Across The Seas: Elgaladwen's History IV

Our Lady forgive me… She flashes past my mind’s eye: a woman, a tree, a great bear. I have done wrong… I see Eredis’ gaunt face wet with tears, old human. Time shifts backward: the face is young, immortal, wrong. Evalius reaches out to touch me, his hand stinging like that of his Lord. Forgive me… Naralarn smiles, human still; baby Galathil lies dead in his sphere. Rathma watches, ever smirking. I am but mortal; I have made a grave mistake… Wilrayen looks to me sadly, and once again I am with My Lady. The centuries of memories play inside my head. Death take me! My silent voice screams.

I awake, as always.

The now familiar cold sweat drenched me, causing my shift to cling to my body in a most uncomfortable fashion. My heart was heavy in my chest, though it was not the first I had dreamt this dream. How many years had it been since I left the shores of Xenobia? Two in the least, though I had hardly been keeping track as the days spiraled into weeks and months. Such a short time it had been, the faces and memories still so fresh, but who was to say it was the same? The Dark Father could have taken Quant by now, or Lord Mythandor Shadowport. All those I remembered could be dead in the time I’d been gone; the wars were fresh then…

No, no. That could not be. I would have heard some word. Removed from those lands as I might have been, I was not inactive or deaf.

As I rose and quickly dressed for travel even more thoughts came unbidden through my mind until I felt utterly mad. I had left Xenobia; I was not going back. I let those words run through me like a litany as I made my way from the house that had once belonged to my greatest mentor and set off on a path through the great wood.

“A horse, Maman!” The girl’s shrill voice plucked me from my reverie as her pudgy fingers clasped at the Symbol that hung from my neck. I continued to wrap her small leg tightly with strips of linen, her voice doing well to bring me back to the present.

“’Tis actually a unicorn, my sweet girl. Perhaps you will see one someday!” The mother looked on with worry still, though she let herself smile as I explained as much as I knew about the sacred creatures. The girl had fallen from her explorations atop a tree, her leg snapped, though as I uttered a final prayer and stood, the little one seemed to have hardly a care in the world, her leg least of all.

“What is your name, Lady?” She called out after I had conversed with the mother as to rest and proper care of the leg.

“Elena, good child. Your mother told me you are called Marigold? I used to have your namesake growing in my garden of old. Near as pretty as you.”

I no longer felt strange about using the name I was given at birth, even in Xenobia My dear brother, Aramil, would still slip sometimes and call me such. I imagined that this would have been my life had nothing happened to my village. Like my mother before me, I would have been Healer, traveling to the other holdfasts and villages nearby to offer my services when my mother was gone. There would have been no Elgaladwen, no title of Invoker upon my humble head, nor the shame that had blossomed upon losing it during my frantic flee across the seas.

I should have been content. But as ever before I was not; always reaching for what I ought not to touch.

Some months later I wandered to where the village I was born had once stood. It had been rebuilt and reoccupied sometime during the days I had first set foot on Xenobia, though not by my people, who seemed to be lingering less and less in these areas. Humans, they were, though I had long ago set aside my arrogance in thinking them inferior to those of Elvenkind. I still find it hard to believe I was capable of such folly, but there it was.

So happy I was to see the place full of life again. Part of me dared to hope that Aramil might have returned here, as I had not seen him in quite a few years, or even less likely that my son might have passed through.

It did not come as a surprise that neither had been seen, which only made me long for my old friends in Xenobia all the more…

Neither good or evil could survive without a balance to give them guidance.

So read the words of The Mystical Hand of the Forest, My Lady Ariel’s highest Order.

I ran a hand across the page to smooth the old parchment. This small book I had started at the time of my induction, listing leaders past and present. Alliances, wars, things I found to be of interest. My eyes stared at the words, though they had been seared to memory long ago.

I looked outside to the multitude of old oak trees that made their home just beyond my door, their leaves once more metamorphosing from green to the variegated colors of the Autumn.

Something else quickly caught my eye.

A woman with skin brown as bark and twig-like hair the color of moss-covered branches stood with her arms against the trunk of a tree, her ancient eyes staring straight at me. She had not been there a moment before, I was sure, but that was not what startled me. Never before had I seen Dryad, Nymph or any other manner of woodland creature in this forest. For whatever reason, they had ceased to show themselves in these lands ages ago, preferring places like the Sylvan Wood in Xenobia, among others.

The book clattered to the floor in my haste to be outside, though I needn’t have hurried, for she stood perfectly still, waiting for me to come to her.

“When are you coming back to us?” Her voice was the wind rushing through thousands of leaves; water tumbling over jagged stones.

“I…I had been thinking of returning…” My eyes were drawn to her fingers which melded into the tree as if she was simply another large knot upon the trunk.

“When are you coming back to us…?” She asked again, and this time I knew she was not speaking of returning to a place.

“I never left-“ I started to say, but she smiled and the voice of the trees cut me off.

“Give your heart back to Her. Your mind, your body, your soul. Not just your healing hands, Elena-Elgaladwen. Remember Her embrace…” She was gone quickly as she had come, her form melting back into the tree as if she had never been there at all.

And here I am. Our Lady is forever the most merciful and wonderful of the gods, taking care of Her children even when they fail to take care of themselves, and to give me another chance. I know Her wrath exists as well; I have seen Her in anger, and it would terrify me more than the Dark Father, should that anger be turned upon myself, for I know the power of Nature.

I know the power of Nature and of Balance and I revel in it. The blind fools that disregard that power would do well to catch a taste of what the world would be if there was nothing to counter Dark and Light, nothing to keep the world green and living, nothing to keep one alive.

So long as I draw breath, longer if I may, I will see that they never truly do have to find out.