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Old 12-04-2007, 05:14 PM   #209
Lalaith
Blithe Spirit
 
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Join Date: Jan 2003
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Lalaith is a guest at the Prancing Pony.Lalaith is a guest at the Prancing Pony.
"You are free then to do as you please. To come or go as you want...."

Embla caressed the necklace she had been given with her fingers, and gazed at her husband, lost for words.

Freedom. She could appreciate the shamed sincerity of his words, and for the first time, she felt something approaching affection for this man who had been her husband. Given the age gap, and the fact that their physical relations, such as they were, had been joyless and perfunctory, this warmth was hardly romantic. It was more like the feeling a niece might feel for an uncle who had given unexpected tip, or a that of a truculent pupil receiving praise from a hitherto forbidding teacher.

Khandr continued to speak. ".....the woman Jord, whom I do not trust.... evil afoot....speak with me or, if I am not here, then to Fastarr or one of the Elves.... help preserve the light...”
Jord....Fastarr....who to trust .... Embla felt like she was in a maelstrom. “My Lord....I too have felt this evil. I will speak...”
....but she spoke to the air. Khandr had spurred his horse and he was gone.

Too late. Alone, still clutching the necklet she had been given as her parting-gift, Embla sank down onto the greensward. But free.....her mind grew blank with the thrill of it, and suddenly the peculiar feeling she had in the field, after her meeting with Jord, came back with increased power. Her mind filled with horrors... nameless things that slowly began to form words....words that she she must share.
She rose up again. What she had seen had left her cold and sick in a grey world. Her hair stuck dankly to her brow and her robe felt prickly against her flesh. She needed to speak to someone, quickly. To find comfort. Fastarr...the name, and the face that went with it, came instinctively to her. She rode off at frantic speed towards the stable where she had last seen the hunter.
There he was in the field, about to spur on his horse, his broad, comfortable back to her. “Fastarr,” she almost screamed. He turned, looking distracted but at the same time welcoming. The words of her vision came blurting forth.
The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free;
Much do I know, and more can see

Fastarr wheeled round and stared at her, aghast.

I saw there wading through rivers wild
Treacherous men and murderers too,
And workers of ill with the wives of men;
There the vampire sucked the blood of the slain,
And the wolf tore men; would you know yet more?


Embla stared back, panting. She scarcely knew what she had said or what the fell words meant. She had seen in her mind’s eye something almost too horrible for contemplation.

Last edited by Lalaith; 12-04-2007 at 05:33 PM.
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