Muri The Lightning Primordial

Chapter 11 [Becoming A Man]

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Becoming A Man

They emerged from the treeline into the village, still bickering. Muri was in the middle of a sentence about the philosophical implications of cloud movement—a topic he had never cared about until Venit had forced him to defend his position—when he stopped.

His feet froze mid-step.

He heard voices near his mother's hut

Familiar voices.

One of them was deep, authoritative, carrying the weight of someone used to being obeyed without question.

His father.

Chief Abara.

Muri's steps slowed.

Venit noticed immediately—he could feel her attention shift to him, her posture changing from relaxed to alert.

"What is it?"

"My father."

She looked ahead. He heard her breath catch slightly. "I see him. Two others with him. Older. They're standing in front of your mother's hut."

Muri's jaw tightened. His stomach knotted. "They're here about the rite I'm sure."

He walked forward, his stride steady, his face carefully blank. He had learned long ago not to show anticipation or fear. It gave people leverage, and he had given them enough over the years.

Chief Abara stood tall and broad-shouldered, with a voice that could silence a crowd without effort. He stood with his arms crossed, his presence filling the space in front of Sena's hut. The two elders beside him were old, their faces carved by years of sun and wind and judgment.

Muri stopped a few paces away. Venit stood at his side—he could feel her presence, tense and watchful, like a coiled spring.

His father's voice came first. "Muri."

"Father."

"The elders and I have reached a verdict on the rite."

Muri said nothing. He waited.

Abara continued, his voice measured, deliberate. "The beast was struck by lightning before you could make the killing blow. That much is certain. But the elders reviewed the evidence. The tracks. The position of the body. The wounds."

He paused.

"You hit it before the lightning fell. The rock was lodged in its head, deep enough to cause significant damages before the lightning struck. That counts as a successful hunt."

Muri's heart, which had been a tight knot in his chest, loosened slightly. But he didn't let it show. "I see."

"You have passed the rite. You are now a man of this clan." Abara smiled as he held his son shoulder and shook him roughly, making Muri look small and little before releasing him.

Upon his release, Muri heard a soft breath from beside him.

Venit.

A breath of relief so faint that anyone else would have missed it. He filed that away for later.

Abara stepped back.

He could hear the weight of his father's footsteps, the rustle of his thick ceremonial furs. "You have proven yourself, Muri. The hunters' unit has a place for you. You can join your brother Kaelen. Learn to hunt the great beasts. Bring meat for the clan. Secure your position. Secure your mother's position."

Muri was silent for a long moment. He felt the weight of his father's expectation, the pressure of the elders' gaze. He felt Venit's presence beside him, a silent question in the air.

Then he spoke, his voice calm, measured, laced with the faintest edge of sarcasm that he couldn't quite suppress. "And what exactly would a blind man contribute to a unit of trained hunters? Stand in the back and listen? Trip over roots while the real hunters do the work? Serve as a distraction for the beasts?"

Abara's jaw tightened. He could hear the shift in his father's breathing. "You have skills, Muri. You survived in that jungle alone. You faced that beast. Alone. On a dark raining night and you hit it. Not once but multiple times."

"I have skills for surviving. Not for fighting. Not for hunting great beasts." He paused, letting the words settle.

"I'll pass."

"Muri—"

"I'll help my mother." He turned slightly, gesturing toward the herb satchel. "I have everything I need here. Herbs. Small prey. Fishing. I know this village. I know these forests. I don't need to be a hunter to contribute. I have my little ways of being useful."

Abara stared at him. The silence stretched, heavy and uncomfortable. The elders exchanged glances that Muri could hear—the rustle of their clothes, the soft shift of their weight.

Finally, the Chief nodded, his voice unreadable. "So be it. But know this: the clan does not carry those who do not carry themselves. You understand the rules."

"I understand."

His father turned and walked away, the elders following. Their footsteps faded, swallowed by the sounds of the village.

Muri stood still, listening, his hands loose at his sides.

Venit's voice, when it came, was uncharacteristically soft. "That was brave."

"It was stupid."

"Both, maybe."

He turned toward the jungle. "We need to find dinner. Let's go."

They walked into the green, and for a long time, neither spoke.

The jungle was alive around them—birds, insects, the rustle of unseen creatures in the underbrush. But between them, there was only the sound of footsteps and breathing and the occasional snap of a twig.

Finally, Venit spoke, her voice careful, almost tentative. "Why did you refuse to join the clan's hunters?"

Muri kept walking. His feet found the familiar path, the roots and stones he had memorized over years of foraging. "You heard me. I'm blind."

"That's not the real reason."

He stopped.

For a long moment, he said nothing. The jungle breathed around him. A bird called in the distance. Somewhere, water trickled over rocks.

He turned, his face unreadable, but his voice carried a weight he usually kept hidden beneath layers of sarcasm and dry humor.

"In this clan, you eat what you earn. No exceptions. Every family gets a share of the communal hunt, but only if they contribute. If you don't bring anything to the table, the table closes to you."

He paused, gathering his words.

