Ticetar

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Ticetar
Status:	Alive
Guild:	Cleric
Race:	Rakash
Gender:	Female
Location:	Siksraja
Associates:	Sahred, Lukca

A resident of the Rakash village of Siksraja and a member of the Cleric Guild. She refers to Lukca Zelkuk, author of Celoturs uz Siksraja, as her uncle though he does not share a blood relation to her. Her connection to the author is through her father Sahred, who belongs to the same Rakash pack as Lukca.

Appearance

You see Ticetar, a Rakash.
Ticetar has a triangular face, gold eyes and a small nose. Her white hair is shoulder length and straight, and is worn in a simple, pulled-back style held in place by some crow feathers strung upon amulet-strewn cording. She has fair skin and a lean figure.
She is short for a Rakash.
She appears to be a pack hunter.
She is in good shape.

She is wearing a tawny weapon harness adorned with Enelne's eye amulets and crow feathers, a battle odaj crafted from golden-hued mail atop deep bronze titanese and some elaborate footwraps dangling crow feathers from leather strips at the ankles.

The Mulberry Tree

As told by Ticetar at a Rakash Moot (2014) in Siksraja:

This is a story of what comes after loss.

Those who left the West during the great migration had less time for planning than one might think, yet still some had the forethought to take not only the simple, practical things which were needed for life, but also pieces of that which nourishes the soul.

The fraction of redivawzis here in the Awksa Dzilvawta Ala is the most famous example, perhaps, of this choice, this thought to bring more than just our bodies to the East. The father of the man I call my uncle in the Common tongue, but is more rightly my father Sahred's Packmate, took the time to save this precious connection to our first home.

For another, this choice came in the form of seeds.

Mulberry trees were used by Rakash artisans in the West to create paper for, well, my father tells it as it was always so. As there were the trees, there were those who took the pieces of them to craft their arts.

So then, if we did not often write our stories, what purpose was this paper, eh? I asked my father this more than once, and more than once did he stare at me like I'd been dropped on my skull when it was still new and soft.

He was not a man of many words, no matter their method of delivery, my father.

The truth came to me many years later, when I finally decided to ask the ones who make the paper now. After all, this was their story to tell or not, eh?

Most stared at me with the same look I was all too familiar with, but I persisted all the same, and finally one of the older women told me, though whether out of pity or approval of my determination, I'll never know. Words were meant to be fleeting, carried upon Enelne's wings from one to the next, but when written, words hold.

Puzzled by this, I asked her why we didn't just write everything down, then. Wouldn't that be easier? Wouldn't that save old stories from being lost?

Briefly I saw that stare yet again, but her face softened just as I thought I had finally exhausted her patience with my childish lack of understanding. It was then that she explained that to write a story, to make the words hold within any thing, is to force it to be still. A written word does not change, save for defacement. So then a written story becomes a thing of the past, a dead thing, a gone thing.

And it is for this that most words are best left to Enelne's wings, so that they may continue to be as the present, to live with those who speak them.

So then, she went on to say that only mulberry paper is to be used for writing of stories, of things that must live with us, as the tree is blessed by Enelne above all others.

Truth of Self

(Posted on the forums by Persida, 07/02/2015)

What has come to be known as moonskin is simply what we, the Rakash, truly are.

Though our people had different words for it so long ago when the horrors in the sky caused the loss of our original physical forms, Katamba's scarring was also our own undoing.

However, as in all things there is a deeper truth, a deeper Us.

Wracked as we were by the suddenness, the fear, the disorientation of that, the moment of our First Change, many thought it was the coming of the end of all things. The stripping of our forms was seen as yet another aspect of the mutilation of one of Mrod's many Faces and the full loss of another -- harbingers of the eventual nothingness to come when all was fully lost.

So great was this painful thought, that the earliest of the stories to remain with us from this time speak not of the destruction of Grahzir as coming first, but of Katamba's sudden, inexplicable darkening presaging a great explosion in Mrod's Kingdoms. It was thought that this explosion; attributed variously to destructive magical forces great and small, and even, in despondent, hushed whispers, to us having angered Mrod and Him bringing this upon us as His punishment; caused the true damage to Katamba and the wholesale disappearance of Grahzir.

