| Hello my new friends, It was inspiring to meet so many good people during my time with the caravan, I am one of the Reidi 'Outwalker,' usually striding to new places and new adventures alone I was honored to bring my king and his daughter to the caravan. Little did I know of the changes that would occur. My cousin, Ceri, is now a Queen and a bride, my clan has a new king and I've become an 'official advisor' and wedding coordinator. It was not what I was expecting. Unfortunately when I got back to the clan I found that someone blabbed about my telling of the story of our origins. I am ashamed to admit I was far gone with drink at the time (mostly because that *$$%£""! Mar, kind and loving god that he is has basically imprisoned my clan!) but there are no excuses, as my fellow clansmen explained to me rather harshly. I was politely informed by what looked to me like the tip of a sword at the time to go back and tell the story properly. I tell it here, for it is more than just a story, it is who the Reidi are; How the Reidi started their stride And many generations ago we were just like the other clans, we lived in villages and our kings had a mighty hall. We tilled the land and mined in the earth and we were as content as any people had a right to be. Bardel was our king when our lives changed, he was not famously wise, he was not glorious in battle but he was our king and commanded our love, our respect. He led our people well enough but rarely left his fort, for him the sky was too blue, the rain was too wet, the wind was too cold and the sun too hot. Our Wise ones tried to cure him of his dislike of the world but to no avail. Unknown to us at the time Bardel was not entirely of his own right mind when he chose to stay in his fort. We thought his mind was sick, and it was, but the sickness was a fire we have all felt, a fever that can banish reason, a sickness from which none of us wished to be cured. Bardel, you see, was in love. All Dannan know that spirits walk the world, they soar in the sky and sleep deep within the earth. They wander alone through wilderness and brush passed us on bustling streets. We have all seen their wrath, their fear, their retribution and we have passed those stories down through the ages. The stories we rarely hear are those of a spirit’s love. Our people were strong in the land and its spirit was strong because of the people. On many occasions, as was its want, it took human form and wander among us, taking power from our landbound souls wandering and basking in our love for it. And during one of these incarnations, when it walked through the hill fort wrapped in the form of a young woman it locked eyes with our king. It is said that the king and the land are one, I have often thought that the story of our people led to such a saying. For no love at first sight ever rivalled that first glance. If a man had walked between the king and the spirit at that instant I am sure he would have been rendered to dust by the power of the love that flowed between them. There were no words, no bard, not even the greatest could have found such words. There was no action, no warrior, facing a thousand foes could battle strongly enough to rival such love. For though we Elves have quick tongues and our feats on the battlefield are legends, at the core, at the heart our strength is our love. We love our brothers, a hundred warriors will die for one, we love our family, we would rather cut off our own heads than betray them. Love makes us powerful, love carries us down through the ages, our love makes us eternal. Our loves set our fate. In that instant our destinies changes. In that instant, though we did not realise, we were becoming the Reidi. The spirit of the land could not bear to leave the side of the king, could not bear to return to the other side, always wanting one more moment, one more sight of her heart’s love. She pulled her power to the hill fort, the place we knew was the heart of our lands, and in that knowledge her power grew a thousandfold and she could hold her form, she could stay heart by heart with our king. But this was not the king’s first love, and therein lies the pain of our story my friends, for as any king our king need heirs to carry on his line. In that knowledge, many years before our story began, he had taken a wife. This wife, our queen, loved our king and in times passed he had loved her, they had many strong sons and many comely daughters. But the love between Bardel and the spirit of the land banished the king’s love for his wife and laid it down to death. I am not sure that even after so many generations we can forgive him such a treachery, truly if our king had chose to pick up his sword and slice off his own head we would have welcomed the act, and this would be a story about loyalty for family. But it is not my brothers and sisters, it is not. This is a story about love, true love, and what a man and woman, maybe any man and any woman, will do to keep such a love. Love is often accompanied by tragedy, and the truest love can bring the deepest pain. For a spirit belongs to spirit world and a man belongs to the land of men and mayhap there is a reason, mayhap there is purpose and woe betide the person that tries that purpose, even the loverly. Without its spirit the land began to fade, not quickly at first, not noticbly. A tree at the edge of our lands grew stunted, a small part of the