Thrice Advent chapters 25 and 26

                                                           Chapter Twenty-five

A Stranger in the Unwritten Land

The Author, Araden, and Jon Esierk stood together, silent in the pondering place and stared at the painterly beauty of The Unwritten Land.  Jon led his brother forward out from the shade of the portal into the birdsong.

‘I’d forgotten this place; I have been to long upon Esplomeoir. Jon it is time-I will lose myself in The Unwritten Land. Lose myself so well that the portal will also be lost’

Jon laughed. ‘Just like you. If things ever got too tough you were around one minute, then the next leaving us to pick up all the pieces.  Lose yourself! Don’t treat me like a fool. For you that is impossible.  When the storm passes you will find yourself, all smiles, on Esplomeoir snapping at everyone if you don’t get on with it you never will.’

‘Don’t laugh at me.  I loved Lebin more than the Story.  Lebin was my only friend – you Crow. Where were you? Always flitting about hither and thither. A visit once in a while…but, oh no.’ The Author tried to raise his voice, but his anger faltered and he walked to a crimson flecked slope of a hill.  He sat and removed his boots and let the flock of flowers about him tickle at his pale feet. Jon watched- he seemed a child at play- until Araden lay back, grey hair spread about on the pillow of the hill and his pale face lined with hieroglyphs of age and troubled thoughts.

‘I’m sorry about Lebin.  How did Aflarien kill him? How did he even get to Esplomeoir?’

This time it was The Author’s turn to laugh.

‘How do you think?’

‘Our little brother?’ The Author nodded. ‘I suppose he allowed Aflarien into the Temple.’

‘No Aflarien possessed him- he was nowhere near Esplomeoir, but on Ashenmoire.  Too quickly has Aflarien learnt to harness the power of the Rose Oil. With it he cracked an opening into the tidalverse. Aflarien swam into Rabranath’s confused head and through him strangled Lebin.’

Jon was worried that The Author was going to start crying. Anything but tears.  The memory of Araden’s last tantrum was so fresh in his mind it might have occurred only a moment ago.

‘I will go somewhere else, somewhere thought has not touched, or empty eyes seen.  I have done enough.  I should have died with Lebin.’

‘So you’ve done enough,’ Jon was exasperated, ‘and you’re off on a little holiday.’

‘Yes. So listen to me.  You can treat me like a child as you usually do, but it won’t work. I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not going back there.’

Jon decided to try persuasion. ‘Brother, without you there steering our Story the Menerth will fall into countless years of tragedy, without you there to protect the Omelyns they will finally die.  Is that what you want? You want Aflarien and the unAuthor to destroy them, those you have protected and nurtured through all their lives, is that it? Without you the golden web of the Omelyns will be torn away from the Universe. The Story, the real story will end, it would have been better that it had not been brought from the imagination. The Story needs you my Lord. Aflarien will pollute it; destroy it, even if it means his own destruction. He will turn the Story into an empty tale, so soon forgotten, and the tidalverse and worlds within will not hear of the glory of the Omelyns. Is that what you want?’

‘I don’t care.  Without Lebin what reason is there continue? I remember before he became my Scribe.  Those times were endless, my existence was the Story and my life was barren of joy. He was the greatest of companions; he made me real, not just the Author, but a man again. Lebin reminded me how to laugh. If he had not been with me I would have forsaken the Omelyns long ago. Now Jon, leave me alone, or at least stop going on. It’s over. That’s that.’  Araden closed his eyes.  The air of The Unwritten Lands bristled with Jon Esierk’s anger.  He could not bring himself to speak, to yell, to scream. He wanted so much to grab his brother by the ear, as if he were a naughty schoolboy and drag him back through the portal to Esplomeoir where he belonged. He wanted to say, the Story is not just yours, but ours, all three of us.  Rabranath and I have helped and hindered you right from the beginning.  You do not have the right to give up. The words hovered behind Jon’s lip. Yet he bit them back as he looked at Araden. Jon wondered how old his brother was. The Story was begun when they had been children. Now Araden looked ill with age.  The Story had driven their brother, the unAuthor, mad, and himself…? Yes, Araden had been right, he was always here and there in the Story, unraveling one knot of the plot then off in another direction, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. Yet he had always felt happiest as part of the Story, not one of its architects. If there were to be no more Story, where would he belong? Definitely not here in the beautiful emptiness of The Unwritten Lands at Araden’s side. Jon tried to remember his life before the Story, surely he had friends then or other interests, but he could not recall them. Jon wanted to tell his brother that without the Story he was nothing, but there was something in the colour and slackness of the Author’s face that stopped him. Jon was then startled by a thought that was almost intuitive.

