Story:Rain's Ascent/Chapter 1

"To live in reality is not the only way to live."

The shadow halts, hovering steadily over a single point in the rock, blessedly flat compared to the ragged earth around it. Quickly, I raise my eyes to see wings arcing towards the sun, pausing for a brief moment in time, enough for me to pull the string taut with my left hand and aim. I let go, and the bolt breaks into the sky, but the wings have already turned towards that mass of clouds in the far northeast. The bolt strikes true, but the bird doesn't fall the way I want it to – its shadow is drifting away from the flat spot I ambitiously picked out moments before.

Another climb! My reward for poor reflexes. I detach the crossbow from my wrist and place it into its case on my back, and begin the descent to the harrier’s corpse before its friends show up to scavenge. Looks like I’ll have to slide down a few slopes to get to it, but it isn’t a problem with the sandals Cleric Stern recently bought for me from his monthly visit to Mt. Kailas. As I edge down the first and catch a view of the downed harrier, a tiny, slate-colored owl pops up above it, holding the bloodied bolt in her claws and hooting.

“Nice work, partner.” She brings the bolt over to me, and I clean it before moving over to the crumpled mass of black feathers that is the Stonebeak Harrier. It’s more feathers than meat, and feeds mostly off of dead things, but there are dozens of them around the peaks. You have to be tough to survive up in the mountains, which makes me wonder how I’m still here.

Sage and I begin the trek homeward, I scrambling over peaks and crevasses and she flitting lightly above. I wish we could trade places. There’s a small pool ahead, and I wash my face in it, greeted and dismissed by my reflection, scarred and darkened from the constant winds and sun of Ilocos, dust already resettling in my short, spiked brown hair. Sage decides that the remainder of the journey back home is best seen perched on my shoulder.

We reach the steep inclination leading up to the arch that marks the entrance to our home. Dad and Cleric Stern have often considered etching steps into them, but they don’t want the publicity it might bring. I scale the slope somewhat easily, partially due to habit, partially due to the new sandals, notching my feet into small niches in the rock. Sage pops up as I reach the earthen arch, the lone entrance into our small camp. The maple tree, a lone pioneer amidst a sea of dust and shrubs. The north cliff, a sheer dropoff overlooking the Sea of Tranquility, with the other three sides sheltered by stone. The three lean-tos crafted of harrier feathers and a few precious sticks. The well, a ring of stone with an elaborate pulley system that I still can’t honestly describe.

Home.

As I approach the well, which is the closest thing to the entrance, the pulleys begin to rattle and turn, and up comes a man with exceptionally dark hair considering his age. He clings to the rope with one hand and turns a crank with the other, raising himself and the bucket of water he is perched upon to the surface.

Cleric Stern gives me one of his iconic eye smiles. It doesn’t extend to his mouth, but it doesn’t need to. “From the depths, I have cried out, and for my supplication have received… some brackish water.”

“The Book of Stern?” I ask.

The smile still plays around his eyes. “I like the original verse better.” He detaches the bucket of water, hands it to me, then rolls up the sleeves of his roughspun tunic and returns to the well. “The well requires more attention. Please attend to your father.” I give a small bow and he slips down the rope as fluidly as water. A few drops of rain fall from the sky as I make my way towards the north side of the camp.

My dad is sitting on his favorite boulder, thinning gray hair tousling in the breeze as he looks at the sky over the Sea of Tranquility, which is quickly darkening. He seems at peace for the moment, and doesn’t notice me until I kneel on one knee beside him.

“Hi, dad. It’s Noa.”

He turns his head slowly and looks at me for a few glassy seconds before breaking into halting, sluggish speech. “Noa. Hi. It’s raining again. Always raining.”

“Don’t be angry at the rain, dad. It doesn’t know how to fall upwards. Here, I got a harrier for tonight. I shot it with your bow!” I hold the crossbow up so he doesn’t have to strain too much to look at it.

“My bow,” he says, as if it is just a speck of dust in my hand.

“Yes, your crossbow,” I reply. He doesn’t say anything else, looking intently at the crossbow with those clear gray eyes, the same as mine. “Here, let’s get you under the roof.” I take his hand gently and lead him to his hang-to.

Out of the rain, his attitude appears to brighten, and he moves over to the ramshackle desk with a single object on it: a small, worn, round picture frame. In it is a watercolor of two figures in heavy, hooded cloaks standing on a misty cliff, their backs to the viewer. I have seen it a thousand times, but each time I do, I have a renewed appreciation for the gentle feeling the image gives me. Pointing to it, I ask my dad, smiling, already knowing the response, “That’s you, right?”

He concentrates on it for a few seconds, eyes not quite focused. I let him escape into it, wherever it brings him, because it usually brings him a few precious moments of clarity. He finally nods. “Yes.” I have given up asking who the other figure is. “Are you going to roast the harrier now?”

