Field Of The Doves.

             In the sunshine of our village and grassy meadows nearby, the play of children had a sound different than that of many other places and eras of time. We had been frightened with only a few exploits in human history and it would be many decades later before I could experience the cruel and unstable nature firsthand of the delusional mad dreams of men and women who often found themselves in the highest places of power. Once on the glorious pedestal the minorities of the masses would quickly be forgotten, whom I now believe stood with equal guilt. They pleaded cries of an innocent lamb, naive of predicaments both parties helped create.
          In contrast the similarities between animals and children were a comfort for their unassuming nature, in how they played a spontaneous ever-lasting game with no preconceived names, or superficial identities in which we as adults would become so fond of producing. The militant ideologies and greed manifested in mythology and reality equally yet did not touch us here, at least - not during my childhood. We sung and laughed far more than spoke; an outsider would believe we were verbally silent in comparison to their own. That was the way of my people, exploring along the underbrush, and running through the rivers barefooted and nearly nude. You could find us under the stars in warm summer nights while watching soft streaks of light fall from the hazy sky. 

          We were free but I dare to never call it as such.

          “Freedom” was a word I’ve studied with great disdain. For practical purposes the meaning is interchangeable with “Faith” - A venomous concoction to enslave and mislead while helping justify evil deeds done by a good many of people who had intended well. And those foreigners far away from our own boundaries whose lives were contained behind physical walls built of hand and rock and fear, in a society bound by more rules and laws than even the most vigilant could keep track of. They were born in debt and fated to be criminals regardless of personal action or choice. It was human order placed to contain chaos against outside threats but more so was the inner nature that could never be abolished. Freedom to those souls meant being relieved of the burden of spontaneous thought and feeling. It was a repression of the serpent’s apple, and crushing of phoenixes egg.

          My mother had repeatedly expressed how we should be weary of tradition for the sake of such, or over indulge with abstract intellectualism that trampled on instinct, which is the gift to all creatures of the world. The unnamed one who held power beyond the three deities who in turn held power above beyond us, had no title for what did it need a silly human title or function for? Nor did it watch us from above or below. It did not answer our callings because the answers where already provided in our environment, and in ourselves. It was a perfect creator, and perfection does not give birth to flaws – therefore, every breath exhaled, indeed life itself, was an answer to prayers never needing a desperate mouth to utter. Dyeing and the dead was a part of being alive as was living, while the crows, vultures, and even Luupin was hardly known for playing favorites.

          We were the children of a different garden where we gorged on all fruits, made friends of every animal and lived alongside the natural world instead of stark contrast to it. It was a wonderful balance that kept us prosperous for hundreds if not thousands of years. The exact time is known only to the Tower, secretive whores of information that they are, and not even I have been able to penetrate those archives. 

          Adults of our village had little use for historical information, busy with endeavors of expression instead; reading great epics, practicing sweet flowing strings of songs, dancing melodies upon water - activities that fascinated us younger one’s attention for awhile, yet we always enjoyed the outskirts more, with our gentle wolf-like creatures known as the “Luupin” who ran beside us, grew faster than our own bodies could, along with the exotic cats of the trees and shadows, their clever yellow eye, twitching tails, and wailing banshee calls. We did not consider ourselves the animal’s keepers, yet I was happy to have them with us. I could not have imagined my childhood without those forestry creatures any more than I could without my friends.

          We were the people of four villages to be found in each of the four directions of North, West, East, and South, each a component in the overall structure of a city that provided only for itself with minimal trade with each other, while we never interacted with outsiders, not with their goods and certainly not themselves. At the center of the villages was an enormous obsidian tower; around its base had a wide birth of bushy trees and vines creating a wall that blocked the view of any who passed along the path to reach its three heavy doors. There was enough space to fit another village inside entirely, yet to our knowledge only a field of short haired grass covered it, and two entrances to a cave in that went deep into earth.

          The Tower itself shot into the sky, disappearing from even the sharpest vision amongst snowy clouds, our own homes appearing unimposing and insignificant in comparison. The Goddess must have planted a seed and grown it to a mighty height as no human effort could aspire to such an accomplishment. It was her seat of power, and like the other two Deities she chose to be amongst the stars for they shared heritage - divine blood flowing in the veins of those possessed of immortality - even humans had a few drops of it, or so the tale claimed.

          As for our own villages, their children played games with our own. The dialect was full of strange words, some like ours and others we couldn’t understand. The similarities brought our groups together while the differences gave us a source of competition. Under the attention of parents or family acquaintances we dabbled in different trades which later on in the years we could be given a choice in what passions compelled us. It was a decision made with council to weigh evenly self interests with ability, and finally the needs of the village along with our own.