Is he dying?

Araden had nurtured the Story, sacrificed all his energy and imagination to it.  He made beauty with his words, he had created the long destiny and fate of the Omelyns and cradled it in a world he alone had imagined, surely Araden should be prized above all beings, yet there at the dark smudges at the corners of his eyes pain lingered.  It seemed for a moment as Jon stared at Araden that his brother was already dead. Jon saw the emptiness unfold before him.  He could never take the Author’s place, he had neither the right nor the ability and all that he had predicted earlier would become true, not because Araden had given up, but because he had given all he could to the Story and it had killed him. Jon cried his brother’s name.

The Author was startled from half-sleep and he smiled foolishly at Jon, he face glowing with embarrassment as it once done eons ago when at a birthday party he taken a piece of Jon’s chocolate cake without asking.

‘So. You’re still here. You really don’t know how to give up nagging at me, do you?’

Jon tried to laugh. ‘What do you expect me to do?’

‘I don’t know, well you can keep me company, I suppose, quietly though. I’m sick of arguing.’ He patted the grass beside him; Jon walked over and sat beside him on the hillock. For a long time there was a silence between them, except for the occasional snore from the Author while Jon, as if for the first time surveyed the quiet countryside about them. The marble portal gleamed like bleached bones in the verdant grasslands, a few miles away a lone tree stood, half dead, yet its ancient branches still covered with remnants of summer green. Further away he could just discern what seemed to be a tower. It seemed long unused and covered with green growth from the land. And as he squinted his eyes he saw… what was it? There was something else, there and not there, as if he was seeing beyond the horizon. Then, Jon saw what was there- a figure, perhaps a man, walking towards them. Despite knowing that it was completely impossible, after minutes of watching the figure come closer, Jon realized there was an imposter, a stranger in The Unwritten Lands.

Chapter Twenty-six

Friend or Foe?

‘Ah, my Lady,’ Schriven mellowly greeted her as Shaneal landed on his broad shoulder, about both of them there was a peaceful vacuum while beyond the storm she had raised blew thunderously through Paternor, The flames of the bonfire had been extinguished as easily as a match being blown out. Schriven’s voice purred. ‘My Lady, you have arrived at last.’

Shaneal was a bit unsure what to say, but she thought Schriven was definitely unnerving.  His eyes seemed to pierce through her blackbird’s form and saw her – Shaneal, the woman. Not slave or psybot, but that strong person who had listened to the Storytellers on that night long ago in Delgdreth.

‘Em,’ she started.  ‘So what are we going to do now? Escape?’

‘Escape?’ Schriven pondered. ‘Yes, that would be wise.  If we linger here too long the throng will come to its senses and I imagine there’ll be some restlessness.’ He paused for a long time still staring at Shaneal intensely.  She felt naked.

‘So, well, em, I mean what is it you want me to do?’

‘Do, my Lady?’  He sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Nothing of course, you have done enough. You have done everything.’

Above Paternor there was a blinding slash of lightening. The last thing she noticed before she fell away from her perch on his shoulder was his broad grin and a wink in his eye, made starkly bright as they reflected the pure whiteness of the lightening. Startled back into flight Shaneal circled the sodden bonfire looking for him. Instead she saw a beautiful turquoise and golden kingfisher.

‘Schriven?’ She asked the bird.

‘Of course my lady. Who else would I be?’ The Kingfisher said.

‘So we can go now?’

‘Why not? Whenever you’re ready.’   The Kingfisher flew out from the vacuum and into the rain. She flew after him more slowly, as if she were stumbling up a slope of loose rocks and shaking with nervousness. She felt pale and nondescript in comparison to the hot crystal colours of the kingfisher. He shone and burnt away the rain ahead of them.

An old woman, her back bent so far down that her head was parallel to the half-rotted timbers of the jetty, met Merve and Dalrosse as the stepped onto The Isle of Surcease.  From head to toe she was dressed in a shapeless black cloth that trailed raggedly on the jetty. A black cowl was stretched tight about her head.  Her nose was incredibly long, pockmarked and pale as a corpse.

