Ar'belath Illaerothil - The Ill-begotten Reveries

[Blissey]

The First Reverie
A Pallid Autumn​

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Curved bark of the Phandar tree brushes my palm. It’s moist, dampened by the thick autumnal forest air. The bark curved impossibly, coiling like snakes. They faced one way, away from the wind. Rain had just fallen, we bathed in it, washed our scents away so that we melded into the Wealdath. I watched her stalk. O’Si, mother. She was now something to be feared. Not nurturing, nor caring – a hunter now with bow and spear on her back and in hand. A curved obsidian edge, molted, sharpened stone and gem – faint flecks of blood dried its sheen. Beyond the Phandar we saw Him; white gossamer fur, antlers proud and fully grown. We pause. She gestures for silence, and I dare not even to breathe. We watch Him graze, then stride, then graze again. He is beautiful, a singular white thing imperfectly camouflaged in a sea of orange and faded greens. I plead, wordlessly, to let him go. Her eyes are not on me, she still watches Him, needle-eyed. I feel grief for Him, then young tears come, but they do not fall silently. He cranes his neck sharply as the wind blows from past our backs. He cannot smell us, yet I wish he did. She nocks an arrow, then draws. The hempen bow-string strains, her arm quivers, but she breathes out one long breath, her aim solidifies then. I yell out as the arrow flies as both word and arrow find Him. He jolts, then springs away into the orange brush, beyond the Phandar. Mother still does not look at me. We follow the scarlet trail through the Wealdath. He turned sharp left, then right, deep strides made into the mud and soil, crushed Alder leaves, some soiled by blood. Then He is gone. The mud lies perfectly still, fallen leaves untouched. Mother nocks another arrow. I feel her fear, then even more so my own. The wind shifts, blowing against us, then something sharp breaks – like bone and flesh, a sound carried by the wind. We move through the Wealdath, and into an open grove. Below the Great Oak, that white thing laid. He was torn apart, limbs had gone and entrails eviscerated. He was not eaten. He was merely killed. Plucked prematurely from His death march by another terrifying something. She looks at me now, and I look at her. She is no longer the hunter as she wipes the tears from my cheeks. O’Si plucks me from the ground, holding me close to her chest. Nimbly she dashes through the Wealdath, beyond the Phandar. My misted eyes blind the gore left to rot beneath the Oak. Some other something looked back at me, past the gored elk, past the Oak and past the orange brush and the Wealdath – the monster of my reverie.​

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[Blissey]

The Second Reverie
An Empty Grave




‘Twere the days of my youngness where ephemeral light lifted every morning across orchids, canopies and skies, flittering rays of light that varied in the shades of seasons that came and passed where tendays felt like lengthened beyond the very meaning of the word. These things are now distant somethings shadowed by empty graves and a monster that does not err. Cold sweat crosses my brow. My palm feels taut, leathery – calluses tear easily against a hastily clad spear. I call out to her, O’Si. The Wealdath responds with a low, despondent groan. She does not whisper to the trees, she never could. She does not warn me here, the Wealdath does. I tread alone, following her tracks. She moved quickly here, then slipped; I find her shiv. Jagged stone, a chipped edge but no blood. She falls here, then turns left fiercely. She is lost, fear takes her here so the scattered leaves and broken branches tell me. I hate what fear I feel for her, I hate what fear I feel for myself. The sun crested over the mountains drawing long shadows now. My mind begins to taunt me. Might I turn to see her gored body? Might I turn to see absolutely nothing? Something tugs at my foot. I jolt, spin around. My foot is caught under a bowstring. I take the bow into my hand. A fine thing, well-made, expertly crafted. My eyes focus under the dark; a blotch of blood stains the cedar wood of it. I stare now into an open mound in the ground; her grave. It is empty, save for the smattering of anemone flowers to fill the bodiless space. My head throbs, and my heart pangs with a silvery white pain that flashes in bursts. Father tells me that Arvandor awaits her; a field of endless green and a tranquil song that plays for her evermore. He does not think to know of the creature that took her, he does not think to avenge her, he does not think of the dread I felt left imparted upon her bow. The Wealdath groans again, a cry for me to relinquish what is now the past and know that nature’s course has risen and fallen like the sun and moon, for my mourning shall and should be as brief as the tendays that now fly past me with each passing winter that jades me. What then is the bounty of love if not nothing more than loss, I think. I do not bury her bow. I do not bury her at all. I let my wrath take me. I let my anger boil so as to make it steeled and immutable. I accept that now I bury what dreams laid before me, and in trade, I become a weapon for the People, and in secret, myself. The day will come when the monster falters, and on that day, the Wealdath will weep.​

