The Lake of the Forest

Ariella Moonbow

Night is well-advanced and so is the muted chorus of sounds that lends so musical a quality to the darkness in this part of the forest. She pauses a moment simply to listen and to savor the song of the night. There is a freshness within its familiarity in the darkness of this night whose stillness follows upon the disturbing violence of the past few hours. Behind her in the distance are the outsiders and the chaos they have brought with them into the forest. Behind her as well, now that the smell of the wet ground near the lake fills her nostrils and the sound of water brushing gently against stones greets her ears, is the disturbance she had felt within her habitual calm not even an hour earlier. The anger, her anger, remains and that will not be easily set aside. Nor should it be. But anger does not master her, at least not here in this place that is her home.

There is a rustling beneath the branches of the laurels that grow along the bank of the lake. They keep watch for her, her swans, and even now several waddle forward to greet her. She stoops and, as they approach her, extends her hand and, in affectionate greeting, brushes her fingers along the neck of each one in turn. She whispers the name of each as does so and then she rises once more to her full height. In spite of all else she feels, she smiles. Striding rapidly forward she leads the birds back to the lake. And as she enters its waters her form changes in aspect and shape, leaving aside that of a woman and taking up the graceful bearing of a swan.

Rh'rohild rises from the edge of the lake, watching the sky. Something is wrong. A distortion clouds his vision, hiding something. But what? What being had the power to totally obscure itself like this? He tries to put it out of his mind, but it is still there, nagging at hm like a child nags their parents. But there are morepressing matters, such as the group of adventurers. They might have noticed it too, and would have sped their travel.

Ariella Moonbow

The swan is proverbial for the gracefulness of its movement and the nobility of it bearing, but the swan is not known for the keenness of its sight. And so it is that while there is sufficient moonlight over the lake for her to note a few basic aspects of the reptilian figure who now stands along its banks, the eyes of her swan form perceive little more than this. Still, even such minimal information may communicate much and it is not difficult to note that this visitor has something of the bearing and character of the warrior about him and that his movement within the wood is a movement that is much more natural than that of those others who have brought such disturbance in their passing. Should this one have some relation to those others, she cannot say, but she will brook none of the violent destructiveness of the outsiders here where she makes her home.

With a silent grace her long neck stretches forward and the downward into the water. Her body flows after the movement of her neck, practically pouring itself into the lake as it disappears below the surface of the water. She swims silently, navigating the darkness of the lake with a familiar and practiced ease until she arrives near spot along that bank that is concealed by a cluster of laurel bushes. Soundless and graceful, she steps onto the mossy stones between the laurels and here, where no eye can see her , she once more shifts in form, leaving aside the graceful serenity of the swan and taking up once more the aspect of a woman.