Merve greeted her and she seemed to be communicating with sharp grunts from her nostrils.  Then her nose sniffed at Dalrosse and as if in surprise her nose seemed to stiffen and grow even longer. Difficulty she raised her head slightly up, her brown lips opened wide, wider still. Dalrosse saw she had no teeth. He shuddered almost taking a step backwards. Then the woman inhaled so deeply the Shouel felt that she is eating his scent.

Quickly, as if she were ashamed of herself she lowered her head, turned about and led the two of them to the derelict, eerily silent Palace. The Palace was the only building on the island. It lay, or huddled like a sick dog in a natural amphitheatre of three steeply sloping barren hills. Beyond the Palace and the hills was a blunt summit of a coal dark mountain. The mountain seemed to admonish the vain beauty of the Fordeni Sea’s tranquility. The unseen side of the mountain, Merve knew, sheared almost vertically, as if sliced by a keenly sharp blade, downwards to the salty waters on the far side of the island.

She locked the Palace doors behind Merve and the Shouel and pocketed the key.  The hallway ahead of them was almost completely abandoned to the dark. Dalrosse’s sharp ears could hear the sound of movement in the unknown length of the hallway. The sound was not the movement of human feet, nor even of scurrying rats, but of tiny, invisible insects: sighing spiders waiting impatiently on their webs: the stamp, stamping of cockroaches; the incessant buzzing of wings issued from what seemed a hundred thousand flies and the panicking wings of lost moths.

Merve and the woman moved on ahead – dark, hulking shapes that seemed like shadows of Dalrosse’s doubt.  Before following after them he hesitated, said:

‘Where are we going?’

Merve replied, his voice hinged with excitement. ‘To see Verlover.  The widowed Queen of Hazeldreame. Hurry up now.’

A hand at his back, boney and sharp with nails seemed to push the Shouel forwards, he turned there was no-one or if there was, cloaked in the dark shrouds of Hazeldreame, he had not such keen eyes to see them. Dalrosse knew that he had no choice but to following Merve and hesitantly he walked deeper into the shadow void palace.

Ahead, as the slope of corridor beneath his feet sipped shallowly down toward some new clittering, wheeze whistling and silent singing of the tiny creatures that were oblivious of Hazeldreame’s perpetual night, Dalrosse heard the grating of stiff hinged door opening. A blue, veiny light emerged from the room within, the pale, sea like light uncovered Merve’s face from the gloom. The light spread about him and Dalrosse thought that he was clothed in the wisps of a revenant. Merve’s eyes shone, his grey green eyes bright as a diamond, a smile of unhindered glee contorted his face. Merve walked into the room and the awful blood blue, the sudden panic of loneliness seemed to elongate the seconds turning time into a pit of blindness, pushed Dalrosse forward and walked into Verlover’s Hall.

In the less harsh light, the blue of Verlover’s now simple waiting now  fragile as an egg,  light of Verlover last of the Sucubiles rose from a couch by the blazing fireplace.

‘So Merve you bring me this…this?’

‘Shouel.’ Merve said, and then added. ‘Great Lady of the Ailves.’ he lowered head into a humble stoop, his back twisted like a hunchman. Dalrosse thought he might fall to his knees in supplication, pray to Verlover as to a god of The Meringal, praying for her love sick with longing.

‘Shouel,’ she said. ‘What are you? Where are you from?’

‘From far away,’ Dalrosse replied. ‘’What am I? I do not know. Orphaned and abandoned, seeking my way home. No, these things perhaps, but mainly I am lost and the voice in my heart that goaded me on is silent.’ Dalrosse felt the raw truth of his word and he almost wept. Homesick, yearning for that beach on the edge of Lake Leme, searching for Ashenmoire before the first true light of the sun dusted the Island, knowing it was too far away behind him, only a memory eroded as the past diminished with each step he took away from Ashenmoire. The truthfulness of his words surprised him; he had thought such words were unutterable, fearing them for they exposed the ash of his dreams, still ashes lying cold at the pit of his gut.

