Storytelling for Week 7: when we are the last (these are the days)

Author's Note
Hey, so I did my storytelling based on two animals from the Nigeria Unit: Dog and Leopard.  It was mostly inspired by "Why Dead People Are Buried" where the Creator sends Dog to tell people that, because it saddens Him whenever humans die, that if they sprinkle wood ashes on their dead loved ones, they will live again.  Dog gets distracted and fails to deliver the message.

I love to play with different storytelling styles, so this story is told in a non-linear narrative.  There are two timelines that are being told at the same time here, and each "-x-" marks the switch between the timelines; a "-" is a scene break within the same time period.

I also changed the setting: modern times and Dog and Leopard are now playing hockey.  I based them off of Seth Jones, an American defenseman for the Nashville Predators, and Evander Kane, a Canadian winger for the Winnipeg Jets.

Dog (Seth Jones) [x]

Leopard (Evander Kane)  [x]

-z-

Dog and Leopard were the last remnants of the Creator’s First Spirits, His first Messengers; they had had been created long before the humans in the luscious forests of Nigeria.  The other First Spirits had died – casualties of wars fought amongst themselves, and of the first waves of European armies.

The Creator had created other spirits to replace His lost ones, but His sadness in their had been imbued in them and they were weaker than their predecessors.  Dog and Leopard, frustrated by this weakness, would leave Nigeria for long periods of time – venturing to surrounding countries before leaving Africa.

-x-

“Hey,” Leopard starts, skating up to Dog, “remember that time you forgot to tell everyone that the Creator would bring their loved ones back?”

"Make one mistake," Dog grumbles to himself, rolling his eyes before he turns and snarls at Leopard.  Leopard only ever brought up what happened hundreds of years ago when he knew that his team was going to lose.

(Which is exactly what happens – the Predators win the game easily and the Jets are chased off the ice of the booing of their home crowd.)

-x-

Europe held nothing but bitter memories for them.  So they traveled east – to Russia, and then to China and then down to Thailand and Vietnam.  Then they headed still further east, eventually finding themselves in California, which was caught in the chaos of the gold rush.

-x-

After the game, Dog is walking out of the locker room when he sees Leopard standing there, waiting for him.

“What do you want?” Dog asks with an exasperated sigh.

“Come on, old friend,” Leopard says, pushing away from the wall he had been leaning against and jerking his head towards the entrance, “let me show you around town.  It’s been ages since we’ve had a chance to catch up.”

“Everything okay out here?” asks Shea Weber, the captain of Dog’s team, as he narrows his eyes at Leopard. 

Shea doesn’t know what they are, doesn’t know their long history of fighting to outdo each other; he doesn’t know how, despite their differences, they could never really venture too far from each other. 

“Fine,” Dog says, looking from Leopard to Shea, “I’ll meet you guys back at the hotel.”

Shea’s lips purse, but he doesn’t say anything else, just nods and hesitantly walks away.

-x-

But California during the 1840s and 50s wasn’t the safest place for two young (or least, young looking) black men.  And Dog and Leopard soon learned that it was safest in northern California, to avoid the southern areas where people from the Deep South states had moved to mine for gold.

So they moved north – and then kept going until they found themselves in Canada.

-x-

“How are you liking Winnipeg?” Dog asks, taking a sip of beer.

“Cold,” Leopard answers with a huff of laughter, “but nothing I can't handle.  When the team isn’t losing and the fans like us, I enjoy it here.”

Dog smiles and nods.  “I feel the same about Nashville.  And it's warmer, which is always a plus.”

A moment of quiet passes between them – it’s a hesitant quiet.  As if there was a question that they both felt needed to be asked; but neither of them can quite bring themselves to ask it.

-x-

In Canada, they lope through the expansive forests and flat, seemingly unending prairie, allowing the decades to slowly pass them by, avoiding the humans when they can.  That all changes when they stumble across a game of pond hockey and fall in love with the sport. 


-

Once the sounds of war have faded from the United States, Dog finds himself compelled to travel south once again.  Leopard stays behind in Canada, no matter how much Dog tries to persuade him.

-

“I’m thinking of trying out for a team,” Dog tells Leopard in a letter.  There are better ways of communication these days, but the feeling of sitting down and putting his thoughts to paper – with the sweet smell of ink in the air – is something that Dog never tires of.

“Tell me which one it is,” Leopards sends back, “and I’ll make sure to be on another.”

-x-

“Do you miss home?” Dog asks Leopard, just before he’s about to climb out of Leopard’s car to go into the hotel.

“All the time,” Leopard answers without hesitation.  He tells Dog that he still dreams of the old days, when all the First Spirits squabbled over things that seem so petty now, when humans were only just discovering fire and just learning how to build huts.

“Me, too,” Dog says, looking down at his hands.  “This summer, after this season, I think it’ll be time to go back.”

“Yeah,” Leopard says, shoving at Dog’s shoulder, “I think it’ll do us some good.”

-z-

End.


-z-


P.S. - as far as I know, the Jets have never booed their own team.  However, it happened to the Oilers last season.  It was very sad.

P.P.S. - During the Civil War, northern California was pro-Union, while southern California contained a lot of transplants from Confederate states and were loudly advocating secession from the Union. [source]

Bibliography: Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910).