Writing

[Robert Earl Brown]

 

Page (1)

Slinger: R. Earl Brown

(In the time of the great waves)

    It began, as a subtle vibration in the sand in the early-darkness of a cold clear Autumn-night. A low far off rumble and a motion underfoot, that would intensify gradually over time.

       Loka Descomb, and his three-younger Brothers, Stone, Bane, and Seer, were aroused from sleep by the worried nickers of their horses, hobbled and left to graze nearby. The animals' concerned response began well before the Brothers felt or heard anything.

       "Might be a Lion," said the youngest man Seer, as he stretched for his spear.

       "Build that fire higher Seer, and you won't need that spear for noth'n," said his oldest Brother Loka, in his usual condescending tone."Wait, you feel that?"

      None of the Brothers had ever experienced an earthquake, except to hear them described by others, but they all agreed that an earthquake was the likely explanation for the deep far-away rumble, attended by an awful movement in the very Earth.

       "You hear that?" yelled Stone over the din, as yet another sound commenced. It was an ominous intermittent thud or knock, that sounded muffled and distant, yet held the unmistakable suggestion of immensity.

       "How do you figure that?" Bane said aloud to himself.

       An ominous deep, repeated knocking noise, began to advance. The sound was reminiscent of the tumbling collisions of stones in the powerful back-wash of a large wave, being sucked back down a steep stone strewn beach. There was the familiar hard, hollow underwater thud of stone on stone churning along together. Yet by the volume the Brother's heard, the "stones" would need be the size of mountains.

       Wildlife began to pass the Brothers’ Camp, running fast in the dark along the hard wet sand closer to the Sea.

       Wolves, Elk, Pig, Deer, and Lion, ran together toward the south, united for the moment by a mutual fear; but fear of what? The Descomb Brother's could only listen and wonder.

       "I seen Critters' run'n from fire that way, but there's no sign in the sky," yelled Stone, trying to make himself heard over the clamor.

"Shouldn't we be run’n along with them?" Shouted Seer, noticing only then that the horses, though hobbled, had begun to attempt that very thing.

      "No, but we should be eat'n one," Loka hollered, as he ran for his horse. “You boy’s stay put.”

       The night grew long, and there was no relief from the quaking ground, the thunderous noise, or the fear of the unknown.

      Loka returned with a Pig, and the Brothers' ate the creature raw, as no amount of tinkering or adjustment would keep the fire burning, as the fire-wood sank into the vibrating sand, along with anything else left aground.

    As the Sun rose it found all four-men asleep on the backs of their horses, as the sturdy beasts walked down the coast to the south.

   Seer was the first one of the four to open his eyes, and look around him. The others awoke quickly, at Seer's initial reaction to seeing the condition of the Ocean; Seer screamed.

   As Seer opened his eyes he beheld a sight that would return to him as nightmares' his life through. The greens and blues of the Ocean he had known all the short fourteen-summers of his life were gone. Replaced by a chocolate brown morass of listless undulating debris, as when old dead driftwood logs are flushed from the forest by some distant heavy rainstorm. Except the trees heaped along the shore today were fresh live-trees in their millions, washed to the shore along with the soil in which they grew.

     The green of life was still in evidence amongst their branches, but the trees that floated on the rubbish choked Sea today were splintered into pulp.

     The dark water moved with huge battered shapes of Ice, from the size of mountains to the size of melons and everything in between. The objects bobbed heavy and listless to the horizon in a quaking morass of untold million-tons' of topsoil, bushes, grasses, and the battered corpses of animals, and fishes' great and small.

     Such was soon deposited along the shore to the horizons to the north and south.

     Sluggish with the weight of its burden, the brown sullen waves, slopped ashore with the enthusiasm and density of cold molasses.

     Thickened oily dark waves pushed through water that moved with an enfeebled effort. Up and down the beach the gooey-morass extended off everywhere, as far as the eye would allow.

