To Follow Bast

         I never really found out what happened to my birth-family.  I would like some answers…but can I really handle the truth?
         I was born to one of the more…prestigious families of clerics in my settlement.  The “gift,” as it was called, usually skipped generations.  My grandfather was the last cleric in my family, before me, of course.
         In any case, my camp, I guess you could call it, moved around a lot, but we had made friends with the cat-folk who lived near us – maybe a week’s journey on foot from the last place I saw my family.  The two groups always got along really well, which is why we would exchange information, spells, wares…and stuff like that.  We even traded children!  …Sometimes.
         That’s what happened to me.  The cat-folk are ruled by the outriders, chiefs and the clerics, so they are always interested in learning different things about the gods.  In my home, we worshiped Nephthys.  The cat-folk didn’t know much about her, and were eager to learn, just as my family wanted to learn about the cat-folks’ goddess, Bast.  Being practical people, the two clans traded children – the child of the cat cleric’s and me.  We were to not only teach the other group about our beliefs and the god we serve, but also to learn more about the way the other group functioned.  The plan was to trade us for five years.
         For four years, nothing went wrong.  I lived with the cat cleric and his family, while their son lived with mine – their son and I had become really good pen-pals.  We were both having fun and learning a lot, as were both my home-clan and my new clan.
         Suddenly, shortly after the hot season of the last year began, something went wrong.  The kitty outriders had never had a problem with finding my people before, but now there was no sign of them.  I knew that neither side had been aggressive, for they both had something to loose – their cleric children.  Also strange is that messengers from my people also stopped arriving, despite all of them being good trackers and our not moving much.  It was like they had just…disappeared.
         While I loved my new parents, I really wanted to find out what had happened to my home, the people who had raised me, and the friend I had only ever briefly met.  I left one night without making much noise (after living with cats, one learns how to move quietly most of the time).  One would think that I would never find my way back, considering that it had been more than four years of not traveling to the woods and since the outriders couldn’t find my clan.  I didn’t even expect to find my family, really, but it was like…like something called me.
         I walked for days.  Somehow, none of the cat scouts or outriders caught up to me or found me on my way.  (That didn’t strike me as unusual until I was finally reaching the edge of the forest and something…felt wrong.)  The clan had been my home, my family.  They would have come looking for me (as they had many times before when I had first arrived and wandered off) and I’m not skilled enough to hide my tracks from them…
         In any case, nobody ever found me and I walked on, driven by the need to know.  Yes, I walked, not wandered, for I had a direction to my steps – a direction that I did not know, but that drew me onwards.  Surely, Bast and/or Nephthys must have been guiding me, for I found my birth-clan.  Or rather…I found what remained of them.  Oddly, the camp was located where it was when I had turned 6 – I recognized an old tree that had been my last fort before I had been taken to live with the cats.  My clan almost never returned to an old camp unless something went wrong and they were driven back, but there were no signs of a fight – just corpses lying around the camp and even inside the houses.  The end of the camp farthest from the plains consisted of elves who appeared to have simply dropped dead in the middle of everyday life.  Closer to me, more of the corpses looked like they had died painfully – either by having been cut down or by…something, terror and pain etched on each of their faces.  Among those who had died painfully, I found the remains of a cat-child, male and roughly my age, wearing what looked to be the remaining rags of robes worn by clerics in training.
         I shuffled (minding where I stepped) to the edge of camp and promptly lost my stomach.  From there, I wandered around in a daze.  The corpses were in various states of decay, but none had been touched by scavengers, which struck me as odd and slightly foreboding.  This wasn’t something that even scavengers wanted to touch.  When I actually came out of my daze, I realized that I didn’t know how to get back to the grass-lands…and started to panic.  Then, something shiny caught my eye.  I hardly consider taking things to be “looting,” when it’s from one’s own clan and…is used as a keepsake – a reminder...which just happens to be shiny.