Every Rakash from the most aged to the youngest of our children was brought together in our pain, our loss. We were always one, but at that moment we learned that were truly One. It was in this learning that we came to our prayers, to our Great Supplication. We prayed to Mrod as the common knowledge says, but also to Enelne and to Coshivi, for our Oneness is Their Oneness. Do not mistake me, I am not speaking as a Prydaen here -- our gods are not as theirs -- I say simply that what we are, They are: we are the Pack, we are One, we are Us.

Perhaps it was this knowledge that was the intended lesson, no matter what the cause of the calamity that brought about our change, for in our prayers we did cry out of our Oneness with each other, with the world, with the heavens, with Them, and the Leader of the Great Pack did answer. We were not lost, we were simply different -- as was the world, as was the heavens -- and along with the cycles of change that we had already known was placed another, the coming and going of our moonskin.

We change -- yet we remain ourselves. We are many -- yet the Pack is always One. We were mutilated into unnatural forms -- yet we are never more aware of the truth of our being.

Katamba's scarring was also our undoing, but from every end we begin anew.

We are Rakash. Our moonskin is our Nature, both in its coming, and in its going.

- Ticetar, Cleric of Siksraja

The Rakash and the Apple

(Posted on the forums by Persida, 3/28/18)

A Rakash fable, as told by Ticetar, Cleric of Siksraja

Very, very long ago, apples were not known to our people. Perhaps they did not even exist.

Then, as now, we ate the meat of animals and flesh of the fruits and vegetables that we found or grew, and, in times when the weather turned and the creatures evaded our hunters, we turned to the stores of cleverly preserved foods that our cooks had prepared for just such instances.

So here our story begins, in one of these hard times. The supplies of preserved foods were dwindling dangerously in the village, and yet the hunt remained elusive and the crops hit by blight after blight. Prayers were given unto Enelne, Coshivi, and Mrod all, but again and again, the spears were bare of blood, the fields and baskets were bare of leaf and stem, and the people grew ever more hungry and weak.

At first, nobody noticed the small sapling that had begun to grow behind one of the buildings, so focused were they on other concerns, but soon food was so scarce that the tiny plant was discovered by some foraging children, desperate to find anything to eat at all. Overjoyed as they were to see the green leaves and the slender stem, that several of the children tried to yank the sapling out of the ground straight away, yet it did not yield. Undaunted, the children decided to instead try to pluck the tiny leaves, but those held firm as well!

With a howl of frustration, some of the children then went to find their older siblings and parents, thinking surely that they would be able to best this tiny plant and maybe make a soup out of it. However, just as with the children, when their older siblings and parents went to tug at the tiny sapling, it did not budge, not even one small leaf!

It was then that an elderly woman, beloved by Enelne for her wisdom, came upon the group. With a soft smile upon her muzzle, she motioned the others to step back and said a prayer of thanks. She then grabbed the top of the sapling and yanked, and lo, did the sapling respond! It came up and up as the elder pulled, but never did it leave the ground. Instead, the tree simply grew taller with each tug! Soon it grew so tall that she began to push upward upon what was now a true trunk, and its growth continued until the tree was full and lush, mature and glorious to behold.

Awestruck, the assembled villagers gazed at the miraculous tree without a sound. That is, until the youngest child snorted loudly and said that while it was a lovely tree and truly Enelne had worked Her ways before their very eyes, a lovely tree did not fill their empty bellies. The old woman simply smiled once more and stretched her arms wide. A soft breeze swept through, and the old woman transformed into a swarm of pale pink butterflies, her clothing falling to the ground where she had once stood as the colorful wings carried the creatures up amongst the leaves!

Dumbfounded once more, all stood before the tree in wonder, even the young one who had spoken up before. They watched as the butterflies landed upon the tree’s branches, only to transform again, this time into flowers. Then, before their eyes, the flowers then gave way to rapidly growing fruits! When full and red, the fruits began to tumble to the ground, and soon there were enough to feed the entire village.

When first they bit into the miraculous fruits, the villagers saw that inside of each of them were five small seeds set into the shape of a person with arms spread wide, just as the old woman had been standing before she had first transformed! The villagers planted the seeds and yet more trees did grow, though not with the swiftness of the first. And though the weather did grow pleasant, the foraging baskets and fields filled, and the hunters’ spears did find their targets once more, none in the village ever ignored the trees, or forgot the lesson of the old woman. They ate of the fruit often, and always with thanks and joy in their hearts, knowing that the Great Pack will always change, always grow, and always become anew, so long as it remembers itself and its place in the Oneness of all things.