The following is the third chapter of a six part history of the Order of the Elder Orchid and its Township of Darel'horth, written by Sir Ferenold Stormshend.
Chapter 3[]
The horses running until they forgot they were horses.
It was not from an ancient poem. It was but three years old, composed from a poet who had dwelt in the city, of all places. It always had me hearkening back to the headlands, though. It was not only the image; of the frolicking mares running ‘cross the green-lit plains, it was not only the youthful boys whom chased the beasts ‘round the ever-widening valleys. Nor was it even about the grin of an old sage, or the white virgin that lied atop the ferns, a pasture extended in time which drew from the youthful fountain.
Gaze within thy heart, the holy tree is growing there.
Words from a poet of the headlands. I was never able to meet him, but I longed to. He and solemn truth, caught up in an affair of sordid love. I smiled faintly, as I trod onwards. I was so close, and I could gaze upon the river of Earl’forth. The life-river, the winding river of past nights, the stream of forgotten woes. It had many names.
It Ought to. It was the place where the first keeper of the old ways dwelt, according to legend. North, on the north side of Earl’forth, looking down upon the river: Nymphs and gorgons dancing as they sung of birth and death and the brothers of Man. I dispelled the myths; I took in the present, the red-tinged woods encapsulated by my vision. In due time, they’d give way to the verdant green of the Headlands.
This place south of Earl’forth, near the town of keel harbor, I had been here before. It was when I was merely the age of fifteen, a full ten winters ago that I dwelt here. That was before the Old Ways came to me, but I was blindly searching for them, searching for the ones whom had granted us those tales. I will not idealize it; I was in a state of terror, the shafts of sun echoing fearful awe.
I remembered; not all the tales I read were pleasant. I cherished them as a lover, but there were the mystical gorgons, the ravenous masses of flesh and tumor that were said to lurk amidst the elder forests. And there was I, a boastful brat that had wandered into an unknown realm, waiting to be stricken down, and growing all the more fitful because I was not granted a blessed reprieve.
I laughed.
I laughed because the rage and cowering, trembling bouts in face of the mist-ridden unknown was infinitely more ennobling then the pallid hands of the businessman or the dull conundrums of the clerk. And I laughed too, because now these forests were not foreign to me in the least, and because I had come to them not seeking mastery but to speak to the beings I named monsters so long ago.
Of course, the awe was not gone, it was merely transformed. Awe never truly leaves a druid, because contemplating the vastness of nature, giving yourself unto the storm, awe is all that one can truly feel. And it indeed inspires horror, but it may be vanquished, it’s not the chains of slavery one oft’ enters into in these days, reduced to beg at another man. No; you are left to your flesh against the stone.
I felt it myself, the summer wind bellowing through the forests, Earl’forth’s gales coming, shedding the tension of past seasons upon the lulling trees. I planted my feet in the ground, I held my right hand outwards with vigor, the winds complying, the winds parting as I walked forth through the ripping breeze. I could have tried to ask the storm to completely cease; to bring nature to calmness, but it needed this, the trees needed the ripping wind to grow stronger, the ferns needed it to plant their roots thickly into the earth, and I, I needed it, because I had not given up what occurred ten winters ago.