         I hunched over where it lay at the cat-boy’s fingertips, not wanting to touch the deceased.  Then something happened and I was standing beneath my tree again.  (My elf friend had apparently used it as a fort and I can understand why – I can always find a sense of peace here.)  It was here where I had finally gotten over my anxiety attacks from being so far from home (?!) and was growing to love my new family (?!?!?!).  I knew that, but that wasn’t what was on my mind.  Something sinister and terrifying is about to happen.  I don’t know what it is and only a few can sense the impending doom, though nothing we try to do has stopped the feeling.  If I stay here, I’ll go insane from the unrest I feel in the back of my mind!  I know!  I’ll fetch the outriders – maybe they will be able to help stave off the coming attack until the rest of my home clan can be mobilized!  I can’t just sit around and do NOTHING!  But…I can’t leave – it would be breaking the pact we made…!  I stand there, tail lashing with frustration, when…  There’s nothing.  No sound, no movement – just a slight breeze rustling the leaves…just like the calm before a viscous storm.  A scream of terror breaks out at the far side of the camp and people are running.  Panicked, I take off at top speed towards the woods.  Half way to there, pain blooms all over my body and my scream drowns out all other thoughts in my mind.  My vision narrows until all I see is the earth coming up to meet me…  Will it make the pain stop…?
         Suddenly, I’m looking down into what is left of my cat friend’s face, eyes wide with fear and panic.  Somehow, I’m on all fours, but…shouldn’t I be dead?  Not that it matters – I’m soon running through the woods as if hell hounds were after me.  It doesn’t matter where I end up just as long as it’s away from this…this…massacre.  Whatever it was that killed them, I can’t sense it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still there – most of the elves didn’t seem to sense it, either.
         About two candle-marks later, I collapsed on the ground, winded.  Gasping for breath, I reflected on what had happened.  I had seen the death of my clan…but they were already dead…  How did I see all of that?  No, that was wrong.  I didn’t just see it…I was there!  I felt the pain and fell…but how am I still alive?  Nobody had survived it.  I didn’t survive it, either.  When I fell, my claws had started digging motes in the ground as I writhed on the ground – my tail was lashed about…  Wait…my tail?  Oh, holy Bast...  I relived his death, didn’t I – the cat-child’s?  How?  Why?  As I pushed myself up from the ground, something cold and hard pressed into the palm of my left hand.  I don’t remember taking it, but there, in my hand, was the bracelet the cat cleric had dropped.  The gem reflected the dappled sunlight and the smoky center seemed to swirl like smoke.  No wonder it had caught my attention before.  Now…why did I have it?  I should return it, I guess, but there’s no way I’m going back there…even if I did know the way back to the camp.  I shrugged and tucked the bracelet into my pocket – the cat clan may want it back – and continued onwards in the direction I had been facing.
         After another few days of travel, I reached my home with the cat-folk.  It was night when I finally returned – roughly the same time as it was when I left, so I slipped back into bed, making as little noise as possible.  The next morning, nobody mentioned my absence, so I became a touch offended and anxious – did I really mean so little that they didn’t even notice me missing, or was something else going on here?  When I asked why no scouts had been sent out after me, my cat parents looked at me as if I had lost my mind.  I explained what had happened – that I had been mysteriously guided back to the forest clan and had returned.  My clan was dead by some unknown force and their corpses hadn’t been touched.  After hearing this, my parents were quite alarmed, for they figured that I was having either visions or nightmares.  But that couldn’t be right…I still had the bracelet (though nobody knew anything about a bracelet with an odd gem – they couldn’t even identify the gem…).
         That afternoon, I told some of the hunters where I thought they may find my elven brethren (or at least their corpses).  They set out to find the outriders at once and the search began.  A week and a half later, the outriders and scouts returned (they run really fast…), confirming what I had found.  Naturally, it was arranged that I would remain living with my cat family as part of their family.  For much of that first season, I felt as if I were walking on tip toes around my new parents.  Did they blame me for their son’s death?  Was it really my fault?  I still don’t know, but it’s easier to just blame myself rather than live, always wondering – sadness can be buried behind a smile but questions come back and have to be reexamined.  They could blame me so long as they accept me.
         Oddly, each year following, it seemed as if I were gradually fading away from their memory.  Maybe it was to block out the pain of losing their young cleric, but each year my presence was acknowledged a little less.  People started forgetting my name, calling me “Cleric” rather than “Nyarris.”  By the time I was thirteen, people didn’t even seem to recognize me as being part of their clan…so I left.
         For the past year, I’ve been wandering about, looking for clues about my clan (...and getting hopelessly distracted by shiny things…).  I found that many of the people I came across couldn’t pronounce my name, so I now go by “Narris,” or simply by “Cleric.”  Eventually, I wandered into a town and found I couldn’t leave.  Whenever I tried to leave, fog cloaked the ground and I ended up entering the town from a different direction.  Roger, a really funny man there, told me to wait – people would come to take me away in a few days, and so they did.