The Marriage of Elgaladwen

            I never quite understood my mother. A healer she was, but her regard for nature went no further than cultivating the herbs she used for her remedies. She certainly was not disrespectful to it in any form; yet untamed land seemed to strike fear into her.  She wanted me to be just like her, I think, but of course, I was not. As soon as I was old enough to be out of the sight of my mother, I would steal away into the wood, and sit among the trees, listening to their voices, which at that time in my life, I merely thought was the wind. Mother worried about me, thinking perhaps that something or someone in the wood might snare me, and keep me from returning home. My Father would laugh, and tell her that I’d be fine, and that the trees would protect me. They were both right. I was snared; snared by the peace, and beauty that was to be found in areas hardly touched by people; and protected, for by dwelling among the trees, I was spared from the fate of the rest of my community. As I grew older, I would spend more and more time in the wood, and I would return home less and less, until finally, the village was my home no longer, and I was not home until I was with the trees, and plants.

After I left that land, many years later, I realized how dull the woods by our village, and the neighboring villages were in comparison to the truly untouched ancient forests, and the forests that were abound with magic, and whose very air seemed to tingle with life.  The forest I sit in now is one of these, as was the forest that I lived in for over a century, with Wilrayn. Here in these woods, I can almost forget that towns and cities exist, and I can think myself the only person for miles, alone in the serenity of nature.

Alone is what I thought I was, when I first met a ranger of Our Lady, called Naralarn. I was restoring a small fern to health, for it had begun to whither, and I was not listening enough to notice his approach. There he was, watching me, a human with silver hair and green eyes…

The fern is still here, much bigger now, its fronds curled the size of my hand, and quite healthy. Healthy, unlike the love that I once held for Naralarn; Healthy perhaps as the hate once was, though now that hate only burns like a small dark flame, deep within me.

Naralarn and I were married here, in this wood. I remember seeing the moss that covers the ground, as I bowed my head before Our Lady.  It was here also; on our wedding day that Our Lady changed Naralarn into one of elvenkind. Oh, how happy I was then… I forgot all of the arguments. That is what happens when love wraps itself around your soul. Even happier, I was, when I became pregnant with child. Finally, I myself would be a mother, with a young person to love and care for, and to raise to love nature as I did. That wondrous joy lasted for a few months, in which the child within me grew, and I could feel that life, and my own intermingling with the lives of those in Our Lady’s wood.

Something happened after that… I ceased to find peace in this place, this wood, which even now still holds much more harmony then all of the lands surrounding it. My mind wandered, along with my feet, and confusion mounted in my brain. Naralarn swore he was there for me then, but alas, he had important things to do, for he was a leader of our faith, and could not be there when I needed him. I think now that I was being selfish, I know I was, but at the time it seemed that I should not have to be alone…

I meandered within the walls of Quant, for there were many different people there, and enough happened, that I did not have time to be unaccompanied with my thoughts. I slowly regained contentment, as I spoke with my acquaintances. The two that have helped me more than anyone, or anything else, were perhaps the two most unlikely people I would have ever spoken too, when I first came to this land of Xenobia.

I have my reasons for not liking mages, especially human mages, after what happened to my parents, sister, and the rest of my village, but a human mage nonetheless, helped me with his quick wit, and good nature. Eredis, he was called, a man clad in the greens of the temple of Lord Gealin…

Even more strange then me becoming friends with a human mage, however, was that it took one of a faith that I despised for their needless maiming of life, and a race that I loathed nearly as much as the faith, to help me make my final decision regarding my then husband, who it seemed, in my mind, had forsaken me. Truly, though, it was Naralarn that made the final decision, but I shall come to that later… Rathma was a drow. A drow of The Lady of Pain, yet without him, I might have been married to Naralarn still, even with all of my qualms. Rathma listened to my misgivings better than anyone, and his advice was good, though I was not to think of following it at first…

* * *

The man I remember as my father looked nothing like me, though his ways were more alike to mine than those of my mother. Wilrayn told me once, during one of her trance-like states, that my father was a great druid, and that one day, he would teach me things of vast eminence. I wondered at this, for my father had always reminded me more of a ranger, and he had never shown himself to be anything close to a druid. I made up my mind to speak with my father of this, next I saw him, but this was soon before the attack, so of course I never had the chance to inquire this of him. Many things one learns, that are not understood when they happen, but those things may unravel with time. It is with that thought that I hope to someday find out if Wilrayn’s words even have true meaning. I fancy that perhaps my mother had another love before the man I knew as my father, and that this man, my true father, had to leave, or was taken away when I was yet a small spark of life within her. Did she ever stop loving him?

Wilrayn told me of a love that she had had once. It almost was hard for me to believe, for Wilrayn was the most independent, free spirited lady I had known, and to me she seemed ancient as the trees themselves, above such things as love and thoughts of marriage. Her love had been lost at sea, ages before that time, when Wilrayn herself was still young.

It was but a small number of years ago that I lost my own love utterly, not in a way such as death, but in a way of my own making. I had always thought the loss of a love to be a tragic thing, but on this one occasion, it seemed to be for the better…

There I sat, my figure very round with child, surrounded by old empty trunks, in an abandoned edifice of some sort. The air was slightly dank, but it was a good enough place to speak, without being heard by others, or so Rathma and I believed, as we spoke. Quite suddenly, Naralarn was there, his face distorted with rage, and with his blades of Our Lady’s order at ready before him. We were partially right about not being overheard, for Naralarn certainly did not hear all of what we said. Whatever he had heard seemed to give him the misconception that I meant to leave him for Rathma. Naralarn’s eyes looked murderous, as he stood in front of Rathma and myself, and perhaps he would have tried to destroy one of us, had not a follower of the Shield stepped from the shadows at that moment.

Even now, I do not remember all of the events of that night clearly, for they are hazy with the tears that I wept. The Lady of Pain, herself, came there... Naralarn tried to kill Rathma, within Her gaze, and he soon was sitting against the wall blindly, with blood pooling placidly around him. I healed him, after She left, though I could not make well his blindness, or mental wounds…  Any remaining hope of friendship between Naralarn and I left with him, sometime later, as he stole away into the darkness outside of the building, leaving me with Rathma and Naerzul.

* * *

The Naralarn that I knew, both the pleasant and the brutal, is gone now, left in the time before, like so many others. My son is grown now, never having known his father… Sometime I shall tell you of how he was born, and why his eyes are that strange shade of gray. Had he been born here, without pain, and with freedom, his eyes might have been a multitude of greens; the vivid emerald of his father’s; the clear jade of the eyes Our Lady blessed me with, in the time before; and the reflection of this wood itself, with the infinite greens of life. Him and Eredis are both gone, as well, though not so far as Naralarn. They have gone on journeys, and I have hope that I will one day see them both again. And Rathma… Rathma is in this world, and still even within these lands. I found after my marriage had been broken apart, that Rathma had meant to have it be so, for his own purpose, and that of his faith. I acted more than naive to think otherwise, but for all the pain that comes to me when I think of my marriage, without Rathma, I would have continued to fall into the trap of my own mind, however strange that sounds… I will not make the same mistake again…