Tales from the Windswept Peaks: Bones

Sitting next to the dying embers of a fire, a young nomad carefully cleans the last gore from a set of boar tusks. He then sets them aside and grabs a burin, delicately carved from an oak limb and set with a small topaz.

Tilting his head back, his eyes stare into the sky for several minutes, observing the constellations. He then looks down, and picks up the bones, his eyes closed as the chants softly under this breath. Slowly red lines form over the tusks with the passage of the burin, forming lines of some significance across their length.

At last, the nomad is finished, and he sets down the burin in place of a slightly curved bladed knife. For hours his hands move over the tusks, whittling away the material as the chant continues under his breath. The magic guiding his hands has taken the place of the firelight, the embers now cooled to darkness. Grey shadows stretch as the false dawn starts.

Finishing his task, slender curls of white and brown showered across his leggings and boots, he reverently sets aside the blade. Rubbing his thumb over each of the four pieces, he gives a brief nod before filling a small clay plate with some white liquid, which he gently rolls the bones in, some of the last remaining red symbols flaring briefly before disappearing. Taking an identical plate, he pours black liquid into it, repeating the process, and causing the last of the symbols to flare before fading. Two bottles are filled with the leftover liquids, and then the nomad rises.

Turning to the west, the half-crescent of xibar is still faintly visible. Once again taking up his burin, he studies the moon intently before rapidly scribing each of the many sides of an almost spherical bone. Over an hour is taken, one sigil slowly flaring to life at a time, this process repeated sixty three times.

Xibar has set by now, and the warm reds of the summer morning start brining color to the surrounding steppe. The nomad unsheathes a slender knife crafted from bone from its strap on his thigh. Below it a bloodstained bandage is visible, the cloth as of yet unstained from daily wear. Holding the bones high, the knife flashes quickly, and a single line of blood forms from a shallow cut on his hand. Clenching his hand tightly for a moment, the bones held tight in his grip, the nomad mutters a quick prayer to his ancestors and spirits of the gods. The knife is returned to its binding, and he then opens his hand as he kneels down to the short grasses.

The cut upon his hand is gone and there is no evidence of blood as he reverently casts the bones along the ground. For a brief moment, the nearly spherical bone is highlighted as a blue flash in the symbol of a star is shown. His head bowed, the nomad offers thanks to the spirit of the fallen boar, before collecting the bones and placing them in a soft leather pouch at his hip.