Verlover seemed to have loosened the grip on his stunted emotions and allowed to set them free. Or perhaps Verlover so resembled Marayela he felt a familiarity that allowed him to say what he wished. Dalrosse smiled as he remembered their flight together upon the back of Xhanu, smiled as he recalled looking down upon Menerth and seeing that it was a place he could easily forget and never return too. He had not laughed as loud, as he had up there, so free as if freedom was an old friend that he had always known see again. Xhanu had flown to the highest of the clouds, below lay the hard white contours of the geography of storm clouds, while above and all around was the bruised black star field. He wanted tell to Xhanu ‘go higher, fly deeper into the horizon less light of the stars and never stop.  He had lessened his grip from about Marayela waist.  Her hair mad in the wind, lashing softly his face. Even though grief tinged her voice, she had tried to sooth the pain Xhanu felt, she urged her on and extolled the High Wasp’s beauty and strength as she had performed for the Bede. Those mock truths she nibbled into his ear, seemed in comparison as she whispered to Xhanu, the most obvious of lies. Slowly as they descended, he tightened his grip about her waist not from fear of falling, but to imbue within her his own strength as she cajoled Xhanu onward.

Now she stood before him-though she was this queen, this Ailve, not the rose maiden who had unshackled him or healed his injuries, not Marayela, Verlover.

Verlover beckoned Dalrosse to her couch by the fire. ‘I see now why Merve has brought you.  He is sometimes presumptuous and brings gaggles of sprogs to tell them the histories of Hazeldreame of its glory days when Sucubiles mended the dreams of the mad, brought comfort to the lonely ones, how we healed hearts, now we are so few. The dreams of men have made us their enemies and without purpose we are nothing so most have faded and our power waned.’  Verlover smiled as if by smiling all the dark things of the world were banished. ‘But, little thing, you have come to break my solitude and remind me that I can still hearts.’

Dalrosse sat beside her, the cushions of her couch yielding as he sat and he felt he was floating, his thin body leant back and yielding softness melted away nagging pains, eviscerated his endless indecisions, so comfortable seeming to massage away knots in his muscles that had always been with him yet he had not realised.  Perhaps he slept, or perhaps the comfort of Verlover’s couch sent him see-sawing in and out of the dreams of those who slept upon the world, at last propelling him to the summer warm shallows of Lake Leme, floating there, his face to the sky, burden less and free of thought.

Verlover’s voice called him. Opening his eyes she caught his gaze. Dalrosse smiled.  This made her laugh.

‘With just a smile your face has realised how long you have grimaced at the world.  All those little lines that self-pity has cut into your face have been healed by your smile.’ She laughed again and infected Dalrosse laughed too, he could not help himself and he did not want to stop. As she watched him age melted from not just his face, but his body.  Time seemed to reshape itself around him as if at once he was unburdened by memory, yet innately wise. Slowly the laughter subsided, yet did not leave their eyes or smiles like a silent friend waiting to serve them.

‘You look like her.’ Dalrosse said.

‘Who?’

‘A  friend.  She’s dead now.’

‘Shh. Death. Do not speak of death in Hazeldreame. There is no death, Dalrosse, did you not know that? This friend this…’

‘Marayela.’

‘Marayela is everywhere now, the patina of her spirit overlays every particle of creation.  She is within in me as she is lodged in your heart.  You should not hold her within you with such hurt. For is not the pain yours, the lose yours.  Marayela now would wait forever in your heart if you could feel the loving instead of what you have lost.’

Dalrosse mumbled quietly.

‘What did you say?’ She asked.

‘It wasn’t until I realised she was gone did I know that I loved her so much.  I don’t want it to hurt, I don’t want to think of her and hurt. Is that what love is? If it is it doesn’t deserve the word love.’

She put an arm about his shoulder and he crushed into her like an infant to a mother. ‘No, that is not love, but it is what the worlds and humans have made of it, called love and in doing so blinded themselves to what it really is. Love isn’t difficult to understand, it isn’t hiding, and it wants to give when worlds reach out for it. Love serves yet yearns to be accepted. Love is in every moment but is left unseen, ignored forgotten, its gifts thrown away and stamped upon. Yet if even for a brief moment it is felt that moment would offer everything – true insight into a world disguised by greed and warring, unending needs. That moment would reveal such pain as unnecessary. That brief moment of love is like a flower left to grow in the long grass, a flower to be found, to kneel beside as the grass is parted. To see that is the flower’s gift, to witness the tiniest touch of love is the gift. All grief is gone and the pain of endings, the fear of being no more is revealed as the oldest lie.  That is the gift love gives if it is accepted, the gift of knowing that where there is a moment of love if looked for then the ageless roads of time are imbued with it and where no time exist there is only it.’

