The Legend Of Terra

The Legend of Terra
Chapter 1
Forever Walking Alone


The last leaf on the dying tree finally broke off. Only days ago all its brothers and sisters were full and healthy, then one by one they fell. They had not danced in the breeze as they descended down from above, and there was no reunion to create a carpet of a thousand colours when they reached their destination.
No; just a dull, lonely sink to the end and now it was the last one’s turn to suffer the same fate as those that fell before it and would continue to fall after.
The girl stood and watched; a great sadness looming over her. As the forlorn leaf finally lay to rest on the earth, the girl closed her eyes to release her tear.
The world around her was dying slowly, and she felt it. She had heard every last one of those leaves cry for help, but she was powerless to stop their end.
  The tree that had just died in front of her was not as great as its neighbours, for they still housed many of their leaves and flowers still. She took solace, for now, knowing that. But she knew their time would one day come. With this thought she turned to leave the scene. The girl had grown up in this forest and had the fondest memories of the colourful, fragrant flowers that would bloom in the spring to its magical autumn blanket but she had witnessed its slow deterioration over the last few years. It was with this tree’s last leaf that it had finally hit her that something was not right and the world seemed to be dying.

She headed south east, narrowing her eyes each time the brightness of the sun poured down through the gaps in the trees. Two small birds had come down from above to join her for a few moments, circling her and tweeting at her before flying back to their home. She smiled, raising her hand as they flew away as if with the meaning to bid them farewell. As she looked up, her smile quickly faded as her attention was grabbed by another falling leaf. She swallowed hard and quickly diverted her attention to the forest floor.  She observed where the fallen leaves now lay and began to delicately walk over them, like one would a grave.
    She stopped as she reached a small clearing and stared up at the sky. A slight breeze circled her, lifting up her long golden hair from her shoulders before placing it gently back down. She closed her eyes; took a deep breath and held it. During that breath, a thousand scents flowed as fiercely as a raging river up her nostrils. She could smell the berries in the bushes as they began to ripen; she could smell the morning fresh dewy grass; she could smell the meal of worms the robin was feeding her young in the tree tops; she could even smell the water lilies in the small lake over a mile away. But, she could also smell the rotting of the leaves. As soon as that particular smell hit her, she let the stale air out of her lungs as quickly as she could. Her eyes welled up slightly as she gagged with the last remains of the stench. She took a few moments to compose herself, catching her breath back, before continuing her walk back into the forest.
    This part of the forest was thick, with trees as old as time itself. They were tall; too tall to tell if the majority of their leaves were still intact or not. The shadows from them seemed to devour her, distressing her, only slightly for an instant, but she took that her sign to leave this part of the forest quickly. As she picked up the pace, it became apparent to her that she was not alone. She stopped abruptly before turning her gaze to her left. The creature stood before her; watching, silent and still. As her eyes began to alter in the darkness, so too did the form of the creature before her. She took note of the long, golden horn protruding from its virgin snow white forehead before breathing a hushed sigh of relief.
As the creature stepped out from the shadows of the great trees, the sun caught its ivory locks which made it glimmer like it housed a universe of shining stars.  The mane was thick and almost flowed down as far as the creatures golden hooves.

“Something troubles you?” it seemed to say; yet its mouth remained still.
The voice coming from the Unicorn was an elder male, with a hushed gentleness about it. It was apparent from his tone alone that the Unicorn and the girl were not strangers to each other.

The girl opened her mouth, ready to return the answer, but a strong breeze quickly interrupted. It blew some of the dead leaves from the forest floor in a small whirlwind between the two until the wind dropped and the leaves fell straight back to their graves.
The girl’s expression changed to a sad one. She looked longingly at the Unicorn, her sky blue eyes seeming glazed over where tears had been building for a long time. The small whirlwind and her expression combined seemed to be enough to answer his question.

The Unicorn walked forward and nuzzled the girl’s arm. “The world has been dying for quite some time, Oona.”

Oona had not long turned 19 summers. Girls her age would be finding suitors or starting a family; but not Oona, for she had not seen another human for well over a decade. The love of the forest animals and the blossoming of the flowers in the spring were what she knew of joy and pleasure, not the touch of a lover or the feeling a child’s laughter brings to its mother. Forest dweller or not, Oona was not remotely like them.
They are called Whisperers because of their ability to speak to the planet, Terra. They are mortal like a human and their anatomy resemble that of a human but there the similarities ended with humans. Their hearts are pure and they cannot hate, cannot lie and cannot hurt anyone or anything. Terra had made them at the turn of the last millennium as a symbol of what humanity should have been, and to try to restore peace to a world gone mad. With each Whisperer created, Terra placed a part of herself in them guaranteeing an eternal connection.
  The Unicorns had raised the girl after they stumbled upon her as a young child, no older than 4 summers. She was lost and alone on the edge of their forest, hidden by a heather bush and weeping softly. They knew what she was and they knew she had to be protected. Oona remembered little to none of her past before her coming to the Great Forest, and she had no desire to learn of it.

“Walk with me Oona,” the creature said, gesturing the girl his way with his head. He turned and began to walk in the same direction Oona had been travelling.
She lightly ran to catch him up, slowing to his pace when she finally reached her friend’s side.
They walked in silence next to each other; Oona following the occasional falling leaf with her head.
“You being here has kept them living longer than had you not been here, Oona” the Unicorn said.

“I have never heard the crying of a leaf until recently, not even during the autumn falling. It is disheartening.” She replied. “Why is this?”

There was silence for a moment before the Unicorn replied. “Did you speak to Terra today?”

Oona shook her head.

The Unicorn stopped, followed quickly by Oona.
“Oona, I cannot speak to her, so I cannot tell you the answers you seek.” He looked up towards the sky.