          I would like to believe that back then, crime and deception was not apart of our usual affairs, and most news was not of people but instead of new ways to plant a field or look after our lifestyle, perhaps a fad of art became popular.
The husband of my mother was a kind man when he was younger, and their love was true. So much in fact that when he became ill with a kind of madness that brought out a snarling anger and love of alcohol above the love of us, she remained with him, giving birth to me at a age too young. I was grown enough to remember the shame it brought upon our household and much more so after the man’s unproven murder by the same Councilor who would eventually adopt me as his only son, a role I took up reluctantly.
A lengthy break from school had given the tutors an idea, that my absence could be a permanent affair. Whether it was their idea or the councilors, one thing was for certain and that was how my options for the future were to be drastically limited to what he was willing to teach me. I was partially consoled by the belief that my mother would be happier without the man who caused her harm, while I stayed near to her at home.

          Instead to my horror she grew distant from me, and the village itself as the darkness that surrounded us only grew deeper and murky, like the swamp you’d never want to draw water from, yet from that I drew the substance, later becoming the source of my rigid outer character, ‘unkindness that shows the side of his father’ - they whispered. And not long after when I awoke in the morning to find she had disappeared – to the Tower I was told, the lonely days following helped me discover early on that I could convert the internal burning wound throbbing red heat through chest and heart, to love of the Luupin – is what kept my mind sane and spirit enthusiastic.
The Luupin knew nothing and cared nothing of human hierarchies that appeared to our own as hopelessly unavoidable. Those universal attributes to flinch at any enigma making one unlike themselves in the narrow bubble of familiarity, just as animals know to avoid another who suffers from physical sickness lest they become infected by association.

          In adolescence I nearly pulled a mother with my near complete withdrawal from former friends and the tutoring of children. Replaced instead with the eccentric Councilor Rocco, him being the oddest member ever to gain the title for three reasons; it was usually given to the most eldest, those who stayed involved heavily in daily affairs, and women who frequented the highest public positions. He was a young man shy of his 4th decade who traveled to other places unknown to me for I had gone no further than 60kms from the bed of my own birth, and even that was a trek out of the range most others ever traveled.
When asked why he went for long journeys, he responded that it was a ‘necessary evil’. This stirred vague recollection more in my heart than mind, for the loving woman who had uttered it was forbidden in one while the other I had no protection against. She said, “Ignorance is the only true evil. For we are good, our intentions sincere, but the tools in which we express ourselves when misguided as they often are carry a burden of all the pain in the whole world.”

          As we walked through the garden in the twilight hours when both sun and moon shown bright in the sky, a long moment of silence lead me to ask a question to my Councilor and now step-uncle, “Hey Rocco, leaving the village is evil, which is why I’m not allowed to come with you?” spoke I, with eyes dropped to the dirt as if reading messages in the corn stalks running along its surface- “and learning ‘the ways of violence.’”

          “That may be a part of the reason, one of many.” Answered Rocco, “You’d have to see the world to understand why there’s a danger in bringing any part of it back home. Ideas from the outside will cling to you like a rot-wood beetle, infesting others and creating complication greater than the end season floods.”
I held up a hand in shock and gasped. “Even worse than the floods, I wouldn’t want to cause that!” (And have others dislike me more than they already did, no thank you.)

         “Not literally the floods, boy, I meant that metaphorically, nor is everything beyond our home bad – we just don’t want it here. The reasoning comes from our Goddess and the will of our people - which is, usually, one and the same.”
There was no element of surprise to the wind upon our backs. A few long howls and yelps filled the air. Claws scratched on wood and the door jostled on its hinges with the weight of pressing bodies. The combined strength of Rocco and my own feeble arms slid it loose slowly. Tied with thin rope on my waste band was a stick dipped in layers of tar, wax, and tree bark which had done a fine job of smearing on my shirt, which at least hadn’t started out that day looking pretty anyways. A strike of flint on the door from the Councilors own hand; once, twice, then on the third time a flame blazed brightly into being.

         “Let me hold that while you tend to them devilish ones. As usual it appears that your presence has been sorely missed here.”
Inside the barn I walked along the wall with a hand sliding upon waxed basil wood, to feel the air cooled texture. Once reaching the gates that kept in the animals at night, keeping them from raiding gardens and pets of unsuspecting neighborhood, the background noise turned into pure pandemonium.

          “What of the other villages, Uncle? Why do they speak differently than we do, wouldn’t there be less ‘complication’ if we all spoke the same language and lived together in one big village?”
At this he groaned, “Oh, Your pups are hungry Koda, they’ve been staring at your bare hands as if expecting to starve at any moment. Just wait, here in a few years, size will bring even greater appetites. Making a beast wait to feed only tempts it to explore what you taste like.”

          This comment of Rocco’s was cause of my wry grin as he made his way out of the barn I reached down to go for one of the litter. Should have known better as they had prepared; at least 6 tongues ranging from wet to rough attached themselves to my face, removing a layer of flesh as it did so, sturdy teeth yanking on clothing and fingers, and with a few pushing from behind I fell foreword and crumpled with laughter and irritation into the rapid furry tide swarming around me.

