[IC] One-Fourth Eternity

[Entropsy]

⦃ ¼ Eternity ⦄
∞

Riverain was a country known best for its port cities along the western coast and progressive government. Elkney was a landlocked fiefdom pressed against the Skerra-Kar mountain range, Riverain’s eastern border, that only exported apples and apple-based dishes and beverages. As one could imagine, its inhabitants weren’t the worldly sort.

Rather, Elkney-folk were the type who believed and perpetuated beliefs about elves being little impish beings who snacked on babies or how dwarves were a strictly male race or that the bodies of the deceased would rise as undead if embalmed without garlic cloves in the mouth. Isolated and wary of strangers, travelers who were unfortunate enough to happen upon Elkney weren’t greeted kindly - more-so ‘tolerated’. They would be given rest at the town’s common house if willing to pay and told to keep to the western roads, as the mountain-range was treacherous and the forests beyond it home to the ‘bae nerrer’, the ‘child-snatchers’ - a misguided warning over the Faan-as-syy elves, who fled the continent two hundred years prior.

‘And never,’ any sensible Elkney-man or -woman or -guard would say, “never follow the path by the creek into the woods.’

They’d neglect to explain what was buried there, deep in the thicket.

The path itself - if one could call it a path - was distinguished by a lighter shade of grass that hadn’t grown in the same direction and spaces between the trees, and after the creek forked away it was nearly impossible to follow with overgrowth. Children occasionally managed to, still, and grew up to tell their own children that it must’ve been fae-addled, the ruins they found.

Six massive stones, alternating between three- to four-times the height of a human man and each as thick as a mule’s length, were arranged around a stepped mound. The circle tapered to a seventh monstrosity with the likeness of a sharp-eared and serene-faced woman carved into its base. And sat before her, at the peak of the mound, an alabaster altar that had long-since been overgrown with foliage. While dirtied and vine-strangled, the stones showed no signs of erosion or disrepair. They could have only been built and kept by the Faan-as-syy, but the wood-elves were a lost to the centuries - and the henge might as well have been erected within the decade.

They were as beautiful as the wellspring of flora surrounding them, but none of the townsfolk visited or prayed to the patron goddess whose name they couldn’t place.

Fifty years prior, when Lord Osten’s keep was still being built and the town’s orchard a yard of saplings, the henge had been discovered and promptly forbidden, though no one made any effort to section off the site. No one talked of it, save for wiley children who wanted to see it for themselves and the parents who warned them off it. To speak about it was to invite its bad luck, or to remind those who’d seen it themselves of its unnerving height, of the sensation of being watched. No one had ever entered the circle, and no one had gone at night. Whatever was there, it be suicide, Elkney-folk thought.

Nonetheless, someone trampled over dead branches and pushed aside knee-length grass, headed straight for the clearing of the Circle. And the quarter-moon had risen hours ago. He could hear them approach.

[Graviloquence]

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[Entropsy]

Most nights seemed to span the breadth of a millisecond, simple and undemanding and frustratingly unfulfilling, but short-lived all the same. Year after year had slipped through his fingers since his coming, and every time he relearned the date, less did those intervals of ignorance feel their age. He had learned to be patient, at some point.

And yet some nights would stretch on for ages. Those nights, the ambience of the Skerra groves grew deafening to over-sensitive ears; the stream outside his home that meandered so gently downhill was a roar, the wind howled over the peaks of the mountains and westward, and She hummed. He was usually better at differentiating the world external from what She imposed on him, and his ability to allocate important details and dull the background was similarly keen - when one has spent ten-fold his mortality overfed sensory input, he learns to adjust.

For whatever reason, it just wasn’t happening that night. What he could ignore on any other he couldn’t, now, couldn’t even hear his own thoughts let alone feel some peace. This was something She was doing and he was sure of it. The mound below groaned an insufferable, eternal buzz that seemed to have only ever bothered him, and he supposed this was Her way of posturing. She was playing a game with him, wanting to remind him that he had been and should be afraid of Her. Childish. Daft.

But even if it wasn’t subtle, it was effective, and he felt himself slip into a kind of numbness. He saw visions of an endless wakefulness accompanied only by white noise that he would acclimate to, and then become, suddenly, jarringly, aware of, over and over again. A bird sang in the distance, and he started - a thousand years passed under a quarter moon. Adjust and remember. The bird trilled again, and he started once more - deja vu. Even if it took the world crumbling to dust and spreading endlessly through the black, even if his mind had to slip so far that there was nothing left of him but a coil of nerves and bared teeth, he would be separate of Her and Her humming. Something had to give.

/\/\/\

Snap!

The Keeper lifted his head and took a deep, inward breath through his sharp nose. That was not a bird. A human - one that stank of intimidation but was likely possessed by some damnable curiosity - was moving towards the clearing, and not away, which he determined after a few more distant footfalls that the wind carried down to him.

Perhaps she was excited, and that was why she had been so incessantly loud.

He couldn’t ascertain much more at the distance between them, but in trying to do so he managed to drown out the screaming world around him enough to focus on those hesitant steps. A grown man. Becoming increasingly intrepid. The Keeper stood and paced the few steps the gateway would allow him, growing agitated with the intruder - if he was reluctant to move forward at all, why was he now running in the same direction?

When the man halted at the treeline before the clearing, evidently taken aback at the enormity of a liminal space as wonder widened his warm brown eyes, the Keeper’s question was satisfied. He knew the type. They never changed their faces, the way they held themselves, regardless of era and dress, and he could nearly smell the archives this one must have swam in, at some point. Surely, that leather binding carried parchment. Some part of him that was still human ached.

A stronger part stayed his body and he fell into a low crouch, moving carefully back until he was sure he was at an angle where he would not be seen unless the man decided to stare directly at the flattened peak of the gateway stone, where the circle opened to the path, and spotted the white iridescence of an animal’s eyes in low lighting. He remained unnaturally still as the intruder approached, drawing his burdens of documentation and confirming the Keeper’s suspicions. Before bitterness could creep in, the man did something that made him terribly nervous. He met Her eyes, and then began scribbling.

When this scribbling became an anxious pacing, the situation had forced his hand. He could smell fear, which meant the man had to at least be entertaining the thought of leaving, and when he did he would go back to whatever Ketti state he was from and drivel about his findings, spreading rumors about one of the few Synni sites that had been undisturbed since the war - feared by ignorant peasants who only knew apples and largely unnoticed by the rest of the country. That folio would be copied to a text he’d share with colleagues, bringing more here, and then...well, what happened after wouldn’t matter, as it wouldn’t be happening. Those notes wouldn’t see the light of day if he could help it.

He inched forwards, before dropping off the precipice of the stone.

What landed on the ground and stumbled forward two steps, unsteady on his feet, was a full head shorter than Itri. What was visible in the dim light the moon provided painted an odd picture - dressed in a poor excuse for a hide coat and pantaloons that had been patched more times than they would seem worth, the stranger looked the part of a mountain hermit, but he wore no beard and looked rather young for it. His sharp features were obscured by layers of filth and the state of his hair was an atrocity, and as he straightened and put a hand on his hip, he seemed disturbingly lacking in any girth, with a posture that was misaligned and jaunty. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like he’d been sewn together by someone who had no prior experience with taxidermy. The greyish taste about his skin tone didn’t help.

He pressed his lips together in a tight, miffed line and fixed Itri with an expectant look, but didn’t say a word.

[Graviloquence]

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