In the fog-thickened landscapes of sleep, a Queen awakens. Somewhere through the haze, a sun slowly rises, growing hot and lazy, bringing with it the humidity of deep Summer, only intensified by the moisture in the morning air. On the outskirts of the lands protected and owned by the Queen of Summer, the leaves of the ancient oaks, though full and lush, hang limply, turned down as they do just before an impending storm. Indeed, rumbling thunder can be heard rolling low in the distance, while the smell of rain wafts across the land, borne by a sudden summer breeze... the Wind is not too far, is it?
     Then a shadow emerges from the depths of those mighty trees... a vision of crimson, rust and yellow... gone is her usual green gown... the green of waiting fertility... the green of the grass... replaced by fabric of the deepest red... blood red... crimson... with a sash of yellow at the waist, whipping wildly behind her, mingling with hair the colour of flame as the Wind whips it up, stirs it.
     The trees do not creak. The leaves are still. Even the grass does not rustle... the calm before the storm...
     But is she not the Storm herself? Heat and anger... warmth and sorrow... it all blends into one as Hafwen stands alone just on the outskirts of her oaken realm, gazing off at a nearby land, separated from her by a land of apples... and an impenetrable wall of Thorns.

     The apples are sweetest that grow in the hidden orchard. The grass is greenest where it is not seen. Beyond the Impenetrable Forest of Thorn, so sudden in its rising from his earth, is a land of unimaginable bounty and the dizzy din of Harvest. It is as if the world has grown so suddenly greedy...
     The king stirs on a bed of blackthorn blossoms, cousins of the rose, the scent lifts from the wall of thorns. One must wonder: if the Queen of Summer set fire to them, would they burn? For their bark is so mossy, the moisture coming from the Perpetual Autumn that exists within the boundaries of the great kingdom of Avalon. There, yes... the apples will be pinkish golden, ripe, the juice full. There is promise there, unfolding life there. And he unfolds from it, feeling the coming of a storm...
     A murder of ravens circles over the thorns and land, one through twelve on the branches of the thorn trees. Puffed up sentinels, they stare down at the queen from on high. Beyond the trees, a trumpeting of stags, the sound of hooves, the creaking of wood...
     I stir in my sleep, yet I do not wake...
     The voice filters in from the ravens, it seems, from the sentinels. Or... perhaps from the trees themselves...
     The rays of the sun shine, yet I do not warm...

     The Storm hesitates. What is this? But then it is in motion again, beginning with a single step. A bare, fair foot steps forward, then the other... rhythmic... slowly... but steadily. Hafwen begins to cross the space between her Kingdom and his, her hair and sash ever kept aloft by the Wind... you cannot see him, but he is with her, surely.... as much as such a fleeting thing can be.
     Where are you, the Once Oak King? Do you fear to face the Summer?
     She taunts, perhaps... anger spurring her words. One foot, then the other... then repeated... again and again... she begins to close the distance to the farthest she dares tread. Will you not show yourself? Will you not show your face?
     There is a look of scorn shown to the ravens, normally unbothered by her. But she feels as though she is being mocked, and this tries her patience. Known to be fair and normally one with a long fuse, it seems that fuse has just about expired, letting the heat of her terrible temper bubble just beneath the surface.
     Show yourself! she calls out once more, growing more and more impatient with each passing moment. Thunder rumbles again, this time closer than before... the Storm approaches.