 

[Blissey]

The Third Reverie
The Immutable Blade​

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Wreathed in vines and locked against mossy stone, I see it. The Immutable Blade. It comes when reveries are warped by rage and wrath. It fits ever so perfectly between memories of empty graves, of weeping kin, of the muted cries of the lost and the howls of broken mothers. It is a blade that rebukes the light of the sun and moon, a cold blade, indifferent and void of all the things that make a blade feel right in one's own hand. But it is a sharp thing. Its heft is eased when the mind is shrouded and fogged by malice. It is not a warrior’s weapon, nor is it a weapon of war; an honorable thing, something just and true. It is not made to protect, like what Corellon so desires, though it may seem so. It is not made to maim or injure, merely kill, and so therefore, it can never be sanctified, blessed or ensorcelled. The vines that hold it turn to chains, wrought iron forged in a fire that burns white hot. The stone beneath it morphs into a bed of searing magma, a deep orange ichor which the blade drinks with great fervor. The Immutable Blade is borne by a singular purpose; to quell a curse in a manner so violent and self-destructive that the wielder themselves becomes cursed in turn. What then, I think, is the nature of that curse? Not of the Y’Tellarien’s curse, no, but of the curse that this Immutable Blade would bestow upon me. But then, I think, there is no greater curse, for I will be this weapon. I will be this Immutable Blade. I will be the indifferent rage of my People. I seek no honor, I seek not even justice, for there is neither to be found in vengeance. True vengeance, a wrath that has forsaken all that was good in those that the monster has taken from me, because there is no good left now that death has taken them. Only then when bones fill empty graves, when my kin’s mourning finally comes to pass, does the blade bury itself too.​

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[Blissey]

The Fourth Reverie
Mother & The Trout​

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The Wealdath groaned, and the sun glittered between autumn’s oranges and winter’s whites. In the glen where the river curled, a secret in the wind blew with a great mystery older than Man and the People. The snow came fast. It crunched under my boot, fresh and young. The river was strong, ice on its edge fell to this strength. Where the sun cast amber rays that scattered the paling water, splashes rippled through the current, and white fins bobbed across the surface. There were so many, and they were so fast. My mother stands with me, our young selves reflected against the graying water. We watch the trout ride and swim with the power of the river.
Where do they go?
They swim to the bay and beyond.
Why?
Because soon it will be too cold, and their young must live, so they must live too.
The river helps them?
It does.
Why?
She touches my head. Her hand is rough and callused. She combs my hair, and smiles at me.
Because nature gives and takes. Come autumn's end, where winter spills into the woods, nature gives what little it has left to give until it can no longer. For afterwards, when the age grows cold and the snow falls draping everything in chill, it can only take.
And they all make it? To the bay?
Some do.
Not all?
Not all.
She kneels next to me, and I wonder. She takes my hand and nears it to the water. I hesitate, the cold bites. But her hand is warm, and I relent. We feel the fish rush past our hands. We are nothing to them. We are stones in the river bed that they glide past. She whispers against my ear.
See how they fly, my love? Eager to ride the water, free and willing. We all ride these waters to the bay, taking what nature gives, and relinquishing what it takes.
Will we make it to the bay?
Yes, my love.​

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[Blissey]

