I have no idea if this is going to work. Not even really sure if this plan is based on reality or a crazy community myth. Council advisor Jaz believes it is true, and to be honest, I have no other option than to believe it too. Maybe if I can get enough people to rally behind us it won't matter if it is true or not. This has to work, we have no choice. Jaz is one of the few people old enough in our community to remember what life was like "before". Noone else ever lives or stays sane enough in this scrap of an exsistance to think past the last decade. But Jaz does. For a council member, he is a pretty tough old bastard, and I think that is the only reason that he has survived. I don't really know if I can him, but the only other option is surrender and that will never happen while I still breathe.

Let me explain. Three moons ago a mean SOB named Dax challenged our ruler Roz and it has been a time of hell. Nothing here is nice, but at least when Roz was leading us he made sure that the food stores were halfway full and that the forest had enough in it to keep us going another year. But Dax? So far, we have already run the stores empty because our hunters are too busy celebrating each night to go out and hunt or fish. NOt that it matters too much since Dax is making sure that our community is going to die off with my generation. Only maidens can marry and bear children in our community; yet, Dax is personally removing all the maidens from our midst one at a time. Each night one girl is summoned to his tent for the celebration and not seen again until morning when she is found with tear streaks on her face and blood streaks on her thighs. I am the only girl left. Without new children to train as hunters and healers, we won't last more than a couple years. And I refuse to lie with his ugly, mean ass and my only hope is this crazy plan of Jaz's.

Jaz swears Dax has a brother, a blood dominant brother at that, that can overturn his rule and put us on the path back to survival. The thing is, noone has ever seen this brother, and a blood dominant sibling is so rare it is almost a myth in itself. For it to be a true overturn it must be an elder identical twin taking control of the rulership within 9 moons of their sibling gaining control. Identical twins are so rarely born, and then the ones that are born never survive more than a couple seasons. Once they are old enough to start training for their community jobs, they understand that there is an option of being a servant to their sibling for the remainer of their lives, and the eldest twin is usually killed shortly after they turn 5. I have never even pair, but Jaz remembers our first leader. She was overturned by blood dominance, and that is the only way our community has survived this long. It hasn't happened since.

Supposedly that is what happened with Dax. Jaz remembers their mother, Dye, when she was a lucid and functioning member of the community. The stroy goes that Roz snuck into her tent and stole the eldest son while she was still laboring with a difficult Dax. He took the babe into the forest and left it to die in the night so that his rulership could not be taken from him too soon. Ironic that Dax won a strength challenge against him at just age 18 and dethroned him anyway.

Dye isn't the same anymore, and the raw river water all the older ones drink never helps their sanity. But she swears that she sent someone to find her son and get him past the gates. That he is alive and thriving outside the community. No way that this can happen in reality, there is no uncontaminated food and water outside the gates, he would have died of starvation long ago, if the creatures didnt tear him to shreads as a small child. Except.... we have to believe he did.

That is my mission. To find this son of Dye and bring him back to our community within 6 more moons. As a healer, I have never even left the community fences, much less gone to our borders. I am going now though, our future depends on it.