Post by Wilhelm Opens-the-Way on Feb 12, 2011 18:10:11 GMT -8
I woke on a hill beneath a starry starry night sky. The quality of the light didn't come from anywhere that made sense to my eyes then. The ground had it. The stones had it. Whisps of the air had it. Puddles of water flickered and rippled like neon fire.
Everything was alive. Everything moved. While I got to my wolf-boy feet, still clutching my father's broken saber in my equally broken hand, the hill beneath me shifted slightly, curling up un itself to better rest where it lay, a sleeping giant annoyed that I had landed like a falling star on it's broad back.
Around me lay crystal spires and glittering stars swirling in a swimming sea of color, and far, far away, in the sky a glittering blue-green orb. Earth.
I wept, because I had died, a fact of which I was certain in those first few days, because it was so beautiful, because my broken hand hurt.
Glistening blue Lunes glided around me, translucent blue nymphs, smiling and giggling coyly before dancing off into the hills. The spirits of animals too, trotting over to investigate, a pair of beavers, a dove, a turtle, a fox - a stag lifted his head behind the hill, his white antlers glowing and flashing with color, while a hawk wheeled overhead, eyeing me and scaring away the spirits of the field mice that had burrowed up to meet me. They paused and sniffed, darted away if I moved too suddenly, and eventually they too left. The stag paused, the last of the animal spirits to leave, before galloping away over the hill.
I was alone. I was tempted to follow the beautiful Lunes to the East, but chose instead to follow the route of the stag. Something in his soulful eyes spoke to me. The hawk... (or was it a falcon?) continued to wheel above me in the glittering, Umbral sky. I walked for a day before I found the small bannered tent upon the hill, and met the Troll that would soon make me his beast of burden.