The Fifth Reverie
The Owl

We run beneath the great oaken boughs. Small feet crush the beds of pine-scented leaves. The sun dances with the swaying of branches and leaves; scattered and fleeting. The Unspoiled Woods hosts our laughter and joys, we swing from branches, and watch the creatures in all their splendor. The caterpillar, thin spines and skin speckled red and gold, sat on his finger and then slid onto a leaf. Aen’garael. He shows me the bird calls, and where they nest. But always the owl was his preference. We sneak out with the moon high, when the secret song of nature’s night called the motes of star-speckled lights from their hovels, and danced with the fireflies. We lie in waiting beneath the fern at the stump of the oak that the Great Horned Owl calls home. We watch her soar out, her young call after her urgently. In secret I see he wants to feed them too, but knows it is not his place. She returns, mouse clasped between her beak, and they feast. She watches out from their home, ever-vigilant, unblinking. Aen’garael never once takes his eyes off her. He tells me to find an animal that I would be were I not me. I think of the stag – graceful, regal, the becoming of a man. I blink between memories of the gored stag beneath the great oak, and the unseen eyes that watch me. I do not ever tell him what animal I would be. Moons pass us by, winters and summers that are strict and sometimes forgiving. He becomes a man, and mourns my mother’s passing almost as deeply as I. We tell what secret depths our grief brings before us, and we weep together. He watches the black rift form in me, but speaks no ill of it. He watches what merry once existed there in our walks in the Unspoiled Woods fade, but brings only light to little fleeting conversations. We watch the firelight crackle and dim the world around us, and he summons the words to make the world come back into focus. Aen’garael, the Owl. Aen’garael, my brother.​

 

[Blissey]

The Sixth Reverie
The Sentinel​

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Once she brought me there, the Court of Starlight, as the sun hung high above the old oaken boughs. I hold her hand meekly, and see then the mossy stone altar paled by the Protector’s likeness. Veldriesse whispered sweet and caring things into my ear. She lets free my hand and ushered me into the warm, sun-flanked shadow of the Protector’s graven image. Her eyes regarded the star speckled motes that filled the court and faded to-and-from some other secret place. She paid little heed to the gaze of one such as Him. I looked back to her, and she was consumed by the air that swells with the smells of that hidden place beyond the pine. Under the shadow, lit scarcely by the motes, Father knelt and did not pale as I did beneath Him. Somehow, He seemed taller than the oldest oaks, as bright and staunch as the sun, and as quiet as the trickling of melting snow. Father stands, and the likeness catches my breath. He places his hand upon my cheek and holds it there. The Protector watches over his shoulder, and there they become one and the same. He becomes the roots that plant the tree firm and give it life. He feels the power of the wood’s mysteries, emboldened and wizened by their unknowable whispers. In my hand he placed something cold, metallic. A silvered crescent moon.
Glide across the moon and stars with Him, Ar’belath. Open your palm to all kin so that they may soar under your wing’s protection.
Will you do this, my son?
I feel the stark pang of grief rock me, and memory ripples like a stone tossed across a river's surface. I stare up at the moon-kissed clouds that hang over Y’tellarien, the silence broken by the call of cicadas and soft weeping. I climb from my perch, atop our home, and peer through a window with darkness breached by candle light. There he sat, the effigy of Rillifane lovingly crafted by Mother clutched harshly by his paled hands. I see him weep for the first time. The roots that held him fast against the storms crack, and the wisdom of the woad so lovingly kept was forgotten utterly in the wake of his heartache. There I saw my Great Oak falter, and I feel betrayal. I do not give him the comfort any son would have. I do not dry his tears, to lessen his heartache with the company of another as equally stricken by it. I climb to my perch again, and watch Selûne glisten over the passing clouds. I hold the silvered crescent moon to it, the symbol glinting under the moonlight, and I stare until his weeping passes into Reverie.​

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[Blissey]

