Rainbow Orchid

A faint black mist from sandy ground arising,
Pale lilacs, purple aroma enfolding,
Silver moonlight on young sweetgrass shim'ring.

Yellow buttercups push cheerfully up through red stone,
Sturdy bark, brown guard 'gainst peril wind-blown,
Merry snowflakes dancing white zephyr-thrown.

Summer sands are gold as leaves autumnal,
Waves of blue that flow persistent, gentle,
Nurture trees of vibrant green eternal.

- - - - - - - - -

On its own this song might not seem any more than a jumble of images that hint
at, but do not resolve into, an impression of some colourful beauty unglimpsed.
Those studied in the mysteries of Wildarrane might discern more significance
behind the words when they hear the song and recognize its melodies. Still
others, a scant handful who were part of the events that inspired the song,
might sense the coherence and origins of the images within the words. But
heretofore, only two people in all the Basin have had everything needed to
appreciate the song in its full intent: the one who wrote it, and the one for
whom it was written.

It is best to begin with a consideration of the origins of the song, in the
events of the year 208. Only a few people were privileged to be part of
goings-on which seemed humble at the time, but proved far more invested with
hope than any of us glimpsed. How simple, almost trivial: overabundant
wildflowers causing wanderers to stumble, and a simple bard seeking a way to
restrain these exuberant flowerings of colour and beauty, and requiring
assistance.

To do this required criss-crossing travel through the Basin to a series of
locations. These were not places of grave importance to the history of peoples
and nations, or places of power to shift mountains. Each place was just a single
hue in the portrait of the beauty of life, one note in life's song, quiet on its
own but part of a symphony of life in the ears of those who choose to hear it.

At each place, one colour, one part of the symphony of life's beauty and
diversity, was absorbed into a crystal orchid. Ten in all, and seeming like a
scattering of random images to most, but together they produced a rainbow orchid
that became known as the symbol of Lady Maylea, Bloom of Serenity.

The voyage, and the orchid, and the places, and their colours and notes, sing
the same song as the Goddess herself: that beauty is not merely an appearance,
but part of the weft of life itself, a gift that most of the world takes for
granted but which was bought and continues to be preserved at terrible cost.
That the joy in finding beauty in the world, and the responsibility of
preserving that beauty and even creating a little more, are one and the same.

In seeking better to understand this, I considered the wisdom and
responsibility that is embodied in Wildarrane alongside the beauty of life's
song, and tried to find the point where all these ideas intersected and were
revealed as parts of a whole. Every step in that journey, every melody in the
songs of our ancestors, every colour in the rainbow orchid, they are all one
thing. This song was intended to unify them and make plain the synergy of
concept to the listener. Or at least to the author.

- - - - - - - - -

A faint black mist from sandy ground arising,

All of Wildarrane derives from one underpinning melody, the song of
the Ancestral Call which evokes the wisdom and the protection of
one's ancestors, who rise up from the mists of time hearkening to the
call. With this song we revere the dead even as we call them back to
the world of the living for a time of service. The colour black is
oft associated with the dead, and some imagine it to be not a colour
at all; but just as death is the matter of which life is made, black
is the colour of which all other colours are born. On our travels,
the black mists rose from the bosom of the land itself like a
protective shroud, but also like the first principle on which the
other colours would find their basis.

Pale lilacs, purple aroma enfolding,

Beauty is sometimes subtle, only showing itself to those who look for
it; sometimes evident, drawing attention to itself; and sometimes so
loud and clamorous that it makes one wonder if it is genuine. Pale
lilac heather lacks even the mild showiness of its namesake cousin,
the lilac bush, whose fragrant blossoms sing in many colours. Yet
even the humbler heather shimmers with a Pale Beauty that is proud
without being boastful, just as the song which lends strength of will
in its quiet confidence.

Silver moonlight on young sweetgrass shim'ring.

Luna's Melody is one of growth, for Luna represents the beginnings of
life and all the potential locked up in the blooming of a newly sown
seed. Under its influence, the growth and healing in living things
are strengthened, drawing out more of the potential that was with
them when they were new. The silver light of Mother Moon takes on as
many aspects as she herself does, but when it shines on the youngest,
sweetest, and most humble of plants, the colour is that of newness
itself, the vibrance of youth and the hope that comes with it.

