Unending Cycle - Chapter 1
By Danthefish
Chief Night Owl stood and gazed along the valley from his tribe’s camp in the bottom. The valley seemed to stretch on for miles; the great stone walls stood foreboding and strong like vigilant warriors guarding the path to the plains that the tribe desired to reach. The valley lay empty, not a blade of grass wavered in the cool desert night, and the great red cliffs sat alone, merely a small interruption from the vast bleak flats of the desert. Yet, the elderly chief of the Sun tribe reasoned, the overall lack of anything represented much. The harsh rock lay bare, where no grass could grow. The valley defied the sand and dust that had otherwise devoured the land around him. Not a single creature would Chief Night Owl stumble upon that night, as few things could live in the shade of the valley. To many, especially the young, eager braves of his tribe, it was a brutal land, deprived of any features, that was destined to lay abandoned and alone for eternity. Yet to the chief, it showed that nothing could stand unbowed before nature. The plant grew, the rabbit ate the plant, the eagle caught the rabbit, and one day the eagle would provide subsidence for plants to grow after it died, as would all living things. It was a simple cycle, and one that all living beings went through. The complete inevitability of it reassured the chief. All things would be created, exist, and end. An unending cycle interrupted by nothing. Existing to be ended seemed to most to be a futile and meaningless existence, though to Chief Night Owl, the cycle of life applied cause to his life. No matter what happened, the cycle would go on.
Hearing scuffing footsteps behind him, the scraping of hooves on the desert rock immediately standing out from the silence of the evening, he turned, and smiled at the sight of a young female buffalo. The sun tribe was small, but that was not the reason he remembered the name of Little Dusk. The buffalo was one of the youngest adults in the entirety of the tribe, but also his favourite. Her parents had both been respected elders and personal friends to the Chief, who had bravely sacrificed themselves when they became too weak to carry on, and began endangering the tribe by slowing them down. The ritual, if that is what it could be called, was known only as Season’s end, and was a decision few talked about. It was not compulsory, but not a single buffalo in the tribe would ever consider refusing it. The entire culture, lives and existence of the buffalo needed them to be nomadic, moving with the grass they ate so they didn’t overgraze, and slowing the tribe down would bring great guilt to ill or elderly members who couldn’t keep up. So rather than risk the lives of their fellow tribesmen, they chose to undergo Season’s end. The chief knew that, one day, he must undergo Season’s end. It was the final part of his cycle, and while the daunting prospect of abandonment was undeniably worrying, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the cycle would be complete. After all, there was no interrupting the uninterruptable. The chief forced himself to leave his thoughts, though, as Little Dusk had now sat beside him. They looked down the valley for silence in a moment. Little Dusk looked up at Night Owl. The old chief of her tribe was a large being, with dark brown fur, and a thick mane around his head, yet his soft eyes and the serene aura he seemed to emit showed him to be a gentle beast. The process of becoming chief meant being superior to the current chief and she wasn’t sure how he had done it. The most straightforward way was physically overpowering the existing chief, but she was sure that the wise chief had not got his position that way. He could have, no doubt about it, be she knew he hadn’t. He was well known for his wisdom, if you had the patience to listen. That was probably how he got leadership over the tribe: being the wisest. Some said that to listen to the chief was a challenge in itself, and required bountiful patience. Little Dusk had patience, and wished to hear the chief’s legendary wisdom. She had, for many years, dared not ask. It was said he only bestowed it on those he considered ready, and at her young age, she was sure he wouldn’t consider her ready for such important words. After all, his highly respected word was the closest they had to law. However, she overpowered the fearful part of her mind, and decided to ask him.
“What is on your mind, Chief Night Owl?”
The old chief gazed down on Little Dusk. She was deserving of her name, being very small, and with fur a dark brown that seemed to shimmer with darkness. Of course, she had been named Little Dusk because of the ending of the day, dusk, was only a small part in the day. Her parents often listened to his philosophies, he remembered sadly, and fully took on his ideas of the cycle. The end was a mere part of the cycle, and not something to be dwelled upon. They believed that, by granting her a name that reflected the equal importance of the end with the rest of the cycle, she would live her life fully, never fearing anything. Hopefully, Chief Night Owl mused, it would not lead her to disregard her safety by taking foolish risks. Finally, after a looking at her for a long time, Chief Night Owl lowered himself down and sat beside Little Dusk.
“Many things exist on my mind, young one. What is it you seek?” He asked, speaking in his soft, deep voice that was immediately calming to Little Dusk.
“Well, chief, why are you out here looking over an empty valley?” Little Dusk asked, refusing to back down to her nerves. She spoke in a hushed tone, soft as a rolling cloud in the sky.
“For this empty valley, young one, shows us nature is the only true leader of anything.”
Little dusk was surprised that he had answered her, but quickly thought of a response.
“Does the lack of life here not show that even nature can sometimes not overcome problems?”