Then in the hall of Verlover a deep silence fell. Dalrosse noticed that Merve and the old woman had left sometime while they were talking.  The fire crackled and settled, the flames slowly fading as red embers glazed their faces with an orange glow. His head was filled with a tapestry of thought. In the silence beside her he remembered how alone he’d felt all his life and the moments of joy that had touched him seemed so brief, that it seemed they belonged to some others life.  His nagging mind had so often dwelt on the dark days of his life. Those days so real in memory he felt he had been forged by them. The hatred that folk felt for him seemed to have created who he was and forced him to hate them in return.  Was that all he was? Created by lies, mired and lost in a world that expected, demanded something from him. To fight back, to hate like them, knowing no forgiveness.

Perhaps there lied his indecision.  If he had been with Shaneal and Aflarien, if he had found them and brought them home, he could have fitted his family back together and not left them on their own paths of fear and unknowing, Dalrosse felt he had abandoned them and selfishly followed his own path.  A path that had no firm purpose in the end what would it bring? Would he have the power to hold Shaneal and Aflarien again? If it did not what was the point, he might heal the Black Rose; remove the blind sickness that blighted Menerth and return Men and Shouels to a land of peace. But if they were gone, if Shaneal was gone and Aflarien lost and he was still alive his eyes would strain to the horizon, watching for them.

Without them the earth would be ugly and the golden beaches where he had danced with Shaneal would be grey ashes and all beauty leeched from them.  He remembered he used to laugh when Aflarien would tell them of his dreams, Dalrosse would pretend to be a dreamsayer revealing the meaning of his dreams. Sometimes he would go collecting in the fields and woods with his brother, Aflarien knew the ways of the weather and Dalrosse had even seen him speak with squirrels and the occasional bird. Surprisingly they occasionally talked back. Aflarien was such a gentle person, a solid anchor of trust.  Many times he would pull the bullies off of him, they always came back, but if Aflarien was around Dalrosse was left in peace. Aflarien had taught him how to climb trees, which were fun and also a good way of avoiding the bullies. Unlike Shaneal he did not often come to the lake and in the last few years he had seldom seen him. When they’d been younger it had been just the three of them swimming in the sweet lake water. Aflarien would tell them the properties of the different mushrooms until they were bored. One time they had buried him in the sand as a punishment for going on so much.  They tried to show Shaneal how to climb trees, but weren’t very successful.  She tried to teach them new songs she’d made up, but Aflarien’s memory was terrible and he rather stuttered the songs than sang them. Dalrosse knew his brother’s head was teeming with dreams, crammed with stories and imaginings that it had no room for too many real things like eating and wearing clothes.

As these thoughts and memories tumbled through his mind, Verlover saw as she watched his face, at first she seemed  to see sadness, longing and regret filling his listless eyes, but by increments she saw that his face lifted into smile of knowing. Once she thought that is lips almost lift, broadly in a breath of a smile, once she thought he would laugh aloud.  She imagined what he witnessed from such a crimson light, so bright, perfected shine out like a comfort of a lighthouse `illuminating a sea wracked with dark, lit only by the roar of lightening. To Verlover, which each brief blink of his eyes a deluge of memory flashed past his mind’s eye. Watching she saw his she smile broadened at one of the youthful Aflarien rude jokes. Dalrosse giggled. In a so short time she saw that the memories dissipated.  . The Shouel clenched his eyes shut as if futility tried to clench the memories within him.  However, lacking choice, he reluctantly opened his eyes again, the bright purple of his eyes washed with a grey pallor of something lost. yet in those eyes there was a grim hope, those brief moments that she had spoke of, those flowers hidden but for the keenest to witnesses hidden in the long glass

As these thoughts and memories tumbled through his mind Verlover saw as she watched his face that he was at first sad, longing and regret filling his eyes, but by increments she saw that his lips striving toward a smile.  Once she thought that he would laugh out loud.  She imagined what he witnessed in his mind as the purple brightness of his eyes shone out like a harbor tower illuminating rough seas.  To Verlover it seemed memory after memory flashed passed his mind’s eye. At one his smile unconsciously broadened, at another – recalling one of Aflarien’s rude jokes – he giggled. She saw though that the memories were fading.  The Shouel clenched his eyes shut as if he was trying to seal the memories within him, but he opened them again. Those brief moments, those flowers in the long grass were hidden. However the smile on his face remained and she felt a new knowledge dawn upon him.

