They stood on the hill together

looking out over the treeless plain.
Behind them were only unburied dead,
felled by the malevolent spirits
who had flicked out their lives
as easily as
one would brush away a fly.
What they had fled
had been their home
ever since the forest god
had created it, but it could no longer
be their destiny.
After they had wandered for a day,
the elder was overwhelmed
by a fevered vision, and said,
with cascading worlds in his eyes,
"We must go to the
unknown lands, even beyond
where our hunters go.
Only there can we escape
the Death Curse."
So they had come to be gathered
in this place of desperation, the
last of The People.
Swallowing his fear, showing no sign,
the tall one said simply,
"Keep on. We have to make camp
by nightfall."
And with that, they began their
two hundred thousand year
journey.