The Seventh Reverie
The Secret and the Song​

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The glittering sun shone rays through my window. Spring had come, and the equinox’s celebrations still rolled into the quiet hours of the morn. Mother had found her Reverie, and Father tended to the celebration’s guarding. They were strange things, these rays of light. I was intent on holding one, if I could, to grasp that silvery ray and feel the texture. My hands were so little then. I could hear the swaying of the Mother Tree’s branches, the fleeting wind that rustled Mother’s messy study, the melodic laughter of those who still drunk and danced their woes away upon the tree and at Her base. I watched the white silken strands that fluttered in the wind at our doorway billow and formed shapes that captivated me. A shadow filled the doorway then, long and blocking out what rays of sun had once captured my young attention. Long and feral fiery hair, the smell of dirt and pine, and wild eyes – ones that spoke of a deeper madness that did not yet, at such an age, frighten me so. Veldriesse. She stood staring at me for what felt like an age. Till her long fingers caught the silken curtains that fluttered in the doorway and squished them, twirled them, and danced with them in the wind. I giggled. Mother told me that others feared her, but I did not know why. I was too young to know the questions to ask, too young to see madness. I saw only her, the woman who played with the drapes and made them dance just so in the wind. Free, just as air, so mad she could catch the rays of sunlight and tell me how they felt in her hand. She giggled with me, and pranced about the room I was left in.
“Is your Mother in Reverie?” She had asked me, as she’d found her way to the floor, on her back staring up at me. I nodded my head, and giggled again at her antics. I saw then her eyes, like beads of deep black, the iris nothing more than a thin line. She bounced back up and onto her feet, and took my little hand in hers. “We should see the Nymph of Serpent Pond, you and I,” Her words had come fast, manic and discordant – as if she spoke through a choir of songs in her mind. “She will never know!” Her black beaded eyes drifted to the room my Mother held her Reverie in, “An adventure. A secret one. She is beautiful, the Nymph. A protector of Serpent Pond. I told her I would bring you, she is my friend, you see. But it is her home, so we must be polite. Yes, Ar’belath?”
I had seen her once before as she was now. The People knew little of what to do save to leave her to her flights of fancy, whimsical and manic dreams and ponderings that drunk deep into the secret songs of the Weald. Mother said she saw spirits neither she nor I could see. But Mother did not seem worried. She had always taken her as the woman she was; one who would whisper back to that secret song of the forest. I clung to Veldriesse’s back as we tread into the weald, and with her, the Unspoiled Woods became more alive than ever. There she would point a finger, and I would see all the majesty of the forest as I had never seen it before; the spheres of blue and yellow upon the apollo butterfly’s wings, the molting of the birch bark, a den of a fox and the many yellow blinking eyes of her cubs. These secret songs, so often unsung and unnoticed, she saw and breathed in as each breath that would give her life.
“Don’t be scared, Ar’belath,” Serpent Pond stretched out before us, and I clung close to her, “We must be calm, or else she will not come. You are brave. The bravest, like a bent twig in gusts of wind!” And I let free her leg, and wandered alongside her. The swampy moss pushed between my toes with each step, the ground was moist, and insects of all kinds fluttered about the dimly lit pond. The canopies had grown so thick I could barely see the blue of the sky. The pond’s waters rippled and bobbed with water lilies and frogs, fish that surfaced to feast on the banquet of insects. A gust of wind burrowed through the weald, and the canopies shook. Within the murky green waters, the light’s refraction cast colors I had yet seen or known. In those solemn and brief rays, She spotted us at the bank. Her skin was a pearlescent green, long mossy hair draped across her shoulders and body, her lips thin and eyes like sparkling emeralds, and an imperceptible look. I did not know what compelled the Nymph to come forth, I felt fear. I trembled. I was unsure. But Veldriesse stood beside me, knelt at the pond’s edge, her hand placed at the small of my back. “Isn’t she beautiful, Ar’belath? She is the pond’s mother. She was born here, this place, and all the little things in it; the bugs, the frogs, the flowers and plants – they are all her children too! So, she must protect them, she would die to do so. She is my most secret of friends!”
She swam close to the shore, the animals parted to give way to their Mother. Her emerald eyes shone under the vagrant light that flickered time and time again as the wind retreated and blew again. “Do not fear, little Ary,” Her lips parted, and her words came like the soft sound of water ripples. I felt a calm fall upon me, my own secret name, known by Veldriesse and my Mother and Father. This was our secret now. The Nymph’s hands touched my cheek, and it felt as though I had pressed it then against the surface of the pond’s waters. She held my eyes, and saw what secrets they bore. “What do you see, my beautiful friend?” Veldriesse asked. But the Nymph was silent, her thin lips dared to frown. I felt Veldriesse’s hands fall upon my small ears, pressed tight so that all I could hear was the thrum of my heart. What dazzling emeralds her eyes once were turned dark and shallow, the light that draped over her otherworldly face drew the long shadows of her frown as she spoke that secret thing she saw in my own eyes. She drifted away after all was said and done, the pond swallowed her again, returning to the womb of Serpent Pond. Veldriesse’s hands came away from my ears and her lip quivered. I searched the mania in her eyes, and found only a hollow darkness. She summoned her song again, and her smile, as small and as faint as it was, reassured me.
“Do you know what she saw in you, Ary?” I shook my head, and she cupped my face, “Your legs will be so tired! My, my! A storm! But you are in the eye of it, but so brave, little Ary! So smile! Smile for me, and be as air so I won’t forget you!”​

