brawynae

Jump! My lords and ladies
Put your hands together
Stop not for love knot
And not for stormy weather

Leap! My lords and ladies
Keep the waltzes whirling
Dance on, queen and pawn
All while the mists are swirling

Fly! My lords and ladies
Like the black-winged raven
Bow down to no crown
And call the dark woods haven

Sing! My lords and ladies
For the dawning summer
Fair, (beat) merry, fleet
We keep step with the drummer

- Aethelwyne’s Short Verses and Tall Tales

Bealtine

When I first arrived here, this country was cold. The land ignores the short-lived sleepers, but the presence of my kind creates ripples. The land remembers.

My cousins in this country have returned to the land, and the land has given them up. I and my sisters were not welcome here. The climate is no worse and no better than that of my old home, but when we first arrived here, Winter froze us and Summer scorched us, Spring drowned us and Autumn buried us, stones tripped us and trees scratched us and birds and beasts fled from us.

I was so alone. My sisters… We are not so alike. Aembersyne shares some of my solitary tendencies, but she never understood that I am not as solitary as I seem; when I have the land, I am never alone.

I tried to make peace. I am an exile, but I love the land, wherever I am. This country did not know me, did not trust me. How could she? Her stewards were hunted, eradicated, destroyed, corralled. Perhaps some of my cousins survive in lands farther west; but I have been here a long time and I have never heard them.

I weep for the wounds this country bears. Triskele’s friendship is an inexpressible boon. There are others…my brother and his clan, a small but growing band of entrepreneurial Templars, a few freelancers.

Will we be enough? Can we protect the land from the sleepers, the sleepers from themselves, and reach the next cycle without losing any more? My sisters…my friends…my oath...the lights of the world…

Every Bealtine is this Bealtine. On this day, the visions come.