Spirit Speaker

a story of strixus

The dust has settled into the sweat on my cannons, matting the short brown fur which terminates above the hard black surface of my hoves. Red dust. This land is so different from my home, so strange, yet here I stand, my hooves planted in its earth, and I can still hear the voices speaking to me.
In the wind, they are calling my name, in the small pools of bitter water they sing softly, even in the waves of heat on the horizon they dance, beckoning me forwards. From the time I had sense enough as a calf to know what words were, I have heard them. Spirit Speaker, they said, and there was a Path for me to walk.
Another stone bites painfully into the soft bottom of one of my feet, sending pain shooting through my leg again and I stumble, catching myself on my walking stick. The corium is bruised deeply, but I cannot stop, cannot rest for any longer than it takes me to drink from a brakish pool or to grab a thorny mouthfull of plant from a passing shrub. Those voices will not stop until I reach my goal. I grunt with pain, bear the weight onto my stick, and keep walking. A dust devil gibbers at me insanely as it whirls by.
I miss my home. I miss the green fields of Mulgore, where the wind was sweet with Peaceblossom and cedar, and the dust was soft and brown. Where there were no sharp stones in the soil, and where the grass was sweet to the taist. And where other Tauren roam, where the kodo are hunted, where life is good and green. Home. Village. Family. Elders. Not here, searching for some mad troll and his mountian shrine.
But this is my path. I have to find him. The village Shaman told me when I was a calf that one day I must do this, I grew up knowing one day I would cross The Barrens and enter this land of Orcs and Trolls and find my way to the Troll Shaman and his shrine here.
Another scorpion looms out of the rocks in front of me, and it is all I can do to smash its brains in with the end of my staff before it stings me. They are huge creatures, the size of small dogs, big enough even a Kodo could die from their stings. Worse even than the Rapters which haunt the rocks and box canoyons or the crocodiles in the river which bounded this red hell. Durotar. Hell.
But the voices in the hot wind wisper in my ears when the flies are not buzzing in them. Shaman. Young Shaman. The Fire calls you. The Earth speaks to you. The Wind wispers to you. The Water dances for you. Follow us, we will show you the way. And I do. I follow their voices, empty and calling, to the foot of the mountians. My hooves are bleeding, and I have had no water for a day. My fur is the color of the dried clotted blood on my hooves, though it is a deep glossy black beneith the dust. But here is the marker stone, and the narrow path. Leading up.
Climb. The wind wispers to me. We will hold you up.
Climb. The earth comforts me. I am beneith your hooves.
I wrap my thick fingers around the first outcroping of rock and pull myself up. I start the climb. And the spirits wisper to me. Shaman.