A Story of Ice and Earth (closed to Rehtul)

[Philomel]

Through narrowed eyes the faun glared at the being. Her lips, though slightly parted, still formed a stern line, and the creases in her forehead were severe. Slowly, her chest rose up and down as she surveyed the hovering being before her - one she had not seen in decades, if not centuries - and she made no direct effort to ease her tense stance.

Slowly her mind worked, summoning memories of the time with this blue-haired male. Vague words came to mind - "mage" and "ice" and "powerful". In the latter years reports had been made of him drifting to a lone sanctuary somewhere distant and remote. While Philomel had been struggling within, making the ancient forest flourish and struggle to survive through the poisonings of the mortals' despicable machinations, he had been another immortal, quietly biding his time until something new occurred.

"I remember you," she whispered in a haunting voice. As she spoke the animals that had alerted to Rehtul's presence stirrred and gathered about her waist and hooves. Gently she stroked the long snout of a greying, but familiar, large fox who glared with golden eyes.

"I remember you being impulsive. Your cold ice. Your love of ... This technology," she waved a hand to the broken steel towers, satellites and magnetic levitation trams. "You ... Were kind upon a time to my daughter."

Celandine. A whisper of supreme love, pride and joy spread into the ancient faun's eyes, filling them briefly, before it was replaced with horrible loss. So much loss. So many centuries of grieving over ones mortal descendants.

"I have reclaimed this world," her eyes snapped back to glare. "They were killing this planet, threatening my forest. They had driven my creatures to near extinction, even destroyed the last ash tree," she ground her teeth. The fox beside her softly growled, eyes ablaze. "I therefore took their lives. They were warned, but still they persisted. They knew not to harm my forest yet they hacked her trees.down for lumber. They deserved this."

She spat violently on the ground, her magnificent robe and coronet shaking with a rustling and the various beasts about her hissing, growling, buzzing in righteous fury.

"No. This is my land now. You have been gone. You have no right to demand anything of me. No one does anymore."