Of Immortality & Ice

There are many tales of heroes come and gone, as poets let them live forever, building sagas from rumors a story lives a long time. An immortal man, living as if he had no time to spare was punished to be a statue for 1,000 years, and one day he escaped, as all immortals eventually do, to see a world memorized for the first time as what it had become. 

So he wandered with a dead language learning the world with only a few phrases taken from his captors and other prisoners, doing good for the world and making many mistakes, and in a quiet place learned of a wizard to end his eternal boredom freeing him from immortal duty. In this low place he met a witch of fire who giveth him light living forfeit to burn with his passion for her. 

In three years time she was with a child born in the first winter storm, their magic powers against the violent skies bore a child like the mother with the gift of fire, you may now this story from the people near her statue carved by the immortal man at the base of the black mountain Palidrias. They say for childbirth a mother's water "breaks," now I would have you imagine what fire would do instead. 

The immortal can recount many experiences more than there is time to hear just a few by so many that he knows, but for his family's safety he made it that only a precious few knew their life after the childbirth other than the gods and ghosts. 

Now, as trees sleep, being immortal and in that most dangerous magic of love the wife and child could live extended lives while supernaturally bonded to his soul, and they hid in the child's birthplace in the mountains titled by the unused name for the poisonous flowers that grow in the snowline. The fire magic allowed mother and daughter to burn away the toxins and the immortal would die and wake from time to time, learning that even having walked the world he lived in a place unknown to him. 

In three years neighbors were met, traditions of fire magic celebrated in old ways that humans and most cities wouldn't. Terribly, three years later the child became sick, with magic it was postponed and this new tale of loss to the immortal frightened even he who is usually without fear. The mother and her coven tried to burn the illness and the child's blood would not purify, and so they tied more of the immortal's essence to their auras. It almost killed him, not waking until the spell was diminished. 

Offering to sleep for the child's life he rested in a silo, to channel him his immortality required offerings of life that would wilt in his presence, and the child was not dying, but not healing, and in only days what things once wilted now quickly became ash. 

The mother became rage and fire as one and drew a circle on the ground and summoned that wizard that her immortal husband once sought, promised, and abandoned. The magician was thrown from the ground with a tear and a laugh and held accountable for all things in time, whose quick response was to offer her a diamond made of pure coldness and night sky to offer the immortal. 

For reasons of honesty, there is too much to understand in this story to explain both why and how a puddle in mud became a mirror, from it three men without mouths crawled from it without ripple, which then became muddy waters again, and the druid has better places to be right now. 

The immortal man grasped the cold-star and woke, fear-driven eyes he worried his awakening meant his child's demise he ran toward his home, the mother chased behind. 

The child was getting much worse, more as they ran, the child began burning in magical fire to heal and running outside to breathe, seeing the stone ran to them, taking the stone and collapsing. A silence consumed everything and they watched as flames died and child rose, black veins receding toward the neck until the eyes black. 

"Are you well, can you see?" they asked.

"I can see...I can breathe..," smiling first in weeks, "but I am, ...warm?" she asked, almost complaining. To relieved to worry they hugged their child.

The mother asked, "Can I see the stone?"

When the mother took the diamond it burn her deeply, matching her pain with her magic fire to heal the child, intending to make holy fire burned a shade of green, making the wound worse. 

The immortal moved the child away taking more damage to his clothes than any danger, asking the mother, "Are you healing?" 

"I am, not by that diadem shard," she replied, healing herself, holding his hand. 

They watched as the child quickly learned what still looked like familiar fire made mountain grass brittle and water eventually freeze. Putting the stone on the ground made the child sick again, troublesome veins and making bones to strains. Putting it to their decision that if the child was warm they would move up the mountain and left for a tethered ridge with a common breeze. 

It was only days before winter, in a few weeks they had to build a cabin where the treeline meets the stone of the world itself, and still the child would often sleep outside, such an altitude that even their resilience needed fire to cook and keep warm, but mostly for comfort. 

The stress caused hate, the most common of elements, to be uncovered and derided, and caused a contemplative tear from the child that quickly turned to snow and drifted into the wind. This mixture of magic and melancholy made a sound only deities of ice can hear, of wolves and spears in distant echoes.  The immortal opens the door to the rising storm of the summit skies and the child is gone, footsteps and heavy sleeted wind he chases his daughter austerely for the track's path could erase it. 

He followed the tracks until they vanished, in the growing storm the mother also went looking for the child, running until escaping the snow into a clearing of blue sky and sunlight. He is snow-laden and damp, his child sat on the ground to the side and one hand, smiling at the immortal man. 

"Fair greetings, my father, you are very snowy," the child said.

"Out of breath, ...out of my mind, ...who in all the hells, ....are you, ...?" he gasped.

There stood a woman, dressed as priestess throwing the seeds of the poisonous flower on the ground as would a farmer on a spring morning.

"

"Your child has something that doesn't belong here," she said. 

