FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Zelda 01

Where it began and Was Lost

Zalika could remember every detail of the day two years ago when her mother left. It was just after her sixth birthday. The naming ceremony when her name would be presented to the elders was just a handful of days away. She would become part of the people, known to all by her own name. The Janjaweed had heard a rumor that the Dutch would attack a village to the south. Her father Saladin Ibin Yusuf, named for a Great War leader, rode out to meet them with most of the other men of the village.

Zalika and her mother were collecting maze west of town when they heard the riders approach. These were not the Portages that had plagued them off and on for as long as anyone could remember. These men had magic sticks that roared thunder and spit death. Even there speech was hard and broken to hear. To the young Zalika their pail skin made them look like ghosts. They took everything they could carry, and destroyed the rest. Zalika watched terrified as her friend Dayo was carried off by a rider. By the time the village men returned, there home was nearly completely destroyed, and the raiders already gone.

Zalika still held the smoking pistol she had picked up during the fight. Her father gently took it from her hands. At Zalika's feet lay her mother, her brother and the body of the European she had shot trying to defend them.

Saladin found a meadow where the zebra liked to graze. Kaddyjutu was my slave. I took her to this place so very far from her home only to find my hart made me a slave to her. She loved this place. Maybe the zebra could carry her spirit to paradise, thought Saladin as he wrapped her in black cloth, and bound her with string. He burned the sacred incense, blessed the earth and blessed his dead wife. This was not quite the way of his people but it was the way of hers.

Saladin's parents had been followers of Islam and now he was the village medicine-man, a fact that still amazed him. The old medicine-man changed him forever by showing him how to heal an infected wound. Clearly, here was a miracle and if it was not the will of Allah, it could not work.

Zalika's name had been a compromise her father wanted her to have a good name from the Quran. Her mother wanted her to have a name from the land. They compromised and did it Kaddy's way. When Saladin learned that it meant of high or noble birth he was certain that it was a sign of things to come.

Zalika and Saladin followed the men carrying her mother's body to the meadow. She watched as they placed her in the ground and covered her with dirt. She cried as her father spoke and could make no sound come out of her mouth when it was her turn to speak. On the trek home, it began to rain. "You see even the heavens are crying" said Saladin. Through the night it got colder and in the morning there was a white thing on the ground like ash, but it was cold and left the hands clean and wet when touched. The people of the village had never seen it before and had no name for it.

That was the last day Zalika saw her father as a normal man. Every day after that her father became more convinced, he could bring her back. He studied for days at a time in the hut where he kept his things of magic. Zala as her father called her when it was just the two of them was never allowed to enter that hut.

Zala took on all the chores of her mother now that there were just the two of them. Saladin would work in his hut coming out only when summoned to perform some healing or purification, as was the job of the village medicine-man. Evan this tapered off after a wile. Their garden could probably have fed the two of them but Zala did not know how to tend it and as her father's isolation grew help with the garden tapered off as well, leaving Zala to forage for ever more of their food in the bush as well as the fire wood.

Zala would bring a meal to her father's hut nock on the door and wait. Saladin would grumble leave it, but Zala would wait. After a while, Saladin would come out and eat the meal with his child, thank her for her patience and understanding, promise that some new great magic would restore her mother, and send her to the living hut promising to follow soon. In the morning, Zala would bring another meal and the scene would repeat. Her father would always be kind and gentle with his child in these meetings, but Zala felt the loss of both her parents. Her father never told her stories. She had no time to learn the stories of origin from the elders. As the daughter of the medicine-man Zalika could expect to become a priestess or even carry on as a healer when her father died. How would she do that with out her father teaching her?

At the meals they shared Saladin spoke of ever stronger magic's and Zalika could feel the growing magic around the hut as the days went by. But as Sallahudin grew in power so did his isolation. He had less and less to do with the people of the village and they began to shun Zala as well.

None were foolish enough to harm her in any way fearing what Saladin might do but it became clear the village wanted them both gone. Often Zala asked her father "When will you stop and be my father again?"

"When the snow is on the Serengeti again, or I have brought her back. Then I will quit." Saladin would hug his child and go back to work. This too became a regular part of the evening meal.

Now nearly two years after her mother's death Zalika still did all the chores, but the single women had stopped coming around to see Saladin and the boys her age would no longer see her either.

It had been raining all day and with the darkness of the night, it started to snow. Zalika knew it was her mother that sent the snow because her father would keep his word. Zala also knew that her father would work all this last night for one last chance at something he was coming to understand was futile. Zala approached the hut with a blanket for her father. She saw the hut glowing blue with the building magic energy. Zala could feel the pull in her hair and a tingling in her feet. How could this be? The hut was very well protected from stray magic.

