Rutzgarsoyle

"Tera, pay attention! Your wind speaker has purpose - use it! Make the proper sacrifice when it calls. Do you wish to die in youth like the uplanders, or live to see your children grown?"

— Mesafe Yuru

The rutgarsoyle looks like nothing. A simple talisman, a cultural decoration of the strange, private people of the west desert lands. It looks - and is - so common amongst the Burr Flakka that one might completely miss it. It is after all nothing more notable than a scrap of fabric or a pretty feather left over from cleaning the previous nights dinner.

But the rutgarsoyle is essential to the garments of every member of the nomadic tribe. Lightweight and mobile, it flutters in every wind.

Which is good, since that is it's purpose.

The Burr Flaaka are ever watchful of the flutter of these lightweight charms. At every campsite, a young child places a semi permanent rutgarsoyle at the edge of the camp; a sturdy tall stick standing proud, with a feather tied on a foot long lightweight string fastened to the top, and at it's base, an arrow scratched in the soil in the direction of the sunset.

The Burr Flaaka watch the sun and gauge the flutter of the feather as it moves silently in the wind pointing to the place from which the wind proceeds. Most of the time, it points to the east, indicating a dry and cold wind will come carrying bitter weather from the high mountain peaks down to the desert below. The hunt will be good. Some times the wind comes from the south, in the wet season, filled with clouds that shed water on the parched land, and the land gives up fruit and nuts to feed the people. And sometimes it comes from the west, and the Barr Flaaka hide in their tents until the evil winds pass. For three days after the winds cease, they forage for nothing, and hunt no life. They drink water from their packs that has been strained through fine cloth. They consume only foods and drink which they carry for those three days. It is a sacrifice they will say if you corner them. A sacrifice for life. They call it the Lifzaman.

It is pointless superstition of course. As pointless as the Winnowing rituals of the Elgenbridge farmers.