          The mother sat away from us, a ray of moonlight from the great windows emphasizing the reddish brown strip on her back as she watched a human pup wrestle with her many.  This had been her first litter, born in around 40 days. We fed the Luupin only a small part of their overall diet. Commonly my people would see them hunting in wide circles around the outskirts, bringing down big game like Elephant Caboose and mighty Elk with tusks protruding from its jaws and great antlers sharpened on stones for a deadly touch.
The Luupin could go days without food - an empty stomach made them more nimble and viscous, especially when going up against opponents who held four or five times the raw strength and speed of themselves. Intelligent tactics were passed down from experienced hunters to pups, especially interesting was how families had only a single big game that they specialized in.

         Already the pups were showing traits based on what they hunted; the tusked Elk hunters had hardened shells covering the front of their head like a black helmet with only eyes and ears unprotected, while Elephant Caboose hunters had long razor claws the length of my own hands, which made them especially painful when they insisted on climbing upon my back as if to make me the next meal. There were many other variations of pup, though those two breeds were the most common in what once had been entirely our family’s farm and trade, passed down from my mother’s side. We raised litters of Luupin to bargain with professionals in many other services; they could pull the flour grinding handles at the mills, carry single passengers on their back, run while attached to sleds in winter, heard sheep, chickens, and fowls, guide the blind, chase out vermin from guardians, help with hunting big game which I’ve already talked a little about, and most prestigious of all was the largest, smartest and strongest could become familiar to the striders. They were bread to carry our homeland guard from one end of our border to the other within a day, and keep outsiders as out as their name implied. We also allowed other Luupin in as they pleased, for free as a courtesy to others in the village. A well trained mature animal could roam around without a human and still behave itself. This occasionally introduced me to breeds I would not have come into contact with otherwise, one in particular being familiar to a woman I’d seen much of in my earlier days.   

         Her name was Demisus, a village caretaker only a handful of years older than myself, one of the few foreigner who had ever lived amongst us. She hadn’t any skills that were useful to our people, so instead she watched the children during the hours of schooling. It freed the instructors for other students while giving her a chance to learn. Demisus had brought a Luupin with her, small enough to fit in a bag she wore around her waist. I’d mistaken it for a pup at the time, but instead it was bread to be so very small. It rarely left her side, when it did however and ended up in our barn I would find the animal attached the wall higher than a Luupin could leap. With sticky paws it climbed up as a spider would and eyes wider than an owl. The critter was creepier than she was. Being too small for large game and never eating the fruit, I wondered if perhaps it fed on dreams instead, as more than once did I find it sticking to the illusions in my sleeping mind.

          As the excitement died down I was free to jump onto a latter to the loft. Long bags of potent smelling radish shaped fruits rained down to hungry mouths below. They could eat almost anything.
If food was scarce and hunting stretched far beyond the normal fifty miles that was usual, they could go after rabbits, mice, gophers, or even climb some trees to eat rare bird eggs (or use armored heads to bash skinnier trees down), animal droppings, and rarest of all was the fruit that we gave, grown high in the mountains where the air was always dry and cold. It was a complex diet. As my step uncle said, “the beasts eat better than we do!”

          To that I could not agree. We ate all the same things they did, except for dung, which I was not curious why they enjoyed it, and liked my seafood’s from the ocean, which was fatal for them, even in small amounts.

         How wonderful it would be if there was in this universe a force bestowed upon me to become one of the Luupin. I spent more nights in the farm than my own room with the mother as a pillow and her pups nestled against my shoulder and upon my chest, along with another litter, or even three the heat could become almost unbearable in summer, yet there was not another place I’d rather be when dreaming. During the day if I could run as one of them and never see another  village, and not know what it meant to be human; our concerns and prejudices shamefully being driven on a constant hunt for comforts above all else.

         I still believed this, perhaps more now than ever – yet the childish wishes and dreams are no longer present, they have evaporated under the glaring sun of the present reality in which I exist, one where the Deities consume our souls like the animals consume each other, and the humans I had briefly held hope for, proved a malice beyond any previously imagined. They self-cannibalized in a political hysteria that may destroy each and every one of them. Not me, for what made me human has already departed this world, but oh may the Universe conspire to bring peace to the still living. This final oasis for a semi-peaceful existence, perhaps the last of any land, like a beautiful sculpture made of ice in the path of a stampede, was doomed to be shattered.
Indeed, the Luupin had the strengths of my race without the cons, even the smallest was always beautiful and graceful and strong. What were we but the rabbits of the valley, staying in our dens nibbling attentively on the roots of the world, shielded against the gusty winds and glorious faces of the Sun.