Yellow buttercups push cheerfully up through red stone,

This stanza alone combines two of the colours, in part to fit ten
colours into nine stanzas, but for more than that. The yellow of a
buttercup is the yellow of the light of Father Sun, in its purest
form, stripped of anything but the warmth that gives life, whose
exuberant rising at dawn and flamboyant setting at dusk are like the
world itself in celebration of another day. But such celebration
needs must be depicted against the backdrop of a firm foundation; it
is only when rooted to the bedrock of the land drinking in that
sunlight that one can lift one's voice and spirits in joy. That is
why a festive colour like yellow looks cheerful most when it is shown
in contrast with a more grounded colour like that of red granite. We
see the yellow and it cheers us; the dark red goes unnoticed, but is
just as necessary.

Sturdy bark, brown guard 'gainst peril wind-blown,

Ask any child what colour is the forest and he will say green, but
ask what colour he uses to paint drawings of the forest, and he will
add brown. And the truth is that brown is more the colour of the
forest than green is, for half the trees are green only half the year,
but almost all the trees are brown all the time. Leaves bring life to
the trees, but bark is what keeps the trees alive, a sturdy and
untiring protection against the thousand harms that visit trees every
day, from wind to pest, from axe to gnawing teeth. Bark is old and
young at the same time; trees often shed bark, and it is stripped
away by weather and the rubbing of staghorn, but when it grows back
it grows from the oldest part of the tree, as it was the first part
formed. The song of the Spirit Guard protects the singer in the
embrace of his ancestors, which, bark-like, fall to the ravages of a
hostile world to spare that which is warded, and then spring back up,
new and old at once.

Merry snowflakes dancing white zephyr-thrown.

The wind that strips bark from the trees and carries the violence of
air is the same wind that bears seeds to faraway places where they
might find new purchase and new hope. A milkweed seed, born on a
zephyr of spring, might find itself buried in winter's deepest drifts
of snow in a remote place only to take root with the next spring,
preserving in its new growth the life of the plant which shed the
seed into the wind. How, then, must Nintoba have felt, leading his
people from their ancestral home on a frightening journey to the
colder lands of the north? Behind, the wind blowing black clouds of
death incarnate; ahead, the same winds blowing pure white snowflakes
like milkweed seeds finding new lands in a new home. Nintoba's Song
is the bitter sweetness of what must be left behind and lost, and the
fragile hope of life in the cold of a new place, forbidding, strange,
and cold, yet pure as snow dancing in the clear air of winter.

Summer sands are gold as leaves autumnal,

The wind-blown voyage of a seed is the turning of the seasons, as
seen from the viewpoint of one turning along with them. Most of us
imagine ourselves to be standing still as the seasons roll past us
one at a time; but a seed knows that it rides the seasons and moves
with them, as in part do we all. The Rhythm of Nature is easy to
mistake as a progression from start to end, as the phases of Mother
Moon; or an ever-turning circle. But as we see on the Ethereal Plane,
the seasons are both sequential and simultaneous at once, and what is
in one of them is in the other, changed but still preserving its
identity. The golden light of summer sands, so full of warmth, is a
reminder of the gold of autumn leaves coming soon after, and thus, a
reminder of the rhythm of the seasons itself.

Waves of blue that flow persistent, gentle,

And yet on the sands of a shore by summer, the sparkling blue of the
water is just as full of sunlight as the sands. The water,
ever-moving as it is driven by the winds, laps against the land,
soaked through with the fire of sunlight. For just as the seasons
cannot be understood in isolation from one another, the elements too
can be only misunderstood, as by those city-bred mages who diminish
them in the name of purifying them, when they are separated. When
water is part of the world around it, it speaks of the ancestral duty
of life to continue to live. It is not hurried and unwise in
impatience like cityfolk; every obstacle makes it change its path.
But water sees the ancestral past and thus into the distant future;
it knows it will arrive, and that in time, every obstacle will be
worn away, no matter how mighty, by the perseverance that is our
Ancestral Fealty, our solemn unending duty to survive. The wisdom of
days gone by speaks of the wisdom of being not seduced by today but
with an eye on times far away and long to come, when all obstacles
will have been worn away.

Nurture trees of vibrant green eternal.

For ultimately, life more than anything is what must be preserved.
Without the unending preservation of life itself, nothing else
matters: not power, not gold, not science, not art, not purity, not
beauty, not even death. The tree that stands strong and tall, that in
merely living provides shelter and food and a home to countless other
things which live in its embrace, is not merely a living thing: it is
the eternity of life itself, and thus, our only hope. Green may speak
of that which lives on through adversity, like the holly and spruce,
or of that which is knocked down and rises again, like the fern and
maple, but either way, green is the colour of the Eternal Tree, whose
health is not merely its own but the health of all others. Those who
forget the debt they owe to the tree do so at their own peril, and
the peril of all around them. But trees can survive even the folly of
those who take trees for granted. The tenacity of life is the source
of all beauty, as it is the source of all of everything.