Run Into The Fire

CHAPTER 1

What we know about mankind’s history is really quite vague. All that is chronicled of our origins and past aren’t even highlights, but just momentary glimpses that don’t really paint much of a picture. Yet, just because we don’t have a record of everything dating back to creation, does not mean that times long gone were uneventful or meaningless. Indeed, simple reflection should bring one to say that long ago, the lives of men were every bit as involved, shall we say, as they are today.

Isn’t it funny, and at the same time tragic, that every generation thinks themselves to be so much more enlightened than the last? But we fail, even in those things we do know. For example, it’s unambiguous in the record that giants existed long ago. But a giant is only a giant to those who are not giants. And recognizing someone as a giant, then depends on what is considered normal. But it’s unknown what normal was in ancient days, and we only assume it was relative to men today. What if a man at five feet and nine inches was considered a “titan”?

Regardless of the age a man lives in, his full significance is only known to God. It could be that he is a titan. It could be that he’s smart, or that he’s charismatic, or that he can play the xylophone. And it could also be that he is simple. The significance of a man’s life, the real meaning of his existence, lies with God’s purposes for him—not men’s. And the most significant, often pass right before our eyes unnoticed.

Take this little guy for example:

The brown dibeetle with its six thin legs, all barbed for sure footing, was escaping up Hugly’s arm, when he reached and pulled it, as it scratched and grasped. He pushed it shell-first into the cinched top of the bag with the others.

The white worm, that he had paused to wait for, had just breached the surface of the soft dirt beneath him. He took hold of it, pulled it free, and in one motion, swung it in an arc, striking it on a bulky root. The hard, black head with its stem and much of the liquid came out on the impact. He drew it through his clenched fist and flung away the gooey dirt mix. Wiping his hand on the root, he then punched the remainder into his bag for the dibeetles to feast on.

The draw string was pulled, sealing the churning mass within. The bag hung from his neck in front and was secured around the waist with his coiled cloak pinned firmly upon his back.

Looking into the lighted canopy of tall brown grass above him, Hugly sighed and quoted someone, “Don’t waste your portion.”

He took a deep breath and tapped his hands in rapid fashion together, then upon the bag, and then his brow. Quickly waving his hand up, next, he said,

“

Mosimpofah!” to the sky, before setting off through the thick.

He knew the way, as he nearly always seemed to. He never wondered at this and certainly would not start today. Someone was due home soon, and Hugly was excited at the reunion.

Being here on this unfamiliar off-path, he would point himself in a right direction and be where he intended, in time. He picked up the pace, and now he was running quickly over smooth and rough paths made by creatures other than men. He would reach the broad Dead Tree some time shortly after he caught his second wind.

Dibeetles are not overly rare. They are highly prized for stews. A hearty and clean food, they never eat anything dead that has gone bad. Hugly had earned some wages in the past, finding and selling the shiny black bugs. But now he was collecting things for Isha Maera Cousins, who had dispatched him on various missions over the last several days. She had a need for preparations.

He liked this, because he was alone in the wilderness much of the time, where he was comfortable and knew his business. In the wild, Hugly was free to do and think as he pleased. No one expected of him things he could not readily do, and now he was doing what he loved most of all. His feet were swift and light and agile as he could pick them up and put them down very quickly.

The terrain involved the grass and underbrush. It flew toward him as Hugly reached out with hands and feet, pulling it and throwing it all behind. Every beast that could, scattered as he neared them. His swishing legs and buffeting hands met the floor and every obstacle with a great energy and precision.

This challenging of himself always involved an odd rhythm that he relished. The slap of hand, the pound of foot, the dodge, the duck and weave… all incorporated rapidly upon the path, as though he had come this way a thousand times. But he had not. He chose the odd route as often as possible.

As the grasses and saplings were now thinning around him, Hugly looked in the distance where he saw two crows high up in a broken and leafless dead tree, which sat alone in the midst of a small meadow. Normally crows avoid people and fly away when they are approached, yet Hugly had been so often busily harvesting and rummaging near to these that they grew accustomed to him and now only look at him curiously. Hugly was also very conscious of them, often considerately digging up grubs (their favorite) and leaving them on the surface.

One of the two crows looked off at the sky, while another bobbed and cocked its head at a location not far from Hugly’s path. Hugly slowed. The crow had doubtlessly seen him, but it was not looking at him under the bright, half-clouded sky, this mildly cold day. The bird did it again. A bob of the head and slight cocking, as it was seeing something off in the distance and beneath its perched gaze. Hugly slowed to a near walk and softly padded off into the longer grass toward the crow’s interest.

The short-eared rabbit had not seen or heard Hugly approach, but suddenly it smelled him. Curiously, it turned its head to discover Hugly’s lean body standing directly at its rear quarter, with his tied bag, his gummed feet, and his head out on his leaning torso. His wide eyes looked through his brows above the display of a broad, misshapen toothy smile.

The rabbit leaped sidelong from Hugly in panic, landing in a stagger to turn and run. Hugly was never more than one step from it, as it was now careening through the grass in full flight, turning this way and that way, every time it caught a glimpse of Hugly close enough to touch, as he matched its speed and turbulent attempt to flee him in fear.

To compete for speed was the ultimate thrill, and Hugly was getting it in spades from this fully-grown, male strip-tail. Hugly felt as though time slowed when he ran. He knew the move of each rabbit foot before it happened. He anticipated the sound of the beast’s breath and scrape of its nails. He saw each intent as it made its path in flight of him, as the two clove the tiny meadow with a jagged line.

