Druids

And the forest reached out, grasping his ankles, his wrists.

It would not let him die.

 

“It is not your time”
the trees said.

And with a creak, drew him up from the pit, from the dark.

The cool wet sound of dripping left him, and his head was full of the cries of birds, the buzzing of insects.

 

“Ah, I have returned”
he said aloud.

And he went to go awaken his brothers.

Faerun and Faerul lay sleeping at the base of two trees, which arced over them into a grand portal.

Faengol stopped and looked into the bounded space, could see the slight glimmer, knew it was not the forest as it truly was.

“The Emerald Dreaming I see…”

‘I think it is time it is over’ he though.

 

The youngest brother took out his great horn, and blew a full breath into it, resonating up through the boughs into the canopy, but most importantly, into the earth.

There it shook the very ground beneath Faerun and Faerul, so that they could feel his call, even in the Dreaming.

 

First Faerun, then Faerul, slowly opened their lids, and registered their new-yet-old bodies.

 

“Brother!” Faengol said to them, and gave them a moment to remember how to speak.

“O what beastly forms you must have inhabited in the Dream.

Tell me --”

 

But before the youngest could complete his request, the two long, bent boughs forming the portal between his brothers shifted, groaning, back into their original positions. The doorway was closed.

 

“...Tell me how it is, in the underlayers.”

 

“Dark, dark…” said Faerul.

“But you would know better than us,” said Faerun, “You look to have just come from the Underdark yourself.”

 

“I felt as though I were falling, falling… ever so slowly.

But the elders saved me, the trees.” replied Faengol.

 

“Well the beasts were quite restless” said Faerul, of the Dreaming.

“Wolves, owls…”

“We were lucky we were bears!” added Faerun “or we would have been torn to shreds”

Faerul stretched his hulking body and let out a gaping yawn from his maw.