Username: -=Elita=-
Name: Silent
Gender: Female
Personality Pros: Determined, Passionate, Free Spirited, Resilient, Tradition Bound, Exotic, Proud
Personality Cons: Reserved, Unwilling to accept help, Skeptical, Self deprecating, Rigid
Birthday: January 20th
Zodiac: Capricorn
Likes: Tradition, Runs through the forest, Honing her warrior skills, Tracking for the challenge, Woodcarving, Quiet, Singing tribal songs under her breath
Dislikes: Senseless destruction, Technology, Feeling isolated from home, Strangers and large groups, Feeling weak, Change, Falling short of her goals
Theme Song: Evergreen by Yoann Lemoine
Name: Silent
Gender: Female
Personality Pros: Determined, Passionate, Free Spirited, Resilient, Tradition Bound, Exotic, Proud
Personality Cons: Reserved, Unwilling to accept help, Skeptical, Self deprecating, Rigid
Birthday: January 20th
Zodiac: Capricorn
Likes: Tradition, Runs through the forest, Honing her warrior skills, Tracking for the challenge, Woodcarving, Quiet, Singing tribal songs under her breath
Dislikes: Senseless destruction, Technology, Feeling isolated from home, Strangers and large groups, Feeling weak, Change, Falling short of her goals
Theme Song: Evergreen by Yoann Lemoine
January 20th
This is strange to me. Everything is strange here. Johanna gave this to me when I first arrived here. A journal she called it? A book for me to write my thoughts in. She hoped that it would help me. Said I am going through a lot of change, and I am, and she told me that a good way to relieve some of that stress was to write it out. She know's that I miss my home in a terrible way, and since it is too much for me to speak of out loud, I can put it on paper. I can write about my home, anything I want about it. How much I want about it. I told her that I would use up the entire journal, but she told me it was okay, that that is what it was made for. I've never written anything like this before. I guess I should just start somewhere.... let this take me back.
I was born in the great rain forest called the Amazon, a place as much a part of me as I was it. It was the most beautiful place I could imagine... I grew up there, roaming the land as I saw fit, exploring every nook and hole I came across. I can remember it so clearly.... it was always warm and humid.... one of the best things about it.... The trees that grew there grew in abundance, dense and close knit. Sunlight rarely made it to the forest floor because the branches above blotted it out. There were so many trees! Unlike here... the woods here in America look dead in comparison.... Everything was connected there... The trees rooted themselves deep into the earth and their branches twisted and meshed with others so that it was impossible to tell when one tree ended and another began. Ferns and flowers and creeping vines colored their trunks, blending, disappearing and reappearing, with a certain kind of flow that only nature can make. I remember running for the sheer joy of seeing all shades of green blend in my sight, in and out of shadow, feeling safe with all the life around me. You could hear it humming all the time, everywhere you went there was always a whisper of life to be heard, as if nature was humming to me.... Birds called, monkeys screeched and hollered, insects buzzed and rummaged the leaves.... Even quiet creatures like the jaguar and the ant made noise, even if it was just a soft brush of fur against a tree, or the hint of a scuffling colony building a nest. Life was everywhere, thriving in this green paradise, protected... safe...
I went on my own when I was very young, and the wild was my teacher. Over the years I learned the prints of every animal that walked or climbed, recognized the sent of every plant and fruit, I even grew familiar with the layout of the forest itself. The way the trees leaned, how the webs of moss and vine made nets upon their branches, the pools of spring water.... I rarely found myself lost.
One day, though, I did...
I created my own trails with swift paws, and I relished the feeling of moist earth beneath my feet and the way my claws churned it up into clumps with each step. So lost was I in the feeling that I did not pay attention to the passage of trees around me. For the only time in my life, I was truly lost. The ferns and fronds around me were unfamiliar, and there was the sound of a great river somewhere, a river that I never knew existed until then. Wandering, I followed the river for many steps, most of the sunlight was spent by the time anything changed. Near dusk, I met my first humans. They were strange looking, without fur for the most part, two legged, faces that were flat and set in patterns of different colors of which I would later realize was face paint. They saw me and we both stood still. They were just as uncertain as I was, hands clasping sticks with pointed ends. I felt the urge to flee, until another strange human appeared, an old one. This one looked upon me with an expression I did not quite recognize... it looked almost expectant... A lot happened in a short amount of time, and I was still young and do not remember most of it, but... I ended up in a village, a village full of life. Different life. Humans mulled around huts fashioned from branches and crude mortar and fires smelling of fresh wood and cooking meals. Young ones played with sticks and round objects while adults gathered in groups, talking or weaving or stringing bows... a community. The oldest one came to me again and startled me by speaking in the language that I knew. He told me that he saw me in a dream, and that he wished to welcome me into his tribe as a fellow sister and warrior. I was confused at first, and I could tell the other humans were just as wary, but the old one was insistent, saying that if it was not fate, then I would not have been born the was I had. Looking into a small pool of water, he showed me myself clearly for the first time, and I was startled. I looked like one of the humans! The pattern of colors on my muzzle looked just like the paint the warrior men wore, and that, the old one said, along with my sudden appearance just as the men were returning from an extended trip he sent them on after first having the dream, where no coincidence. He told me that it was the will of the gods that brought me to them, and with surprising ease, I believed him...
