#valduron

"Brother,"

"I—"

     "I know."

"I am sorry."

     "You are determined, there is no stopping you."

"I can't see a different ending. I must—. Stop feeling their pain. I can't—. not see these images! "

     "You feel their pain. I understand. Father will not."

     "...Alaune?"

"The races can live with magic and be at peace. I will show them a way. I won't happen again. Not again when we did not intervene. Then, father will understand—"

     "Alaune."

"They are ready."

     "Stay safe."

"I will."

Alaune

It lighted from its marrow, from the lake’s deep waters. Its light overshadowed the pinnacling day star. So bright, so dense, to the top it went. The rising waters, brought to incandescence, moulded a delicate water frame above the water level. And in a flash of light – light forged to flesh, and from the delicate frame – she rose.

“You are the goddess of the hunt;” she reminded herself through her father’s words, “you feel the hunter’s thrill of the chase but also their prey’s ache.” She crouched down to touch the water, it glared, and drew out her quiver and bow, carved from the Primordial Tree, with a crescent moon blade around its grip, stricken by moonlight.

“You are the goddess of the moon;” she stood upright and filled her naked body with honour and pride and walked to the lake’s edge; water that ran down over her body sprang into little moonstones dewing her body – and what may divert the eye – in radiance, “you are the high tide and the low but never one.” The sound of father’s voice uttering her duties reran at inside her head.

She stepped land. Off the hulking beech trees, crows flurried into the northern summer skies of Valduron. “You have no place here!” the basin cawed.