Sighter Tnailog
04-06-12, 01:13 AM
((This is a solo work for now, though I would entertain other collaborators with a few conditions, mainly a willingness to work within the constraints of a slow storyline that doesn't go anywhere in particular. It is set in the Warded Wood, the lost enclave of Enarlin spellsingers cast out of Raiaera ages ago roughly at the same time as the formal foundation of the now-devastated Raiaeran state. So if you do desire entry to the storyline, you'd need a reason to have found the way through this strange and warded area.))
Sing, divine stars, of the implacable grief of the elves!
The sorrow cut within us like dwarven-rendered stone
that stands forever weathered, worn and yet remains.
Undeath that lies within us, a life that does not die
but grows to mourn the passing of many hearts less fair,
yet hearts bound in joyous dying, a beauty lost to us
that in our age ne'er ending we find unending pain...
Poised quivering and uncertain, the pen stopped above the page, a thick bead of moist black ink hanging with tenacity onto the white nub of the feather. It glistened against the candle that lit the darkness of an late evening in the north, glistened but remained, a wet drop against the duct of the quill, constantly threatening to drop upon the page in a splash of black. That catastrophe was always averted by the pull of water to water, a phenomenon Findelfin had often noted but never understood, just as he understood very little in this age that lasted beyond destruction. But always that drop remained unbroken, undisturbed until he dipped it again to the page and put it down, put it down as surely as if it were not ink he placed to paper, but the same water cleft to water that lurked behind his own eyelids. Fitting, how fitting, thought Findelfin. Here, in the House of Earlon, the Manse of the Enarlin Exiles, it was water that absorbed him, contained him, that threatened to burst from him without ceasing. Studying the walls of his cabin, and the windows, he looked across to the pine trees that stood immaculate and snow-laden. The walls of winter, the mages here had called them. No, that's not right. It was something different. The walls of bitter winter.. It was a fitting phrase. Beyond those walls a true winter deepened, and Findelfin knew that he had brought a small bit of that winter with him, into the center of this haven.
He missed his friends so much.
The missing was like a reservoir within the center of his belly, a ball contained only by an ice as implacable as the fir trees that guarded the Warded Wood. He had always thought the fierce aloofness of elves a drawback. They lived alone in Raiaera, strove to maintain their culture, for the most part eschewed friendship with humans. But now he wondered if they had not all been like him at one point, young and gregarious and moving widely among the realms of humanity. There was a time when it was possible to do so, carefree. But though death takes all, it takes humans first. Had Varalad and Linwë carried these scars within them? Even when Findelfin was most angry with them for withdrawing from the affairs of the world, were they not full to bursting? Findelfin felt that liquid ice set so full and tight within him, and he was scarcely a tenth of their ages. He knew now the things they carried.
He could still summon them, though, his friends. Devon, Natamrael, and Wyn; his enemies, Mazrith and Mulciber; his mentor, Linwë. He did not know where the rosary had come from; he had awoken with it in his hand when his eyes opened upon the walls of the house of Earlon and Enarlin. He had been too groggy to fight back, too disoriented; he had been in one place, watching the dread army swoop down on his friends, and then he was in the fever-dream of the Warded Wood. But somewhere in all of that a rosary had been placed in his hands, and he came to found that as he moved his fingertips over it one particular crystal would flood his mind with memories.
He shuffled the beads through his fingers, searching out that one specific bead. As he touched it, his mind was flooded with the images of Wyn and Devon, of the unstoppable Mazrith and the untouchable, unsullied Natamrael. These were good memories, and sad ones, for they were all of people he would never see again, people whose deaths, if not certain, were probable. But there were other memories too, memories (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12597-The-Cosmic-Detour) that were barely at the level of his language, memories that stirred unreflected when his fingertips brushed the other crystals. In that region where memory remembers without remembering, he knew a young wizard. In a far-off time, a time he could scarce remember, or perhaps a time he remembered as though it was a time that had not come or might not come, the wizard had told him something. His memory beyond thought could hear the words echoing through whatever warp in time he had fallen through once, so long ago, when the strange archivist of the Thayne pulled him away from his battlefield and his glory. Your glamour broke. The words echoed such, beyond the veil of consciousness, because they were no longer true. The glamour he had known in a forgotten charge was gone, certainly. Maybe broken was the right word, even, but the right word is not always the true word. The memory itself, though it existed in words spoken in the realm of possibility and not the realm of time, had changed him without his knowledge. His glamour had been buried. Perhaps it even had broken. But it was, reknitting itself, growing towards something else. He did not know what it was growing towards; how could he? Whenever his fingers ceased to touch that crystal glass that contained such memories beyond his language, he was left with only the echo of the thought, and never the full thing. Yet even an echo writes its image on the mind of the one who hears it. Perhaps Blueraven's words had saved him, though he would never know it for sure.
