Sibling's Quarrel Pt 1 - Orenda

I want you to think back to those nights when you were a child, lying in your bed as branches began to scratch at your window and the wind howled outside. Do you remember looking at the shadows in your room, only to realise that the longer you looked at them the more dangerous they appeared? Those branches suddenly began to look like the claws of a monster, scratching at your window looking for a way in. The shadows would begin to turn into ominous figures that looked as if they were moving closer. You’d lay there frozen, shutting your eyes tight as your heart pounded away, your body cold with dread as you felt danger all around. What if I told you that feeling was more than just a feeling?

There are beings in this world – beings we call eyti, who were once human like you – corrupted and deformed by their own malice to the point they became the thing you feared as a child. They became the darkness; shadows that move, preying on everyone around them. Getting close to them is something you’ll never forget. That cold, empty feeling that sinks deeper than your bones. It pierces your very soul, leaving a haunting memory of their presence, and forever reminding you of how close you came to eternal torment.

To encounter the eyti is to experience true purgatory, but despite what scriptures and tales from the Inferno would have you believe, it is not a stepping stone to heaven. It is not where we cleanse our souls before ascending to a higher place. It is true, unending torment. Trapped as a bodiless being bound by your own misery, forced to spread it like a plague. These beings exist, and I am the being tasked with protecting you from them. I may be immune to their influence, but I am not unaffected.

For thirty-thousand years I have saved humankind time and time again from the dark forces of the eyti. I have been touched by darkness more times than I can count, and each time I feel it cling to me just a little longer. I feel the coldness moving through my bones, and that heavy, inescapable feeling of loneliness surrounding me. It feels like the walls are moving in and I’m powerless to move against them.

As I land in the vast backyard of my private home, enclosed by the beautiful ponderosa pines and Douglas firs that make up so much of the Helena, Montana landscape, I feel the presence of the eyti still with me. Though my body feels electrified as my grand bird form is replaced by my human one, it does not erase the frigid sensation that lingers within me. I rub my arms in a futile attempt to erase the chill of the eyti with friction, even though I know you can’t erase a feeling like this. Just ask Nietzsche.

Not many people know this, but Nietzsche was almost the victim of an eyti but was fortunately saved in time by my brother. It led him to write that famous quote of his, “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

For thirty-thousand years I’ve gazed into that abyss. An abyss of shadow with piercing purple eyes of doom, and I have felt it gaze back at me. Even I wonder how long before I too become the very monsters I fight.

I do my best, as usual, to shake off this indescribable cold, pushing it to the back of my mind as I have done many times before. I look up at the glowing warm light emanating through the glass windows of my private residence and I feel comfort quickly replace the empty void that clung to my being like a noxious weed, sucking the very joy from my essram. I walk up the steps of the front patio, dimly lit lights shining through all three stories of the mostly glass walls connecting that allow us to remain connected to the natural beauty around us. I keep telling Ayawamat that we don’t need every light in the house on, but he never listens to me.

I walk up to the front door and as I place my hand on the handle I hear moans and grunts that have an entirely different – though still unpleasant – sensation moving through my stomach. I debate just turning around and leaving, but I desperately want to go inside and shower. I can confidently stand down an army of eyti, but my brother’s sexual escapades…that’s when I wave my white flag.

Bracing myself, I swing open the glass door and step inside. The sounds of sex increase in volume as I step inside, my face crumpling in disgust as I shut the door. I walk down the foyer into the vast living room only to wish I’d had the forethought to walk in with my eyes shut. There in the living room is some blonde woman I’ve never seen before, spread-eagled on the sofa with my brother kneeled on the floor pounding away, but as if that weren’t enough to make me want to pry my eyes from their sockets, it’s all made worse by the somewhat plus-size man with ebony skin who is kneeled behind my brother going to town on him.

Just fucking fantastic. It’s every sister’s desire to come home from a long day of saving humankind to find their brother is the filling in a multi-racial sandwich. I avert my eyes as quickly as I can and make a beeline for the stairs, racing to the third floor. Thankfully I don’t think they noticed me as the three of them seemed far more preoccupied. I head straight for the bathroom and proceed to lock the door.