"My father has five wives. My mother is the last. The least favored yet most loved. She was a exceptional healer from a smaller clan, married for her beauty and skills, not for status. When I was born blind, the clan decided I would never pass the rite. They stopped allocating food to my mother's hut. They expected us to fade, to become dependent, to eventually leave or die."

Venit was silent.

"My mother kept me alive. She foraged. She traded her healing skills for scraps of meat, for root vegetables, for anything she could get. The only time we had real meat was when she treated someone rich enough to pay in flesh." He paused, his jaw tightening. "I grew up hungry. I grew up learning to catch small prey—rodents, birds, fish—so that we could have meat once in a while. A luxury."

He reached out, his hand brushing a nearby tree trunk, feeling the rough bark under his fingers.

"I honed my senses because I had to. Every sound, every scent, every shift in the air—it meant survival. My mother taught me everything she knew about plants and herbs because that was all we had." A bitter smile touched his lips.

"The reason she's so good at seasoning? She had to make roots taste like a feast. We had nothing else."

Venit's voice was barely audible. "Muri..."

"Now they want me to join the hunters. To leave her behind. To prove that I'm a man." His voice turned bitter, sharp.

"She spent nineteen years keeping me alive, feeding me, teaching me, healing me when I got sick or injured. And I'm supposed to abandon her the moment I'm useful to them?"

He turned and kept walking.

Venit followed. She didn't say anything for a long time. The silence was thick, heavy with something neither of them knew how to name. The weight of his story hung between them like a physical thing.

Then, abruptly, she stooped, picked up a rock, and threw it.

It hit him square in the back of the head.

Muri stumbled, whirled around, his hand flying to the spot where the rock had connected. "What the—"

She smiled.

He couldn't see it, but he could hear it in her voice—a lightness, a deliberate shift in tone.

"I wanted to test your reflexes. You claimed you honed your senses. I wanted to see if they were as sharp as you claimed."

" You threw a rock at my head!! ” he groaned in shock rubbing his head.

"Your head is quite a beautiful target."

"I could have been seriously injured!"

"But you weren't— See…Your skills work."

"That's not the point!" He yelled in frustration

"That's exactly the point. You're alive. You're alert. You caught a rock with your skull."

"I dont remember catching it. It hit me."

"But you noticed it. You turned. You reacted. That's progress."

He stared in her direction, his mouth open, his brain struggling to catch up with the absurdity of the situation. Then, despite himself, a laugh escaped him. It started small, then grew, until he was shaking his head, grinning.

"You're insane."

"I'm effective."

"You threw a rock at me."

"And now you're laughing. That was the goal."

He shook his head, still grinning. "I don't understand you."

"That's fine. I don't understand myself half the time."

They walked on, the tension broken, the mood lighter. They bickered about the proper way to identify edible mushrooms. She claimed that purple-spotted ones were safe; he insisted they were poisonous.

They argued about whether the stream they passed was the same one from yesterday. Venit claimed she could taste the difference in the water—"This one has more mineral content"—and Muri called her dramatic.

But as they walked, Muri began to notice something.

The sounds were wrong.

The birds were too quiet. The insects had stopped their chorus. The air felt... still. Heavy. Waiting.

He stopped, his head tilted, his senses reaching out into the jungle around him. Something was off. He didn't know what, but his instincts, honed by years of survival, were screaming at him.

"Something's wrong…" he whispers

Venit paused. "What???"

"We've gone too far." He turned his head, parsing the sounds, the smells, the feel of the ground beneath his feet. "I do not fully recognize this part of the jungle."

She looked around. He heard her turn, heard the rustle of her clothes as she surveyed the area. "It's fine. I can find my way back."

"You don't know this jungle."

"I have divine instincts."

"Your divine instincts led you into a mud puddle."

"That was different."

"How?"

Before she could answer, Muri heard it.

A wet, tearing sound. Followed by the low, guttural growl of something large feeding.

His blood went cold.

He froze, his hand shooting out to grab Venit's arm. His fingers closed around her wrist, and he felt her tense.

"Don't move."

She stiffened immediately. "What is it?"

"Predator. Big. Feeding on something fresh."

He listened. The sounds were coming from about thirty paces ahead, to the left. The wet tearing of flesh. The crunch of bone. The heavy breathing of something content in its kill. The animal was focused, distracted.

If they were quiet, they could back away slowly.

Find another path.

Circle around.

He began to step backward, pulling Venit with him. His foot came down slowly, carefully, feeling for solid ground.

His foot landed on a dry branch.

The crack was deafening in the silence.

The growling stopped.

For one endless second, the jungle held its breath. The birds fell silent. The insects stopped. Even the wind seemed to pause.

Then Venit cursed in her usual otherworldly language as she smacked Muri's hard, hitter harder than the rock.

Immediately the sound of claws scraping earth. Heavy breathing. The distinct rustle of something large turning to face them.

Venit's voice was a whisper, tight with fear and annoyance. "Muri."

"Run."

"What?"

" Run!!!"

They ran.

Behind them, the predator roared—a sound that vibrated through the trees, through the ground, through their bones.