     Seer's sharp young-eyes found even more. A color and a shape caught his attention a quarter-mile down the blackish beach. He kicked his horse into action, and rode to examine the oddly reminiscent object. He didn't linger there for long, and he rode back with tears on his cheeks to describe what he'd found there.

     "It's The old-lady, who belonged to Suder,"Seer explained." She's dead Loka. I could tell by her red hair, and that green neckerchief she always wears. Loka she is beat so bad, like I never seen before.

     "How could she be here? We’re four-days downriver from home easy."said Loka

     "They're all dead Loka,"Stone answered.

     "Who's all dead?"Bane asked in a voice that quavered.

     "Everybody we knew, said Stone quietly.

     "You can't know that Stone, how could you know that?” Seer agonized.

     "I say we ride up to that Mountain that looks like a Saddle, we could see clear across the big-river from there, might even be able to see home."

     "Yeah, Stone but what are we look'n for up there exactly?"asked Loka.

     "I don't know, but we can't stay here anyway."

     "Why not."

     "It's all this death, Loka. It's not good. We'll all die if we stay on this black beach, even Father said to bury the dead, or get sick, and die yourself. There’s no way of bury'n this Loka.”

     When the brothers' reached the top of the saddle-shaped coastal-mountain a day later, the sight from the top removed any doubt that anyone may have had concerning Stone's dyer prediction. The devastation they beheld was absolute.

     Nothing below them was now as it had been. The “big-river” had now returned to a semblance of its former size, but the river's former beautifully forested banks were gone.

     Trees' a thousand years in the making, had been stripped from the land. The river's flow was erratic and awkward, as if confused in an unfamiliar channel through a landscape stripped down to bed-rock.

     Visible below, and to the North-east for a hundred-miles, the land lay scoured unrecognizable. The high-valley, that had so recently become the home of their people, no longer existed. It appeared to have been swept away along with the high hill upon which it rested just five-days before.

      From the height of the mountain they stood upon, the horizon of the Sea extended back hundreds-of miles to the west, and there was no blue-water to be seen.

     The ice, seven-eights of it submerged, had come aground short of the beach and formed a thick icy dirty-white reef close offshore.

     "They're all down on the coast like Suder's woman, and just as dead as her."said Loka absently."No-way they lived. This mountain's the only reason we're not dead too.

     "It was a flood," said Stone,"but from where?"

     "I don't know," said Loka, "but let's build a camp up here for the night. We’ll watch and see if anybody down there builds a fire tonight."

     Through the night, the three-younger Descomb's watched for fires below, and shivered in the snow of that elevation. They talked of rescuing their loved ones, and forays into the dead-zone of the North-east while Loka slept, or was strangely quiet.

     In the morning They tried to entice Loka into leading them forth to"make sure there was nothing they could do” for those now lost to them.

     "I'm sorry boys," Loka told them,"you're all old enough to make up your own mind, but I'm going south away from this place. You can all come along if you want, and I really hope you do.."

     With that Loka turned his horse around, and rode away to the south. His three-Brothers sat in silence for a time, then one by one they followed their eldest-Brother down the mountain and rode away to the south.

     It was early in a new day.

There was an odd energy in the air along the shore that morning. Goman felt it, but he didn't dwell on it for long."The colors are always a little different in the morning-light," he thought with a shrug“but that’s not the whole of it.”

He rowed steadily out until he approached the low-protruding tip of a familiar Granite Pinnacle. Called "Hag's-Head" by the fishermen, most of whom had wrecked a boat on it at least once, it rose from the bottom like a spire, close to where the reef lay large and exposed today by a minus low-tide, a mile out from the beach.

The structure was usually well below sea-level, as evidenced by the long tentacles of sea-grass, that hung limp and slippery down its sides today, as if a head lurked there chin deep, watching him through long strands of green and brown hair.

A quick glance around at several other familiar features, gave him a rough triangulation, and assured him he was above the spot he sought on the seabed far below. He drew in several deep lung-fulls of air, and reminded himself to relax as his hands organized the coil of hemp that secured his boat to his anchor of stone.