     The king rolls over on his bed of blackthorn and whitethorn blossoms, eyes opening as if a thunderstrike woke him. Deepest green, deeper than the moss on the trees, deep as holly leaves in a dense wood. His mouth moves, his voice murmurs: Hafwen. (And in the Waking World, a heavy Welshman rolls over in his rest upon the grass, his lover gone to the river to bathe away her own anger. He breathes for a moment, murmuring a word, a name in Welsh but not waking...)
     Summer storms stir so suddenly, tempests and fistfuls of rain. Autumn storms roll more gently, mostly full of rain. Better still, a misting, a constant misting and silver fog. So goes the world now. He stands upon the edges of his realm, his forest at his back. He is as he sleeps, clothed only in tattoos. Twelve now. More now than of your devising, Hafwen. Blackthorn, Whitethorn, Holly, Ivy and Ash -- Apple and Yew. Life and Death and Resurrection. Rebirth.
     He, as his land, has been transformed -- for rightly his land is transformed in his own transformation. Beautiful the unblemished face, the British features, wholly British from families before the arrival of Saxons, Angles and Jutes. Fiery bronze hair is in longer waves, curls that end at his neck. The rest is as, perhaps, you recall...
     "I fear not the face of the Summer," he says. "For she is the one who gives rise to the Fall." Soft his voice and deep, lyrical. It is music all its own. "And do you fear the end of Summer? You know it is a lie," he smiles a little. "Nothing ever really dies..."

     She stops some distance away from the edges of his lands, from where he stands... though in the real world, they may need to shout, this is not the real world. As she speaks, her voice travels as clearly as if she were standing directly in front of him.
     "Over eight hundred years, Davydd." Each word is said succinctly, simply, and as though each carried the weight of that time that has passed. Lightning flashes, barely seen against the hazy light of the sun through the fog, but the crack of thunder is audible enough... sudden... electric... full of anger.
     Hafwen's jaw sets and she looks off to the distance for a moment, as though looking for the rain chasing its way across the lands, flooding and filling every valley and crevice it can find. When she looks back, she is calmer, but her tone carries the weight of her ire.
     "Did I mean so little?" There is a pause. No mention of the vow. The vows and fates be damned, apparently -- her anger is stemming from a more personal vein, like an artery that has been cut. "I found out through word of mouth. Through rumor. Whispered within the halls of Samradh Doire like a dirty little secret." Yet another pause, then she whispers, "People spoke... and I doubted it. I denied it at first. Then I saw with mine own two eyes... I saw..."
     Those sky-blue eyes finally turn to look at the Once Oak King as she spits, "...I had been replaced." Only now does she really look at him, take the sight of him in... and only then does she gasp, her anger faltering out of shock...
     "By the stars... what... what has happened? What...?" She can't even put into words what she wants to ask. Blood rushes in her ears as she realizes something has gone terribly wrong...

     He does not falter at your shock, nor does he answer it, nor is there any blanching at your anger or shame in his nakedness. He comes unarmed to face your anger. It is just as well as justified. "My lady, I know I hurt you, and you are right to be upset with me." Everyone is right to be at the moment. "I am not going to stand here and make excuses for it. I will say that hurting you was never the intent, though that was the result. I have... hurt a great many in the past few months... trying to be something I could never be, too much and nothing at all."
     Davydd does not step away from the guarding thorns. "I am of the physical realm, and I always have been. My attempts to leave it have... not been successful. My ... attempts to integrate the two or more worlds together ... have not been successful. I am sorry, Hafwen, Oak Queen of Summer, for hurting you and for breaking the vow that I made. I thought," Davydd chuckles now, though his eyes are full of holly-berry redness, "...to people the earth with heirs and fill the world with magic." He laughs again, he laughs at himself, and he cries, lifting his head up, his eyes to the sky and he shakes his head at himself.
     "The curse has ended," Davydd murmurs a moment later, looking back to you there in the distance, and the redness, that is blood, no longer falls to stain the cheeks of the Holly King. "I have merely become that which I should have been before. Where there once was Oak, there now grows Holly. But there is no such thing as death," Davydd smiles again. "There is Harvest, there is Sleep, there is Waking, there is Copulating." Great (and vividly blue-painted) shoulders roll in a slight shrug. "I am one of those who walk that perpetual road. But it is far from hopeless. I feel ... strangely at peace..."