As the rosary dropped from his fingers, he stirred in his chair, like a beast from the depths of the sea surfacing for a moment to remind himself where to find the sun. He looked around himself, and thought again of escape. He had thought of leaving this place many times, and it seemed natural. All his life he had been taught the history of Raiaera as a history forged in the fire of Enarlin's betrayal. Atanamir, scion of the Lord of the Stars, the great God Galatirion, had driven forth the wicked servants of Earlon who had turned their magic to the domination of all. That Enarlin magic was born of the single traumatic moment when the elves massacred the Durklans, that Aurient herself had first censured and then expelled the Enarlin servitors from the ranks of worthy elven-singers. Had he been fit to run when he was first told that he was lying abed in the Warded Wood, that he had somehow passed into that place without breaking the wards that held it aloft from the world.
But here where evil supposedly held court, he had found good; in place of scourge, he found succour; instead of hatred, healing. Enarlin mages had tended him; they sang soothing Lissilin music to bind his wounds, Aglarlin when the knot in his belly built to bursting, and strange musics he did not know, musics that he later came to find out where Enarlin and Ainalin, the forbidden school and the forgotten school. They even had a chapel, complete with monks who bowed to sing the Sevenfold Psalms at the appointed times; they even had one old saint whose life had become consumed with the saying of the Sacrament of the Hours. There was more to the story than he had been taught. And though he was certain that the singers he had met here would teach him, if he asked, he was not certain that he needed to know. It was enough that they were kind, and good, and not at all what he had been told. There was more to learn than anyone could in a lifetime, even an immortal lifetime, and kindness was a decent substitute for knowledge.
They had let him heal, and they had left him be, and they had involved him with the life of their community. He prayed with them, sang with them, hunted with them, practiced with their Bladesingers. He had never been pressured to do any of it, but had been invited to all of it. And he had been writing since then. Writing what he could. He had found that using the rosary and going to chapel had changed him, made him want to dedicate some measure of his practice to the glory of the star-gods that Raiaera had largely ignored.
Through the window of his cabin, the small bard-lights at the boundaries of the clearing pulsated and vibrated at frequencies known only to the holy singers of the Ainalin school. Vespers was approaching, and Findelfin thought it would be appropriate to attend to prayers. Prayer was an art one could only learn, he had found, by attention and embrace. Taking up his rosary again, fingers glinting brieftly against the crystal surfaces of memory before seeking out less mournful beads, he tucked his pen into its inkwell, rolled up the parchment scroll he had been working on, and opened the door to his small cabin. Pulling his cloak around his shoulders, he set off across the grounds for the Chapel of the Holy Stars.
Sing, divine stars, of the implacable grief of the elves!
The sorrow cut within us like dwarven-rendered stone
that stands forever weathered, worn and yet remains.
Undeath that lies within us, a life that does not die
but grows to mourn the passing of many hearts less fair,
yet hearts bound in joyous dying, a beauty lost to us
that in our age ne'er ending we find unending pain...
Poised quivering and uncertain, the pen stopped above the page, a thick bead of moist black ink hanging with tenacity onto the white nub of the feather. It glistened against the candle that lit the darkness of an late evening in the north, glistened but remained, a wet drop against the duct of the quill, constantly threatening to drop upon the page in a splash of black. That catastrophe was always averted by the pull of water to water, a phenomenon Findelfin had often noted but never understood, just as he understood very little in this age that lasted beyond destruction. But always that drop remained unbroken, undisturbed until he dipped it again to the page and put it down, put it down as surely as if it were not ink he placed to paper, but the same water cleft to water that lurked behind his own eyelids. Fitting, how fitting, thought Findelfin. Here, in the House of Earlon, the Manse of the Enarlin Exiles, it was water that absorbed him, contained him, that threatened to burst from him without ceasing. Studying the walls of his cabin, and the windows, he looked across to the pine trees that stood immaculate and snow-laden. The walls of winter, the mages here had called them. No, that's not right. It was something different. The walls of bitter winter.. It was a fitting phrase. Beyond those walls a true winter deepened, and Findelfin knew that he had brought a small bit of that winter with him, into the center of this haven.
He missed his friends so much.
The missing was like a reservoir within the center of his belly, a ball contained only by an ice as implacable as the fir trees that guarded the Warded Wood. He had always thought the fierce aloofness of elves a drawback. They lived alone in Raiaera, strove to maintain their culture, for the most part eschewed friendship with humans. But now he wondered if they had not all been like him at one point, young and gregarious and moving widely among the realms of humanity. There was a time when it was possible to do so, carefree. But though death takes all, it takes humans first. Had Varalad and Linwë carried these scars within them? Even when Findelfin was most angry with them for withdrawing from the affairs of the world, were they not full to bursting? Findelfin felt that liquid ice set so full and tight within him, and he was scarcely a tenth of their ages. He knew now the things they carried.