‘I am not made of hate,’ he said.

Verlover kissed his brow. ‘You are not. Hate tries to lodge within us, attracting more pain, more loathing, disfiguring all that is lovely and all that is possible. None, Dalrosse, are made of hate, but so many, too many yield to it, accept it and live by it. I see you understand this and you realise now that the love you’ve received has the power to turn you away from a future of revenge, an uncertain future, and one without meaning.  For here in this hallowed place where hearts are healed you are set on a path where all things are possible and while love remains with you there is no room for hate.  The heart knows.  Knowledge is just one of the gifts love gives.’

For awhile Dalrosse’s eyes held Verlover’s in his gaze.  As she had spoken old memories resurfaced- yet they were not true memories, perhaps instead a premonition of his road ahead, he seemed to be convinced that these memories were not of youth but a trail to premonition, something good, fixed in a time that snuggled in a new now, a undeniable future. Yes, as the Sucubiles words of healing chiming in his thoughts, at last he was Aflarien and Shaneal.  They had built a fiver on the sands of lake Leme.  Shaneal was in a new read dress; turning beneath the stars ass she danced. There two was Aflarien for a moment pretending to be stern and staid, until he leapt from a dune of sand and he stepped his feet, pounding and pummeling about the fire on glowed golden sand, in an ecstasy of dance. He grabbed his sisters by her arms, slow spinning around as their eyes looked up to the starlight. Dalrosse sang for them added to the whirling dervish of the dance. Shaneal and Aflarien.  From the Hall of Verlover he realized that the three of them were not children yet possessed the virginities of age. No, they had grown, seemingly years had passed, and maybe twenty maybe more years had aged them- yet still reenacting the unfettered youth and energy.  There song and dance echoed over the waters.  Dalrosse consumed in the Imaging that searched for its time, Dalrosse was filled again with a happy joy, a premonition of a future from which hopelessness had been erased.

Dalrosse seemed to sleep again. When he opened his eye he was alone on the couch, the heat from the fire barely perceptible.  He looked about him and saw Verlover standing in a shadow. In her hand she heard something He squinted, the sat up to try and get a better look.

‘Dalrosse, she said. ‘This is the Blue rose.  Once it blossomed in the Temple Lands of the Ailves hidden in the Mountains of Drendunde. In those days the Sucubiles were the friends of dreamers, of the mad and the lifelong lonely.  Long, long ago my folk left the Mountains and took with them the blue rose and brought it here to the Isle of Surcease. Now, only I and my two sisters are all that remain of the Sucubiles.  ‘Ahh,’ she smiled. ‘Little Shouel, we are so old, ancient as the walls of Hazeldreame’

Dalrosse allowed himself a smile of understanding, a smile so knowing, a crux of past and present, a link of hidden flowers lost in the fallow ground of unkempt grasses and by knowledge of love’s gift. Verlover gave him his last gift, the last healing and enwreathed herself from the glamour of Marayela.

Bent, and pale, dressed in a dusty ripped robe, her bald head, blotched bathed  in the blood red of the fire’s embers, Verlover walked slowly to Dalrosse and lay the blue Rose at his feet.

‘This is for you, and for all those whose hearts have no home for hate.’

Tentatively Dalrosse reached out a hand to the Sucubiles, a woman as ugly and diseased as Marayela was  beautiful, brimmed with health and energy.  His finger touched her dry face. Gently he lifted her face until their eyes met once more. Her eyes immense in her sockets, the pupils grey as if it had seen the moon full a million times, yet in the pinprick a bright light shone rayed from them and he saw she was neither crone or young woman.  She was the blue light, and that light had been in the world before the mountains of Menerth had been raised.

