A New Pack, Part II
The next morning, Nourd was in the gardens. The sun was shining on a bright day, and the birds sang overhead. Nourd threw back his head and called to them. He bid them good morning, and they answered back “Good morning”. He grinned at them, happy to talk to creatures that understood him.
“Explain to me the Balance of Nature,” Master Gorkle said in the tongue of the forest. Zie sat in the grass nearby, keeping an eye on Nourd.
“Don’t you know? How can you commune with nature and not understand the Balance?”
“I know of it. I want to know what you know.”
Nourd was having a pretty good day. After a year in the court, most of what he’d learned about was human things. Master Gorkle had greeted him with news that they’d go over what Nourd could do.
“We can commune with nature. We wield her power. Like the flowers, we draw energy from the sun, but we must leave enough for others. We leap through the trees, but must not harm them. The wind answers our call, but rain in one land is a drought in another. Helping a flower to grow takes nutrients from the others. We must never use more than what we need.”
It’d been a long time since Nourd had been able to have a conversation in the tongue of the forest. He missed it. It was so much easier than stumbling through human speech. The Power of Nature allowed him to understand and communicate with all living things, but it was still harder dealing with humans who could so rarely understand him.
“Why don’t humans obey the Balance? They cut down trees without replacing them, slaughter the creatures of the forest, my friends. If Mother were not there—”
“That’s our job. We enforce the balance outside the forest. We all must live in peace with one another, and with the forest. The druids keep that peace, and in return, Mother protects us. The forest is the first line of defense against invasion. That’s how the court started.”
Nourd recalled learning something about the how the court began. People had run away, and Mother had protected them. That was all he remembered.
“Mother protected people who ran away.”
Master Gorkle nodded.
“About 200 years ago, the entire continent was ruled by warlords. There were good people, as there always are, but they were few and far between. The person with the largest army prevailed, able to force people to do their will. One of the good ones was overrun, and a handful of survivors fled into a forest, previously uncharted. One of them was able to communicate with the forest, having slept many nights under the stars, among nature, slowly absorbing her power. She spoke with Mother, begging her for protection against the human world.”
“Why would Mother allow that?”
“You know Mother. She’s kind. It was her forest, even in those days. She made a deal with the humans. In exchange for protection against the outside world, the humans would help care for the forest. They cleared out a place to live, replacing all the trees they removed. In time, they built a city, one where everyone could find a place to be themselves and belong. Among those first settlers were people of all backgrounds. They were from all over the world, not just the northern continent, as it was known back then.”
Nourd remained silent as Master Gorkle finished hir story. One phrase stuck in Nourd’s mind: “Everyone could find a place to be themselves and belong”. He liked the idea of that, but he was different too. He was too different. He didn’t belong with Oshal’s friends. What about Oshal? Could he belong with him? If he couldn’t belong with Oshal’s pack, he couldn’t belong with Oshal.
“It isn’t like that,” Nourd said. “Not everyone can belong.”
“I was born male. But it didn’t feel right when people would treat me like one, look at me like one. Do you remember the way you felt when you first saw Apprentice Roshil?”
Nourd nodded. His skin had crawled at the sight of her. She was wrong, unnatural. Nourd understood why the forest hated her, why the elders wanted her dead. But he had seen the way Oshal was around her, and Nourd knew that Oshal would be upset if anything happened to her. So he had learned to live with it, for the sake of Oshal.
“That’s what it felt like when people would refer to me as a male. I thought I was like His Majesty at first. He was born female, but Mother sensed his conflict, as she sensed mine. It was Mother that changed him. I learned in time that I didn’t feel comfortable as either male or female. It was hard for me at first, as it was for His Majesty, but we’re closer because of it. The court accepted us, as it accepted you.”
Nourd thought of the way the other apprentices had shut him out, ignoring him, mocking and jeering.
“But it didn’t. The other apprentices—”
“Don’t mind them. After a while, even people who are different can settle in. The court accepts that His Majesty was born female, and, with the occasional slip up, everyone calls me Grand Master Gorkle instead of Lord Gorkle. Apprentices are all still growing, and it will take time. You’ll always have Apprentice Oshal, right?”
“But I don’t belong with his friends.”
“I can tell you’re important to him. If you talk to him about it, it’ll work out. That’s what the court teaches: discussion, then action. If you’re willing to listen, people are willing to talk. Give it some time, that’s all.”
Nourd hoped that was all he had to do. He wanted everything to be resolved sooner, or not have the problems at all. Why couldn’t it just be he and Oshal, like it had been before? Why did Oshal have to have other friends?