He could still summon them, though, his friends. Devon, Natamrael, and Wyn; his enemies, Mazrith and Mulciber; his mentor, Linwë. He did not know where the rosary had come from; he had awoken with it in his hand when his eyes opened upon the walls of the house of Earlon and Enarlin. He had been too groggy to fight back, too disoriented; he had been in one place, watching the dread army swoop down on his friends, and then he was in the fever-dream of the Warded Wood. But somewhere in all of that a rosary had been placed in his hands, and he came to found that as he moved his fingertips over it one particular crystal would flood his mind with memories.
He shuffled the beads through his fingers, searching out that one specific bead. As he touched it, his mind was flooded with the images of Wyn and Devon, of the unstoppable Mazrith and the untouchable, unsullied Natamrael. These were good memories, and sad ones, for they were all of people he would never see again, people whose deaths, if not certain, were probable. But there were other memories too, memories (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12597-The-Cosmic-Detour) that were barely at the level of his language, memories that stirred unreflected when his fingertips brushed the other crystals. In that region where memory remembers without remembering, he knew a young wizard. In a far-off time, a time he could scarce remember, or perhaps a time he remembered as though it was a time that had not come or might not come, the wizard had told him something. His memory beyond thought could hear the words echoing through whatever warp in time he had fallen through once, so long ago, when the strange archivist of the Thayne pulled him away from his battlefield and his glory. Your glamour broke. The words echoed such, beyond the veil of consciousness, because they were no longer true. The glamour he had known in a forgotten charge was gone, certainly. Maybe broken was the right word, even, but the right word is not always the true word. The memory itself, though it existed in words spoken in the realm of possibility and not the realm of time, had changed him without his knowledge. His glamour had been buried. Perhaps it even had broken. But it was, reknitting itself, growing towards something else. He did not know what it was growing towards; how could he? Whenever his fingers ceased to touch that crystal glass that contained such memories beyond his language, he was left with only the echo of the thought, and never the full thing. Yet even an echo writes its image on the mind of the one who hears it. Perhaps Blueraven's words had saved him, though he would never know it for sure.
As the rosary dropped from his fingers, he stirred in his chair, like a beast from the depths of the sea surfacing for a moment to remind himself where to find the sun. He looked around himself, and thought again of escape. He had thought of leaving this place many times, and it seemed natural. All his life he had been taught the history of Raiaera as a history forged in the fire of Enarlin's betrayal. Atanamir, scion of the Lord of the Stars, the great God Galatirion, had driven forth the wicked servants of Earlon who had turned their magic to the domination of all. That Enarlin magic was born of the single traumatic moment when the elves massacred the Durklans, that Aurient herself had first censured and then expelled the Enarlin servitors from the ranks of worthy elven-singers. Had he been fit to run when he was first told that he was lying abed in the Warded Wood, that he had somehow passed into that place without breaking the wards that held it aloft from the world.
But here where evil supposedly held court, he had found good; in place of scourge, he found succour; instead of hatred, healing. Enarlin mages had tended him; they sang soothing Lissilin music to bind his wounds, Aglarlin when the knot in his belly built to bursting, and strange musics he did not know, musics that he later came to find out where Enarlin and Ainalin, the forbidden school and the forgotten school. They even had a chapel, complete with monks who bowed to sing the Sevenfold Psalms at the appointed times; they even had one old saint whose life had become consumed with the saying of the Sacrament of the Hours. There was more to the story than he had been taught. And though he was certain that the singers he had met here would teach him, if he asked, he was not certain that he needed to know. It was enough that they were kind, and good, and not at all what he had been told. There was more to learn than anyone could in a lifetime, even an immortal lifetime, and kindness was a decent substitute for knowledge.
They had let him heal, and they had left him be, and they had involved him with the life of their community. He prayed with them, sang with them, hunted with them, practiced with their Bladesingers. He had never been pressured to do any of it, but had been invited to all of it. And he had been writing since then. Writing what he could. He had found that using the rosary and going to chapel had changed him, made him want to dedicate some measure of his practice to the glory of the star-gods that Raiaera had largely ignored.
Through the window of his cabin, the small bard-lights at the boundaries of the clearing pulsated and vibrated at frequencies known only to the holy singers of the Ainalin school. Vespers was approaching, and Findelfin thought it would be appropriate to attend to prayers. Prayer was an art one could only learn, he had found, by attention and embrace. Taking up his rosary again, fingers glinting brieftly against the crystal surfaces of memory before seeking out less mournful beads, he tucked his pen into its inkwell, rolled up the parchment scroll he had been working on, and opened the door to his small cabin. Pulling his cloak around his shoulders, he set off across the grounds for the Chapel of the Holy Stars.