He slipped both leg's over the stern of the little craft, then followed them into the water, until just his hands remained on the stern-rail. Only then, did he reach back into the boat to lift out his anchor. He let out about a fathom of line, allowing the anchor to dangle a few-feet below his toes. Then, carefully retaining a grip on the rope, he looked to be sure his coil of anchor-line was free to follow

him down without a snag.

"The water is warmer than usual" crossed his mind, as he sucked in a long last deep breath of air, and released his hold on the rail. Then, he waited patiently as the heavy square of stone pulled him to the bottom. Down from seven-fathoms of water at high tide, less than six-fathoms now covered the many large flat Granite Slabs that lay strewn across the uneven sea floor. Here, each massive flat-stone rested across the tops of smaller more rounded stones, forming low table-like structures, under which were spaces where Goman's quarry found narrow, hidden, hard to reach places to secret themselves away, beyond the range of foraging Sea-Lions, Otter and Seal. Yet the tasty foot-long mollusk "Abalone," often remained within the longer reach of the human-arm. Carefully, Goman kept his anchor from striking the bottom with enough force to send a warning vibration to his intended prey. He knew that during calm sea-conditions like today, Limpets and Abalone, which depend on the suction of a large strong foot to secure themselves against any surge of strong current, can relax for a time in the peace of the slack-tide. Occasionally, if caught by surprise they could simply if quickly be snatched from the rock. However, palm-held wedge-shaped stones' strewn around the sea-floor here, attested to the difficulty divers' usually. encountered, when they needed to lever the tenacious foot-long Mollusk from it's grip on the underside of a barnacle encrusted boulder.

As a young-man Goman was one of a small-number of divers, who could visit this place in any-weather. All strong swimmers, they were drawn to hunt Abalone at the height of storms, precisely because it was difficult. They would swim out from the beach, dive-deep under any large waves they couldn't avoid otherwise, and arrive out here a mile from the beach to dive the forty- feet to these same rocks, fill their bags with Abalone and return to shore.

Goman began hunting Abalone this way about the time his Fathers generation grew-older and lost interest in swimming during storms, They were replaced by the younger-men of Goman's generation. Now, Goman found himself trying to remember why they didn't just wait for quiet times like today, but all he could remember for sure was he had known the reason then.

Reality returned, when his feet found the bottom, and he peered under his favorite rock. He knew at first-glance that something was not right. Barnacles, Muscle, and Sea Anemone were there in profusion as expected, but everything else was gone. Goman could see no Abalone, no Limpet, not even Starfish. Sea urchin, or Crab. Usually a variety of small-fish could be seen hiding amongst the sea-grasses'. Eels should be there, with their toothy faces sticking out of dark holes.

As Goman continued his search, it became obvious that every living creature on the reef that could go somewhere else, had done so, and all that remained were those creatures more permanently attached to the rocks.

Why Goman puzzled.  

Yanander Gualt Senior stood looking down on the mouth of the Eel-River from the Widow's-walk on the red-tile roof of his home, Laboratory, and workshop. A quarter-mile west the Eel-river, a seven-mile fork of the larger Green-river, joined the Ocean just two-miles south of the Green. The shallow sand-bar formed at the outflow of both rivers was much too calm today for Yanander Gualt’s liking.

Yanander originally built his home at this particular location for the sociality his wife and family required, and the convenience of living near the small farming, fishing, and trading community of Wellhaven. Nevertheless, his Copper-Mine and Smelter stood along Green river, seventy-miles upriver from Wellhaven.

Ordinarily, the sand-bars at the mouth of both rivers were treacherous places to navigate. Large breaking waves, and strong unpredictable currents were the rule in these shoal waters. Over time, the silt from both rivers had combined to form islands far offshore,

sandbars, and dangerous stretches of shallow water. Although only two-miles separated these two-waterways at their mouth, it was almost never safe to navigate between them. Even during periods of an otherwise calm-sea. Today however, Yanander had sailed the two-miles between both rivers by way of the Sea on his way home from Wellhaven.

