♒ Ƭнє Ƭι∂єcαℓℓєя ♒ Tuesday Challenges #3

"The Tidecaller"

     Every few generations, the Water Bearer will ascend from the sea caves and choose who the next Tidecaller will be. The Tidecaller is an ancient entity who is believed to be reincarnated in the body of a she-cat in the Tribe of Roaring Waves every few decades. Once the Tidecaller is found, she is taken away by the Water Bearer and trained to hone her powers. It is the Tidecaller's duty to bring change and ultimately prosperity to the tribe. With her powers she can tame and control the sea itself, giving the tribe many years of peaceful and prosperous living for as long as the Tidecaller lives. Once the Tidecaller dies, the tribe must wait until the Water Bearer emerges from the caves again to train the next Tidecaller.

---

The Characters

     Wylie: (means well-watered meadow) Brenna’s older brother. 24 moons old. Lanky blue-grey tom with lighter silvery grey tabby stripes. Has a long tail with tabby rings and bright, shimmering blue eyes.

     Brenna: (means little drop of water) Wylie’s kid sister. 5 moons old. Small, blue-grey she-cat with a rounded face and large watery blue eyes.

     Ceto: (means goddess of the sea) The Tidecaller. 30 moons old. A tall, long-legged she-cat with greyish white sea-foam fur. She has dark grey almost black ears and tail with a lighter shade of grey splotches in the corners of her sea-green eyes. She has a brighter, whiter patch of fur on the bridge of her nose and cheek bones.

---

The Short Story

     Change. It can occur without warning.


     Run, they scream. They are all screaming, but I do not turn to ask them why. Their pelts bristle and their claws flash in the light of the setting, blood stained sun, but I do not feel alarm. I can feel the rumbling of tens of fleeing paws hitting the sand around me, and a gentle roar steadily growing louder, and louder, and louder until it begins to drown out my own thrumming heartbeat. And yet, I do not move.


     Change is coming. When the tide roars, so will she.


     The salt riding upon the sea breeze becomes stale on my tongue. The wind picks up and lashes out desperately at my fur, urging me to move, to act, to feel. I do not do any of those things. My eyes are still locked upon the sun that is being swallowed by the ocean all too quickly, its wide, blue jaws in its massive body coming up and over to embrace the crimson rays. The water is never supposed to approach the sun. It is always the sun diving into the sea to replenish its life force, because the sea is the one who provides. The sea is life itself. Without it the sun would not rise in the morning and the land would never feel the cold stinging of the rain and the prey would die of dehydration and we…we would all die without the sea.


     But the change hasn’t come. She hasn’t come to return the sea’s roar.


     “Wylie! Wylie, please!” A voice cries into my numb ears.


     Something isn’t right. Something is happening.


     “Wylie!” The voice has turned into a screech, and then it is broken by a hiccupping sob.


     She’s not supposed to cry.


     “Brenna?” I whisper, ripping my eyes away from the horizon to look down at my small kid sister.


     Her soft, rounded features are twisted in fear, her lips trembling and her ears lying flat against her skull. Her watery blue eyes are swimming with tears, tears that make me feel, tears that make me care. Her grip on my leg is tight and almost painful. She’s been trying to drag me away from the beach, and I didn’t even notice.


     She wipes at her tears, her grey fur becoming darker as they fall upon her flesh. “The ocean!” she shouts. “The ocean is coming!”


     My head whips back to the horizon, and reality comes crashing down upon me.


     The sea has retreated, leaving tens of hundreds of feet of bare, wet sand exposed to the turbulent air. Beyond that, a large, white line is steadily approaching. Digging inside the memories and the stories I have preserved, I know immediately that this is a tsunami.


     And we are the only ones left on the beach.


     “Oh gods,” I gasp, adrenaline forcing itself through my dried up veins filled with sand and salt.


     I don’t bother to keep looking at the approaching wave to calculate how long we have until it hits. I know that with how far back the ocean went it will be a big one, and it will be fast.


     “Go, go, go!” I yell, pushing my sister to her feet and sprinting with her for higher ground.


     My kid sister’s legs are short. She’s only five moons old, so I have to slow down to keep pace with her. Her breaths are harsh and ragged. It doesn’t help that she’s been screaming and crying while I stood on the beach unwilling to move.


     Why did I do that? Why didn’t I care?


     “You have to run faster!” I snarl at her. I don’t want to alarm her, but at the rate we are going, the wave will catch us.


     “I’m trying!” she cries, her eyes wide with fright.


     The line of palm trees comes into view along with the gently sloping hillside that signals our survival. If we can make it to the top, we will be safe.


     But then I hear the sea’s roar. It is lurid and heavy in my ears. I can feel it sucking up all the water from beneath my paws, quickly taking any and all sustaining life force that it had given to our tribe. I can tell that it is angry, and it is hungry.


     “Wylie!” My sister screams, looking over her shoulder. In the reflection of her eyes I can see the blue wave cresting over us. It has already caught up.


