They inhaled, and the light rose. Exhaled, and it sank. Attuned to their breathing, the firelight pulsed and wavered, and the leader reached high upon his left arm, upon the arm that steadies the bow, where a leather band that was adorned with five black stones rested.

"Now," the big man proclaimed expectantly as the red light bathed the crags and wrinkles of his face, glittered on the beads knotted into his hair, and glowed on the dark paint encircling his eyes.

Those eyes were green. They were odd, sometimes even ominous to a brown-eyed people, but no accident of nature. To a Plainsman, there are no accidents. Those eyes had marked him from birth as a vision catcher.

"Now is the time for the going inward, for the weaving of water and wind," he continued, drawing the leather band from his arm. His company breathed a measured breath, and the red fire pulsed like a heart beating. "For the wind and the water have risen, here in these mountains, and soon the Sundered Peoples will be joined once again, as legend and prophecy swore to their joining."

"Then this is the time, Longwalker? The time we have looked for?" piped a voice from the encircling tribesmen. It was the voice of a young girl, quickly stifled by a hiss from an older man beside her. About her, the others stared at the fire, breathing in and out together.

The leader, the one they called Longwalker, nodded, the faintest hint of a smile passing over his weathered, ugly face. "This is the time, Marmot," he answered, for the girl's naming night was yet to come, and the company called her by pet names and endearments. "Or the next, or the time after that. Until the time that we look for. The Telling is nigh, scarcely a year away. The old gods will not allow the sorrow of the last Telling, when the stories were broken and the tribes unhoused."