For Yukito (short story)
Title: For Yukito
Author: player of Charna Ja'Varrel'Kav
Once, the land of man was simple. There were great fires and brightly woven clothes. But man grew adventurous and traveled away from its home and hearth, and so the world grew complicated. Amongst the children of man was a child, she was a curious child that was often made fun of. She was a bit of an artist. This is a story about her.
The child was petite, even nearly frail. She had blotches of light pigment upon her cheeks in the design of double waves that were given to her by her brother. This story is about him, too.
No brother could love a sister more, and no sister could love a brother more. They were mirror images of the other in every way, except that where she was frail, as I have mentioned, he was physically strong and tall.
One day the pair were gathering acorns in the woods not far from their home, it was the farthest that they had ever traveled and they were a bit nervous. On this day, the two were separated for the first time ever.
The child cried out for her brother, fearful that he was gone from her but no reply to her came. You see, the brother had fallen into a river that swept him too faraway lands and for now, this is where his story ends.
The child wept for her brother but was visited by three strange signs that come out of prophecy. The first was a cluster of acorns that grows two inside a third. Her tears stilled when she saw this and silence filled her ears that was deafening to experience. The next was a long shaft of silver light in the middle of the daytime. And lastly, a squirrel appeared before her. Now squirrels by nature are not terribly odd, except when they are pure turquoise. This squirrel sat behind her and told her of a man that she must visit. When the light was gone, and the vision left, the girl would long remember these words.
Beyond the world of sand and light, forests and waters was a land of white, the girl struggled to find the man of old that she had to visit, and around her, the world began to decay. Beasts out of nightmares rose around her and she cried out for the one that could save her from such a fate. Exhausted from running from the shadows, her feet bruised and broken she retired to a cave in the mountains not far from where, unbeknownst to her, her brother was living.
However, locked in the cave, the girl did not know this and so began to rock back and forth. How could she escape, how could she find the man she must find? She did not know. And as such, feared the things beyond her cave. How does one banish a nightmare?
The answer came to her in a dream, and when she woke the next day she began to paint upon the inside of her cloak, which was fashioned of animal skins.
You see child’s brother had landed in cold lands where small people found him. He was revered as a god amongst them because of his physical strength and height. The little people lived in a grand town of ice and snow and took the boy in as one of their own where he great stronger by eating their special winter berry tarts.
The howls of the nightmares grew thick and the small people of the distant village grew worried. Fearing that the nightmares would come for them, they begged the brother to find them and fight them off. They equipped him with a javelin and a wolf-hide shield.
He made his way to the cave, not knowing his sister was inside. For fourteen nights he struck out against the nightmares, and for fourteen nights they stayed strong around him. On the fifteenth night, the moon full of Liabo, Lornon, and Tilaok, he struggled to stand for one more battle against the dreaded beasts.
Inside the cave, the child saw the man struggle night after night against the beasts, and every day she struggled to finish her work within the cave. On the night of the full moons, she stepped forward bravely determined that this was the man she must aid and yet not knowing it was her brother.
She raised her cloak high into the air and the triple moons struck it just as a nightmare leaped into the air in an attempt to take out the man’s throat. The silvery light struck her cloak, were moving in unison out of a stunningly bright white light in the center of the canvas, a gaunt-faced man clad in sable garments turns to the left, while a magnificent white unicorn faces right. The man is poised to strike with a black steel falchion, though his dark eyes, devoid of whites, droop closed with sleep. Rearing up grandly, the unicorn is decked with a luminous silver horn. Filling the remainder of the canvas, a wide barren plain spreads out to the edge of all vision, all below a midnight sky.
The man was saved, and the nightmares vanquished. The child and her brother were reunited, and that is how Halflings came to call upon Ronan as their Defender against Nightmares.