Yamook

and some had as of yet, always been quiet. Others were wider and grown from stone, once filled with fire and laughter. They’d become old long before the current era had ever been born. But now those halls are all quiet. The ones who walk them are few. And those that do-prefer not to share their secrets.

Bending at the waist the six horned cloaked hermit stooped through the door. The bones and pendants tide into its fur, clattered together, the only other music the hall had heard since before the doors had rusted shut. Its eyes had lost their colour, turning a milky white with small slightly darker turbid white rectangles where the pupil should have been. They stood straight, pulling their tawny robe tightly around their broad shoulders, the long since tattered hem trailing across the dirt floor behind them. Each step was purposeful, an action offered to the old gods with whom they had long since become one.

This specific individual was a Yamook, one of the last of its kind still integrated in a fleshy tomb. They call the body a tomb because they feel leaving the inside to venture into the world is akin to how the majority of your race might perceive dying. There were times such as these, where the veil between the external physically manifest world, and the inside, or “It” as some would call it, became thinner. For Yamook, the flesh is an obstacle. One which slows and sedates and limits the mind's observation of itself. It has been this way since just after the last days when we could choose if our daily bread was baked or if it was bought. Or, if it was to be found inside our own breath.

As a species of elder dryad, Yamook are integrated spirits. Initially taking on a wooded form which changes in texture, quality, and appearance as they live and grow. Shape and form are dictated amongst the Yamook by disposition and are therefore nothing more than external reflections thereof. Misunderstood in the common era as demons rising from the deeper places in this world, people of old either feared them, or worshiped them. Some even considered witnessing them a miracle. Like all things in the external world, Yamook follow cycles of becoming and unbecoming, though they do not become in the same way as a human. When you were born, your body was inhabited relatively early on into its physical development and was thusly engaged for the next years with becoming a minimum standard of convention amongst your people. Within this process, a subtle truth is easily and understandably, forgotten by most that is not forgotten by the Yamook: There is no thing which you could become that you are not already.

Heavy hooves fell rhythmically upon damp earth following the luminous orb. Tiny plasmatic droplets, the color of buttered corn, dripped from its sides, evaporating before hitting the ground. This light wasn't for the convenience of the blind one, but for the unfolding earth itself. This tunnel is alive, and it had been living since the days when the first dryads crawled out from the trees. The collective results of individuals taking their first steps, coalescing into a pattern walkable by those with the eyes to see it. To let you in on one little secret, it's belief that got all of us here, and that's what keeps it all going. With enough time and enough intention, suddenly a walkable path may start to form, in most senses figuratively. Or in this case, should you know just the right songs, and be in just the right places, at just the right times, the path may form in a slightly more literal sense. Today this path is being walked again for potentially the last time. With so few of the wooded folk remaining, and with thin spots on the outside becoming less and less abundant. This journey, which exists as a function of a Yamook’s own unfolding, may never be witnessed by those who steward the earths surface again.

One step after the other, the corridor turns round a bend. The tunnel extends onwards, but this time, the yellow orb is already sitting at its end, shinning light back towards the patient traveler. The bones tied into the hair hung from its chin again bounced off one and other, though this time due to a stream of air less damp then before. The cloven hooves carried the Yamook closer to the light that seemed to stretch vertically with each step until a tall oval slit of light bearing the images of the outside world had evolved. The symphony of visual delicacies were not lost on the milky eye’d one. Standing at the threshold, the Yamook inhaled through their wooded nose, their ornaments singing in the wind. The sun was crawling over distant mountains welcoming the cozy hillsides to the day to come, and a deep rolling exhale echoed from the chest of the ancient individual. The warming sun spilt across the first groaning leg as it stepped from a tree hollow in a giant old oak at the top of the hill. Standing outside for the first time in an epoch, the Yamook shook its cloak from its body, and each tiny mossy nook vibrated in turn lifting the old dust, carrying it away with the morning breeze.

This story (including this statement) has been translated and interpreted from its original language into your local dialect and syntax.
Please note, some words may not be Translated Acurately, or at all due to the dissimilarities between alien cultures, customs, and complexities

They pushed the door open slowly, the rusted hinges complaining to the tunnel who carried its concerns to deaf ears. Slowly, a small luminous yellow orb floated through the frame. Tuberous roots were exposed, hung from mud walls lined with gnarled twisted beams, supporting the otherwise completely dark hallway. This trail had been established long since before the common magic had even yet been considered young. Not all these kinds of hallways were of the same ilk, or even the same architecture. Some were quiet,