(This story is about my house knight Charlemont (Julien), who resides at @house-mercaiges. For the ease of organization for @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast, however, I will be posting this here to my main blog and simply reblogging it to Char’s, where it belongs. Featuring @stab-sister with permission and overseeing.)
Julien moved through the slumbering forest with deliberate, gentle steps. Underfoot, twig and branch alike creaked and snapped; leaves crackled and shifted, dusting his bare feet with detritus and caking them with mud. The hem of his simple white nightgown appeared to bleed earth, the cotton fabric pulling the moisture upward in slow, hemorrhaging streaks. He’d trodden through shallow ponds and gullies rumbly with pebbles and thorns to find the voice that called him. Scratches on his hands and cheeks, dirt gathered under his nails, and the errant leaf snagged by his hair told the tale, and yet Julien traveled with a solemn sort of mysticism. He seemed to notice nothing more than that tree.
The single white birch that shot through the midnight wood and drew him closer seemed to sing, seemed to glow with a low, eerie thrum of energy that he could not ignore. Julien saw it in his dreams and searched for it during the day, but it was only at night that it appeared to him. In summer, at first, and throughout the fall. Now willingly, he left his warm, eiderdown pillows and quilts to venture into the icy Shroud, his hot, panting breath threading small cumulus clouds into the air.
I will tell you stories and secrets. Come listen, little one. You will be the only one to know.
