Death of Meivrarienth the Voiceless

Life, Death

Kenku Hero Kalaka Kaliki hatched as part of a clutch of six eggs, with two brothers (Yipip and Teolo) and three sisters (Izaza, Sheee, and Wiedie). Her parents, delighted by the survival of all six eggs, raised their chicks with all the love in the world. Kalaka's early childhood was relatively normal, protected by the moderately sized community of kenku living in the settlement which would eventually grow into The Chattering City. With her siblings and the other chicks roughly her age, of which there were three nestfuls, she learned words and sounds and skills appropriate to her youth. The community was vibrant and thriving.   Kalaka was a cheerful child, excitable and energetic, and always too curious for her own good. She often wandered away from the nest, got lost, and had to be retrieved by a member of her community. Her tendency to wander never put her in real danger, because the majority of local predators had vocalizations she quickly learned to mimic. Mostly this just confused the predators long enough for one of her guardians to show up and rescue her, but her exploration of the surrounding area made her confident rather than scared.   One day in her fourth year, she set off from her family's nest to visit her friends down the path. Her mother told her not to go alone, and had planned to send Teolo with her to ensure she didn't get lost, but Kalaka could not bear to wait. It was a path she had walked many times before, though never by herself, and she thought (inasmuch as a child so young thinks about anything) that she would be able to make the trip easily. She walked for hours, sometimes following the path, other times being distracted by flowers or bugs and wandering away. Merely minutes after leaving the nest, she completely forgot about her original purpose in traveling, and spent her day enjoying the beautiful mountain scenery.   When night fell, Kalaka believed her friend's home must just be a little further along. She continued to wander all night, becoming more distressed as the night went on, finally accepting that she was lost around midnight. Crying, she walked on through the darkness. When dawn finally came, she was exhausted and curled up in a puddle of sun to sleep. After a few hours of rest, she woke and climbed a tree to see if she could find any landmarks that she recognized. The forested mountainside was unfamiliar from her vantage point, but she spotted a plume of black smoke rising from something in the distance. Her curiosity compelled her to investigate, so she began heading towards it.   When she reached the source of the black smoke, Kalaka discovered the burned wreckage of her home. Bundles of scorched black feathers, once the members of her community, lay scattered among blackened, crushed trees and nests. In shock, she stumbled from body to body, desperately trying to find anyone still alive to tell her what had happened. In the burned-out rubble of a neighbor's nest, she finally found someone. Barely clinging to life by some miracle, Kalaka's uncle Lilili still breathed. Despite his terrible burns, Lilili managed to remain calm, and he told his niece of the monster that had destroyed their home.   That day, Kalaka learned the word for "dragon."   Her uncle, in his last moments, told her of the temple to the God of Nature, only a few miles down the mountain. He had little hope for himself, but Lilili asked his niece to run to the temple in the hopes that she would find shelter there. The young kenku swore to come back for her uncle, and ran as fast as she could down the mountainside. With the images in her mind of her family and friends lying dead in the dirt and ash, she could not get distracted, and she reached the temple in hours.   Stumbling into the garden of the Temple to Lord Adaris, Kalaka was dehydrated and filthy. Her feathers were sticking up in every direction, and at first the monks at the temple thought she was a malevolent forest spirit. With a moment's contemplation, they realized they were looking at a small bird-person, and managed to calm her down. Kalaka pleaded with the monks for help, asking why the holy men and women of the temple had not gone to the aid of her village. The monks gave her food and drink, but said they would not venture farther up the mountain than the boundaries of their temple garden. A mandate of their god, they claimed, forbade them from going any deeper into the wilderness that was his domain.   After a day and a night of arguing, using all the words at her disposal and any new ones the monks were willing to teach her (such as "divine will" and "hands are tied"), Kalaka threw up her hands in disgust and left the temple. She ran down the mountain, crashing through the underbrush, stumbling through thickets of thorns, and squawking for help from anyone who could hear her. After three days, she came to a farming village. The human and tiefling people of the village placed their tiered fields on the slopes of the mountains and lived in quiet harmony with their neighbors.   Kalaka crashed into the center of the village, where she was immediately caught by a young father. With the help of his spouse, the man managed to calm Kalaka and get her story from her. She told the young family of the destruction of her home, and of the monks' inaction. The man agreed that the monks should have done something, and took the baby bird to the village elders, that they could hear her story and take action. The village elders, who had been deliberating about sending someone to investigate the plume of smoke for days now, were eager to find out more information. Upon learning that the destruction of the kenku settlement was enacted by a red dragon, the elders absolutely refused to endanger any of their people. Kalaka pleaded with the man who was taking care of her to go against the elders' decision, but he had his young family to think of. He would not go up the