Dalrosse laughed and a part of him heard her also laughing, the amalgam of the enjoined joy. Their laughter sang of the creation of the world, their enjoined heart’s melodies.  His heart was caressed and tickled by her long, low laughter.  He laughed for so long and hers remained with him all his long, long lonely days ahead, bursting in his heart that heart Verlover had healed. She stood stock still, blue hued and diminished and with grief and hope he realized the Lady of the Isle of Surcease she was lost from the world.

 The Blue rose sat lightly at his feet, he touched the petals.  A blue dust wiped onto his fingertips and he put the blue stain fingers to his lips.  Though it lasted but for a moment, he found himself, twisted out of time and he found himself in rock strewn devastation.  Up ahead there was a figure, Dalrosse knew it was the lonely god, Drendunde, the banished, who had lost his way, unpraised, forgotten by the High Gods, long thrilled by exile. Drendunde had so loved the old world Rex Mundi had destroyed that they shunned him and abandoned him to his grief.  Yes Dalrosse knew this Drendunde who had founded the beginnings of Menerth. How, he had, loved those of the old lands in the endless space of the sky, but they were gone and he bereft escaped the ruined world and travelled to a new constellation and was drawn to Menerth.  Only Drendunde, a God spurned by other gods, the great coward of the Universe. In his lonely land disdained the ancient gods.  Drendunde had so long forsaken the Old world and Drendunde looked upon the ravaged Menerth, void of life, a rocky desert, vicious with molten seas and fiery river beds.  The seas were devoid of life, the towering mountains, bleak and empty of fauna and flowers. It reminded the Lonely God of the forsaken of Old Worlds that, yet, with a word he had created and made live.  He took his  first step upon the Menerth and there he tarried unwilling to leave it recalling millions years of the Old world where his green touch had filled his heart with green sap and the laughter of children.  For an age of a thousand days of searching upon Menerth he now had claimed, Drendunde tarried. Though he searched, and hoped for new life, green shoots of the first forests, recalling the laughter of the lost dead of the Old World.

Drendunde strode from one end of Menerth travelling as the revolutions of the world ran round him he remained the lonely God and a great despair overcame him. He had been defeated by Rex Mundi and all the goodness of the universes had been ruined. Here in his chosen world there was a mere paucity of life.  He was cursed, it seemed then by the high gods, that knew no empathy, new nothing of love and his grief, unshared, his own grief alone.  Tears fell from Drendunde’s eyes, one by one and at Drendunde’s feet the barren, rocky land dampened by his rush of tears until a curved pool formed. So blinded by his tears Drendunde did not notice the pool of water and a nudge of green growth rising into the air of Menerth.

Finally the tears of Drendunde ceased and he spied the green about the pool of his tears.

As Dalrosse watched the green life rose, green trees myriad of blossom.  From the pool of sunlight, a thorny, many branched rose lifted from the Isle set in the water of Drendunde’s tears. Sunlight gleamed from its leaves, the first rose and the final rose, black flowered, unfurling it’s petals to the Lonely Gods eyes. Seeing what he had made he grasped handful of water from the pool of tears, that in time would be named Lake Leme and scattered the waters upon the dusty lifeless lands of Menerth.  Dalrosse watched Drendunde cultivate and bring life overall the world of Menerth.  Then there were no men, or Shouels or any of the other races of Menerth.

Drendunde came back to Ashenmoire where the Black Rose grew, that had grown into a good green place. Deftly he plucked a petal from the Black Rose and put it in his in his mouth and gently chewed it. Without swallowing he spat the bits of the Black rose over the green vales and plains of burgeoning forests.  As Dalrosse witnessed time, eons, times stretched for a year of years and from the places the Black Rose petal pieces fell the sounds of laughter issued up from the world, a sound of laughter like a happy song issued, a sound of a newborn would make when he saw his Father’s face for the first time, recognizing that face and knowing only happiness.