She could deny her curiosity no longer, Zala opened the door just a clack to see what was making all the light. Their, she saw her father in the part of the spell where he gathers the magic. Zala had never imagined that there could be so much magic. Next, she saw the messenger a young zebra mare. She would carry the spell or something like that if Zala remembered correctly.

Zalika did not notice that she had crept inside the hut and more importantly inside the wards. She could feel the magic dancing on her skin. When her father released the spell, Zala saw a flash and then nothing for a few minutes no light no sound no feel of magic, nothing. As her vision returned, Zalika was standing in the middle of the hut facing her father. I am in so much trouble now she thought. Her father just stood there, for an eternity in a single moment. When he did move Saladin grabbed Zalika's arms and screamed her name. Zala was so afraid she wonted to cry, but stood their ready to take what would come. "I have done it," Saladin screamed.

Saladin stared at the woman in front of him unconcerned by her striped skin covered in short smooth fur. She had Kaddy's hands. She had come back to him, and at the moment that was all he cared about. He released his hold on the zebra woman before him and rushed to the living hut to tell his remaining child the good news, screaming, "I have done it" repeatedly as he ran.

Zalika tried to apologize to her father but all that came out was a modified zebra bray. Zala tried to walk but her legs were too long, and something seemed to be attached to her face. When she reached up to investigate, the hands she saw were black and white striped. She thrust them forward only to see the arms striped as well. "What has happened to me?" Zala tried to call her father and ask the obvious question, but all that came out of her mouth was the squealing of a zebra. Zala struggled with the halter briefly before getting free of it and going after her father.

Zala met Saladin returning from the living hut looking frightened "My daughter! My child is gone. I must find her!"

"Father I am here," Zalika tried to say, but with no success. Zala took her father by the hand and led him to where she had been standing by the door.

Saladin studied the tracks. In a village where everybody hunts, even the medicine-man can track, and these tracks told a dreadful story. Saladin assumed that his child had come to investigate, stepped inside the ward, and been consumed by the spell. Saladin fell to the snow wailing, "What have I done?"

The zebra woman Zala had become still held the blanket she had brought for her father. She covered Saladin with the blanket and tried to explain that she was his child, but Zala could only produce variations on the noises of zebras.

"You are working so hard to tell me something, it must be very important." Saladin said this with a tear streaked face looking up into the zebra woman's elongated face. Zala nodded and wiped her father's face clean with part of the blanket.

"You are not my lost wife are you?" Saladin asked it without knowing why but as soon as he did he knew that she was not his Kaddyjutu.

Zalika shook her head. At least she could do that much.

"There has never been anything like you before, yet you are familiar to me. How can this be?" Listening to her father Zala felt the fur on her back and sides pull as it fluffed to keep her warm. As strange as this sensation was Zala realized that her father would not last long in the cold. Zala struggled again to speak "ooom iii" was all that came out. She practically lifted Saladin to his feet and pushed him towards the living hut. Along the way she realized that she was taller than her father and strong enough to easily push him any where.

Have I gotten so big that I could carry my father like a child? Zala continued to ponder that question as she built up the fire and brought in more wood. This body was larger than her own was and not at all difficult to use, well other than the mouth. This body was also naked. Zala needed to find something to wear. Her mother's clothes were the obvious answer. Women of the village wore clothing that largely consisted of fabric wrapped around the body. So the size difference was not an issue, but wearing her dead mother's clothing was not at all a pleasant thought. Zala wrapped a blanket around herself.

Over the next hand full of days Zala's speech improved to a point that while Saladin could not understand what she was saying it was apparent that would soon change. Saladin did all the outside chores, explaining that it might be hard for the other villagers to accept a zebra walking upright among them. Zala did everything inside the hut, venturing out only at night after the cooking fires died down to colas. She felt intensely alone.

Her isolation was bearable during the days because she could hear and smell the village around her. At night when the noises dropped off, she needed to see others. She did not want to be alone but she did not want to be touched either. She slept where she could see Saladin, and resisted growing pressure to share his bed.

Over the next month everything got worse. The village elders while glad to have the Medicine-man back wanted to know where Zalika was and what happened to her. Zala's need to be part of a crowd grew ever more intense. Saladin's desire for physical contact grew as well. Zala worked every day to speak to her father who seemed amused at the attempts of the zebra woman to talk to him. That is until the day when Saladin finally understood the message. Finley heard and understood Zala say. "Father I am Zalika your daughter." Saladin was struck dumb for a moment. He was angered that this zebra woman would play such a mean trick on him, but overjoyed there might be something left of his last child. Next Saladin felt horror as he realized that this probably was his daughter blended with the zebra mare, and that it was his spell that did it. Then fear of how the village would react, and finely terror at how this would affect his entry intoParadiseand how the village might hasten that day, for the both of them.