Choices

In the darkness, a young llama crouched motionless on a strip of firm ground at the base of a short cliff, hidden behind thick, coarse grass edging the peat-brown water of the tarn. She was alone; all she remembered was standing near the edge when the warning cry rang from the rocks, the herd flashing away like a flock of startled birds and an unseen shoulder striking as she turned to join them. When she woke, her herd and the hunter, whatever it had been, were both long gone. If she hadn’t been weaned, or almost so, she wouldn’t have lasted a day. As it was, she nibbled the grass around her and sipped the brackets water, uninjured save for a throbbing head, ears straining for the low hum of her mother’s call and the soft security of her side.

Day followed day, and she was dying, but she would be Reborn. All knew this, even the very young. Wherever the herd was now, she would find them and live again. Others, too, for a taint hung in the air, and she could hear birds, out of sight above her, fighting over scraps. By now, loneliness was like a seeping wound in her neck, and she would have sat with the bodies of her dead, even those birds, just to have someone around her. If instinct hadn’t pinned her in place as firmly as any rock. Later, she woke in darkness, the stars bright above the water turned to ice, a white llama standing in front of her, this time, dull fleece and ears spotted with age: another dream, more yearning for something to be so. Then the head flashed down and gripped her ear with teeth all too real. “Get up, young llama. Or I will pull you up.”

She wobbled to her feet, felt the ache in her unused legs, and the cold spit drying on her ear. “Better. You see your thread?”

“Yes, Senior”, and she could. A glint of sunlight, thin as spider silk, joined her to the stranger and on, golden, across the frozen lake.

“That is your connection to your herd”, she huffed out a breath, “If you die, it will guide you back to be Reborn. But I can see you still have the strength to find them, youngster. They will not come back. So you must choose. Die here, let your life fall from your mouth, or follow where they went. Be here for a herd that needs you now, your own young in time and wisdom in age.”

“But, how? Where?” the weight on her back was gone, but not the fear. Another huff. “The thread. You will feel it; you will know the right way.”

The old llama turned for a moment as if to go, then, as if she’d heard something, stepped back and sat instead, close, as a mother would.

“Come. Sit. You’ve been alone too long and have a journey ahead. Rest, youngster, while I tell you the Story of Stars.”