Routinely, boat-traffic on the Eel River that was bound for the Green, need travel the seven-miles upriver to where the two-rivers merged into one. Once at this confluence, one could continue down Green-River for the five-mile trip to Wellhaven, or turn and take the Green seventy-miles upriver to the Gualt Copper-Mine.

Yanander’s problem with the shallows on the bar being calm today was simple enough. It stirred bad memories of another time, when he, as a younger-man, was returning by sail to an island kingdom far to the Northwest. His boat was becalmed, in conditions like these, at the start of what would become a great Tempest. A swirling Cyclone, that swept his Father’s boat past the familiar channel, and onto the rocks of the island he sought, killing most of the treasured friends who made up his crew.

"The birds, the distant thunder, the warm-lazy water," he thought, "It's all here. I've never seen Albatross this side of a-thousand-miles west of here, nor pelican in these large numbers."

Yanander rang the town bell, when he arrived in Wellhaven, and called for quiet when the town folk responded, then told those assembled:

"1 am here to ask you all for your help. There are signs that a storm is gathering that will batter the coast with strong winds, and perhaps a tidal-surge that could make the river dangerous, perhaps even drive it over its banks. Anyone caught along the Sea, or even here close to the river, could be swept away.

I will leave my family with Tamrod Barter, while I move my boats' up Green River to the“Switchback”hopefully out of danger. Anyone who depends on his boat for his supper, may want to do likewise. I hope to see you all back here safe when this is over."

"Yanander, what will become of your home on Eel River,?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"Lanten, it's good to see you my friend,” Yanander shouted to the man, “No... I over-built my home knowing of this very possibility. Still, I don't want my Family to be anywhere near the Ocean in what I believe will transpire. The Sea has the power to do most anything, and it sometimes does. My home may well be a memory two-days hence."

At the end, Yanander's comments and observations inspired stories from other's who had recently witnessed unusual signs. Thousands of unfamiliar birds, unusual fish caught in their nets, and smoke that rose straight up into the sky despite the clouds that flew overhead. The crowd laughed at one tale by a local-Fisherman, who claimed there was“suddenly no Eels in Eel-River.”

Many of the comments' were not considered especially noteworthy. Still, the town-folk knew Yanander was no fool, and those who listened to his warning, got busy preparing for the“Storm”Yanander said would soon be at their door.

Within the hour, twenty-boats were underway up the Green. Trustingly if somewhat self-consciously, running from what appeared to be a flat calm Sea.

Later in the day Yanander and the others watched as the high-clouds began to fly across the sky faster still, and all without the slightest breeze along the ground.

“As if they're be'n chased by devil's" thought Yanander, remembering lost friends'.

The Sunset that evening, vivid to the extreme, found Yanander back in Wellhaven with his family, watching as the Sunset moved-south instead of dimming into darkness.

“There must be a fire on the Sea" Yanander reasoned, “but what could be burning on water?

The Comet

During the comets last complete orbit of the Sun, It resembled a mile-long shrunken black potato. But that was before the Sun snapped it into four-nearly equal pieces.

Twice as distant from the Sun, as the orbit of the ninth-planet, a comet was formed in an orbiting belt of dust, ice, and gas, not otherwise engaged in the formation of the solar-system.

Atypical of other comets which coalesced from these scattered remnants of creation, the comet encountered a large gaseous object, early in it's development, and was consequently set upon an orbit unlike the band of raw materials from which it sprang. Wrenched into an orbital course passing unequally above and below the ecliptic plain, the comet settled into a wide oval-orbit through the Solar system. An orbit that narrowed with each orbit of the Sun, as the comet passed through the immense gravity of the outer gas-giants.

During each of its two hundred-year cycles, as the Comet neared the warmth of the Sun, frozen gases' locked deep inside its frozen nucleus, thawed and "out-gassed" into space, forming a coma of gas and dust, to be caught up in the lee of the Solar-Wind. Thus, forming a tail that could extend out across the Solar-System for a hundred million-miles.

