As you march along the trail, fallen pine cones crunching beneath your feet, the tall trees towering above you, the sound of trickling water meets your ears; your first sign that Kaawa is near. Soon after, you come upon the characteristic piles of stone that flank the trail, the cairns standing both as gate and sentinel for what lies beyond. The trail continues past the cairn, but you take the less-traveled path through the underbrush. The air turns crisp, and clear, and you know that out into the wood just a little more is the spring that supplies the inhabitants of the thorp.
Only just before you emerge from the green does the burbling of the spring give way to another sound. No, many sounds: many people laughing at the same time, the trill of a tinflute, a boastful voice, and then a melodic response. As you pass between the small, sturdy houses from behind, you smell the sweet, nutty wafts of a food vendor selling honeyed pine nuts. You enter the clearing proper and see a simple stage that has been built out of cloven trunks where an acrobat deftly flips several times before feigning a botched landing. The small gathering of local folk laugh in concert again. Your heart lifts: you've reached Kaawa by the Way.
Now close to a century ago, there was a Fenris man named Knut who proudly showed himself as a wolf-were around the human town where he grew up, and cared nothing for the consequences. While he was small, he was well-muscled and tough. This and his teeth were enough to keep others from disturbing him. Eventually, Knut mated with a human woman—the daughter of a renowned wolf-hunter—who cared as little as Knut did what others thought of his ancestry. Shocked, but afraid of Knut's bite, the villagers passively accepted the union for nearly a year. In time the huntsman's daughter bore a daughter of her own, and for less than a week Knut and his little pack dwelt in tense peace.
But one night, while Knut was away in the mountains on a hunt, the woman's uncle came to her bed where she swaddled her newborn child. Seeing the result of her union with the wolf, his blood boiled. It was a betrayal of their family name, he told himself; if she had any pride in her kin she would have killed the wolf, not lain with it. And with the skill of a hunter, he slit his niece's throat, bleeding her before she could feel any pain.
Nearby, Knut's nose instantly filled with the scent of blood coming from his own house. Before the uncle could react, the hunter became the prey, and he was shredded to bloody strips where he stood by Knut's fearsome and feral bite. Broken by the sight of his mate, and fearing for his pup, Knut collected his wailing daughter and fled eastward into the forest, past the sign that read "Kaawa", or "Eastward" in the language of the bird-folk who lived further up the mountain.
Knut ran into the dawn of the following morning before the cloud of rage and sadness cleared from his eyes. He was exhausted and parched, and his sharp ears caught the sound of a bubbling spring somewhere away from the trail. It was a welcome sound.
That, it is said, was the founding of Kaawa by the Way. Since that time, it has become a refuge for Knut and his family, along with any others who sought respite from the pressures of their homelands. Knut's daughter grew, and found a mate. Only when she named her own twin pup daughters, Stellan and Ebur, did she take a name herself: Moa or "mother," she was called from then on, for a mother she was.
As her father grew old, Moa found purpose in making his hunts less taxing, eventually learning from a travelling draconian trapper how to catch their prey with little effort altogether. Under the instruction of her new tutor, she became a trapper herself. For this reason, Moa named the draconian Manu, or "wise."
Seeing how he was accepted into the community, Manu invited his very dear friend, a Córean merchant from the mountains, to come and set up shop with him. Upon his arrival, Moa named the bird-folk "Kaawa," after the direction of his homeland.
Time passed, and Stellan and Ebur grew, while members of the community came and went as their journeys led them. One merchant—a seraph from the north—chose to stay longer than most. As he came in the evening, when most seraphs are beginning their day, Moa named him Unnuk. So the tradition continued; whenever someone would stay in their community long enough, they were obliged to be named by "Mother."
And still the thorp grew with Knut's pack. Ebur had a daughter, a blind pup she named Cecilia, who never let her lack of sight stop her from exploring her world. Around the time Cecilia settled in as the thorp's local apothecary, like her mother before her, Kaawa by the Way had been joined by a Winslie hunter, and an adventurous Ranai who brought his knowledge of travel to bear in outfitting the visitors who frequented their forest refuge.
Today, Kaawa by the Way traditionally plays host to a travelling performance troupe every year, and the honeyed pine nuts have become such a staple that there is an entire pavilion squatting among the dozen or so buildings dedicated exclusively to the enterprise.
On days such as this, now gray of fur, Knut lays on his sleeping mat on the porch of the oldest house in the thorp, sniffs the sweet air, listens to the joy and laughter, and thinks fondly of a certain hunter's daughter.
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