Book One of The Sheltered Land Tenets

The Gods of the sky were lost to them...

The Skybrights, Mother Tyo and Father Sym, had turned away from the People, Their younger children. They had turned away because of the loss of Their son, the moon Syo'o, to the Hunter from the Outer Rings. This left only Their daughter, Tym'm, to weep. And the pieces of Syo'o rained down, burning, falling on the unprotected backs of all. The pieces of Syo'o became the hell-rain.

So came the Sym'Tyo, the over-trees, that protected all, and sheltered the lands from the hell-rain. And the People lived and prospered, hunted and died, all without seeing the tortured sky.

Dien Den Sur had lived all his life under the shelter of the Sym'Tyo. He ate and slept and played there, in the embracing walls of Caverness, with all his family and Tribe around him. But Dien longed for the hunt. Like all his friends, he dreamed of the hunt, lived for nothing else. Being a hunter meant good things, freedoms and privileges that children did not have. But first came the warm season, and all its chores, then the mild-cold season, and its long sleep...

Could he wait so long? Or was he doomed to forever dream the terror-dreams, by dark-turning, and toil at the travails of just surviving by the light, never to see the tortured sky or the world overhead? Was all that there was to life the need to eat and work, or was there something more to be found in the hunt and in the glimpses of the lost Gods of the Skies, the moment of death shared, between hunter and prey?

Overland