After Five hundred-orbits' of the Sun, and the passing of a hundred thousand-years, the volatile stuff of the comet's nucleus was spent, leaving the comet a black, twisted, oblong concentration of dirty-ice and rock, no longer able to form its characteristic tail.

The wide oval of the comet's arc had narrowed markedly by then, as it passed ever closer amongst the large outer planets. Until the day it passed uncommonly close to a small, rocky, inner-planet along its path; the planet Earth. There, a tiny mutual attraction of gravity pulled at the comet, but it was not significant at the time.

However, this transfer of energy compounded throughout the comet's next two hundred-year Solar-sojourn, and sufficed to nudge the comet closer to the Sun than ever before.

It was not drawn into the Sun, but the conflicting forces of the Sun's awesome gravity, and the comets own intense inertia, conspired to snap the dead black stone in half at it's center. The two-halves immediately did likewise, and the four-separate sections of a dead comet dutifully finished their turn around the Sun, and careened back into deep-space only to return quite uncharacteristically, after only one hundred and eighty-years. The four- quarter mile-square pieces, remained in a line together as they were before, Nevertheless, this time they came allied on a path straight toward the center of the Sun.

Ninety three million-miles from a fiery inconsequential end in the heart of an indifferent fusion-furnace, this hapless comet's destiny was to suffer an entirely different, and a far more infamous demise.

The Earth, faithfully rotating every twenty four-hours on it's axis, and tumbling through space on it's near circular annual orbit of the Sun, rose up in front of all four-quarter mile-square stone pieces of the spent comet.

Each quarter-mile cube was obliged to collide head-on with the Earth, precisely into one of the Earth's deeper Oceanic-Trenches, at a relative speed of twenty three-miles per-second.

The crisp clear light of an early Summer afternoon, spread out across the open Ocean, five thousand-miles West-southwest of the rocky coast at Celanin.

       Winter and Summer were not much different here, so close to the equator, and In this isolated expanse of endless Sun and gentle winds, only the occasional low-volcanic island, broke the surface of a vast warm Sea. Only the Whale and the Albatross would witness the events that were destined to transpire on this rare and tragic day.  

      Far below the surface of the quiet Sea, unseen in the utter-black below six-miles of Saltwater, two-continent size, twenty-mile thick, Oceanic-Plate’s relentlessly moved together in a slow but persistent collision. Afloat on the sluggish molten Upper-Mantle of the Earth, these two-stone giants moved steadily forward along a front, that stretched out over a thousand-miles

      With less speed forward than the growth of human fingernails, these two- moving sections of the Earth’s crust nevertheless, contained the energy required over time, to fold stone into mountains. Through Eons-of-time, these two-massive stone chunks of the Earth’s Crust, had patiently carved out an under Sea trench, six-miles deep along the Ocean floor.

      One plate was slowly being driven under the other, it’s leading edge diving into the molten mantle below, while the weight of the plate above, pressed down with an ever increasing force.

      Here, rock born in the heat and pressure of the Inner Earth, melted back to where it began, thereby completing a cycle of renewal a billion-years long. This day, high in the heavens above this black and cold abyssal deep, another awesome force of nature was set to unfold.

      The smallest of four-quarter-mile cubic, pieces of a spent comet, traveling at nineteen-miles per-second, met head-on with the upper-atmosphere of the Earth, in a sudden and violent explosion.  

      The Earth, dutifully following its routine orbit around the Sun, at eighteen thousand five hundred-miles per hour, Lent its velocity to that of the Comet, for a relative sum of twenty four-miles per second.

      This smallest-comet-quarter had originally existed near the comet’s center, and perhaps still contained water that flashed to steam; with the heat of crashing into eighty-miles of atmosphere. Whatever the reason, the first-quarter exploded twenty thousand-feet above the surface of the Sea, setting Volcanic-Islands ablaze for a seventy-mile radius.