“Sure! Did you want to come with me to the fire pit?”

“…No, no thank you.” He points to Sage on my shoulder, who has been quiet the entire time. She usually is, to avoid agitating my dad. Most compassionate bird I’ve ever met, though that isn’t hard when everything else with wings is a harrier.

“What’s this? An owl? What’s her name?” Sage has been with me for two years, tagging along ever since I had the confidence to start hunting for our three-person camp. He never remembers her name, which I gave her in honor of the sagebrush she likes to roost in.

“Sage, dad.”

“Mm. Nice name.” He smiles at nothing at particular, and I let him go back to his boulder alongside the cliff lip, hearing him mumble, “My bow…”

The rest of the daylight hours go by without incident, as the usual mass of clouds from Mindanao begin their journey towards us. The harrier burns slightly as I’m more occupied with shielding the fire pit from the rain, and Cleric Stern returns with a few more pots of water in which he has decided to “flavor” with some… interesting leaves.

“Germain, how do you feel about Noa’s cooking today? It is improving, yes?” asks Cleric Stern as we sit on the dirt around the pit. He gets a few coughs and a moment of silence in return. “Harrier is okay. Tea is worse.” He pushes his pot away, and I grin in agreement. My dad is always polite about how I massacre every meal. I don’t know how I could manage that were I to have his condition.

“I must atone for this. Perhaps drinking the rest will be fitting penance,” says the cleric with mock contrition. Sage, pecking on the ground at a harrier bone, gives him a territorial glance. My dad chuckles roughly.

“You know, one day, I’m going to be the kid, and you’ll be running this entire place.”

“Haha, not yet, I don’t think.” My dad hasn’t gone hunting in two years, ever since the cough came on and his mental condition deteriorated further. I convinced him to stay back at camp when he got lost and wandered nearly halfway to the Mindanoan border. I was 14, and since then I haven't developed into a very good replacement. I’m lucky Cleric Stern is around to keep an eye on the camp. He’s been with us for as long as I can remember, a hermit living the word of Xen and the teachings of Virga across the lonely peaks of Ilocos. Most prefer solitary caves, but Cleric Stern decided to accompany us after assisting my dad after a few forgetful episodes and realizing the difficult situation we were in. He's an angel sent from the clouds.

We break away after dinner, Cleric Stern leaving to visit a few other hermits and my dad retiring to his rock. I pluck harrier feathers and attempt to craft them into straps for the new sandals, but it doesn’t really work and I am content to just listen to the rain as it intensifies. The sun sinks below the horizon, swallowed by the looming peak and white winds of Mt. Kailas. More clouds take its place, hungrily obscuring even the cathedral on Mt. Kailas’ peak. Cleric Stern, entering from the archway, calls me over from my lean-to.

“A regiment of soldiers is about, seeking shelter from the storm. Attend to your father and calm him, lest he betray our sanctuary.” he whispers. “Soldiers? From where?” I ask. Cleric Stern puts a finger to his lips in reply. Above the sound of pelting rain, I can just make out the foreboding, terrifyingly regular marching sounds of an approaching army. Then the wind picks up, drowning the sound away in a horizontal torrent of water. Sage hoots in alarm and wheels back towards the camp, ostensibly to take refuge in a tuft of brush.

“I will conceal the arch! Arm yourself just in case!” shouts Cleric Stern; it is the loudest I have ever heard him speak. Clouds drift from Mindanao nearly every evening, but never this severe. I turn away as the cleric struggles to drape heavy curtain of feathers coated in dust over the arch.

I can hardly see two feet in front of me as I struggle to return to the opposite edge of the camp. Holy Xen, where did this deluge come from? We must be getting punished for something, but I will have to reflect on what after I make sure my dad is safe. I grab the crossbow and its case from my lean-to, then I check his, the feather roof leaking like a sieve – empty. The fire pit, coals hissing demonically in the sizzling rain – empty. The well, raindrops echoing from the depths - empty. The maple tree, helicopter seeds tearing off branches in panicked flight – empty. One place left.

The Sea of Tranquility is screaming. The favorite boulder is vacant, but on the edge of the cliff stands a figure shadowed by the rain, facing towards the raging waters.

“Dad! NO! What are you doing?!” He takes one step further.

“I’m here for you!” I am running at him as he takes another.

“I promise!” He is at the border between earth and a fatal stretch of sky, but I am so close –

“I’ll do better, I’ll ask Xen to - ”

I reach out to grab his shoulder, and the entire silhouette vanishes like smoke. My movement carries me with the northward wind off the cliff edge, scrambling in shock to hold anything, anything, I have a hold…

I cling for one moment on the precipice of everything I have ever known. Then my grip falters, and I am falling in the rain – with the rain. The last thing I see is a hooded figure descending towards me, one hand outstretched, before everything goes black.