He replies, "And again, who are you so I can decide to run with my child."

"I am Skade, this is my storm, every stnowflake is mine, and there is a bear in your house."

The immortal kneels, "I know your name, in your audience I ask you heal my daughter for the diamond."

Discontentedly, "It is not a stone, it is an eye, and there is no cost, one cannot keep things from me."

"Then please, my child is sick, my 'little torch' is sick, unable to fight the poison flowers like the wizards and witches, heal this child or tell me what it is that I can fight with my aching heart!"

"Witches of fire suffered a plague when their home-world split during Ragnarok, they called it "the night root," and unable to get a cure from another realm they nearly died. Your child is descendant of them, altho it is rare the risk is more so from being surrounded by the green poisonous flower."

"I am well aware of the worlds having been, but i cannot guess who has the cure, that stone is the only thing keeping 'the child' alive"

"'Cure?' You will sadden at the pain, and you will hate the reason."

"I am ready for everything when by living I am not alone, one way or another."

"Taking the stone, the child will not enjoy, curing the child, you will not enjoy."

Skade walked to the child and raised her hand to the immortal, freezing him in his footsteps almost unable to move. The trees stood still watching snowflakes hover, she knelt over the child and tore it from tiny hands. The more the poison turned the child's veins against them, the more the child screamed. The immortal can move slowly, but Skade notices him as he almost cut her throat. 

"An immortal? in this forest? we will freeze your time more so for your patience," she said. 

She slowed the immortal to a total stop, the toxin moved faster thru the child, and Skade began pulling out the black veins faster to compensate, pulling at threads like fates. A very black blood was everywhere and the child didn't move when Skade finished. 

Skade stood and release the immortal man from frozen time, the wind blew, the storm circled and he knelt at his child. 

"What have you done!?" he asked.

"Your hearts may beat as one again, " she said, but then her voice became many voices with the powers of time and space, "Stand, give yourself selflessly, and the child will live!"

"I surrender to the cosmic balance."

"Sleep," she said as she touched him on his face. 

He fell directly to the rugged and jagged ground, into he bloodpool with the child. The mother, burning dark colors to survive the storm in squall surrounding the the other two, enters the utopia without cloud or shadow. Seeing the mother's face Skade collapses that utopia, the storm retakes the entire summit in earnest. The sky diamond is gone, the witch's fire is all that protects them. 

Merlin 3:16 “Porcelain Heart”

Merlin 3:16 “Porcelain Heart”

A ragged violently drawn surface, never carved by iced peak the rough terrain is a summiting area named Aordngtoumh on the oldest of maps, a mountain where the scarcity of rock goblins dare not hide. The sky is blue as the height reaches, near the top a small plateau resides the size of a yard, a smooth and grey clearing abraded somewhat like a bowl and in it bathing is a giant egret the weight of three horses, the collected water filled with the day’s rain so oft of heights. Preening with sense of stamina it flings water when it can, trying to bury its head in shallow water a task encumbered by the length of its beak, its wrists occasionally rubbing over eyes in the ways some have seen cats do. Nearby considerably accessible in terms a giant radiant white heronshaw understands a nest made of dead trees, adjacent the water is a cave entrance.

A red lady exits the caverns, suited for work, her gloved hands have exposed arms to the hooded shawl over her shoulders by her skin the color of a dark tree, the goods she carries are bound in a muslin sheet wrapped and at end with the limbs of bows uncovered. She stands before the heron, raises her left hand, the bird stands primly, and walks to her and bows for her to lift her belongings onto it. All to secure them with a belt of her possessions and foists herself upon it. Her hood she throws back to further reveal her face young with eyes of contrast hazel and hair of auburn fire brightened by many hours of sky and sunlight and station. They lift with grace swift and silently from hearthstone unto the heavens, trailing water from laggard avian legs, soon hiding in the baby-blue sky.

Troy meanwhilst rests on the phoenix, hiding from the ground his waking time to practice vaunted maneuvers and in even sleeps with phoenix Alerion in a field of healthy roses, burned in a small circle to nest until morning for a breakfast of rosehips and ash. On the second day, Troy sleeps in flight and in spotting a deer, the phoenix majestically lands without waking him, only to buck him abruptly to the side and ground to wake him. After arguing with the bird for a matter of minutes, he notices the stag in the distance and practices his longshot, as much as his manna, hitting the deer with one distant arrow let. On the third day, he trains with Alerion for combat, in how to defend against each other by sword, man, or arrow. In boredom, they take to flight and this day fourth find another in the sky.

