Setting Free

☽ The Jungle Remembers The jungle held its breath. Precious Rain paused mid-air. Cicadas silenced their rhythm. The Ceiba trees loomed like ancient gods, their roots twisted deep into secrets, their bark exuding a sweet, resinous musk that clung to the air like memory. Somewhere beyond the moss-draped vines, a branch snapped. She stumbled into view like a ghost—blood streaked down her side, her shawl torn and clinging to her shoulder by threads. Her eyes were wild, vacant, as if she’d traveled further than any living soul should. Perhaps she had. The sentries saw her first—perched among the trees in canopies woven so tightly with green they vanished into the leaves. One gave a low whistle, bird-like in tone. Another echoed it, sending the signal through the underbrush. By the time she collapsed at the boundary stone, a dozen warriors had gathered. None touched her at first. They looked to the patterns woven into her skirt—the sun-and-feather motif. She was Ixchele, but not of the Tetzahuitl—her spirit carried the cold weight of mountain winds, not the breath of the jungle. She was from the north. The oldest of the guards crouched beside her and gently turned her face. Her lips were cracked. Her eyes fluttered. “Tlatoani,” she whispered. “Take me to the Tlatoani.” They lifted her with reverence, walking barefoot along the roots of the Ceiba until they reached the village heart—a place hidden in plain sight, cradled by the land itself. Homes spiraled into trees. Bridges braided from vines. Firelight flickered against clay altars. The jungle itself seemed to hold its breath around them. The Tlatoani met them beneath the great Ceiba. His hair was long, streaked with silver; his face lined by time. Beside him stood the healer, clutching a clay bowl of herbs. They laid the stranger on a reed mat. Her breath was thin. The healer leaned to press water to her lips, but the woman turned her face toward the Tlatoani, locking eyes. “They are all gone,” she rasped. “The wolves… the wolves came.” The healer froze. The warriors shifted. “They smelled our blood,” she whispered. “They knew what we were. We hid the children—but they… they hunted us.” Her body convulsed once. Then stilled. She had come farther than her spirit could carry. The jungle fell still again. The Tlatoani closed her eyes with his fingers and lifted her into his arms without a word. He carried her to the ritual hill and laid her gently on a woven mat, draping a burial cloth across her chest. “She will be honored,” he said. “She will not be forgotten.” Then his voice hardened. “But this is what the outside brings us. Death. Desecration. Wolves who have forgotten the moon’s balance.” He turned to the flame-lit crowd. “They call us naguales. Demons. Monsters. Beasts that walk like men. Let them. Let them whisper in fear. It is fear that kept us alive. It is shadow that shielded us when the world turned to fire.” He raised his hand. “No more borders. No more visitors. We will vanish again, as the naguales do—into leaf and bone, into myth. Let them believe we never existed.” And so they did. They slipped back into the jungle, unseen—but always watching. The Tetzahuitl became legend. Stories to scare children. Shapeshifters with glowing eyes. Whispers of owls that turned into women. Of jaguars that vanished into men. The people called them naguales—and crossed themselves when they heard howls after dark. But in truth, they were Ixchele. Not cursed. Not creatures. Descendants of an older power—one that shifted not only into wolves, but into anything the blood remembered. They shifted like dancers, like breath, like a drop of rain slipping into a river. The world forgot them. But the jungle did not. ☽ When Silence Breaks… The fire crackled beneath the Ceiba again. But this time, the boy standing before it was not afraid. He had never known fear. He knelt on the woven mat, ceremonial shawl draped across his shoulders like a mantle of smoke. His hair was thick and black, braided in a warrior’s plait. His chest bore the scar of the rite—cut across the heart when he was fourteen, the blade dragged without flinching. Blood had dried in the dirt that day, and the elders had called it a good omen. Now they called his name. “Xiuhcoatl,” they said. “Tlatoani.” The jungle bowed to him. He bowed to no one. He rose in silence, the firelight casting his shadow across the gathered tribe like a serpent stretching through smoke. There was no softness in him. No mercy carved into his bones. His grandfather had once carried the last woman of the north in his arms. Xiuhcoatl carried only war. He did not speak right away. He let the moment stretch, taut and heavy, until even the fire seemed to dim beneath his gaze. The warriors stood still as carved obsidian. The elders held their breath. When he spoke, his voice rang like flint against stone—sharp, cold, final. “No more hiding.” He let the words hang. “We are not prey.” He stepped forward and the crowd parted, as if some instinct—older than language—recognized what he was. Not a man. Not a ruler. A storm, sheathed in flesh. They said the naguales walked like shadows, but Xiuhcoatl walked like judgment. He did not howl or rage. He simply existed—and the earth remembered what it meant to tremble. The wind shifted. The leaves whispered. Somewhere beyond the trees, fate stirred. Somewhere, the wolves looked up and felt their blood run colder. And the age of silence ended.