Chapter I: Otherwise you're nothing

It is the season when birds build.

On a plateau where tension between two adverse tribes is springing up, a wanted man seeks somewhere to hide his winter transgressions - sedition and murder in the name of a love he'd always forbidden.

Chased from his city home, he stumbles across a wilderness he never learned to read - the land language of his ancestors is becoming as endangered as he is.

Alone and exhausted, he contemplates oblivion. Does he even deserve another chapter?

Certainly not, suspects a teenager he collides with. Despite the boredom she battles with daily in her isolated village, he is not the change she craves.

And, whilst her family hide him, she yearns to recover their past life she's on the verge of forgetting.

This is the first part of the Highworld Season: When birds build hiding places. It is the first of many chapters and many seasons, spanning many worlds. Please donate, subscribe and review to engage with the story.

Words and illustrations by Ben Louis Hudson.