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Vhalar, 15, 719
They say that drugs are bad for you…. They’re probably right, however the mortalborn had long since passed the threshold of being able to rouse himself from his addictions alone. Even as his resources stowed from yaralon dwindled he continued to consume the eggs that let his mind wander to safer places, more like home? More like Emea.
To an outside observer the Blonde foreigner left his small room at the inn in a haze eyes glassed and a dreamlike grin accosting his face. Elders shook their heads and clicked their tongues as he passed utterly unaware of their presence. He was being led away by something... he hastened towards the forest at a slow but unwavering pace. Perhaps it was the purpose with which he seemed to walk that halted them, or perhaps it was simply not their way to involve themselves with the strange foreigners that came to their lands. Either way Hwyn made his way into the forest following something nobody else could see or hear. Hwyn however was blissfully unaware of most of this… his feet almost moving of their own accord as his head lolled about lazily on his shoulders as his wide eyes bounced about in their sockets constantly trying and failing to focus on what he was hearing and seeing.
It started differently this time for the mortalborn. Normally it was simply a pleasant warmth that filled him as the eggs dissolved into his stomach, but this time was different. He saw… heard… everything? The greens! Goodness the Greens! The light filtering through the leaves of the trees and the branches swaying in the wind fascinated him like never before… the forest… it was alive… and so very Green. He could hear her, the forest breathing…. Whispering… “come.”
He bolted upright from his bed when he heard it, and began to follow it immediately, no thoughts of doing his hair or even changing from his bed clothes, the forest was calling him he had to go. So he did.
As he entered the forest proper and left Desnind behind he heard the voice again calling him deeper into the forest the Green green forest, and he began to feel it watching him. Casting his eyes about he swore that the trees had eyes hidden in their gnarled knots and twisted roots. The forest was watching him… the forest was judging him… The green green forest was carefully picking apart his very essence. A strand of hair lost to a branch snagging it… a small cut when he strayed too close to a thorny bush. The creatures of the forest watched him as well only ever appearing to him as bright pairs of eyes or bright flashes of fast moving color in the otherwise green forest.
Finally after some time he found himself at a small clear pond, and for a moment his feverish mind found a brief peace as he heard the voice again in his head. “Look into the lake.” So he knelt at the water’s edge before leaning over it and meeting his own gaze… locking eyes with his own green green eyes. Then he spoke… or his reflection did.
“Who are you?”
“Hwyn”
“Who… are… you…?”
“I don’t know”
“Don’t you?”
Slowly the water before him rippled and with it his visage changed becoming even more feminine and beautiful, his lips filling and his pensive frown shifted to a cruel smirk… he was no longer looking at himself but a visage of his mother, though the eyes never changed the green green eyes of the forest that locked him in his place filling his veins with ice. He tried to refute this vision but before he could open his mouth the forest rebuked him.
“Just as each tree comes from the seed of another… so too do you… you are your mothers seed… how will you grow?”
Then the forest released its grip. He gasped and fell over from his spot kneeling by the water his form embraced by the cool mud below, it stained his clothes, but it cooled him too. Lying for a moment in the muck by the pond the mortal born rested, the world still shifted in a hallucinogenic daze but the forest had gone back to its passive beautiful state… it didn’t need him anymore.