Excerpt: Sidifir Oerri

Blood-red light. Fire-hot breath.

The vaguest of shapes - body, four legs, head, neck, tail. Deep in the chest and broad through the shoulders, thick in the limb, heavy in the jaw.

Blood and fire, interlacing like drumbeats, like heartbeats. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. A brand new heart contracting in an unfinished chest.

A spark. A glimpse of spirit. A nascent soul. Tha-thump.

Flesh knit heavy, bones knit solid. Tha-thump. Thick skin and thicker fur. Tha-thump. Sharp teeth and sharper claws. Tha-thump.

'Average' denied. Rebuke denied. Power demanded. Tha-thump.

Battle won. Far-seeing eyes, keen ears, sensitive nose. Tha-thump. Long whiskers and callused pawpads. Tha-thump.

Blood and fire, interlacing like sine and cosine, like firing synapses. Tha-thump. Alert, aware, analyzing. Tha-thump.

Cold, pale blue gaze unlidded. Tha-thump. First view of blinding light - a spinning orb - and a towering tree with bright leaves. Tha-thump.

Body coalescing like the first breath of the world, a shuddering inhale, a wave of physical sensation. Tha-thump.

Weight settling, pressing paws into the earth, gravity taking hold of a freshly-completed frame. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

A silent voice older than time, a language deeper than intuition. "You are she." Tha-thump.

A long pink tongue awkward against heavy teeth. Vocal chords snarling into soundwaves. "I am."

The spinning light, luminous enough to blind, met with unblinking eyes. "Then you are she. You are the perfect one. What do you call yourself, she who awoke before created?"

No hesitation. No uncertainty. "I shall be called Redwood, as mighty as the kûsani under which I was created, and as red as blood, heart, and fire."

Scents whipped to shreds by the radiance's rotation. "And what shall you call your people, O Redwood?"

Broad black nose beginning to distinguish smells despite the whirling winds. Snf snf. "They shall be called Korats, for the word pleases me."

A long pause. Korats. 'Kings' in a tongue not Lavanian. "You are unprecedented. Lavana would bow before you, should you choose to take her. This you must know."

Ears angling backwards, a tacit display of disapproval. "Lavana is my home. Not my slave; not my kingdom. I hold no dreams of tyranny in my heart."

A longer pause, the self-contained blaze spinning within its own tornado. "...then you are she."

Confidence. Surety. "She I am, and she I will always be. None shall take my life, nor conquer my people." Tha-thump. "Give me my sisters' shadows, that I may add them to mine."

Disdain. Disagreement. "They are weak."

A lowering of the voice from baritone to growling thunder. "They are no weaker than I, and you daren't call Redwood weak." Tha-thump.

Silence. Two bodiless shadows crept over the fields and bled into hers, making it as black as the void.

Pleased. "Take it. My sisters and I shall lead our people together." Unprecedented, three Originals instead of one.

A sound like shattering crystal - the abyss-dark shadow vanished entirely. Below the ledge, below the kûsani, the first fifty Korats breathed their first lungful of wind together. Three distinct breeds: black, tan, ... and red. "I shall be watching." Tha-thump.

Body became permanent in every final detail as the light rose into the lavender sky like a phoenix ascending. Tha-thump. Redwood breathed deeply, flesh and fur and bone moving in sweet synchronicity. Tha-thump. Scents were easily read and sounds suddenly audible as the wind calmed. The retreat of brilliant luminance let color creep into vision, staining objects with vivid life. Natural sunlight and a planet-born breeze replaced the alien power of the intangible Creator as its light faded entirely from view.

The red mother smiled.

Tha-thump.