[!]
Blackness shriveled.
The dark sillhouettes drew into a vision.
A vista of unknown realm spanned down
below – first falling down a slope ever steep,
and then bounding and sinking,
soaring and diving.
Unwavering twilight lay on the uncanny landscape.
Hither and thither, the undulate domain
was cracked and riven; meagre fissures and
great chasms scarred it, and thence spouted
unyielding streams of eerie mist.
It roved about the air, and entwined between
the abound trees – for in all the sight that
unravelled from the tall peak
there was the arboreal swath,
tailing the earth in every direction,
be it the spikes jutting through the hazes
and piercing heavens, or deep bowls
where dark concealed the lower pits.
Tranquil it seemed.
Unscathed by the currents
of time or other force..
And quiet.
Amid those woods
only breath of trees
and some faraway
running waters stirred
the elsewise unbreakable
silence.
A sudden movement occured;
through whomever's eyes
the lulling picture was perceived,
they were turned away from
the plastering beauty now.
They glimpsed behind;
and they fell upon a glade,
rimmed by the woods of
similitude – where wafts of mist curled,
and trees cloaked in enchanted
and ancient bark loomed.
Grasses of varying shapes and sizes curled in the sheen whither
the unbeknownst Watcher now looked:
some were short and crimson,
and tipped with black;
others were lush and verdant,
sprouting into splayed
or narrowed bushes.
There the wind was meek and nigh unnoticeable,
yet the greenery and even younger trees
obeyed its whims, swaying slightly.
The Watcher first indulged in that sight,
admiring it in stillness..
Alas, he couldn't wallow long;
from gloom and mist emerged a figure.
A short one – just about five feet in height,
and about two in breadth.
Its approach lilted with the air of the realm about,
as the paces were perpetual and calm,
and the step was so light that no grass bent behind it,
and no sound it summoned forth.
The dinless visitor wore a robe of dark silk with a hood cast over the head,
and where sleeves dangled from the arms and peeked no hands,
and where the only gap that showed was where the visitor's face should be.
Yet a shadow was strewn over it; the countenance could not be seen.
Dreary was the encloaked person, and with his coming dread was spilled into the air.
The Watcher bated breath and tensed. His head inclined a slight in caution, and thereby the gaze followed to slant a little.
Thus was the only answer to the trepidation that the figure harbringed,
for the forest remained unangered and unstirred.
So the mutual stare proceeded,
and the time of
unmotion drew into minutes..-
Hours, perhaps.
The flow thereof
was hard to tell
in the midst of placidity.
But second after second,
all the doubt and terror
that enwreathed the Watcher
slowly waned.
At last it had shrunken
so much that he broke
the pause.
With a hand rising aloft
and fingers splaying,
he gave the other
a cautious wave.
“Come now, don’t be scaring my weary bones so much. Are you the dweller of this place?”
Thus, the face of shadow – of that figure across the glade – shifted.
It cocked to a side and gawked keenly at the Watcher –
so much so that all the angst that
tarried him before swooped back,
looming like a great, dark shadow.
At length a noise was made –
but it was not a word spoken hereafter.
It was a sneer, and only a passing.
For though no other sound was made,
in but a twinkle the visitor was gone.
And though the Watcher looked about,
he found naught but the unruffled woods again.
A growl suddenly droned,
and it made the Watcher flinch like a tenebrous mouse
that overheard a hissing snake..
But soon his eyes fell to his stomach –
wherein some bits of his own attire exhibited.
It was a tunic of bleak green,
crossed by a series of leathery straps,
whence hung different apparatuses–
bottles and vials with sunken glow,
a pair of daggers in oaken sheaves,
and a pouch embroiled in intricate embroidery –,
and it was the stomach that turned
out to be longing for food,
rather than a prowling predator.
So a sigh the Watcher held,
and he set into the woods,
and he sought for prey or fruit or other food~