     There’s no point. We won’t make it.


     I grab onto my sister’s scruff, pulling her into my stomach and curling my body around hers, hoping I can use myself as a shield so that she might have a chance to survive.


     “I won’t let go, Brenna!” I yell over the wave that’s only inches from us. My sister nods, new tears streaming down her face as she buries herself into my fur.


     Change is coming. When the tide roars, so will she.


     There is a sound then. A grand disturbance in the air, as if the wind itself had to part to make way for its presence.


     It sounds like a low boom, like a giant boulder whistling through the air and landing in the sand. Then there is a crackling noise that follows, going higher, and higher, and higher in pitch until it is almost like a screech or the sound of many sea-gulls dying at once.


     Water splashes onto me. A lot less than I was expecting. It only hits my sides instead of the front of my body where the wave should have already overcame me. This forces me to look up.


     When she roars the sea will go silent. The water will part wherever she walks.


     A tall, sea-foam white she-cat is standing in front of me, her legs strong and straight, her black tail stretched out behind her like a perfect wake. She does not look behind her. She looks straight into the gaping jaws of the sea which has halted before her. She does not fear it, because it goes around her, giving her space to stand and breathe. All around us, the ocean keeps rushing onwards, scraping away the sandy beach and any debris in its path.


     The screeching sound is the water grating against the barrier she has thrown up around us. And from the way a small crater of sand has formed around her, I can only assume she made quite a landing.


     “Are you both alright?” she calls loudly over the sound, still not turning around to look at us.


     It takes a few moments for me to look down at my sister, who is peering up at the she-cat through the layers of my fur.


     “She’s the Tidecaller,” she whispers in wonder, looking at me with shocked blue eyes.


     I look back at the she-cat standing before us, still holding back the oncoming waves.


     She will protect and provide. She will be forgiving and merciful.


     “Yes,” I finally say. “We are alright.”


     I see her head nod. “Good. I’m glad I could get to you two in time.”


     She will be powerful and fierce. She will not bow, no matter how harsh the sea tries to break her down.


     “Th-thank you,” I stutter, unable to take my eyes off of her back. Her muscles are straining, as if she’s using every ounce and fiber inside her body to hold back the sea.


     The water then finally calms around us, and she eventually drops the barrier, revealing the ruined landscape the ocean left behind.


     Many of the palm trees have been ripped out and erased. Even the hillside is eroded, the sand and grass all mixed and clumped together. The cats that got away are safely at the top where the water never reached, but it is obvious it had been close. Many of them are still shaking and crying.


     The sand is covered in sea-weed and pieces of coral. Among the scattered debris are a few unlucky fish flopping on their sides, their gills desperately searching for water.


     The beach is completely in ruins.


     “Wylie,” my sister murmurs, tugging on my leg.


     I look down at her and then up at where she is pointing with her tail to see that the Tidecaller has turned to face us.


     A bright white stripe of fur follows the bridge of her nose and flares out onto her delicate cheekbones. Her ears are black like her tail, and in the corners of her eyes she has dark grey splotches that make her swirling sea-green colored eyes pop.


     I know her. I remember when the Water Bearer came to take her away many moons ago. I remember those sea-green eyes looking over her shoulder as she was led away, a reassuring smile aimed directly at me.


     Don’t cry! She had told me. I will come back for you, and everything will change.


     But she had been the one shedding tears.


     “Ceto?” I say, my voice breaking as I stand, the sea-breeze ruffling my damp fur.


     She smiles gently, her eyes glimmering with sorrow and bliss. “Hello, Wylie,” she says softly.


     She will be hidden away from the world until she is ready to tame the sea.


     Until she is ready to protect us.


     I laugh, disbelief and pure joy sweeping through every vein in my body.


     The change has come. Ceto has come back.

---

The Tidecaller Will Return!

     This one-shot was for Tuesday's Challenges. The prompt this week asked us to write a story about change and you would get bonus points if this change was natural. I took this on a much larger and literal scale. I included a natural disaster which is nature's physical bringing of change. I chose this for this story because it also represents the change coming in through the new Tidecaller who will bring her own dramatic change. There are other changes as well. A change for Wylie who gets an old friend ( and possible lover? :'O ) back, but as a powerful Tidecaller imbued with the wrath of the ocean. Then there is the change for the tribe. With the return of the Tidecaller, they no longer have to fear the ocean. Honestly a lot happens behind the scenes of this small story, but most of it can be assumed.

    No thanks to ᴛᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ *cough cough* I have fallen deeply in love with this idea over the past few days and have decided to create a full blown fan-fiction out of it. The Tidecaller will be returning to the forums with the same cast and ocean themes. :'D STAY TUNED FOR MORE WHEN I GET THINGS DONE.

    Credit goes to ~Sapphire~ for the crazy amazing html layout. You guys need to go check out her stuff.
   
     I created the banner with the use of free stock images and Paint.net.