I remember...

The darkened trees, the moss, the wet loam, the clacking stones of the sheltered bank. Beside a river, beneath a skeletal tree of the Thorns and Web. There in the darkness was despair. Sheltered, on the bank. Evermore a lack of purpose. No meaning in the dark. Sheltered from the world.

I remember...

Wandering. Listless, aimless, purposeless. Surrounded by purpose, yet receiving none. The purpose of the Wyrd, that which grants purpose, and yet receiving none of my own. I dip my hands into the well of shadows, and try desperately to cling to the strands that drip away. Knowledge, power, meaning, all slide away. The shadow-stuff is hard, impossible, to grasp. I take to the Grand Hall of the Dark Heart, the cold stone benches before the darkly polished expanse of black marble. A performance on the stage, actors miming real emotion. A performance in my life, an actor miming real connection. I advance in my studies, I learn the secrets of the shadows. But there is no depth. No passion. It is understanding by rote, by memorization. My mastery of the Great Song improves, but it is a parlour trick. The Song around me is elusive. I can sing the notes, but never the Song. Never the shadows. Do I dance to the beat of a different drum? For it is not the pounding of the Drums of the Dead. I hear them, but they do not move within me. The Wyrd flows around me like a river flows around a rock. No matter how much the rock wishes to be the water, it is always a rock. It will be wetted by the water, but it will not be water, and in time, it will be worn away to nothing.

I remember...

A cave on a mountain. It is not high. The path extends in both directions, leading ever onwards, leading ever back. The mountain is well known, and well travelled, the focal point of all within and without. The meekest mortals and the mightiest Divine have trod these cliffs, all in search of something. Sometimes they are able to find what they seek. I search inside the cave, not knowing for what I look. There is a wheel, vast and colourful, filled with potential unrealized. We are alike, the Wheel and I. Awaiting someone, something, to draw out what lies in store. We are unalike, the Wheel and I. For the cave is packed with hundreds, each waving coins and shoving, jostling, pushing, and demanding a turn, a chance to see their dreams realized. No one wishes me to realize dreams. Not even I. So I stand in line, amorphous, chaotic, like the markings on the wheel. We are alike, the line and I. There is nothing to us. We exist in concept, a thing with a name. We do not exist. To call us what we are, a line, a Harbinger, a Dark Forestal, is to do a disservice to the words and what they embody. Better to call us nothing at all. And so I spin the wheel, living for a moment, and then the moment is gone. I am back beside the river, under the veil of Thorns.

I remember...

Her.

I remember...

Beneath the rotting trees that blot the light I walked, cheerful despite myself. So it often is, that I wake, a good mood around me, and I spin the wheel, and I am happy, and I go to my river and my shrine and my tears and my loneliness. The next month I wake again, and perhaps it will be different. It never is. Until it is. Then everything changes. One moment there is hopeless and despair surrounding. One moment one is a puppet, the strings pulled by a phantom, an apparition, and though the secrets are known to cut those strings and stand on one's own, it is not taken. But then she appears, and suddenly the world makes sense. The Wyrd, the power, the rebirth. The life it gives, the life it has taken. Devotion. There lies the secret. Devotion. Focus deep upon that thing, and the meaning changes, of all things. Then the Wyrd comes in, and you are reborn to it. Rebirth through the Portal of Fates is not enough. One must be reborn to the Wyrd.

I remember...

There she is. New, fresh to life. Unknowing of what awaits. Filled with purpose, a burning fire earned by the death of the shadow within, born again to the forest that embraces the shadow without. She moves with an awkward grace. I am drawn to her. Who would not be? She is filled with an unusual verve, an energy, and the movement, like a dancer untrained! It fascinates me to see such energy in a place so seemingly lifeless. But I see beyond it now. I see the life that lives beneath. I walk with her, like a mentor, and teach her of the world she now lives within. I talk with her, like a friend, and teach her of the life she now has before her. I take her to my secret place, full of colour and life and purpose, full of people and laughter and dreams, and we stand amidst the chaos and seek a purpose together. I encourage her to realize her potential, and she spins the wheel. I decide to realize my own potential, and I spin myself.

I remember...

She spins. A whirl surrounds her, a deadly grace. In the arms of the Scorpion she has practiced her art, and her awkwardness is gone, replaced by poise of a ferocious predator. In her whirl, she kicks, and in her kick, she stabs, and in her scorpion sting she slashes her training dummy, the claws of iron she wields splitting it in twain. I applaud, and the sound inspires the shadows to applaud with me. She inspires me. My art flourishes under her gaze. She looks away, and it flourishes more, that I might impress her when she turns back. My muse. I watch her movements, and I see the Song to which she dances. I listen to the Song, and hear the beat of the Drums. On my violin I play a harmony, accenting the beat, accenting the Song, accenting her. The Song flows within me, through me, from me, and to my Song, the Song of the shadows, she dances, she spins, she kicks with grace and passion. Her passion is profound, deeply instilled, facing none of the struggles I once faced. I thrive on her passion. Passion is mine. Passion for my muse, passion for the Wyrd, passion for the Song. No more do I go to the cave of wonders, for in me the wonders never cease. I feel the connection, the power, the truth. I see the glory of the Dark, and the Heart from which it flows. Ta-tum ta-tum its power thrums and to its beat I sing. To my song she dances. To the beat of the Dark Heart, the metronome by which the grand Song of Mahalla will measure its rhythms and keep time until it swallows the Basin. The glory of the Wyrd, the Glory of nature.

I remember...

