With the Wind...

[Toffee 2843]

Cool air brushed Illynora’s skin. The cavern was alive with the faint sound of dripping water that melted into the whisper of aspen leaves. Silver trunks rose from the mossy earth, pillars of moonlight, and above them gaped an imperfect ring in the cavern’s roof through which the stars looked down, remote and unblinking. Amongst those farflung constellations was the Mariner, the seven stars that always led the Almenodrim across the seas towards home.

 

Illynora sat with her back against one of the white trees, her fingers resting on the roots. She was not a druid, but she could practically feel life humming up through the pads of her fingers. The grove smelled of damp soil and lingering rain. How long has she sat there, watching the constellations wheel slowly overhead? Time always stretched thin around her, like the fragile skin of ice over a winter stream, the water rushing ever onwards even while seeming frozen.

 

Five centuries she had lived. Nearly four hundred years since she set aside her crown, her nation sinking into the murmur of history like the great citadel being slowly claimed by the sea. The Dominion of Malin, Aegrothond, Amaethea, Nevaehlen, Amathine, Illivira, all rising and falling in the endless cycle of time, and yet, she had Nenar. Always Nenar.

 

How many times had she healed Nenar’s mortal body, closing wounds, knitting together sundered flesh, coaxing a stuttering heart to beat again beneath her hands? Wyvern’s teeth, Vaeyl spears, frostbite, darkspawn, wolves, dread trees. How many times had she scolded Nenar for her carelessness, only to see that same reckless smile, bright and fierce? Cernunnos’ mark stood starkly red on one of Nenar’s hands, the Mother’s mark on the other, but Nenar had always been a warrior more than a healer.

 

“Do not worry, my lady,” Nenar would say, eyes glittering. “You know that fate is not finished with me yet.”

 

The wind shifted through the leaves, and for a heartbeat Illynora thought she heard Nenar’s tread among them. But it was only the grove breathing around her.

 

Illynora’s fingers tightened around the tool in her hand, a long, thin, hollowed out bone, stained with ink. She had marked Siss’siru’s Grip around Nenar’s throat, the mark of redemption. Soon she was to mark her with Morea’s Teeth, the mark of a leader, however reluctant Nenar was to receive it.

 

“You would have laughed at me, old friend,” Illynora murmured. “To see me sitting here, weeping for you.”

 

No answer came. The leaves made a dry rustle.

 

Nenar had been as constant as the tide and the stars, Illynora’s anchor in years that slipped past infinitely quickly and slowly all at once. The sea still roared, the sky yet turned, the breeze whispered with hidden voices, but Nenar was gone. The eternal had yielded. The unyielding had fallen.

 

Illynora closed her eyes, pressing her brow against the aspen’s silver bark. It was cold but living beneath her skin.  

 

“Sleep, my friend,” she breathed. “Rest. Claim the death that was once stolen from you.”

 

Above the grove, the stars burned on. Serinwë was up there, somewhere, looking down upon her. Was Nenar there with her?

[Calioos 91]

"Oem'ii..."

The singular word spoken out in the darkness as a shadow cast itself over the aging elf. Silence followed, as it does with all things, a beckoning herald of the anguish to come. He had wandered for so long, chasing ghosts, chasing dreams, chasing a memory that was just as fleeting as the light of the next dusk. It had led him astray, far beyond what he could have ever wished for.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be closer."

Reaching out for a nearby oak, the ancient, one-eyed elf fell into the young tree. A hand clutched to the worn leather of his traveling coat as he felt the lack of beating in his chest. The ache that still remained was the reminder of what he was. Long had he been lost in the boughs of the wilds, not so dissimilar to the trees that swayed with the wind, and the birds that sang in them. They did not sing for him, nor did they for his daughter, they sang for their own, for love and for joy. Things he felt slipping from his grasp once again.

He couldn't remember the last conversation they'd had, in the turbulent state of his mind. Too much had transpired; too much was now lost in place of the muddled tracks he indefinitely left through the old wood. Memories came in waves of the times they had together.

A tear fell from his ambery eye as he recalled the first time she'd ever called him maln. Now spun around to slowly slide to a seated position at the foot of the oak, resting amongst its roots. How hopeful she was then, and how proud was he, to have someone he should be so proud of. Her smile, her laugh, the care she spared for others when things were at their worst. He couldn't have asked for a better daughter.

When he took her on as his student, a dedicant in the arts of druidism. She was always a quick learner, clever as a fox, and creative as the most wonderful minds. He always saw hope when he looked to her, something that was sorely needed in a time of turmoil in the order. Never had he wanted it all to fall on her shoulders, and yet, he couldn't have asked for a better student.

And now, he was left wondering how he could have been a better father, a better teacher and mentor. Long had he traveled now, so that his feet felt like they were one with the grass.

"Why her?"

He finally asked as he looked to the forest beyond, his eye slowly glazing over with a bright, violet light. Why did she have to be the one to perish? He knew not the how, or the why, but when one has walked the realm for nigh a millenia... One has to ask, why hasn't the forest taken him yet? Why must the world have such cruelty? She was- is- his daughter, and once, she was all that he had left to cling to a stable mind. There was so much left to say to her, to hold her in his arms again when it all got to be too much, and to have just one last picnic. It was all too late now, the woods could only lie silent as the old elf mourned.

Nature was neither kind, nor cruel. It knew not the struggles of good and evil, or the fragility of the soul.

Nature simply was.

And that was his greatest failing as a Druid, the fact that he could not merely be. For decades now, he had tried to, oh how he had tried. Like a wail in the void, he felt the cold chill run through his hollow body from the death. It had been far too long since he had wandered and forgotten himself. He was a druid, he was a father, he was an elf, and he had a mission to find out why.

After a time, he pushed himself back to his feet and lifted his gloved hand to wipe the tears from his eye. It would be a long time to wander out of the forest, unknowing if he was even in his own mind or in reality. He would find a way, somehow.

"We will see each other again, I don't know when, but we will. I promise."

The old elf promised to the trees and the sky, the grass and the roots, and just about anything else that would listen.

And then, the River Druid began his walk home.