Ode To A Nightingale

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient day by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

-Keats

There were two Elders who joined me at the fire that night. The first was there to share a fine Turian liqueur with me. The second .. I am not sure why he was there. Perhaps there are fewer Haruspex who call up the spirits now days and perhaps .. he was lonely for someone to remember his name and to ask him of old days and when he heard the call .. he simply showed up.

The first was a tall slender feminine figure .. all black with arms like slender branches. Her eyes were green with yellow specks. She came to me from the tem forests .. I was appreciative. She settled across the fire from me letting her feet sink deep into the rick soil .. wary of the flames but she knew what the fire was built of and fueled by and knew I would never have disrespected her with anything else. She rustled when she moved .. like a fine lady. A lady trained to make just such sounds when she moved.

The second was a hoary old man with wet mossy hair of gray and green that fell from his head nearly to the ground .. it mingled with his beard and mustache until it was hard to tell which was which. His face was full of crags and his eyes were hard like granite but still with a gleam of days gone by. Days when greater deeds and greater men lived upon the soil. Days when the mountains were young .. the great rivers were merely runoff rivulets ... and valleys were nothing but bosk wallows.

The Lady of the Tem was pleased to see the Old Man of the Mountains .. it seems they had not spoken to each other in many hundreds of years and I sat quiet while they renewed their immortal friendship and spoke of mutual acquaintances as well as lamented the lack of respect from humans these days. Mourned their own kind who had gone to sleep .. and blamed most of it on the destruction and raping of the land by the humans.

I do not know if humans are more disrespectful now than they were then. I have learned that many old speak that way without really having a good example of why .. it is always so and never do they feel respect from anyone young. Perhaps .. the young today are no different than the young of yesterday. But it was not for me to surmise upon their conversation .. I merely remained patient as they spoke together. All humanity seemed but youth to these.

Time is nothing to the Elders. My time .. the entirety of my life ... is but a blink of their eye and I am nothing but a stray drop of rain fallen from the Sky and given form and voice. I mean very little .. and yet I knew their names and I knew the ways to call upon them and .. in that there was something. For no one wishes to be forgotten.

They seemed to remember I was there ... long after they had arrived but I did not mind. I never grew weary or tired listening to their stories .. of the times before. Sometimes they even spoke of the times before men .. but that was rare. They seemed to hold that time sacred unto themselves .. as if ... it was something too precious to simply discuss like it was any other topic.

The Lady of the Tem spoke then to me of the great forests and the voices of her sisters that were growing fainter and more distant in the North. She worried for them but had not made the journey to see for herself. She asked me to see of them when I journeyed North .. and upon the next year to bring her word. She gave me specific names to call upon and I told her I would do this for her. It was my experience that the Elders rarely if ever left their specific place of residence very far these days .. during the days of men. Though some .. like the Man of the Mountains had come quite a distance in response to my calling the Lady's name. He spoke of his own forests .. of those Elders still there among the great heavy broken pieces of the land stacked upon themselves as high as the Sky itself. He told me a of a lake .. a lake he bid me find some day. A circular lake at the very top of the mountains .. it was here he lived and it was here he bid me come .. for he had a gift for me. A special gift .. but I would not receive it unless I made the journey from my beloved plains. He said it was in return for the gift given him .. the gift of knowing his name when he arrived.

It was then that the Lady of the Tem asked me why I had called upon her .. it seemed the time for business had come. I told her .. and the Man of the Mountains ... about my plight in the case of the Tuchuk woman Cana and her mate .. the Beloved of the Sky ... and the strange dreams she was given .. and my inability to find Ba'atar through them. I spoke to them of the white vulo with no eyes .. and I spoke to them of the accident with the paintbrush. They listened and nodded and told me that bringing two such symbolic articles together created rifts and tears in the fabrics of time and space and in this case the two had been made one. That I would suffer the consequences of such carelessness .. both good and bad.

They told me .. they had heard the Sky call the name of Ba'atar .. but they had not involved themselves in the affairs of men and could not tell me why .. or what that meant. They told me that they had no answers for me .. but then they told me that I could possibly find my answers through .. Marrianne. It was a human name .. and I asked them of this Marrianne. They told me she was someone who sometimes walked the place between the grass and the Sky. I told the Elders I did not communicate with spirits. They chuckled .. as if I was some foolish boy and they shook their heads .. as Elders do. The Lady told me to seek this Marrianne and the Old Man told me he knew her .. she sang for him ... and her name was a human name he would remember.

The Old Man told me a story .. of a beautiful Tuchuk woman who walked between the grass and the Sky at times .. and she would sing of peace and goodness that soothed some of the Elders. I asked him .. had she been a Singer? He seemed to stare at me for a hundred years before he patiently reminded me that things as I knew them .. were not the way things were beyond. The words of Clan and bloodline meant nothing to him. Humans were a plague that would run itself out sooner or later and the Elders would inherit their land once more. Those who had not decided to sleep that is.

It took me a few moments .. but I asked them to speak to Marrianne for me and to let her know that I wished to communicate with her. They nodded in their way and said they would pass along the message. By that time the coals were low and nearly ash and the night was old and almost gone. They left me there and I do not know if they will pass along my message or not .. or if they will forget .. because everything I am and all that I need is such a transient fraction of time for them. Would they? Would they reach Marrianne for me? Or would they go off among their forests and mountains and forget I even existed? Or perhaps they would remember a thousand years from now .. but a moment for them ... and find Marrianne for me .. only too late.

I am not even sure how I feel about speaking to her .. this Marrianne.

I do not do spirits.