Merlin 2 - 16: The Harlequin Forest
M.J. Banks
In the passing time it rained many days as does it on just this day, the muddy path to each step tersely sloughed by muck and mire coursed with largely hooded cloaks coated with oil embossed. At the break of each day the next, continually the morose rains, and every set to camp a large tent coated in the same fashion above a dry site that sorcery defends with the vigilance of two sorcerers of three travelers. Four poles, three travelers, two magicians and one deluge, where after a request quod by Ana Merlin took two golden bracelets and made them one with an immanent careening slap against the soil with disregard for the laws of nature, a low effulgent glow drying the soil, lifting them and washing them in the falling rain they began to glow with luster, with legerdemain he pulled them apart. Seeker bracelets have a primordial magnetism that the pyrophile nomadically courting Ana, she a firebrand antiquarian for his low entropic immortality, whilst will never part.
Elsewhere in the woods close but furtive, Lynn of the Hazelwood mists and her sister Etain begin their entrances and discourse. There are willows in the fog, at the riverbanks, white and weeping, common and curious of their own roots as to bow before the other trees, a deer samples the intoxicating bark and the clouds lowered have fallen thrice complete and a resonant dawn fills the forestry. Imperatively dwellers shall watch two others bestride, Lynn from the sunset horizon, drawing close to the mist, and Etain from a fiery sunrise. Whereas Ana has oft an enduring flame of survival coursing through a novice soul, Etain has an eminence of fire forged by olden times. The dusty-miller and forget-me-nots suffer and wilt from many colors to shades of ash at her feet, confronting the humidity her path causes tropism of the resident flora turning or curving by movement or by differential growth both positive in ways and negative in others, in response to her font of tropic temperature. A frontlet of course leather don as crown matching her dark eyes and obsidian hair.
Each damsel looks at an outcast to the verge afore them, adroit they halt in ceremony to hold their palms against another then hug.
Lynn: “I have trouble in these silver willows, three with common magic have beaten Halle’s mercenary and seven of my better stone soldiers, try and kill them, if you fail visit me.”
As her sister concedes Lynn turns to the river with a step and stead, soon alongside stands Etain, one watching the fish of the stream, the other watching tantamount flow wary of the upstream.
Etain: “These are the trickster’s woods?”
Lynn: “Are you still proceeding with that bothersome glad-simple wedding?”
Etain: “It is the only way to gather those trite fools.”
Lynn: “And rally your tattooed jesters.”
Etain: “Will you be attending?”
Lynn: “I might pass through it.”
Etain: “You’re ever the dispassionate.”
Lynn: “Unlike you I keep my promises, despite your reckoning I like blessed unions.”
With a begrudging expression upon Etain’s face Lynn begins drifting into the forest seeping spiritual whispers into her mist at the sound of a finch, from the distance sardonic cynicism.
Lynn: “…A task I ask of you…”
Etain: “A task it is done.”
Whirling smoke consumes the dusky shadow distance of her departure, Etain’s heat burns the clouds clear over her, in heat waves she drifts toward the sunrise.