by gently stroking the old woman’s back.
– Be careful with the stars! They are beautiful, but we know nothing about them,» the old woman whispered.
«Everything will be fine, Inga,» Roshan answered. «And the potion is fast-acting!»
– What? Already? the healer asked in surprise and stared with her green eyes at the leader’s eyeballs. – I added quite a bit of red flower. Didn’t think so…
– Set it on fire! Roshan interrupted her.
The shaman’s gaze slowly swam.
– Yes, I see. May Pangea keep your soul in unity,» Inga admonished.
The leader lowered his eyelids, nodding. The sorceress took a torch and lit the candles, and then carefully placed the dried roots of a bundle leaf on each candle. The roots began to smolder little by little, spreading a pleasant smelling aroma throughout the expanses of the Temple.
– Hord, old, where are you? It is time! What are you stuck in there? Inga said.
– I’m coming! – Returning from the passage with the barriers, the old man answered. – Checked the horns. Roshan, everything is whole, like…
«Shh, shut up, old man!» the woman interrupted. – Let’s go outside. We don’t belong here anymore.
An experienced hunter helped the old woman to her feet.
– So soon? he whispered, looking at Roshan.
«A red flower…» Inga whispered thoughtfully. I’ll dilute it more next time…
«May Pangea help your soul in unity!» – the elder barely audibly blessed the leader and, together with Inga, left the cave.
***
Silence reigned in the Temple of the Creator. Under the influence of the healer’s decoction, Roshan fell into a dream, but thoughts in a dream remained subject to him. Focusing his thoughts on the stars, the shaman embodied before him the events of the past night, and in the realm of oblivion, the radiance of the heavenly bodies appeared before the gaze of the leader. Penetrating deeper and deeper into the world of dreams, Roshan was able to see every moment in the night sky, which disturbed him the day before. He again saw the glow of heavenly fires and their crowding, a strange nebula, a flash of the skies and a red star. And in order to be among the stars during the time of unity, Roshan needed to keep the manifestation of memories as long as possible. The shaman recreated passages of the previous night over and over again, going over the details of what he had seen in his mind.
Meanwhile, smoldering herbs filled the grotto with aromas, and the distant bursts of an underground source and the crackle of blazing lights in immaculate silence gradually became more expressive. The peaceful atmosphere of the Temple seemed to revive and, having overcome the limits of the possible, slowly approached the dream of the leader. It squeezed in a thin mist through the nostrils and auricles straight into Roshan’s mind, and in his dream he felt the smell of incense and the murmur of the stream. The sound and flavor of reality mingled in oblivion with the embodiment of what was presented, blurring the line between the recreated past and present. Thus, in a stream of perfect harmony, reality penetrated into the manifestation of the past and awakened the flow of prana in the Temple of the Creator.
The leader felt how She quiveringly touched his bare feet with her fibers. Then Her touch rose a little higher and embraced the ankles. Life threads in the form of thin stems of plants unseen in Her abode, breaking through from the ground cover of the Temple, began to envelop the body of the leader in numerous beginnings. Squeezing through the cut of the robe on the hips, they were already crawling along the naked torso and, branching into dozens of processes, continued to excite a surge of energy in the camp of the man. A moment later, the same fibers, escaping from the ground nearby, touched the tips of the fingers. First, they clasped the phalanxes, and then, confidently moving to the palms and not slowing down for a moment, reached out to the shaman’s shoulders.
The leader raised his eyelids. The irises of his eyes turned black like night and merged with the pupils, and the whites filled with a scarlet glow!
On the reliefs of the grotto, the shadows from the light of the flame of candles and torches have disappeared. The surroundings of the Temple faded, and a red nebula formed everywhere. Suddenly around, at a distance of the shaman’s outstretched hand, sources of glow flared up. Bright multi-colored tiny lights, now connecting with each other, then avoiding collisions, with incredible swiftness began to randomly circle around. Those that merged together, pushed out one by one into the expanses of the cave in the form of extinguished particles. The remnants of the lights slowly settled on the rock paintings and in the cavities of the carved symbols of the first people throughout the Temple of the Creator, and those sources of glow that never touched, like swamp mosquitoes, divided into small flocks and hung in the space of the grotto.
Meanwhile, the fibers of life reached the head of the leader, and a radiance radiated from the stems of the creator. It covered the entire cave, engravings and paintings on the walls of the Temple of the Creator blazed with green flames. Roshan was overtaken by unity with Pangea – his soul left the flesh and turned into an essence…
Primal hunt
The rays of the Great Fire illuminated the hunting trails of the first people. The Giver of Warmth rose high into the sky and hovered over the Bennettite field, breathing new day into the endless expanse of a recently created world. From mountain ranges to dense palm-like plains, from swamps and arid steppes to coniferous and liana forests, from deep lakes and fast-flowing rivers to impenetrable jungles and thickets of araucaria – Fire embraced everything, and only the raging waters washing the shores of Her creations remained on the dark side light alone with the cold stars and the moon. In the midst of the abundance of impregnable and unexplored nature, in every inspiration of its creator, the life of the then inhabitants, from young to old, was in full swing: huge dragonflies, horned beetles, colorful butterflies and other marvelous living creatures buzzed everywhere in flocks; buzzing, chirping and chirping, they created a universal rumble that carried to the most secluded corners of the mysterious, sometimes dangerous and unknown abode of all living things. Even the cave creatures that had abandoned the Great Fire heard the alluring singing of their relatives, but hostility to the rays of the luminary left the once reigning species in the dark labyrinths of rocky volcanoes.
Somewhere in the fields near the boulders, jumping out of the grass after low-flying butterflies, from time to time the heads of small cold-blooded ones showed up. Expecting easy prey, bipedal carnivores, squeaking, hid among the young shoots of the cycad and occasionally climbed small hills to catch the smells of something edible brought by the wind. Larger lizards tried not to give themselves away, and only by swaying grass or bushes could one understand that they were somewhere out there – hunting down their own kind in order to feed their offspring, or hiding so as not to become prey for others.
On this most ordinary day, from the outskirts of the liana forest into the bennettite field, the most ordinary inhabitant of this world came out to graze – a dark blue herbivorous Longneck. But he didn’t leave of his own accord. Hunters contributed to this. Noisy and occasionally appearing before the giant’s eyes, they deliberately forced the creature to leave the thickets. Huge, fifteen or twenty paces from head to tail and almost ten in height considering the length of the neck, Long Neck felt the presence of people. But the good-natured reptile did not suspect why they had come. She nibbled on the grass and leaves of the ginkgo trees, sometimes stopping and warily looking at the thickets around her.
If this herbivore were Tailtail or Razorthorn, he would have long ago made those who disturbed his peace flee, but Longneck’s temperament, unusually for a lizard, was too soft and affable. Taking advantage of this, the beaters-pathfinders lured him into the field with hunting tricks, since the dense vine forest was not the best place for the Big Hunt: huge boulders lay everywhere, mighty trees with trunks,