(I don’t know what level of abstraction still needs a CW tbh sorry)

On the twentieth of the Red-flower Days, when the trees made bare by the Bird-crossing days were making their first clothes for their branches , the weatherwatcher came down from her high basket afraid. The clicker monkeys scattered when she crashed through their bowers, and the many who listen to them were then also afraid. There was a word behind the weatherwatcher’s lips that had a foul taste but which she would never spit without terror’s tang to deliver it.

“Storm!” she said to the Short House People who had come around her, and she did not do it gently. Some could not stand then, while others stood by a stiffness that gripped them, and they all suffered a bitter taste. They were then all dead, and they envied the Short House People of the nineteenth of the Red-flower Days who had not had their plans and their hopes taken.

The Big Speaker stepped quickly from behind his screen of snakefisher feathers. His face was flat, because fear was familiar to him, but now he was not alone with his, and his eyes that were known to be heavy for him were lifted. He called for the smallest drums and the shortest pipes that were sharp enough to cut wind. He called for the goose feather blankets that would repel the rain. He gathered the strongest arms for holding the ropes, and the finest fingers for tying them. He made a circle of the oldest and the youngest, to whom many listen, and gave to each a pinch of singing salt.

Food was gathered, and it came from every house. Mothers brought their lecberries in baskets and in their folded clothes. The drying pits were opened, and the clay was shaken free from the bushels of redreeds in a soft rhythm. Clouds of steam parted around the red faces of those who carried racks of buanpa meat, and for each there was another to wave away the eager glass flies. Much food that had been saved was piled, because the Short House People were dead and much would rot.

They were all watched by the Stealer, whose legs were tied so that he could not leave his house. To him, things were only given, because then they could not be taken from another. Much was kept from him also, and this is because he took a child on her first day. He had been dead since he had returned without the child in his arms, and so he was happy that the Short House People were then all dead with him.

The air went still, and the light was amber. The weatherwatcher trembled, knowing that the sky was taking its first breaths. The Big Speaker watched her, because her trembling was familiar to him.

The winds came then, and it pulled the youngest trees flat, and the world began to sway. The drums became the heartbeat of the Short House People, and the flutes their voice, and these were heard by many who do not speak. The rains enclosed them, and struck their backs with thunder, and it was the trust of the young and the knowledge of the old that repelled the sky’s hatreds.

But the Short House People were not winning. Mud covered their feet, and the rain was too cold. The Big Speaker roused their spirits and made their circle a stone that was deeply buried. But his fear was not their fear, and his death was not theirs, because his had happened many days ago. With the singing salts to open the ways between them, the young and the old broke the circle, for the beat of their drums and the chirp of their pipes was louder than any speaking.

To the cave they went, where they could die and be reborn tomorrow. They said goodbye to their houses, and goodbye to what they had drawn on the walls. Bitterest of all was their goodbye to the weatherwatcher, who refused to follow them, and went instead to her basket where she would not be reborn tomorrow. And because they were all dead, the Short House People freed the Stealer from his bindings, so that they would not have killed him. The Stealer, who had watched the Big Speaker with a still gaze, ran then into the rain and the wind, and from the cave the Short House People saw his back in the thunder, thinking they would never see his face again.

In the cave, with the flickering firelight upon his smile, the Big Speaker was a worry to the old and to the young, because he was happy in an evil moment. The breaking of great trees sent a shock through the Short House People, and they knew then that much they had built was gone. They went to the cave’s mouth, and they watched the whirling sky, and the black branches in bursts of white. There were no days then, no seasons, and no lifetimes, for each flash was a death, and they lived many lives together in the cave.

A child with keen eyes pointed then, because he had seen a person apart in the flashes. And with many eyes to join the child’s, the Short House People saw the Stealer, who had taken the weatherwatcher from her basket.

The Stealer was then among the Short House People in the cave, and the weatherwatcher had been taken from her death to be reborn with them. The Stealer’s gaze was then upon the Big Speaker again, who was no longer smiling, and who was most afraid of all in the cave.