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[Blissey]

The Eighth Reverie
The Scar​

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Bran, Vaelia, Valen. Our breaths rise as one. “This is wrong,” Valen says in a singular, shuddering gasp, “It’s all wrong.” An immovable storm raged above, clouds of choked smoke and ash and rot. A field of thorns and death stretched out and beyond. I say then to my mind, this is no different than any shadow or pale death. I know this fear. Yet the Monster of my Reverie is no longer a beast; it is the unnatural branch of the dead elder oak, it is the cry of the crows that linger on the border of this place, it is the silence that fears even to be silent here. The storm roars above us. “We need to leave,” Vaelia demands, “Turn around, now!” I take a step, I feel the thorns prickle my ankle, I feel something crack under my boot. I was once someone, the skull tells me as I pull free from the boot-shaped cavity, but we are all empty here. I feel the ache of the silence beg to return, but even in this place of nothingness, it could find little space. We hear no Gods here. We feel none of our own gifts. The sinews of our open wounds sting and singe at the touch of the air. Bran calls to his Goddess; she does not reply. He revolts against despair. The dead here sing their dirge to an audience of nature’s carrion, they sing a plea to their Gods for succor. The ache of silence begs to return. Out here, in these fields of emptiness, of rotted leaf and smoldering dirt, she is there. She is here in this Godless place. O’Si, I say beneath my breath. I step again, and Bran is there beside me.
It’s all empty. Why would you leave? How would you hope to become whole when all you seek is empty?
I recall her face, and see the empty waste. I recall her voice, and hear the storm. I recall her touch, and feel the thorns. I recall her smell, and I smell the carrion.
I recall her love, and I feel the Scar.​

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[Blissey]

The Final Reverie​

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Ten years ago to this day, I marched to my death. I would find Her bones, I thought, out there beneath the carrion and the ash. The Scar beckoned, and I heeded it alone. Sarya had given me a gift, a hope bundled in a lie that I had woven. My mother's cloak, or so I thought. I carry Her spirit, and through that She would allow me to bring Her home. Abominations thrust from every fold of that cursed place and assailed my advance. Yet when I looked over the bones, thousands of bones of kin and animals – they all looked alike. Just as the Scar had taken them from us, it had taken too what they once were – made simple and singular. I laid down in this bed of Death and for the first time in so long, when Death began to pull at my spirit, I knew what it was like to lie beside Her in Her grave. I would die here, and my blood would bleed into the white bone and scarred earth, trickling until it found Her. I felt rage when I first woke, surrounded by my loved ones, sequestered away in the Mother Tree’s embrace – saved by friends and family. Tearful eyes and stoic masks rent by what they saw. It had taken days until I spoke, and the wounds I had bore would remain with me till I died, Fall had said. The Scar’s deepest and truest mark upon me laid bare for all to see. A pain that would walk with me at every step.

Visits came from friends and family and kin…

Bran placed in my hand a small flask of Oakbarrel brandy, “The best in Tethyr,” he said, “Drink up.” It was his wisdom that this brandy could cure any ailment, though, his exaggeration was enough to summon the briefest laugh in me. Valen was there, telling me of the recent Whiteheart attacks. Valen spared only a few niceties, but said, “Once you’re on your feet, we’ll need you out there, Ar’belath.”

Vaelia came, braiding and brushing my hair – fretting terribly but laughing so joyously all the while.

Diago came too – sneaking past the gates of the Mother Tree and into its heights where I laid, and he told me of the Row; his plans, his hopes, his dreams. A place he’d proudly show me one day when all was said and done. Before he left, he said, “All them years you’ve got? Don’t waste ‘em.”

