The Primeval Era-Chapter 80: Umoya! I

The Purple Stone Tribe was alive with warmth and light.

At the center of the village, a massive bonfire burned brightly against the darkness of the night sky, its flames reaching toward the stars as if trying to join the Ancestors who watched from above. The fire crackled and roared with a voice of its own, fed by logs that had been carefully selected and arranged by those who understood that a good fire was not just heat and light. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

It was a gathering point and really, the heart of the Tribe.

Around it, Tribesmen were situated in clusters and circles, their faces illuminated by the dancing flames as they ate from stone trays piled high with food.

Laughter mixed with conversation. Children ran between groups while their parents called after them with warnings that held no real threat. The smell of roasted meat and cooked grains filled the air with an aroma that made stomachs growl and mouths water.

It was a feast and celebration.

And Serala watched it all from the entrance of her hut with eyes that had never witnessed anything quite like this. It looked foreign as if she was witnessing some alien ritual!

Near the bonfire, a group of Tribesmen had risen from their meals to perform something that immediately captured her attention.

A dance.

But not like the dances she had seen in the courts of the Covenant, those precise and measured movements designed to display grace and control. This was something older!

Something that seemed to connect the dancers to forces beneath their feet and above their heads simultaneously.

They called it the Umoya.

The Dance of Breath and Spirit.

The dancers moved in a circle around a smaller fire that had been lit specifically for this purpose, their feet stamping against the packed stone in rhythms that seemed to match heartbeats. Their arms swept upward and outward, fingers spread wide as if catching invisible currents. Their bodies bent and swayed like grass before a storm, then snapped upright with sudden force that made their bones shake.

And as they danced, Mana faintly circled them!

Serala’s wing-shaped pupils caught it immediately. Wisps of blue energy rising from the earth where their feet struck, swirling around their moving forms like smoke that had been given purpose. The Mana responded to their movements, drawn by the rhythm and the intent, gathering in concentrations that normal activities could never produce.

This was a unique celebration.

The dancers were pulling power from the Land itself through nothing but movement and will, their bodies becoming conduits for forces that most people couldn’t perceive. Their eyes were closed in concentration, their expressions holding something between ecstasy and determination.

An old man beat a drum made from stretched hide and hollowed wood, his hands striking patterns that guided the dancers through transitions. Women who were too old or too tired to dance themselves clapped and chanted words in a dialect that Serala didn’t recognize, their voices rising and falling with the rhythm.

It was beautiful and primal.

It was nothing like the sterile cultivation chambers of the Sacred Grove where she had spent years refining her power in silence and solitude.

Her gaze moved past the dancers to the center of the gathering where the most important figures of the tribe were seated.

There was the young man she couldn’t quite grasp as she had picked up a few things already.

Damian, the Tokoloshe.

He sat at the center of the group on a flat stone that had been worn smooth by generations of use, his posture relaxed but his eyes alert as they watched everything around him. Beside him sat a powerful Bone Tempering Warrior whose bronze skin and weathered features spoke of decades of violence and survival. Uncle Adam, she had heard them call him.

On Damian’s other side sat Grandmother Essun, that shrewd wise woman who had brought Serala soup and claimed her armor. The old woman’s yellow teeth were currently tearing into a piece of roasted meat with enthusiasm that belied her age.

The Chieftain was there as well, a broad man whose bandaged wounds did not prevent him from participating in the feast. His daughter sat beside him, a girl with fiery hair and a muscular build who kept glancing at Damian with expressions that shifted between gratitude and something else.

Around them sat others. Warriors. Elders. Those who had earned the right to eat at the center through service or age or simple respect.

And before them all, round stone trays held the bounty of the feast.

One massive stone tray dominated the center, piled high with steaming rice and chunks of meat that had been seasoned with herbs and roasted over open flames. The aroma that rose from it reached Serala even from where she stood, and she found herself surprised by how her stomach responded.

She had eaten the finest meals in the Covenant as trult, this should not compare.

And yet her body was already demanding that she move closer!

She mainted her otherworldly air as she moved out.

As soon as Serala stepped forward from the shadows of her hut, many paused to look at her.

She was wearing Dross rags as Damian had instructed, simple cloth wrapped around her torso and treated hide secured at her waist. Her dark hair was unadorned, falling in waves without the beads and ornaments that had always decorated it before.

But she couldn’t hide her bearing.

The way she held herself. The grace in her movements. The quality of her caramel skin that had never known harsh labor. The wing-shaped pupils that caught the firelight and reflected it back with otherworldly luminescence.

She was beautiful, and undeniably so.

In a way that made even rough Tribesmen pause and stare with expressions they probably shouldn’t have worn in front of their women.

But the moment passed quickly.

This was a feast, after all.

There was food to eat and dancing to watch and celebration to participate in. The strange beautiful woman could be wondered about later.

The eating continued!