crop was taken by rats, a weave didn’t come out quite right. We didn’t see, the warnings were too subtle, our content blinded us. The queen knew that the king’s eye did not fall on her as often as it had, her bed often went unwarmed by his presence and, rightly so, she began to grow suspicious. Glances that had once escaped her eye became filled with their true meanings. Passing words became portents. It did not take long for her to realise that Bardel’s heart belonged to another. She began to follow her erstwhile husband around the fort and it was not long before she found him in the arms of his new love. When the queen realised that she had been cuckolded she became enraged, a burning fury that seared her heart to ash and turned her wanting to naught but blood. With the speed of the strongest warrior she drew her knife and plunged it into the heart of her husband’s lover. Caught in the act of love with another the king was stunned, he was ashamed, he was guilty. But the spirit knew nothing of guilt, what is guilt to love, she was not ashamed, what is shame in the face of a spirit’s power? With the knife still in her heart she rose and turned to the queen who would be killer. “He is mine,” was all she said. The queen ran, pain and fear and rage and sorrow biting like wolves at her heels. She did not stop until she reached the edge of our lands, there she fell and wept to the gods. Not for her pain, not for her sorrow, not for her rage and not for her fear. For she had seen the madness in the spirit’s eyes and she knew what would happen next. She wept for her people, thought not born of our blood she had always been welcomed, always been loved by the people of the land and she had loved them in return. She wept for us, because she knew that one day our suffering would rival her own. The king’s love for the spirit was gone, he knew what he had done and he was wracked with guilt. Then he did what any true elf would have done, should have done a long time ago, he rose from the bed of his love, drew his sword and tried to die. The spirit halted his righteous arm and smiled at him. She reached into his mind and, gently as a mother’s kiss on a babe’s cheek, took that day from his thoughts. The king was confused, why had he drawn his sword? Why was he rising from bed so late in the day? But then he laid eyes on the spirit of the land and his love swelled in his heart and banished confusion. But the spirit was afeared, for she knew that if the people found the queen gone, if they began to suspect that all was not right in the king’s hall others would come and try to destroy her love. Suspicion and fear made a small but powerful home in her heart for nothing, not the queen, not the people, not even the gods themselves would stand between her and her love. Those the spirit could banish from the hall she banished, those she could drive away she drove, and not kindly. For the people still thought their land was good, that the soil and the air loved them and they loved the land and in that love the spirit had terrible power. But still she feared, for the gods and spirits walked many lands with many people, if they were to find out what she was doing they would, sooner or later move against her. As she had sealed the boundary to the queen so, with her full and awesome strength she did seal the boundary for everyone. From the outside none could enter for her power destroyed the roads and hid the land. From within her power moved with more subtilty, she reached into the minds of the people that loved her and took the desire to wander, destroyed the will to want more than they had at home. And on the boundaries of our land our queen walked, unable to return and claim her place, or her vengeance, or her people’s freedom. She walked, on stony ground, through copse of dead trees, by the bones of dead animals and across dried up streams. Without its spirit the land was slowly dying. And the queen wept again for she knew that we would die with it. So time passed, the king held fast to his fort, he and love both jealously guarded by the spirit. The king still ruled his people and the people still loved their king, but there was a sadness, a forgotten loss that could not be remembered, a pain that could only just be felt. The spirit still loved, her mind obscured by such love, she did not realise her land was dying, she did not care her people were dying, she only cared for her king. And on a lonely day, on her terrible patrol of the dead and dying boundary, the queen happened upon a camp, and in that camp sat a Seer enjoying a breakfast that seemed large enough for two. The Seer invited the queen into his camp and offered half of his breakfast to her. For the seer knew what was happening in our land and he knew that the one person who could save us, who would save us, was the queen. But at a price. While the queen ate he told her his visions. He gave her a plan for the coming battle and he gave her a way into the land. He told her the price and again she wept for us. Strong in her resolve the queen, our beautiful queen, our brave queen, stood at the boundary to our hidden land. In her hand a branch from the last living tree that grew on both our side of the boundary and on the side that was not ours. In this simple stick there was power, for while one side grew weak the other held strong, while one side was part of the spirit of our land the other was not. She