?

It was a very simple question, but Esma did not have enough vocabulary to express everything that was on her mind. For her thoughts were more about a sensation and visuals than actual words. Yet she sensed a genuine curiousity in the other person, so - instead of shying away and mumbling something incoherent - she pondered on the matter for a bit. 

"The world. Within... a world," Esma replied. "That it is different for each and every living being. My whole world is... this," she beckoned to the surroundings. "But for a bug the whole world might be this single rock," she placed one of her paws atop the rock she had been lying on moments earlier.

for a time the stranger was silent. sobeille did not mind; it gave her time to unabashedly study every aspect of her face.

finally she spoke; a world within a world. to sobeille, this was rather profound — and a refreshing change of pace from the ingenuine pleasantries sobeille often felt forced to acknowledge during conversations.

one of her earlier memories was studying a spider. she remembered quite clearly noticing this thing had eight eyes, not two — eight legs, with bristly pedipalps and a way of moving across a twig that mesmerized sobeille. to her, it had been a twig — but to the spider it may have well been a colossal tree. she wondered if there were beasts in this world that had the perspective that she was the spider; so small and inconsequential she hardly existed.

mebbe we are bugs too, we just ‘avent met big t’ings yet. sobeille mused aloud, coming to sit close. ’ave you seen de t’ings in the ocean? val once told me he found a crab dis big — she spread her arms wide, but even then it did not measurably indicate just how gigantic the decapod had been. bigger even.

"My mom worships bear-gods. I think that they are the bigger things," Esma suggested, though only know did it occur to her that she had never asked her mother, whether she had actually seen Atka and Sos. Like in flesh and blood. Not just as an idea. 

"Maybe it was the crab god... or a king. In stories kings sound kind of big," she added. "What is a val?" she asked, feeling genuinely curious. 

something in sobeille pinged as esme spoke of bear-gods. her own family’s history was wrapped around bears like vines to a tree, or viscera to bone. bears had a strange way of reappearing, inviting themselves into each generation like malevolent house guests.

she took her time considering Esme’s view point. one thing that excited her when she spoke to strangers was the opportunity to be presented with an altogether different outlook; it was as tantalizing as it was refreshing, and sometimes vaguely threatening to her own impressions of the world.

as for kings, sobeille had no use for them. but a god — a god could be used for considerable greatness. many terrible things had been unleashed upon the world, all for the sake of god’s vision.

what about queens? she asked innocently enough, gaze panning over esme’s ashen features. she found she liked the way esme’s face was assembled; the generous stop to her muzzle, the slant of her eyes. it all came together to present a harmonious picture. a val is this annoying guy in my pack. she left out the important detail that he was her sire; there was no use for fathers in sapphique’s storied landscape of history. what is your maman like?

"I would not know. I have never heard of gods being referred to as female," Esma answered, realizing that she had never asked her mom about this. "Or male. I do not know, if they have a gender at all. Or any use for it," she shrugged, looking expectantly at Sobeille. After all there was a lot the Riverclan girl did not know about the world of gods - hence - she had set out in the world to find out. It could be that her companion knew the answer.

"Maman? What is a maman?" she asked next, because this word was just as foreign to her as the val had been. At least now she knew that "vals" were people, who were annoying in Sobeille's pack.

in another world, sobeille would have made a good heretic. sapphique did not observe gods in the traditional sense - there were loa, of different genders and importance - but no overarching deity in which to assign one’s worship.

sobeille’s worship was to her family’s legacy; her grandme’s and fore-mothers. anything else was simply minutiae.

dat be my mot’er. sobeille expanded with a tinge of pride. she be fierce an’ a good fighter. but also a good ‘ealer. she an’ my tante — she glanced over esme and paused — my auntie — lead sapphique. what about your maman, den?

For a moment there Esma was tempted to mimic Sobeille's accent and was about to begin with my maman... only to cut that thought short, stop and think. "Her name is Ash Paw," she said, carefully choosing her words. "She is a healer," had she also been a leader too, Esma did not know. Anything outside the small family circle did not concern her at all. 

