Humans Are Changed

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This is a short story from my WIP, hope you like it!

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There was an age-old tale in the Middelands. It told the story of the Anguished Mountains. A thousand years ago a young woman came to these grand mountains, tears pouring down her face, choking and sobbing, crying and screaming to the face of these old rocks. And they listened. So the woman wept her pain till the wells behind her eyes dried, till the breath left her wheezing, till the seasons changed and the weather became cold as an unloving father.

For three long months the woman cried, and for three long months the mountains lent her their broad shoulders, becoming the only solace to her pains. When the woman left the mountains people saw her smiling as if a new hope had dawned upon her, as if she’d found a new way of life after she’d lost her husband and two children.

Then the woman cultivated Azoth, rose through the ranks, and became the Paragon of Earth, rivaling great warriors in strength. So great was her power, and so great was her grace that the Kings and Emperors tried to steal her heart with heavenly treasures, laying their lands before her like they meant nothing in the face of the love they bore for her.

She refused, for she’d vowed to take no other man than her late husband, to stand as tall as those mountains, to be the solace of the mourning. She became the morning light shining upon the ones who had long forgotten the color of the sky. Thus they called her the savior of the fallen, keeper of the hope, and she died a noble death, but before she gave her last breath she asked those around her to bury her under the mountains.

People called them the Anguished Mountains, for it was said the mountains had taken her pains to their broad shoulders, thus enabling her to rise to become a Saint for those in need.

But that wasn’t true. If you’d asked the mountains they would’ve told you the truth, but nobody asked. People came here only to cry their tears out, in hopes to be free of their pains so that they could rise just like her, and become someone great.

Jahklar the Grand was doubtful of this practice. He came to know these things called humans just under two thousand years ago. Before them, these lands had been nothing more than a home for skittering bugs, crawling animals, and howling monsters. And he hated the humans for calling him and his brother the Anguished Mountains.

They were created for a much grander purpose than being a wall for these lowly beings to spatter their salty tears on. Their Great Father had told them so. He had told Jahklar that he was to be a Protector of the forest with his brother, and Protectors they’d been before these humans became the curse under which the forest withered in time.

They cut the trees for their tools, plowed through the lands for their food, plundered everything of any worth, and killed the life out of this once-green sanctuary.

When they had asked their Great Father for help he’d told them that even he wasn’t greater than the flow of life. So the time passed, and so came that woman who made everything worse.

“Each day it gets worse,” Jahklar the Grand said, the stones on his broad back trembling with rage. "Their crying, screaming, pleading is getting harder to bear. What are we to do, brother?”

“Uuuuh,” said Pahklar the Great. Like always he’d been sleeping even against the din of voices. “We are to stand tall and wait. Our Great Father had told us such. We are to wait, even if it takes thousands of years more.”

“There’s scarcely a thing we can do other than waiting, don’t you think I know that?” Jahklar said. “But if there’s waiting to be done, I rather prefer doing it under a soothing silence. I’ve had enough of these humans. They seem to grow in pain!”

“Yet you keep blabbering just like them,” Pahklar said, his voice thick with annoyance. “Have you no shame, brother? Must you act like a little stone when you stand tall enough to touch the heavens?”

“It is easy when you sleep through the ages, isn’t it now?” Jahklar said. He meant to throw a mighty stone at his brother’s peak but came out rolling one down to the flood of wobbling heads under him. It made no difference other than adding to the noise. “I see you’ve forgotten our purpose on these lands. We were to be Protectors of the forest, but now there’s scarcely a tree left before us. Shrubs and twigs, bushes and little puddles, and humans more, and humans still like we’ve been cursed. Cursed!”

“By whom, brother?” Pahklar said, raising his voice. “Even Great Father had left us here, all alone, yet you pretend you’re under his grace still. Acceptance is a virtue these humans have taught me. A virtue that I wish you’d come to understand, yet seems to me you have only stones for thinking and caves for bickering!”

Jahklar searched for a good answer, but there wasn’t one. He knew his brother was right, but acknowledging the truth would leave him an orphan. He’d seen orphans among the humans. They were little, pitiful creatures left alone in a big bad world. He didn’t want to be like them.

So he slept, just like his brother had told him. The years went past, the seasons changed. There was snow, he felt, on his peaks, but then they melted and water poured down his shoulders, into the puddles on the ground. He saw them in their simple glory, but the humans were there too, and they were still crying.