          T’was fine, I suppose, the older one’s told us we were lucky to be of this village and not of foreign lands. There was an unproven suspicion of whether children in other lands were told the same about us, though that possibility had not yet taken form in my mind. As I’d grow older and more distant from my friends, to a very similar degree of Demisus’ Luupin, it became an almost uninterrupted fantasy lens that filtered through my life. Others could see the shadows but knew not of what source they came. Floating on the currents of wistfulness they floated me to the greatest of places, along with my four footed companions. Until a few years later during the summer solstice festival, I would become an adult within moments of setting my eyes on a single woman. She was one of the two females who had been stolen away from me in my youth, and she had grown like an exotic flower with the fragrance of nectar that filled my nostrils with an urge like never before. 

         I’m uncertain if I could choose to extract those memories and forget completely, or if I would willfully cling to them as a senile dragon clings to its gold. My hands are numb as if bitten by frost, yet until the last moment of feeling they burned for her, and my mouth warm for a taste of the most wonderful poison a mortal can.
That night, on the edge of the Highlands where the mountains carved away to open into an expansive valley, open to the sky and far from any water that bred mosquitoes, cows had been brought in during early spring to trim the grass and now it stood at one’s ankle. I sat on one of the few trees and looked in awe at the gathering of the four villages, combined into a mass of people that was beyond comfortable estimation. I’ll say it again, that we did not need language to communicate, for the bands who spread their sound far and wide, competing in the air while simultaneously being harmonious with all other players. Large bonfires like the army camps we’d read about in stories, big and small dotting the landscape – some for dancing and others cooking.
Our people’s lives were not difficult; we were not burdened with physical labor or combat, and so we could get away with having only a single celebration a year, though this lasted three days, some said it was for the three Dieities, though we knew little of the other two, and really just came here for fun. If it had an original purpose of remembrance, than we – the forgetful goldfish that we were, had forgotten already.

         A small stone hit my brow while simultaneously feeling a noose go round my arms, with them yanked to my side I fell powerlessly backwards and let out a frightened scream, in my confusion I fully expected to hit the ground, and instead managed to find an even harder substance - the rock solid arms of a former friend of mine who now from what little I could tell in that moment of panic, as the bully had just grabbed my feet and swung out my body with face two hair breaths from the ground, as he chuckled with a deviance,

         “I thought I sensed a conspirator against me!”

         “Come on Koda, I know you missed us and have just been too shy all these years.” Said Tadka.

         “No wonder, look at him.” Added Russel in his slick suit of rare caterpillar silks, “He’s as scrawny as ever.”

         The burlier man who was my original attacker tilted his head and leaned in closer to my own to mock whisper, “A rumors going around that you breed the best doggies by impregnating themselves. I have to admit some of those hind legs look pretty good but we don’t want a bunch of were-pups running around. It’d be the witch hunts all over again.”

         “Like that would ever happen again.” I said.

         “Impregnating….”

         “No! The Witch hunts!”

         “…to create were-pups, oh right. Got it now.”

         “Seriously though, weren’t you lonely up there on the mountain with only an old man and those dogs?” spoke, Reiza who had her arm around Tadka’s waist, with the possessiveness as a lover. There was an immediate and unshakable lump of jealousy in my throat that I would have been reluctant to admit out loud. She hadn’t been known as a smart girl when we were younger, then again nor had I the sharpest mind, but her features certainly had bloomed impressively. 

         “Twas not a burden to me. Seeing you stand here now is the only reminded I’ve received of the years that have been passed as sand in an hour’s glass, otherwise I’m not sure if I’d noticed it otherwise… Hey release my foot before I call in the pack you’ve become so fond in your sly jokes of. They can smell my excitement and it makes their fangs drool.”
With a hand to his brow to express forgetfulness, Tadka released his grip as I braced for the ground, doing a roll and fluidly ending back on the balls of my feet.

         “An acrobat!” Rieza clapped, “Hey Koda dear, we tried to visit you many times in the first year, even occasionally the second but you were never home, that’s what the Councilor always told us.”

         “Huh… ‘never home’, of course I was, where else would I be?”

         An excitement rose from the crowd as they cleared to create an opening wide enough for carts to enter side by side, only that what came were not carts but sled teams of Luupin, 8 tied side by side with the nimble and lean leader in front. A girl wearing a fox costume rode on its back, her hand waving with furry paws gloves and long silver whiskers, and a very human smile grinning wildly. They pulled massive barrels that when turned on the side as they were; rolling on wooden wheels, still loomed over the head of the village’s tallest man.

         Russel hooted and charged towards where the teams were heading to unpack, ignoring the call of Tadka who shouted, “Like you’ll be doing any drinking tonight, not with your father around - just leave those fine spirits to a strapping lad like myself.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize my little sister in the front, father’s who’s bringing it!”