placed the stick on the ground alongside her own stride and, as though there had never been a restriction she walked onto our lands again. In that instant the spirit felt her strength wane, only for a heartbeat, only for the quickest moment, but in that blink of an eye she felt her doom. Enraged she ran to the battlements, to the very edge of her greatest power and began to scour the land for sight of her fate. The queen walked the land, she did not go straight to the fort, did not leap to battle, and she wept, for she knew that what was to come would both bless and doom her people for generations if not forever. As the queen walked a strange feeling came over the people she walked by. Their feet began to itch and in their minds they felt a burning desire to see what was over the next hill. A curiosity befell them as to where this stranger who was familiar to their eyes was going. The queen walked through village after village, and as she left the villages they began to empty. She walked passed flocks and the shepherds abandoned their charges to follow her, she walked passed herdsmen and the men dismounted from their horses to walk behind her. Small children were picked up by their families and taken from their homes. Infants were bundled into baskets and backpacks as their parents follow the queen across the land. The queen walked passed the hill fort, but she did not enter, the entire fort emptied of its people but she did not seek her revenge, yet. The spirit of the land saw that her people, her power, were leaving the land and she cast about with all of her might to stop them. But the minds of the people were closed to her, their love of the land was already beginning to fade and with it her strength. The spirit ran to the one thing that held true, the love of the king, and in that love she found enough strength to continue, in that love she found the power to fight back. The queen walked until she had taken all of the people from the land, she walked until she reached the dead border of our home. There the spirit and the king waited for her. The spirit looked at the queen and in full knowing of the pain it would caused she took the king’s hand in hers. The queen bowed her head for an instant in memory of lost love but her will stood strong. She looked at her king, her husband and smiled sadly. The king looked at the mother of his children, at his first love and was again filled with shame and guilt. He reached out a hand to her. Rage filled the spirit at this betrayal, and she gripped the king’s hand in hers until bones cracked and blood ran. “You are mine!” was all she said. The queen shook her head sadly. She took up her stick, held it high and turned back to the land that had once been our home. With all her strength she plunged her stick into the earth. The ground shook, the skies screamed. The spirit fought back. Into our hearts she plunged, into the last remnants of our love she grasped until she had a hold of our very souls. We were bound to the land, we were bound to her, through generations of blood, through our houses and our fields, through good summers and mild winters we had all been bound. If the spirit was to die at the hands of the queen then she would take her vengeance, she would take us with her. The world groaned as power coursed through the soil and the bedrock. The gods looked upon the land, saw what the spirit had done, and were wroth. They raised their hands to cast the spirit down, unconcerned at the fate of the people that would die with her. But the queen raised her eyes to the heavens, and cast her voice down to the roots of the tallest trees. She offered her own soul for ours, she faced oblivion for the fate of her people. And the gods stayed their hands. The whole world stopped. The birds froze in the air and the rivers turned to glass. In that pause the gods changed fate for the sacrifice of one woman, our queen, our beloved queen. The spirit felt her grip being lifted, she felt another’s presence in our hearts, our minds. As the spirit was cast down a wonder occurred, our queen was raised in her place. Where there had been a spirit of the land there was now a spirit of the people. Where once we had been bound we were now free. In her last throws of existence the spirit gripped fast to her love. The king struggled to be free, to join his people once more, but none came to his aid, none even realised his passing as the spirit of the queen joined with our souls. The spirit and the king faded from the world, cursed to oblivion by the gods. But the spirit and the land were one. As the spirit died the land died with her, as the spirit was cast into nothingness so went our land forever from the world. Everything we had ever known was gone but we felt no sadness. Our queen had risen to the gods, but we felt no loss. We felt free. We had finally realised that we were Reidi. Our wanderlust has never faded, we never rest in one place, never trust to the spirit of any one land. our queen, our spirit, still guides our hearts, she sets our course eternal and we still love her as fiercely as those who walked behind her on the last day of binding. If anyone encounters the Reidi clan please let them know that I did it right this time! By the way, has anyone seen my new King? He and I have a hunting trip to discuss...
"Ohhh, he's making it up as he goes along!"
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