     Her own shock has brought her a bit closer than before, though she did not move her feet. She stands a short distance away, though the two could not touch if they merely reached out... there is still a small chasm. The thunder rolls again, but it is lower, deeper, and further back... the rage of it tamed slightly.
     Strands of hair lick about her like flames in a fire, though not as wildly as before. The sash moves with the flames. Red and yellow... colours of lust and life... of flame and summer.
     Quietly, she regards the Holly King carefully, looking at the changes... noting the lack of blood in his cheeks... the pallor and perfection replacing it. Where others of her kind may have fallen back with revulsion at what they might have perceived as a Dead Thing, she looks on him with great sorrow.
     "Davydd... oh, no... Davydd... are you lost to us forever then? Are you truly lost to the Summerlands?" You exist here, but... your realm has been cut off in the land of the fae... blocked by that terrible, Impenetrable Forest of Thorn. Her face looks drawn, even strained. While she was angry and longed to vent her frustration and fury on him, there was still that little tiny flicker of hope in her heart, in her soul, that he would see the 'error of his ways'... but now she sees that this is not the case... that he probably did not wish this upon himself... and that there really is no Turning Back.
     The Truth of this weighs heavily upon her, apparently... even the Wind dies down, leaving her be, letting her locks fall about her and become still.

     "I have been lost for eight-hundred years, Hafwen." Davydd's mouth cants sideways in a crooked smile. "I have never belonged to this realm. I have always belonged to the ....earth. Summer...has a queen, and the queen does not need a king to have her power," he speaks to you. "And you know more of Life and Death," he softly cautions, "...than to look up on me with pity. For without me, where are you? Without you, where am I? Without Life, Death has no meaning. Without Death, Life has no lure. And we know," he notes to you, dark green gaze pointedly on you, "...that death is only transformation. It is a state of becoming...something else. Why look upon me with such sorrow, then."
     "There are some things, lady, that we must answer to, things greater than ourselves. Things greater than our intentions," Davydd remarks, "... our plans. So... I move where my Fate would have me move, as I should have moved eight-hundred years ago. I have been... walking in this ... limbo. Now, now... I am alive...now I am born... and now my story may have its beginning, even as other stories must end..."

     There is a moment's thought given to the questions as Hafwen's head bows, eyes seeking the solitude of the ground. Finally glancing back up to gaze upon the Holly King, she murmurs softly, "There is sadness, yes. I mourn... I mourn for the passing of promises, hopes and dreams I once held onto through the ages."
     Glancing behind her shoulder, her attention drawn by the smell of rain, she murmurs, "I mourn for a great number of things. But mostly, I mourn for the passing of the King of Summer... so I may... eventually," as adjustment always takes time, "...rejoice the birth of the King of Autumn, so I can take solace in the fact that when my time comes to its brief end, there is one to take up the reigns... only to pass them back to me when my time comes again."
     Only now does she glance back, briefly closing her eyes, then reopening them to release tears as crystal clear as the purest pond. And thus the signal is released.. and the heavens open, bringing the rains which pound into the earth, replenishing it, but soaking it... flooding it... it is too much for the soil to hold for now, and so flooding begins... but the land will heal over time.
     And there she stands, the Oak Queen, Queen of Summer, in the middle of her summer rain and sorrow... strands of hair hang heavily about her with the weight of the water, as does her gown... but she stands tall and proud nonetheless.
     "And so, Holly King, I bid you farewell. May the Fates be kind to you now that you no longer fight them..." comes her whisper.

     "Hope..." Davydd smiles a little. "We are most hopeful, Hafwen, when things are most dire. On the darkest night of the year, there we sat, praying for dawn," he whispers. His fiery eyebrows cock upward and suddenly Davydd smiles, a smile of thorns, a smile of beauty, the smile of the rake, "You make it sound so awful..." his voice pulls lowly.
     And then the deluge...
     The water, no matter how plentiful, cannot wash away the marks upon his skin. As he turns, Blackthorn and Whitethorn visible along shoulder blades and draping to his spine. On his right shoulder, evident in forever blossoming, the promise...and the hope... and the sweetness of Apples...
     There is no such thing as death...

Posted by rowan at July 10, 2004 11:12 AM