Oona joined his gaze for a few moments before dropping her gaze back to him. She stared longingly at him, a great aura of respect for the creature hanging over her.

The Unicorn spoke every tongue under Terra, but not through speech. When they spoke, their mouths did not move, however their voices could be heard clearly to all in ears shot. Oona often wondered how the Wolves would howl, the birds would sing and the frogs would croak, but the Unicorn’s had no sound of their own. Unicorns however did have their own language but seldom used it. It was known to be the most beautiful tongue of them all. Legend had it that any human that heard Unicorns speak to one another would be immune to all disease and would live an unnaturally long life. Humans would often try and trap Unicorn’s to hear them speak, especially during the Dark Ages when the Great Plague swept over the lands and that was also why the Unicorn’s fled into the forests of the world. In all her years of living amongst the Unicorns, Oona had never heard them use their own language. Because of the pureness of their language, even Oona would never be able to speak it, understand it nor ever able to know their real names. Because the Unicorn’s could speak all tongues, they also had names in all tongues and so they were able to provide Oona with names she could speak upon their adoption of her.
The Unicorn in her company now was Brogan. Brogan was the leader of the Unicorn’s that resided in the Great Forest. Many songs and stories had been written of Brogan. He was the first Unicorn Terra ever created, and had been alive since the dawn of time. This gave him the title of Lord of all Unicorns. During his time on Terra, he had seen many changes, from the creation of the human race to the creation of the Whisperers.

Brogan began to walk again, Oona dropping behind slightly.
She before long realised they were nearing the place they called home. It was a large clearing to the south of the forest where the River Duer ran through. A slight terrain of moss coated rocks lay sleeping here; the river tumbling over them in the shape of a waterfall to a small placid lake before continuing its journey through the forest and to the sea. The Great Forest they resided in was vast as its name suggested. It covered nearly half of the Southern Continent to which it belonged. To walk from east to west would take many days, and to go from north to south even longer. Humans rarely ventured near the forest. They had said the ghosts of the dead wondered aimlessly in and out of the Forest at night and local folk swore there had been sightings of a large Dragon guarding the borders. The stories kept the humans away for many years and kept forest creatures, and Oona, safe for the time being.

“Why have you led me here Brogan?” Oona asked

Brogan turned to her, keeping his voice hushed. “Man has been seen roaming our forest borders Oona. Some creatures have said they have even entered the forest.”

“Will they come here?”

“I do not think so Oona, but it is best you stay here where we can protect you.”
Oona nodded enthusiastically. She never asked questions about what the outside world was like and had come to fear it greatly.

The clearing housed an array of luscious plants and colourful, blooming wild flowers. Nothing seemed to be dying here.
Oona noticed the rest of the Unicorns were also gathered here. Searan, Brogan’s valiant son stood the nearest, ready to greet his Father and Oona. A group of Unicorn’s were huddled around the lake. This group had travelled down from the Northern Continent to the safety of the Great Forest not long after the Great War began. He had spread the word across the forests that he, Eadoin, the Lord of the Unicorns from the North, were preparing to leave the North Continent and would lead his kingdom to the safety of the Great Forest. One by one they came to meet him to see their dangerous journey through together. When Unicorn’s travel, they can cover great distance in a shorter time than any other creature but even with that on their side their journey still took them over two weeks. Several times they did not have the protection of forests and several times they came under danger. It was in the Dark Forest, they came across a savagely attacked Unicorn and her two unharmed young. It did not sit right with any of them the finding of the family in the Dark Forest. Either she had been travelling up to the Northern Continent, or she had lived there, but neither was a logical answer. Not one Unicorn from the North knew her, and even when all Unicorns from forests of the world finally reached the Great Forest, they too claimed to not know the two young Unicorns or heard of their mother.

Eadoin’s life long mate Terrwyn had taken on the role of second mother to the two orphans, for the mother had died from her injuries. She looked after them as if they were her own and was now at the present moment keeping a watchful eye on them as they chased each other around the lake.
They had been great play friends to Oona in her younger days, but even now she would leap at the chance to join in their child like games for Oona was still young at heart.

Several small groups of Unicorn’s were also dotted around this clearing, each one of them a friend to Oona. Brogan had told Oona that many Unicorns’s now lived in the Great Forest and had each come to see Oona during her younger years here. They knew they could not all live in such a confined space within the forest, so they separated to different parts. Each of these groups of Unicorns had come from different forests of the world, a Lord leading them to the Great Forest. The Lords would come together every full moon to discuss various matters relating to the forest and the outside world. Brogan was of course head of the council as it had become to be known.
It had been the South Western Unicorn clan that had raised the alarm of human activity at the previous nights meeting. Oona had wandered off the day before and had been heading back but Brogan had tracked her down to bring her back sooner.

Oona had known for as long as she could remember that the humans were fighting each other in something called a war, but she did not fully understand the concept and she certainly did not know why the war was going on. The more the leaves fell, the more she felt this war had something to do with it and she needed to know what.
Although a Whisperer, Oona could not talk to Terra for she did not know how. None of the forest creatures could teach her, and she had spent many years trying to understand the hundreds of whispers that overwhelmed her head every now and then. She would leave for days at a time to be alone to try to channel the whispers, but she had never been so much as close to successful.
Brogan was the only other creature who could communicate with Terra, but it was not the same as how Whisperers would communicate.
A domestic animal can only understand certain words its owner speaks; and that was the same with how Brogan and Terra communicated. He would occasionally catch certain words as the wind blew through the trees or certain words from Whispers as he lay down at night time. He never fully understood, but he knew Terra had plans for Oona. He never told her; she had to learn to speak to Terra herself, which is why he encouraged her so much.