Moving as one, they began to come near a small wood, when the rabbit took a misstep on a small fallen branch that lay hidden in the grass. It tumbled with its eyes wide in terror and its legs still in the run. Hugly had to pat a thrusting hairy foot to keep from being thumped by it. The rabbit twisted onto its feet, stopped, and froze in launch position. Hugly timed his stop to be in locked gaze with the terrified creature. However, just a moment into this, the same crow sailed directly overhead and off into the trees. Hugly looked to see it and breathed a heavy breath, ignoring the rabbit that had just taken the opportunity to tear away again.

Hugly wondered and looked back in the direction the crow had been cocking its head toward before. He carefully made his way back near the scrubs that covered the low hills on the meadow’s edge.

He ducked down when he caught a whiff of smoke, and brewing wickhetzel. It made him recall some distant sickness when the off-smelling tox was used to draw out a fever. He slowed and began to quietly pad, low and cautious.

Through the dry gray and tan grasses, Gallium fighters were suddenly within his view in their rock and limb strewn camp, just under the lee of a scrub oak, as they were stoking a small licking fire with a cauldron set above it.

Not wanting to be discovered, Hugly veered away without taking note of how many fighters there were. Bad happenings were most likely in store for whomever the red and green dressed troops were intending to visit in this region. Best to make note of them and immediately find his way away.

Just as he turned, Hugly heard footsteps to the rear on the rabbit path he had been following. He quickly and very quietly toe-heel stepped into the grass wall and lifted some dry matter to distort his shape.

A young and thin Gallium fighter, with jet black hair, passed by Hugly, mumbling a complaint to himself. He walked a further twenty steps into the camp, with the messy remnants of his drop all over the back of his leaf green trousers.

Hugly’s heart was pounding in his chest. The camp burst into laughter upon this young man’s entrance, and Hugly took the opportunity to make a hasty retreat through the grainheads.

After a good while, Hugly was sure he was far from the group, and looking to the trees and the sky, he pointed himself toward home and began a good run. Soon the distinction between the beats of his feet and hands diminished, until his coursing body became a thrumming.

Breaking free of the thick and dry autumn straw, the sky was suddenly above him, and there were no birds to be seen. Hugly opened up his stride, and the earth became his, as he breathed deeper and ran even faster and smoother on the soft dusty way.

Now, Hugly was not done for the day. Whenever in these parts, he would try to spend time in the battle grounds, where remnants from the War of the Lincolets could be stirred up out of the earth. He veered toward the watch heaps, somehow confident that he would not be meeting anyone wearing red and green along the way.

Protruding his face from the brush, Hugly peered out over a shallow valley speckled of low and broad hearty plants with tiny purple flowers that grew in places where men had fallen in battle.

“Blood does that,” he’d been told. Hugly remembered such things he’d been taught, but largely upon seeing or hearing reminders—less so at other times.

Pulling a long, dead limb from the grass, he entered the field and returned to a place he had last been rummaging in the dirt at the base of a large dilapidated watch heap of stones, or as it was sometimes called, a “Watcher’s Mound”. It probably was quite high at one time.

There were other heaps of stones elsewhere that Hugly knew were not as old, which were easily more than twenty men tall. And yet some were torn apart, stone by stone, to find if there had been a treasure buried beneath. Hugly, however, was not concerned with the impossible to confirm. It was the honors that others had given around the stones that he was certain of. He had found coins, altars, armor, weapons, and even men, who in life were attached in some way to whomever the stones were for—having been interned nearby to someone whom they were loyal and probably greatly loved.

In the stamped down hole, a stone in the dirt, which Hugly had left as stuck, was just as he’d left it. He pulled loose and dropped his bag and proceeded to move another loose stone near to the embedded one to execute the plan he had devised in his earlier thinking. Stabbing the limb between them, he leaned this back on the loose stone and pulled with his weight, and the object was turned up from its place.

Hugly knelt down, wrapped his arms about the Hugly-sized stone, and rolled it further before getting to his knees and plunging his hands into the fresh bed, to draw and pitch the dirt as he widened and deepened the spot. Soon he pulled out a sandal that he wiped free of the bulk of clinging soil. It was easy to see that it was well worn, very old… and quite useless.

He pushed around in a pile he had extricated but found nothing. Back in the stone’s hole he dug and drew, finding more small stones until he pulled out a metal button, and then another, and then a third. These he set aside, having only wiped them down to their heavy tarnish.

He dug again and now found a cloth belt and then a small iron-wrapped, wooden shield that fell apart in his hand. Below it was an oddly shaped piece of metal. Extricating this, he found it was a somewhat crescent with a straight-ish edge on one end, and a beaten image was bumpy beneath the heavy years of earthen stain. He liked such odd finds.

Hugly looked up. The sun was near to gone, and he would need to be upon a real road soon to be able to reach Isha Maera by mid morrow. Putting his findings among his twenty dibeetles, he strapped his bag.

“

Mosimpofah!” he said to the sky, beginning his rapid pace in the waning light.

Before he had taken a dozen steps, Hugly felt a distant thumping in the ground. He statue-stopped fully, his arms out like an odd tree. With his eyes jockeying about, he listened and felt. A half minute later, there were several more rapid thumps in the distance before him.

Now, while many would perceive danger and avoid such noises in the wilderness… Hugly, instead, trotted forward toward the treeline and turned directly into it.