She is gone. For months I have awaited her presence, to lift my spirits. I have burnished my arts to a pinnacle, and from the Peak of Avechna I have scryed for her. But to no avail. Oh muse, come and walk with me, under the twisted trees of my home! My soul cried out with longing for the sounds I had once heard, but they would not come, and once again the Song lay silent, the beat stilled, the Dark Heart that pumped the life through my veins broken. No more do I dance to my own power, but again I stand as a puppet, a doll, tied to strings, my will not my own. But the understanding, the knowledge, the madness plagues me and rankles and incites me to rage. If I am but a doll, to be but a doll, how am I to know that I am doll? To live, knowing such? And for what purpose did I enter the Portal of the Fates, did I survive their wretched tests, did I struggle to cling to life, and consequently be granted such by the triune puppeteers? I am a doll, but I know I am a doll, and I examine the strings that bind me.

I remember...

Some times, they leave, they vanish, they die, and the Fates deem them weak. We are the Forest of no Mercy, but far more Merciless than us are the Fates, who play their cruel games, throwing their pawns into the fighting ring and watching them crash into each other and grow strong, or fall and weaken. And those who weaken are thrown back again, to fight more until they crumble to dust. Or they fall, and are ready to rise again, but the Fates deem their duty done, and their threads are sheared, their Song forever Silenced. For those with a goal, No Mercy can be vicious, but it is never as cruel as those who play for fun. Cruel to those who no longer return, crueller still to those who remain. Play the game. Fall, and fall, and fall, until you are but dust, battered and broken. Or rise again. The Wyrd, the truth, the life, the death, the relife. That is what I missed, that is what I never understood. By the Wyrd we defy the Fates and their game, for they have no dominion over those of the Wyrd, who are reborn again and again by its power. Never will we crumble, never will we fall. No Mercy is not to other mortals, but to the Fates Themselves. Embrace rebirth, and stand up to the oppression. She has taught me this. Not with her words, nor with her dance, but with her death. I stand on my own. I have no stings, and now I'm free.

I remember...

There is nothing that I have that cannot, will not, be taken away. Perhaps it is my motto. "Remember all things must end." The things I have, the things I want, the things I desire. So many years now I have carried this lesson with me. "This too will pass." I sing of it with every breath, and I hear it echo amongst the trees. A cautionary tale against desire, for desire burns like an incendiary flame and consumes all, even itself, and that which is desired crumbles to ash. "These worldly things are fleeting." Don't turn from it, the pain of loss, the despair of love torn asunder. Drink it in, and from it grow stronger, for that is the strength of mortals, of those who enter the Portal, who Defy the Fates by playing their game, to have within the ability to overcome even as all turns to dust. "Death destroys all and has pity on none." I sing a song for the first that I lost, for the loss of my muse is a synecdoche of my life. Apathy turns to desire, desire turns to passion, passion is wounded by loss, and from that loss comes strength. "Thus passes the glory of the world."

I remember...

Passion. Apathy. Love. Loss. Life. Death. Rebirth. All of these things, and more, and less. They ebb and flow like the tides, but entirely unlike them. Like the whispering winds, like the crackling flames. Like the roaring earth as it quakes and shakes and rages after years, decades, centuries of staying quiet. How long can one fight the Fates? How long can one endure the suffering they cause, they inflict upon Those Who Remain as the ones they love, care for, care about are stolen and sheared from the tapestry? What remains of her, who I once called my muse, who I once felt so strongly for and was willing, so willing, to follow to the ends of the world? Not even that sentiment remains, for she is lost, gone now over a century. She has passed through the Portal and challenged the Fates at their own game, and now there is nothing. Only I remain. A book in my bag, long unused but never truly forgotten, bears my testimony of her existence. But only that. It does not bear her image, or her life, or her verve, or the full extent of the effect she had on me. Only within does it mention her, a story I have told, but that has passed, the details gone. Were it not for the words I kept, she would not exist, she would never have. And one day, I will be gone, spoken of only in legend and remembrance of Those Who Remain. But she will not be spoken of. And one day, I will be gone, and I will not be spoken of, for there will be no one to remember me either. The books I wrote will have crumbled to dust, the people I knew become food for the worms, or worse, the Soulless. Civilisations will rise and fall, the Wyrd will flow from the Forest and encompass the whole of the world, and never more will I be mentioned. Not even I will remain and she, she will be nothing to anyone, or anything.

I remember...

What a wicked game we play. Ever we fight against our own obsolescence. It is a time of great and mighty deeds, but even these will pass into nothing. There once was a traveller from an antique land, and he told of a mighty civilisation, fallen to ruin. A statue graced the entrance from the icy wastes, broken and fallen to ruin. And on its pedestal did appear the words "Behold! For in My greatness did I create all that you see. Any who would claim to be as great as I, must do at least as much." And yet nothing surrounds the statue except snow, and ice, and a few shattered rocks that might once have been something. The Fates take umbrage to the boldness of the mighty, and in time, all things will come to their end. We fight, we challenge, we stand against, and we create powers enduring. The Wyrd, I understand now. It is not a power to conquer life, or death. It is a power to challenge Fate itself. It cannot die, only be reborn, and within it are reborn all those who once called it their own. To embrace the Wyrd is to embrace eternity. And to fight, eternally, for remembrance.

I remember...

An oath. To all I have loved, to all I have lost. To all I have gained in return.

By Crow's Blood Thirst did I lust for you, and the hunger consumed me.
By Crow's Black Sorrow did I weep for you, but I will not succumb to the misery.
By Crow's False Memory did I never love you, and what we had never was.
By Crow's Dark Spirit do I move on, stronger for my loss. Always strong, always victorious.

I do not remember...

Her.

But I will never forget.