With the laughter there too was song that rose louder and as Dalrosse watched Drendunde seeking out his children, the kin of the lonely god.  They were fair and loud with song, like those who had lingered long on The Old world before their destruction.  Drendunde spoke with them, aided them nurtured the growth of Menerth that his tears had conjured.  He taught them, helped them grow, multiply, he told them of love, as he had loved the Old World, at their destruction he felt no grief now. For they were corrupted, but that corruption had sent him here to new life, to Menerth and from it a new, bright place came from his loss.  Love was a river sent forth from a mountain brook.  Love ran with the river; touched each bank spinning toward the sea leaving behind fertile lands about. Though his children knew no knowledge of the Old World Drendunde had been left bereft, yet unforgotten in the mind of Drendunde.  He had coveted the innocence of the people of Menerth for these folk were new with no knowledge of fear and murder, war a meaningless word.  Yet Drendunde knew men’s hearts, how fickle and fey they were how thoughtless they could be. In his heart he knew that the people could be dazzled and transformed by powerful greed, a lust to control, and keep the lowly ones in servile.

He realized that he should birth on Menerth a new race of beings, a persistent people whom he would tell of the Rex Mundi’s destruction of The Lonely God’s old Demense, the world of war, of hate, of empathy’s lack. His world became their teacher so that in ever new generation of  Shouel  that  lived with men and men would be reminded them of their peaceful hearts before all hurt came upon them. They taught peace to the men and every generation they lived with men in peace, they were to quell their anger and unease, bring laughter to the hardiest warriors, tell of their blessed conception, and to banish destruction to a time before Drendunde’s tears.

Drendunde took a handful a handful of fertile earth from Ashenmoire and molded the first of the Shouels; he washed the earth beings in the water’s on the pool of his tears and fed them the promise of the Black Rose petals.

Dalrosse smiled as he saw the first few Shouels walk and talk, they were glad of this life that was bestowed upon them.  He heard Drendunde tutor them, warned them how men, the first folk could destroy worlds to get what they wanted, gold, power and the subjugation of the weak.

As Dalrosse watched the numbers of the two folks grew and, by the world nurtured by the world wide grace of the Black Rose.

Then the lonely God, Drendunde the first hid himself from his children and dwelt upon Ashenmoire tending the Black Rose and the gardens of the Island. On Menerth, for many a decade of decades the Shouels were always known as the friends of humans. The Shouels were their friends, a wide world family; those wise people taught them to see the senselessness of greed when the whole vastness of Menerth was them to share. Though alas conflict came and was nurtured by jealous Gods great beings besotted by the beautiful world where they watched beyond the realms of the Menerth. In time they would subdue it, and rule over it and they had no thought for the peoples of Menerth.  They demanded praise needed blood sacrifice to abate their cruelty and the denizens of the Menerth only hope was to submit to their commands.  Yet, when their hearts recalled Drendunde they told themselves he must think much of us to give Menerth to share and the peoples of that world were grateful.

As the taste of the blue powder of the Blue rose dissipated from Dalrosse’s tongue the long creation of Menerth slowly unfolded and he was allowed one last look at the new life’s on Menerth, where life was not locked in memorylessness where there were no locks and walls of defense constructed. Here there were no locks, there were no slaves and an equality between human and Shouel, man and woman. If there anger. If the were disagreements, or anger, the teaching of the Shouels helped the other races with discussion and persuasion.  No cities were built in those early days before the jealous Gods came, here in the forest about Ashenmoire, a time would come when a king with no power was foretold.  With the last moment of his long observation, time twisting, Dalrosse was filled with envy at all that he had witnessed.

Merve stood by him now looking at the still standing corpse of Verlover.

‘Help me lay her down,’ Merve said. Together Dalrosse helped him carry her to her couch, the fire beside it almost dark and cold. The Shouel heard the sound of sobbing, a stifled crying.  He thought it may have come from some other part of Hazeldreame, then as Merve lifted his face Dalrosse saw that Merve’s face was wet with tears. He wanted to comfort the man as Verlover had comforted with him.  He spoke although he was unsure of himself.

‘I don’t think she would want you to be sad.’

Merve sniffed away the last of his tears. ‘I am not crying because I am sad. I cry only when I am happy. I am happy because I brought you here. Verlover knew she would be no longer and that all her memories and all she had done for others would whisper, unheard throughout the Hall of Verlover.  But because you came here my friend Dalrosse, she too was healed and able in the end to forsake her life that she knows she lingers in the sap and green rush of the Blue Rose.

The Shouels held a hand of her to his his heart.  Here, also.’  Dalrosse felt as tall as Merve as he spoke, brimming with energy, stamping a dance on the dusty floor of Verlover’s hall hearing the Sucubiles laughter in his heart.