"She worships bear gods," she added. "I do not know, if she does it well or not," she remarked, so focussed on attempting to form her reply the way Sobeille had that the silliness of that last sentence was lost to her. 

ash paw did not sound so different in vocation than sobeille's maman, but it was the second part of esma's speech that caused sobeille to sit straight up.

her spine tingled. bear gods?

forgetting the intrinsic taboo it was on sapphique culture to ever revere an agent of chaos like a stupid bear, there was something else there too -- athella and her maman worshipped bears.

was ash paw part of this cult? are you from bearclaw?

"Yes. Sos and Atka. A white bear and a shadow bear," Esma explained, glad to share something she knew, only to realize a moment later that she had no idea, which bear was which or what each of them were. "Ash Paw left little gifts for them on the altars in order to ask for favours," she added. 

"No. I am from Riverclan," she told, feeling puzzled by the unease in Sobeille's voice. "What is Bearclaw?" she asked. 

a shadow bear, a white one. little gifts left on an altar to beseech their favor. a custom as old as the wind or the world.

worship.

sobeille turned all of this over in her mind, fixing the riverclan girl with a gaze imbued in intrigue.

bearclaw be a pack dat worships bears.
sobeille started, breezing straight to the point. tell me more about dese gifts. sacrifices? what do atka and sos like?

"Mother left food and herbs, and said prayers," Esma explained, not revealing that is some cases she had returned to the makeshift altars and stolen the food. In the beginning she had feared a retaliation from the gods themselves and had spent a many night, having nightmares of bears coming to fetch her. But as the days passed and she lost the count of days she had gone to snack on the food, no bears appeared. Rather than taking this as a proof that these gods do not exist, she assumed that they had far more important things to do than to care about one scrawny wolf-pup.

"I do not know, what they like. How can you know, if you have never seen them and asked them?" she shrugged and responded with a question of her own. Maybe Sobeille knew a trick or two about life that Esma did not. There was a lot she did not know.

sobeille envisioned esme’s mother, burdened by the offerings she brought to the idol. herbs, food — and the final gift that cinched it all together. worship.

it would have delighted her to know esme stole food from a god.

i guess you don’t. sobeille admitted, brushing off a dusting of sand from her russet fur. i found dis altar in a cave. i t’ink it be an altar anyway. lots of bones and shells by it. lots of dust too.

she fell to silent thought. what happened to a god when their last worshipper went extinct?

"It could be," Esma agreed. "But I think that the god the offerings were meant for no longer lives there," she went on, suddenly inspired by a particular thought. "I think that a god does not live, where it is no longer worshipped or believed in. If my mother stopped to bring offerings to the altars they would be just like anything else. A tree. A rock. A pond. Or a cave," she said. 

"I think that you do not go to places to find god. I think... that you have to find it within yourself first," she finished and fell silent, because this was an entirely new realization to her. A summary of, why - up until now - she had not found the god she had set out to find it.

it delighted sobeille to no end that they both arrived -- very differently -- at the same thread of thought. this convergent meeting of minds titillated her, and fed a portion of sobeille that had long been starved.

what esme said next intrigued her even more. sobeille had, at times, felt a disassociative power within her. a raw and leering presence just waiting for its moment to outpour from her throat and raze the world. but she knew she could not speak of this incubus; not with her maman, nor chani, nor even strangers.

find your own god within you, esme suggested. and sobeille at last had a name for that malicious singularity that balled itself up like a fist against her heart.

esme pointed out that if her mother ceased her tithes, her altar would turn into something ordinary. sobeille felt that some places had a spiritual significance long after their worshippers left. perhaps the god they worshiped did not matter -- but the power signature left by each sacrificial offering lingered long after their lives faded.

do you think a place 'as memories like you or me? dat it remembers dese things? maybe your maman picked dat altar because de place told 'er to. maybe some people 'ave -- here she grew silent for a moment, conceptualizing words which skittered away from her like playful colts. a sight dat others don't.