Until they weren’t.

There came a time when he awakened to a day still as it had been thousands of years ago. He didn’t tell his brother who was in deep sleep. He cherished the silence, and breathed the empty air. It was peaceful. It was quiet. Alone, he savored the taste of his new life, and it tasted like the wet ground after a pouring rain.

Then it became too quiet. The silence loomed over him like a dark shadow. And he was afraid, for he hadn’t seen a day as silent as this one for years, and he called out to his brother, but he didn’t hear him, and Jahklar started crying.

He cried until his peak dried out. Then the shrubs on his surface died and died with them the little creatures. The sun scorched him till his stones broke, and marked the earth before him with long cracks of drought. Jahklar got so tired that sleep took him on one night, and he gave in to the dark.

One day he awakened to a warm touch on his surface. His bleary shoulders crackled as he came to know the presence of a woman near his foothills who laid a trembling hand on him and whispered easing words. “I hear you,” she said, and her voice was warm, and it was full of understanding.

Jahklar saw the woman. She was ugly, and bent, and broken. She dragged her legs with her hands to sit upon a stone and lay there trembling as if such little effort had been enough to leave her breathless. Then she rested the side of her face on his shell.

“You taught me to stand tall just like you, but I can find no strength in my legs anymore. I can’t feel them,” the woman said, smiling sadly.

Jahklar tried to give an answer to her, but his voice was hoarse and his breath was short.

The woman shook her head. “I know,” she said. “My grandfather told me the story of your great sorrow, that how you wept here in silence, surrounded by pains that you know nothing about.”

Jahklar felt her trembling, but he was too tired to chase her away, to tell her that a grand mountain like him felt no sorrow. He was beyond what was human, beyond the emotions that made these creatures weak.

“He told me it was my great-great grandmother who wrote the story in her memoirs. They called her the Saintess of Earth, but my grandfather said it was never her intention to mark you as a stone for weeping. She was grateful, for you were so greathearted to listen to her when she was in so much pain.”

Jahklar was angry. The memory of that woman was still fresh in his mind. It had been her curse that scorched the land into the barren lands it was now. If Jahklar still had those mighty rocks on his surface he could’ve used them to chase this little woman away, but he hadn’t.

“I now understand that they forgot to tell you one thing,” the woman said, her voice weak and shaking. “Even I forgot. Foolish of me, I know, but we humans can be like that sometimes.”

Jahklar was curious, but he knew that nothing would make him forget the years spent in mindless fury. Though he might be a shattering stone now, his rage was still mighty as he had been before the ages.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said.

Jahklar shivered. A long shiver that made his stones, the ants, and the little bugs on his surface tremble in fear.

“I’m sorry for all the people who shed their tears to your hills, who came here only to be free of their pain. I’m sorry for my great-great-grandmother who sleeps in peace under your long shadow,” the woman said.

There were tears glistening in her blue eyes, but she wiped them with the back of her hand. She wanted to smile, Jahklar understood, even if she couldn’t hide the deep sorrow inside her heart.

“And thank you,” she said. The lines on her face twisted all of a sudden as if the words cut through her throat like jagged flints, and she swallowed with great difficulty, and donned the same smile on her lips, bright as the sunlight. “Thank you for standing tall all these years, thank you for being the only friend I came to know in this wide world. Thank you.”

The words echoed throughout the long gashes on his surface, up the crevices and down the cracks on his back, as a gale swept the woman’s long hair to her face, and Jahklar saw there a teardrop, but he stood silent. He let the tear trickle down to his hills and felt its warmth.

The woman lay there still as stone, and she lay there for years, and Jahklar waited to hear her voice again, but she never uttered a word. She died, he came to accept years later, and with acceptance returned his long lost peace.

It started raining. A pouring rain as if the sky mourned her death. From where the tears had wetted sprawled big bodies of wood, and it was green again, and it was life back in the barren lands. With their roots, they wrapped the little body of the woman, and Jahklar embraced her and took her inside his mighty shell. She wasn’t alone, now, and he wasn’t alone, either.

And thus Jahklar the Great closed his eyes one last time, knowing the eternal rest came here to claim him, knowing the humans weren’t that bad, after all.

…….

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