Troy turns in flight away, due to without Merlin and others, his desired precaution-unattempting slight by unknown fate of peril allure.  The sky is patient as winds are calm so soon with day irradiant and horizon at bay of endless blue sky the warmth of sunlight in his palm. Nowhere in plight his morn the night reverse his sight recurs seeing tother in flight at his extreme peripheral to his right. Toward him, she flies and a smile in her eyes as she comes to pace and shows her face to he who spoils to speed and impress from this trivial of conventions. Toying with him she and her aigrette hesitate, letting him to think he can of her outfly, outré she turns white bird with speed absurd to him, with some helical display thru the airs across the meadowland, keenness and chase of flirtation, landing to speak with ease amongst the breezeless trees.

She, pulling her hair behind her ears, begins to speak in the warmly cold language of Niflhel, which he does not speak or understand. He rashly deduces she is giving greetings of her name or humble salutations to the phoenix, as her beauty keenly smites him. He confidently walks and impetuously kisses her, a humble moan of desire passes from her lips onto his. They inhabit emptiness with complete surrender, the miraculous something emerging from ethers of apparent kismet, the phoenix and egret walk away, the firebird twisting neck to look at the heron’s long legs and strange gait, into the air they fly, first the light then the dark as new lovers tryst.

It is by the afterthought of later he begins to attempt conversion of his name and ideas with a patting of his chest and gesture to her.

Troy: “I am Troy, you?”
Kylesa: “Kylesa Mara, bowyer, stringer …fletcher –“
Troy: “You speak the language.”
Kylesa: “It expected, I huntress the rooks off Niflheim, it helps me catch your soul.”

She crawls on his body, kissing and other intricacies, bareheaded into a furlough of worlds separated by waves of light and fields of erstwhile sight, and closer night.

Troy: “What would you know of bows?”
Kylesa: “Is first to a strong wood.”

She situates herself in his embrace, kissing him again, then sits upright and holds her hand into the air in hopes her egret returns, it still flies toying with the phoenix in speed but less agile in maneuvers, Troy slightly sits upright with his elbows locked and hands on the ground. Looking for the fliers, he lifts one hand into the air and snaps his finger, Alerion cuts away to return to him, a turn the air to burn.

Troy: “We must draw its attention with passion and fire.”

They renew sophisticated coitus until the phoenix lands with first its talons and its cubit-reversed elbows, secondly followed by the graceful landing of the majestic white egret. She whistles for her avian just as he has many times to his. Wrapping a blanket on her skin, she speaks.

Kylesa: “Seller longbow and standard armaments, forests bower so may bowyer and string-maker hemp.”

She rises to walk robed solely around her torso under arms to just around her hips and walks to her creature, persuasive to catch his thoughts from any elsewhere.

Kylesa: “And fletcher added importance, will give you one mine…there are none more it like.”

She drinks secretly a tiny bottle of something warm and red, Troy under coverture takes the bow in the light of dusk, he as at loss of words and again stricken by the beauty of its constructing, the moonlight to its grain, figure, and curves as much as hers as she disrobes and poses to enthrall him. The moonrise bathes the expansive meadow in rays of light behind her that match her wind-swept hair and fade into the colors of her complexion.

She kisses him again and a state of intense unnatural passion consumes his thoughts more than swiftly at a momentum alas too quick for him to notice his collapse into sleep. His body rolls back and head collapses into the meadow grass, in her periphery she notices Alerion enquire suspect so she pretends to ask why he sleeps and feigns minute pomp insult, ever cautious of the phoenix, petting its beak then leaves in the dark post haste.

Proceedings ostensibly lead her back to the cave that she had departed days four ago, it has rained and the water pool recollected slakes avian and aviator, into the cave she enters without light or torch. Thru the darkness she wanders with her hand on the wall for the silence that follows is for none and to all, that this darkest place has no shallows for the walls to let in moonlight her pace constant and an unseen calm on her face. Nearing the light of fires lit by hexed diamonds in clear oil and smokeless heat to fill a cavern by the climes of clandestine opulence the likes of witches, demonic grimoires, and Sino, full to intimidating armored untrustworthy armistice.

Sino: “A soon returns you have not safely.”
Kylesa: “It is done to know. Soon his hunger for my affection will match our own.”

They kiss with passionate affection with prowess of lovers, while holding her she pulls her face from his, and in his arms waiting for him to speak in adoration redolent he stares in memory.

Kylesa: “You don’t know when to silence yourself, do you?”
Sino: “Lesa, spirit, nay soul, of my song, I pride your gift, do tell me how it went with you in the arms of another.”
Kylesa: “I spoke Niflhel and as your magisterial plan, he bought more than he can handle, and even took the bow as you had hoped.”
Sino: “As I knew would be.”

He carries her step and tosses she onto a bedding of silken quilts and down beneath pillows, and smiles of pride and certainty, removing armor as he speaks revealing scars so much a many, the likes of surviving the death of a thousand cuts abruptly.

Kylesa: “What you need now? A Niflhel doll perhaps?”
Sino: “Poison, so strong the naïve fear the fang from whence it was drawn, verily its toxin and blight to air that it should dismantle even evil men.”
Kylesa: “I am what you need.”
Sino: “You are the best of both worlds.”