“Well.” Chief Night Owl smiled, happy to discuss with the eager young buffalo. “Perhaps it shows us that Nature is too intelligent to even try to overcome the problems it creates for itself.” He waved his hoof at the valley, to show he meant that the desolate places that existed were both created by and obstacles for nature.
“But why must it create problems for itself, if it is so intelligent, and if it must do so, why not overcome them? Surely the power that crafted the land we stand on can do anything?”
“Indeed, child, although perhaps it does not want to overcome the problems it has for itself. Maybe it simply cannot. Perhaps it wants them to be problems, to show that nothing can overcome some things, such as no water, food or homes. Or maybe it wants to prove to us that not even the greatest of forces in the world, which is to say nature itself, can overcome impossibility.
Little Dusk considered this for a moment, hoping to turn the conversation towards Night Owl’s trademark ideas on the cycle, of which she had been named after and wished to learn of.
“Perhaps it is to show us that even everything must end, even the habitable land on which we live.”
“Perhaps so child, but these matters are not for us to know. We must accept that this land is not for living on, and bow before nature’s inevitability as all things must, perhaps even nature itself.” With that, Night Owl rose up, and turned towards the tribe’s encampment. Consisting of a few tepees decorated with swirling patters representing the sun and moon, it glowed with a few fires, dying as their makers slept. “Come, let us rest. We must continue our journey onto the plains tomorrow, and for that, I feel we will need strength.” With that, he walked back to the camp, with Little Dusk following just behind him. Entering a tepee, Night Owl fell asleep without another thought. Little Dusk, however, entered her own tepee and, finding the several buffalo she shared it with asleep, simply lay there thinking. She knew that the conversation with Chief Night Owl had not been a full in depth debate, but the thought that there were some things that could not be overcome kept her awake. Trying to survive in the empty valley had cost the lives of many creatures before they had a chance to learn that the place was inhabitable. The only inhabitants besides themselves were creatures trying to survive in vain. She vowed never to try and overcome the impossible right there and then, seeing now that it would only cost more. She remembered the chief’s favourite saying: there is no interrupting the uninterruptable. It was true, and so was her adaptation: there is no beating the unbeatable. She stayed awake for several hours, simply thinking about things that could not be overcome.
As Little Dusk was kept awake by her thoughts, another being was having trouble sleeping that night as well. Buck Orchard was lying in his hammock with his eyes screwed shut, but he couldn’t get the day’s events out of his mind. The son of the leader of an expedition of ponies into the harsh sands of the Eastern San Palomino desert, southwest of Canterlot, he had known it would be hard work, but not deadly work. It had all started well enough; their wagon trail moving along without a hitch for the most part of the day. Stopping at around dusk, a young mare had wandered away from the train to hunt for Jojoba Nuts for the meal that was being prepared. Nothing unusual about that, but what nobody had realised was their location. The region was largely unmapped - despite the road from Canterlot to Los Pegasus skirting around the top of the desert - and nobody knew about the local geographical features. As the mare, a young, purple coated pony by the name of Orchid Bell had walked to a bush of the edible nuts, the ground under her gave way, and she had never even had time to scream as the tumbling rocks took her with them to the bottom of a large ravine. The entire camp had come running quickly, but there was nothing they could do. She had stepped onto an overhang that had collapsed under her weight, and she hadn’t suffered. It wasn’t her death that haunted him; it was the sheer lack of anything that could be done about it. She looked so peaceful lying on the ravine floor, unmoving. He hadn’t stuck around for when they retrieved and buried her though. Being brought up in Canterlot hadn’t prepared him for the horrors of such a sudden death. Sitting up in his hammock, he swung his back hooves over the side and got out, grabbing his large cowpony hat on the way out.
Stepping out of his dark wagon, he walked over to a water trough and knelt down, dousing his face in water to clear his mind. A yellow coated earth pony with a scruffy blue mane that was coated in dust from the travelling, he had a tree cutie mark on his flank, a sign of his ability to grow and look after plants. He hadn’t been forced to come along on this journey, but his talents would definitely be useful. The goal of the wagon trail was to set up a new town in the harsh desert, to live life at its most pure. Of course, all of the ponies on the trip had been brought up in Canterlot and had no idea about survival in the desert, which had led to today’s disaster. Shaking the water out of his mane, he stood and returned to his wagon.
Climbing back into his bunk, Buck tried to empty his mind of thoughts, but simply couldn’t. He knew that it was unlikely the rest of the journey would happen without accidents. They were all too inexperienced. He was well aware of the want for adventure, of living a new life where they were responsible for their own survival, but it had occurred to him many times that this wasn’t a fun outing. This was a very dangerous outing into a harsh, unexplored land. The prospect of death terrified him. He didn’t want to die, not at all, and when he finally had to, he didn’t want to fall down some ravine, or run out of water or food. All of a sudden the whole expedition seemed certain to run into problems. He simply lay there, looking up at the cloth cover of his wagon, and thought. There was no chance of him sleeping that night. Unbeknownst to him, he was exactly right; the expedition would run into problems, but not in the way that he thought.