       One after another, the next three-massive stone quarters of a spent Comet, struck the Ocean in roughly the same area. Not that the four­-pieces had remained all that close together. Rather, because they struck an Earth in rotation, while stacked one over another; traveling along together.

      The Earth, turning on its axis, and speeding along on it’s annual Solar-Orbit, rose-up in front of the four-quarter-mile square cometary fragments, and managed to collect them all in the same two hundred and fifty-square-miles.

       Each fire-ball vaporized catastrophically at impact, along with a column of Salt-water five-miles in diameter, and six-miles deep.

      Water pressure along the bottom of the trench, a mind-numbing eight-tons per square inch, violently rushed in to refill each of three-empty water-craters. Then rebounded, sending out enormous waves in rapidly expanding circles.

      Meanwhile, the edges of the two-opposing under-water giants, themselves the floor of the Sea, had long resisted forward motion, Stuck as they were in many places, along the fault’s thousand-mile long leading edge. Regardless, the stress had continued to build, until the stone on stone surfaces preventing forward motion, strained close to fracture.

      Waiting for Just a little more pressure. These locked-rocks requiring some additional force, were more than accommodated by the energy in the massive impact of the Comets last three-sections.

      Years of pent-up movement released in seconds, as rock fractured all along the fault’s thousand-mile leading edge. Both-plates heaved forward and down. The bottom plate pushed nineteen-feet deeper into the hot upper-mantle under its twin, while the twin moved an equal distance further over the top of the former. Both-sides dropped eight-feet, then lunged back up and forward again.

      A multitude of forces would need spend their energy, ere they returned to a state of balance. Water six-miles deep dropped the same eight-feet, and was pushed nineteen-feet forward, by the top plate’s twenty-mile thick, thousand-mile long wall of rock. Two-great waves were created, that dwarfed those already born of the three-massive cometary impacts.

      Powerful beyond description, two-great waves of energy were set in motion. Unnoticed perhaps on the open Sea, they would become quite apparent as they encountered the shallow-waters close around many a distant shore.

    The energy waves would travel for thousands of miles to the east, at speeds counted in hundreds-of miles an hour, and change would arrive without warning, in many a far-away Land.

Little-Flint

Slinger: R. Earl Brown

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The Little-Flint River, wound through the wide-green valley of the people known as the Jahasta, {wa-has-ta} on its twisted path, to a warm and abundant Sea. The river's zig-zag course crossed the gradual incline of the valley-floor, ten-fold further by width, than by length.

The Jahasta-valley was not the result of erosion by the river that flowed through it, but a random consequence of Volcanism. Two-volcano's existed there together, but neither had been a particularly land-building volcano. One was considered extinct, and had weathered back to nearly the natural level of the surrounding terrain. The other was said to be dormant.

This dormant-volcano was known to vent ash and steam on the rare occasion, and was credited for a multitude of hot-springs in the area, but both volcanic structures were small by any standard, and neither resembled a volcano at a casual glance.

Nevertheless, the river the Jahasta called the "Little Flint" was in some respects channeled by the raised volcanic deposits on both sides, and in this land of little rain, that had made the difference between, the lush forested meadows of the Flint-valley, and the vast surrounding semi-arid plain.

The long-wide valley of the Jahasta, was an oasis in the desert, and unlike the more typical river-valley, which spring from frequent mountain rainfall, the Little-Flint always flowed at the same rate, and was not subject to floods in a unique way which, had to do with it traveling under-ground, through an aperture of a particular size, from a lake behind the coastal mountains. Even when overly-full the river could not drain any faster, yet provided water in times of drought as well as any reservoir.

The Jahasta built their homes and boats of wood, from the abundance of trees the river provided for them, as it twisted through their valley. They hunted through a plentiful natural habitat for game. Yet from the Jahastas' point of view the valley was secondary to the bounty they gleaned from the Sea.