I saw Lyrithe in the doorway. She paused there, and watched me for a time in silence. Brief pity in her eyes. “Forgive me,” I whispered, just as she had left. This was the last I had ever seen of her

Caerylia sang a gentle song, and kissed my forehead. She gave me her sister’s ring, a silver gemmed band. “So that a part of me might be with you always, little Boar. Take care of it like you would care for yourself,” She said.

Solithiel gave me her memories of home, and told me of her training. It was challenging, rigorous, but worth it all in the end. I could see in her the pride of the Protector, the very thing I had strove to have. She wore it best, always.

Aen’garael and Eruil gave me their memories too; of swinging from branches, of laughing and making merry, of the Circle Game and the creatures we would spy in the Unspoiled Woods. Then, we were silent, staring and wondering in our own ways how we had come to this, how our lives had been commanded so constantly by an unending cycle of loss. Yet where we walked, we walked together still.

Elder Nyrie sat beside me after all had paid their visitations. I relinquished my Sentinel’s laurel to her, and she understood. “Your life was robbed from you, Ar’belath. I am sorry,” She said, “Do not die here. Do not seek Her out. Live in spite of all that has been.”

Then came my father. Ynshael had said, “When he stood by your bed, you looked so alike. Weary, robbed of spirit. But I could see the strength you both clung to so desperately.” He shared little words with me, and took only my hand into his. Seeing me as I was here seemed then to bring alight the same fire I once saw then in the Court of Starlight so many decades ago. The light of the Protector shone over him so faintly, clinging to the edges of his withering frame, “So low do you lay, my child, but so high do you soar still. You have fought enough. Sleep now, but do not sleep as long as I have.”

Out of shame or out of rage, I could not give my loved ones the answers to their many questions. Grief is unquestionable. It simply is as it is, unerring and unflinching. Wise and cruel all the same. Grief is a constant. It lingers for a time, a pale shadow in the corner of your mind. When the light dims, it swallows everything if we let it.

Ynshael had been beside me all throughout my recovery; always did she sit with her back to the window, and be it moonlight or sunlight, she shone still brighter than either one. When the nightly terrors and pains came, she held my aching body and said simply, ‘I am here. I am real. You are loved, Ary. You are so loved,’ She sang her songs, plucked at the strings of her lute, and filled the quiet of my room with warmth – fleeting as it was. The days that followed were quieter, solemn. All knew then that if I remained, t’would be the death of me. It would kill Ynshael. It would shatter hope. “There is a place for you there, in the Green Isle,” Caerylia and Solithiel told me, “Out there, you can find peace with Ynshael.” When I had asked Ynshael of her thoughts, she took my hand and said, “But I would not want to part you from your home, from your family. That is as much death as it is keeping you here.” When we took our first stroll in weeks since the beginning of my recovery out into the Court of Starlight, all I saw were ghosts. Vagrant memories that flit between the shades cast beneath sunlight and starlight, gently passing phantoms of Veldriesse, of my mother, of kin lost and living only in memory. If there was peace to be found, as far-fetched as the thought was, how could I ever hope to feel it when I was so plagued by a home that felt no longer my own? Ynshael knew what I would not say. She traced her finger across my cheek, and drew crescents there, “We’ll return, Ary. When we do, we can make it as you remember it again.”

Caerylia and Solithiel made the arrangements. We limped to Y’Tellarien’s outer edges, one by one I bid farewell to the faces that had graced my life. I would remember them, every single one. Every memory, every battle fought, every tear shed, every laugh and song sung in merriment. I walk now through Evermeet’s forests. Ynshael holds my hand, and my old Scar still aches. We walk along a path carved out by nature, a clearing flanked on either side by tall, bowing trees bent by wind and this natural path. There, at its end, a glimmering white stag emerges. We pause, and we watch. It cranes its neck, and it watches us too.

It dawns on me then, as we watch that stag. While I had searched for those memories so darkened by my grief, to find the shreds of them that still held light, I had ignored what truly made Y’Tellarien worth protecting. I had ignored the greatest source of strength, a well of power that all unknowingly drew from there. I believed I endured alone, that the Scar had undone all the love and light that all that knew me had spent so long fostering. I believed all of the memories that I cherished had been warped so brutally by the Monster of my Reverie. While the Scar would never leave me, it gave me this singular truth. A song I had ignored, buried deep within my heart.

But I hear it now.​

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