The tribe became my home just as much as the forest had...
The tribe were as much a part of the land as the land was to them. They took me in and I learned their ways. They worked together, the men and women. Men went out to fetch food and protect the tribe while women cooked the food and took care of the village. Even though I was obviously not human AND female, the old one, who I learned was the chief, had me train with the male warriors, much to their anger. He said that fate would have me follow this path, and it was not anyone's place to change it. The chief's word is law, and so the men took me with scowling and grumbled curse. Life was difficult, and the men did not spare any hurt or scorn from me, but I did not fret. Here was a new life that I never imagined could exist. A way to make my life have purpose. I grabbed at the thought, and clung to it while I trained in the warrior's way. Years passed and my skill grew well... I learned to fight and track as well as any of the men, and, though I do not kill or eat meat, I learned to hunt. My skills did not end there. My swiftness and quietness traversing the forest knew no equal. No creature could run the trail as silent as I could, with years of practice and natural poise, I made not a sound. So great was my skill that even the warrior's were impressed, and, over time, gave me respect. And so I grew into an adult, swift upon silent paws, cunning in battle, and unshakable in navigation. I never lost my way nor stirred up doubt again. Though I was not born to them, I had become a warrior, though and through, as though my heart and spirit had meant for me to be here from the very start. And so it was, among painted faces made to resemble my own, rhythmic chanting that made each voice seem as one, and mesmerizing dance that beats along with the heart... All parts of these people that I have grown to respect and love, I earned my name. From the start when I was born, it never occurred to me that I was, in fact, nameless. There was never any real need to associate myself with a word, for I had been alone and, until now, had lived life as just another dragon. But here, living with the humans that have become family to me, I stood in front of the Great Bonfire that seemed to reach the sky, and from the chief, received my name in honor of my unique skill. I had earned several nicknames over the years, such as 'The Living Shadow' and 'Spirit', for the way I look and how I slide through the forest without twitching a leaf. Most popular among them was 'Silent', and so it was that Silent was the name I was given. I officially became one with my family that cool night, who in turn was one with the land around us... It seemed that my circle for life was complete, and I was happy...
...
...
This is the hardest part to think of.... the part where everything turned to ruin... Another type of human came.... armed with large monsters that growled a sound unlike any animal I've ever heard, and belched black smoke from pipes in their hides. It was monsters, machines as I learned they were called, that began to tear down my forest... Wheels churning up the earth and blades that felled trees in seconds... It must have been a dream...
But it wasn't...
The entire forest was eaten by them, these other humans, and soon there was no place for my family and I to live. Everything we had, every tradition we cherished was torn and we were forced to scatter into the wind like flies or gnats... I have not seen any of my family since then... Before they took me and put me onto the flying machine they called a plane, I ran. Silent as death, I ran to the forest that was no more. There, breathless and heavy with sorrow, I walked among the emptiness, splinters piercing my pads, almost blinded by the sunlight that shined, unblocked and bright now that the canopy was gone. I stood in the middle of this field of splinters, a field of death, suffering from a pain deep inside my chest, a wound more painful and piercing than anything I've ever known...
I wept...
There is probably nothing left of it now, nothing except for the piece of it I carry with me where ever I go. Before I was flown to the country of the United States, I took a part of my home with me. An ancient tree, old as the forest itself, laid on it's side from where it had been felled by the monsters. I had sat by it, weeping in my heart for the place that was disappearing before my eyes, and, in a sudden throbbing of emotion, took out a knife. I wanted to take some of it with me, anything, a tribute to the land I once knew... and so it was that I found a knot in the tree, old and sturdy, and painstakingly carved it out. It wasn't very large, nor was it pretty. Just a lump of unsightly wood in a roundish shape, but I took it. While I was with the tribe, I learned that the knot is the toughest part of the tree, from where it had healed itself from a wound long ago. It reminded me of what I need to keep close, that this wound will heal, and it will become the strongest part of me. Just as the tree heals itself and continues to grow, I hoped that I could follow it's example. And so I took it and wrapped it with a stretch of twine into a necklace. After some thought, I decided not to carve it into a more attractive shape. To do so almost seemed like an insult. I have no right to form nature into what I thing it should look like. That is what these other humans where doing, destroying for their own gain... I never wanted to be like them.. And so I left it as it was, looking just how nature had intended it to look. It seems better that way somehow...
America is so different from all that I've ever known... There is a pain in my heart from where my forest and my people were torn from me, as if the monsters had taken the tree that makes up my heart and turned it's roots skyward, never to be the same again. I am grateful to Johanna for giving me a place to stay and recover. She is very kind. But nothing will ever replace what was lost, and I spend most of my days running the mountain woods by her home in search of it, but it just doesn't feel the same. I know that I can make a new life here, and I might actually be happy, though it will be hard. But difficultly is nothing new to me. I am a warrior to the deepest core of my being... The forest is a part of me just as I was a part of it... I have to remind myself that. As long as I am here, my beloved home is also. I have to remember that...
I have too...
Edited Thursday the 23nd @ 10:21 pm EST
Art by me