They followed the seasonal passage of the "Big-fish" far offshore; the whale. This required stout-boats and a standing-fire atop their highest volcano at night, as a guide to assist mariners.

A landing of floating logs was erected around the second bend in the river upstream from its mouth. It provided a buffer of sorts, and a more secure landing for their whale boats against the fickle moods of the Sea.

While the Ocean at little flint was generally more docile than the same Ocean further north, it could became equally dangerous, however less-often that tended to occur.

Their houses of wood and stone were built strong, and well inland from the shore-line, and many Jahasta boasted their homes had seen “six hundred-years of contented habitation.”

To supplement their fishing, hunting and gathering, the Jahasta worked the Flint they gathered from an abundant nearby deposit. They had, over the generations, become adept at crafting Spear-points, Knives, and Arrowheads, which they traded both to the the infrequent visitor traveling through, or with another village, too far away to allow for easy-trade, any more often than in an annual rendezvous. where they met with the people known as the Menderin, half-way between their two-villages in a place called Yellow Meadow.

All the people of the sparsely inhabited coastal-forests made their own Flint-implements, but none so expertly as the Jahasta. Starting from the highest quality local-Flint, they obtained from a mine known only to them, and ending with their many generations' of experience, they crafted objects of great function and beauty, using only a simple stub of Deer-antler, and a leather leg-cover. Many Jahasta craftsman could create the coveted Jahasta-spear-points, their exquisite knives, and elegant arrow-heads. distinctive only to the Jahasta.

The Menderin and Jahasta had been friends for many generations, and referred to one-another as the Menders' and the Flints' respectively.

The Jahasta were unlike any other coastal inhabitant of their time, in that they spoke a language unique to them alone. Further, They had no legend of migration in their collective memory, and considered themselves an Indigenous people.

Meanwhile, few of their number had ever traveled any further from their Flint-River home, than the villages of their trading partners fifty-miles to the North. Most often, said trading partners came to them, with dried Elk, Venison, fish, and grain to barter for quality Flint-articles, to be used for ceremonial purposes, which few other-craftsmen could provide for themselves.

Lona Winna was a Jahasta Orphan, a child found wrapped neatly in skins, tied pack-like to the back of his dead Mother. A child-less Jahasta-couple who claimed the right to raise the child, told him through the ensuing years about the cave-bear found mauling his Father high in the Flint-River-Valley by Jahasta hunters, who heard and responded to his Mother's screams. His real Father they told him,"only lived long enough to see his Son in good hands." Lona, then in the early days of his second-Summer, would grow up with no recollection of the event, nor of his actual parents.

starting at his rescue He began a new-life nursing without question at the breast of the Jahasta woman “Nessa Winna”Nessa had recently lost a child at birth, and along with her husband Rainer, had become the best Parent's Lona believed he could ever want. In time, Lona became a fine Jahasta-hunter, of an age to father a child of his own.
Now, Lona had come to that very thought in a dream, as he was awakened by a surge of salt-water, as it battered a hole in the West-wall of his home, with a force that drove him through, the very same east-wall, he had recently strengthened against intrusion by Wolverine.

“I'm under water" Lona thought, as he tumbled through the wall, which payed him a stinging blow to the head, That made him angry and afraid. Instinctively he had not taken a breathe when the water covered him in his sleep, and he felt no water in his mouth or lungs, but neither had he taken in any air, and he fought down a panic, that arrived with that thought. Instead Lona remembered his Mother, not far away, she would need his help in this.

Then, Lona saw light. It was diffuse and dim but it gave him direction nonetheless. He struck out for it with all his strength as it twinkled down from a surface that was moving along rapidly above him, carrying him along with it.

I'm under a wave" he shouted to himself,"but not for long," he promised his tortured lungs, knowing they were close to acting without his consent. Then, all he could think of was "just not breathing," until his head broke through to the water's surface, and into the fresh night air. Lona gulped in great quantities of good air ravenously, until the hunger for it past.

