On the knees of Mount Ojin, at the place where the mountain is level to the foothills that surround it, there is a column of green stone erected by the ancestor Ojin.  It is as taller than a tall male who stands on another tall males shoulders.  There are runes carved along it, but they are so old and so weathered, no one really knows what they mean anymore.  It is just an old collection of greenish stones, stacked atop each other since before anyone was born.

It is the place of leave taking for your high village.  When it is time to head to the lowlands, your village descends the mountain by paths that have been worn into the stone by countless generations of pilgrims going along them.  When the leaders bring you to the Ojin stone, the village makes camp and there is one last night of celebration.  Or perhaps it is mourning. No matter how loud the songs are sung or how much is drunk, there is a sense of mourning.  Of goodbye.

Because when the time to wake arrives, the high village is no more.  Each family will depart from that place, silently.  Not looking back.  They will head on their own paths to the doors of their homes in the deserts.  From the moment they wake up, each family is of their low village.  Until it is time to climb high again.

For the first time, you are not following your parents.  Instead, you trail after a couple of families you know slightly.  They look back at you now and again, to make sure you are still there.  They offer you food and water when break time comes.  But mostly they leave you alone.

It is always awkward when a new face shows up.

If you had just been married, it would be slightly different.  Your spouse would have come to your high village to retrieve you.  And they would be walking with you, to guide you to your new home.

But you don't have a spouse.  Instead, tucked into the small pack you carry, you have a small finger bone.  It arrived by a messenger two months ago.  Along it's length is written a message from a family in Cool Shade Low Village.  Hiyal bids you come and work.  That is all it reads.  But it is enough.

You had spent a year carving a crystal the color of rose into the shape of a uko, paying careful attention to the delicate legs and wings so that the crystal looked like the insect it was based on.  You packed it carefully and sent it by messenger to the Hiyal family in their high village.  You didn't send a note.  It would have been rude to do so.

Were you nervous as you waited those long weeks?  Were you scared?  Whether you were or not, you received your answer.  And much sooner than you would have thought.

Hiyal sent you an ancestor's finger bone.  It gives you the right to enter their low village, to approach the ancestral tomb and to place it back where it came from.  Once you do, a Hiyal family representative will meet you at the entrance to the tomb and guide you back to their home.

From then on, until such time as you have repaid your keep and their favor with your labor, you will apprentice.  Hopefully to Matah of Hiyal.  But even D'osk of Hiyal would be good.  To be able to learn crafting at the feet of a Hiyal...

This isn't a dream, is it?

OOC:  I'll stop here and let you ask any questions or react.  Thanks

Migrations were always a weird time. For the changes they brought, for the pretty much constant daylight with Vainia and Seipra tirelessly relaying each other in the sky... This time, as always, Ailith wondered if she liked it. There was always the fact that she pretty much wasn't able to work on anything for the whole trip, to say nothing of how tiresome if was of course. Even though it wasn't that bad going down at least. On the other hand, there were so many things to see and do that were unique to those times that she often arrived home with ideas that would last for a good part of the season.

This time... There was still all of that of course, but muted, shadowed by concerns and hopes that would be unique to this particular trip: leaving her family despite her young age, going to a village she had never seen...and finding out what was waiting for her there. In a way, it was better than the weeks between when she had sent her carving, and when she received an answer: she had been counting the days while trying to estimate how long it would take to get there and back, alternatively sure of herself and her work then a few minutes later convinced it would never be good enough...

According to her family, she had been...difficult. Though her brother had used other words of course. It had been made worse for them by the fact that she hadn't revealed what was happening of course: she had paid for the messenger with her own resources obtained  thanks to little works she had done here and there. Simply because she hadn't wanted them to hope too much... to tell her not to bother - even though she knew her parents would have encouraged her - and also because she didn't want her brother to tease her. Even though he had taken his revenge of course.

But now... Now she knew that something was waiting for her. What, or more exactly who, she didn't know but she tried not too fret about it. Mostly unsuccessfully, but... One last time, she turned to her family, waving in their direction and watching them disappear behind a big rock. Finally with a sigh, and the conviction that if nothing else she would be able to send letters, she jogged to catch up with the families she was following to what would be, at least for some time, her new village.

At the first break, she thanked those who offered her water and food, taking advantage of the occasion to ask for any kind of information they had about...well, a lot of subjects, ranging from the village itself to how many apprentices there were, how they lived and so on.