Burley Bear &Meadow Flower
A Single Tapestry - Individeual Destenies
These Are the origin stories of the people who shaped Taelo’s world. These are the intimate tales: The naming of Taelo and Golden Hawk A Of their Mothers: White Swan and Quiet Pheasant.
Of a Grandmother: Who raises Quiet Rabbit who becomes Taelo's Mate.
Of Busy Bee, Who becomes Golden Hawks Mate
Of Little Otter and Talking Wren two opposites that fate brings together
Of Burley Bear of the Others and how he becomes like a brother to Taelo.
Of How Rolling Stone of the Others became Saber Scar.
And of Broken Spear, the Seer of the Others who is with Taelo from infancy and through all of Taelo's Journeys.
Each story reveals the roots of Courage Loyalty, and the constant adventure that echoes throughout the Taelo saga.
These are not just character sketches.
They are the emotional foundation of a world.
A tapestry of mothers, daughters, hunters seers future leaders.
whose choices, whose sacrifices, and triumphs surrounded the path Taelo walked throughout his life.
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Burley Bear, Meadow Flower
The stand of massive, tall straight pines provided Burley Bear shade and the luxury of relaxing as he recovered from having hoisted four massive buffalo into the trees.
Meadow Flower sat next to him on the body of an ancient pine that had lost its hold on the earth. As it fell it had ripped the limbs off the younger surrounding trees. It left a streak of the blue sky to testify to the path the giant pine had taken on its way down.
He wondered how loud such a fall would have been. He took note of the breeze entering from the edge of the forest and rising past him on its way upward through the opening above. The opening provided a natural path for the wind.
He thought back to the oddity of how his current clan had come to be. It was made up of the unification of many small three and four family clans that had banded together after an especially hard and devastating winter.
Prior to that winter the various small clans had been spread out so each small clan could hunt uncontested in their territory.
This had worked for thousands of moon cycles. Then the loss of almost half of the small clan groups to an extremely cold and snow driven season had caused this practice to change.
His clan and about ten handful of other clans had come together. The combined clans moved across vast snow-covered territory and had ended making their primary camp in a green trench valley to the east of their current location.
It was during this period when their current seer, Broken Spear had earned his name. He had been mauled by a huge bear that had left him with many broken bones and a disfigured face.
He had been broken but he had been given new powers by the ancients. His new powers included flying with the birds and seeing through their eyes.
Burley Bear was just a youngster when Broken Spear had predicted that a man of the eagle would come to lead the clan to a new home. It was many moons later that he and the clan again faced a devastating winter. They were barely keeping all the families fed.
It was in the beginning of that winter when Broken Spear told the clan that they should go to the ocean shore and wait for the man of the eagle to guide them to a new home.
It was a crazy time to make such a move. Burley Bear made his voice heard but Quiet Fox his father and the leader of the clan listened to Broken Spear.
The clan moved to a perilous location by the sea.
Burley Bear’s scouting led him to a camp of the New Ones that was processing a large amount of meat. Somehow the leader of the hunt group sensed his presence.
Later when he led a team to take the meat from the new ones, they tricked him by loading the travois they pulled with wood covered by a small amount of meat.
He became the laughingstock of the old hunters, and they asked him if he could tell the difference between wood and meat.
A few suns later he watched as a travois pulled by two women of the New Ones and two young boys approached the clan. They came with gifts of some small goods and more meat than he had taken from the four travois his team had captured.
He had not meant to be rude, but the strength of his grip was more than he meant it to be when he grabbed the woman with the white feather in her hair.
The next thing he remembered was awakening in his hutch. He knew immediately that an unseen warrior had blind-sided him. He came out of his hutch roaring and ready to fight.
Instead of the pandemonium and fighting that he had expected, he found Quiet Fox talking to the taller of the two young men.
As he approached the young man stood up.
At the same time an eagle let out a loud scream overhead.
There was total silence as the young man introduced himself as the claw of the eagle.
The claw of the eagle, Taelo, had defended his mother and put out his lights. He had done what no other person in the clan had ever been able to do.
He had overcome Burley Bear.
The eagle passed overhead and let out another scream.
Burley Bear took it was a signal to him. He apologized to Taelo’s mother and shook Taelo’s hand.
Thank you for reading this far.
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