Brother,
I am writing to you
from the banks of Nativia in the Eastern Reach
where waves break against the cold stone
and omens fill the thin salt air.
I am writing from the docks of Pemi,
Celtes, Crimn, Well Wae, wherever
they sell ink, pens, brushes or paper
before the evening shops spin into drinking holes.
The men who live here are the men who lied
and the men who died here are the men who died,
then stacked under dunes uncounted and brave
their cracked old armor frayed carapace.
The water is heavy as valiant blood
seeps up from the pier like wet rust and mud
when the iron sun's blade sweeps over the beach
at dawn there is quiet, and finally peace.
By now you've surmised I cut my hair short
and went as a man into the Queen's corps.
To extra muscle and red blood provide
serving the clan of our kingdom's divide.
If you should think me mad and unstable
or imperiled by men so enabled,
I guess you'd be right, O brother so fair,
as I write to you both ill and despaired.
When we lived at home -- try to remember
ominous things we saw in the summer:
windows all slamming, melodious murmurs,
animals tracked us way down the rivers.
Then I was approached by a strange traveler
on the brisk shoals, who spoke all asunder
acting completely out of his mind
and weary from travels of some occult kind.
"My name is Aven and we've not met before
but I've met you elsewhere, please let me assure.
For dark days are looming and coming in store,
I could give you clue, I've lived them before.
"My task is to tour these identical lands,
the omens I tell of you won't understand.
As worlds alike will share many affronts:
here you are endangered by barrens and hunts.
"But in that other space, and likewise same place,
but different in plan, now laid to great waste,
arrived a dark plight, the land rendered dead,
the air was left silent, wary, and red.
"So I warn you now, please turn your attention
to those late stirrings and their intervention.
I must travel quickly and deliver this news
to Well Wae and Pemi -- wherever it goes."
It's been such a hard life as heaven knows
of curses and sorrows and terrible blows.
My heart quick believed whatever he knows
to Well Wae and Pemi, wherever he goes.
Yet Aven warned me sternly with meaning
doubled in language mnemonically bleeding
with apprehension he sought to protect,
"You must not follow," he said with respect.
So on that solstice I bade him goodbye
boarding those ships with soldiers supplied,
thought I would see him not later nor soon
running home crying, I ran back to you.
My mind was never to stay there for long
I thought that I knew where I had belonged.
So as we would toil and dally and pray
I concealed a plan for my getaway.
It was three long months spent locked in a chest
traded like cattle and bargained for less,
then for nine more lived frugal in caves
alongside the reeds and often enraged.
I'd sheared off my locks and bound up my vest,
exhibited, hid, and fasted or bled,
each callous made soft from loose mildew clothes
or hard by labor and being exposed.
It was one year living deep in the woods
training on swords and drinking from floods,
then four more spent sweating in swamps
shoulder to shoulder with chivalric pomp.
After six seasons we came to the beach
of Nativia where Aven once reached.
I traipsing the docks for a clue of his name
found myself starting right over again.
West of Well Wae, high up in the barren
where tall dead grass had gamed the whole warren
we were ambushed by beasts twice our heights tall
and strewn on the road each like a ragdoll.
'Twas Captain White and his Company Wae
who furloughed us back the very next day
in carts and coffins and pieces and pails
to hospice where Aven was tending Wae wails.
Hearing his voice in the crowd so distinct,
gruff and made sore from commanding succinct,
deeper from pulling on pipe after pipe,
not eating nor sleeping for night after night.
Hoarsely I called him unto my bedside
and now with him here we quietly cried
being so beaten and bloodied and bruised
each finally privy to the other's ruse.
"Darling, though you are still young in this life
you have fast learned here the cause of this strife
so it goes like this, each time you are born
into the same land and people of war.
"And so now you are here as you've been before
dying on canvas like I ought to have warned.
I never can ease you into these times sad,
each time that I come here: each time it is bad.
"And yet like a swan some souls travel on
carried from dooly to heaven or song,
but others will die and depart here today
loose to the sea and left out to sway.
"So you cannot help me, I cannot survive,
I came here to do work and you came to try,
so I cannot look you with care in each eye:
I came to save you, we come here to die."
Brother,
I am writing to you,
en route to Causette by the Gold Kingdom
now as a crippled and crossdressing pilgrim
for passage, surgeon, and boarding combined,
and then setting course back toward our coastline.
Do not think me less for years I have spent
learning to drink while fighting strange men,
seeking adventure, and brother do trust
in my weary soul and fierce wanderlust
Speak not prophecy, I am mute myself,
war and I now both know much of hell.
There only is fear and cautious intent
throughout our dear lands at every moment.
So I left my Aven, left him to fate,
and departing Well Wae left its cold hate.
For worlds I've not traveled there's nowhere to go,
for all as it is, I am coming home.
Your sister with love,
Wanna
Also:
The fagas were another magical race in Myara,
be they first fey of Florella’s, travelled westward,
to the Dominion of Beasts, south of Liitheria,
during the Age of Evolution, grew the fagas wayward.
From the Dreaming Waters, those cragged isles
jutting sky Wyrd, as the nagas’ broth
spurred poisons and sailor’s sea-ills,
around the islands the fagas theyselves lost.
Once a happy race, whose mana flowed freely,
the fagas began to bond with nagas of the deep,
their magics became withered, their beauty now steely,
a reminder of remnants lost and chances taken steep.
To Estertoe they travelled, the northmost land in that chain,
and like the slaves they became, followed together
in channels where nagas sung to the sailors’ bane,
set fire to that isle, and then another.
The fagas were green with covetry,
and manifested a mania which surrounded those lands,
and whereupon the earth emeralds crested kested,
became called the Emerald Isles, the envy sands.
And those kests made the sands heavy,
and it came to pass that Luna could not bear the tides,
so so many sailors there awashed in levy,
drawn in by the shimmering fagas at night.