"The light was only the stars" he noticed, as his body came to a jarring halt, that knocked his lungs empty again. He was wrapped around the trunk of a small Pine-tree, while a heavy current pounded on his back, with a relentless force.

The coarse tree-bark stung his chest and face, while the current tried to tie his hands to his ankles, on the other side of the tree. A random surge from another direction swept him free of the tree, and sent him tumbling along through the thick clusters of trees in the valley, in a tumult that lunged up and down so much it left small surface on which to swim.

He felt panic again, as the starlight reflected back the sight of water rushing along for miles on both side of him. He was being carried along by a rushing

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Torrent of a large wave, heading deeper up into the forested valley. He grabbed a tree as it shot by. It was a foot-wide, and it bent over as he clung to its bark by his fingernails. He got both legs around the trunk, but the current shoved water up his nose, and the tree kept bending until he was under water once again.

Lona clung to the boughs in a current that was full of things, that battered and poked, until one was big enough to tear him loose, and he was swept off again. Lona grabbed the thing, which he saw was a small tree, roots and all. He tried to float and relax and let himself rest, but the current eddied and bounced, and holding on tight was the only way to keep the tree from doing him an injury, as it plunged and rolled.

Seeing himself being swept toward low over-hanging branches, he climbed up and crouched momentarily on the small trunk, then jumped as high, and as hard as he could. He didn't jump very high. His legs pushed him up, but they also pushed the tree down. Still, he caught a hand-full of green twigs on a lower branch, and quickly got the other hand full as well. Then, one hand-full at a time, he dragged himself up and along the limb, until he was sitting on top of it, with his legs wrapped around the trees trunk.

Lona rested for what seemed like a long time, until he noticed the current beneath him washing slower. He watched until it stopped, then climbed higher up in his refuge, looking for a way to get into a bigger tree close by.

He was afraid of the jump he would need to accomplish; the jump looked beyond human-ability. He was not happy to see the current begin it's ebb from the opposite direction, but the volume of the water flowing back was worse than he expected. Cluttered and brown with silt, it no longer even resembled water.

Regressing back to the Sea, the back-wash had became an ominous flow of dead logs, uprooted trees, and parts of wrecked buildings. All of which began to buffet his small tree with blows he knew it could not long endure.

Suddenly, he was terrified by a new thought, "Washing up into this valley was one thing," Lona agonized, "but being sucked back out into a dark and angry Ocean?"He shook at the thought of it. Panic-stricken, Lona made an all or nothing leap for the branches of the bigger tree.

Desperation prevailed, and he greedily grabbed on to the boughs of the tree he believed he could trust, while the returning flood began its rush to the Sea, armed with its deadly cargo of broken debris.

Lona climbed lower. The Star-light was dim-enough in the open sky, but in here under the trees it was useless. He got as low as he dared, and watched the small-tree which had saved him first, get swept away as he expected.

He stared down into the dark swirl below his perch, watching the impersonal force of the flood flow around and past him with a will, while he wondered on it's grim reason.

From the direction of the Sea came a startling new sound, and the Stars showed Lona the high white wall of a splash that rose in the distance. All along the coast, the out going and incoming waves met each other head-on.

The black of the night returned, when the white splash receded, but the advance of sound grew louder, and Lona knew it was coming again.

"Maybe larger too" he thought. Tasting fear return, he climbed higher as fast as the darkness would allow.

"If I slip and fall, I'm already dead" he told himself repeatedly as he climbed.

Then the tree to which he clung, was struck by a blast of water and churning debris. "It's bigger" Lona admitted, but with a new feeling of relief, "I think this tree's going to make it" Lona told himself with new confidence, seconds-before he felt the massive impact.

An object smashed into the tree. It struck far down below the surface, "A big dead log" he sensed, though he would never know for sure. It tore his tree from the Earth, as easily as if he were crouched on a blade of grass.

Lona hit something that was not water, rather it was hard and unyielding. Then everything went warm, and Lona felt peaceful as the dim Star-light faded to an unconscious dark.