CARRIEL

       It takes two or three hours to reach the forest center and beyond, to come to the area where Carriel keeps her main dwelling. Her material needs are modest, which is clear from the clean, and cozy small shack she lives in.

       Home for Carriel is an area filled with infinite wild and domestic animals such as cats, dogs and birds, that stroll in and out. Wild animals are magnetized to her because they recognize she cherishes them and is a sanctuary from predators, the men of the Murta State who hunt them in these troubled days, for licentious sport and the frenzy of the invincible kill. They had practiced on creatures to learn the craft of killing men.

       These dark days now see the killing of tribe by it’s tribe or worse, family by family. Carriel has sight the times from the animals’ timbre and her own revealing dreams. She bears grief each time one of her creatures, a human, or even a Splee perishes. In front of Carriel’s house a small lake’s has risen very high because of the relentless summer rains, intensified by the growing schism of light and dark. Fish and frogs, like the creatures who walked on land, play in the water where they live under Carriel’s protection. She loves to muse on their play and express her joy with a grin, as much as she loves her four legged friends and birds that fly around her like glimmers of joy racing in the wind.

       Many human remainders are not as sure of Carriel’s purpose as the creatures she embraces and protects are. This uncertainty is mostly because Carriel is powerful in her body, hands and feet, with an appearance that is a little ominous to those that have dark thoughts and live in fear. She has lost a some of her front teeth and others in her lower jaw so the remaining teeth are like slabs jutting out. Her white hair is clean but stained yellow, brown and green from herbs she collects that peculiar dye. This contrasts sharply with leather like, dark tan skin. Carriel’s can be as wild and fierce as the LIONTILLS, especially when she is chasing hunters away, but she loves good people and knows them with her senses.

       Carriel has keen insight behind piercing blue eyes, surrounded by eyelids that are more heavily lined than than her rounded and large face, which can pierce a man or woman’s heart and know what it holds, in the past present and potentially.

       Although Carriel was orphaned as a infant, eons ago, she has little time for most humans. She is too busy keeping nature in balance.

       In rare moments of leisure, she meets with Doli in the forest while he is walking in meditation and visiting her animal friends, who he also loves. They look peculiar sitting together on the large stones near her lake. He appears noble and dressed in a silk robe while she wears a threadbare cotton dress, that used to be vibrant purple but is now pale mauve, and and hand-knitted, brown, sleeveless wool coat.

       Their conversations are equally uncommon, as they talk of nothing but philosophy and magic and the dire state of the times. They can talk for hours, until exhausted. Then each goes their own way, forgetting to bid farewell to each other, because of preoccupation with thought. They sometimes see each other every day, at other times a year or a century passes before they meet.

       Carriel had not seen Doli this time for three years and although she never worried much for him because she knew he was adept as a immortal magician and king; this time she wondered how he was and why she had not seen him. Carriel couldn’t understand her concern and this concerned her most;- when her inner feelings rumbled and stirred there was indubitably a good reason.