Fantasy stories about llamas. My captive-born, telepathic herd, living a new life in a world without humanity. Learning what it is to be wild.
The Llama World
I struggled for a long time to imagine the world of my llamas, and it was made all the more difficult because I’d owned some for a decade or more — so I knew how they behaved. In the end, I kept them largely as they were; for instance, I couldn’t imagine them talking, even in a fantasy! Instead, I filled in, adding other dimensions to give them a culture and society. And, because I needed a counterpoint for the story, I also have alpacas, the wild-born.
Two societies: wild alpacas with centuries of unbroken tradition, culture, and behaviour living in a world that had never seen humanity, and my field-born llamas, in a place much like Earth, stripped across a millennium of domestication of what they’d once been and barely remembering what it was like to roam the plains.
And then I brought them together:
Fudge
Fudge is a middle-aged llama who’s lived quietly in the herd all her life. She’s bright and strong and won’t let anyone push her around, but she has no ambitions to lead. Anyway, what would a leader do in a field? That role (the herd’s Heart) has become a status symbol for the senior females to fight over.
Until that is, the old Heart dies, and the herd elects a nobody to the role just to tweak the senior’s tails. A bit of fun, and who better than Fudge?
And that’s as far as it would have gone if fate hadn’t sent her herd to a new, wild place, where half-felt instincts and scraps of lore were their only protection and where she had to lead, or they’d all die.
Heart-Cloud-Mountain
Cloud Mountain is the Heart of her herd of wild alpacas. The latest in an unbroken line of traditional leaders, she has a place and a role set out for her, but with no real power. Restless and unfulfilled, she chooses a course that sets her against her seniors. The ensuing chaos, however, could not come at a worse time when they are ruthlessly hunted. Cloud has to chart a course between changes her herd and others will accept and what needs to be done for them to survive.
Fieldborn 