ϟ (for Yumi @gatheringofsouls ~)
@gatheringofsouls // a song spun from the wounds we wear, their memory our burdens alone to bear // not accepting.
Here in this place, this shrine dedicated to the moon and the rabbit built by his own hands, she tends to wounds that the bonfire will not scour away as all others are-- those left in the wake of their war against the inky shadows and shades of the many-headed serpent. Shed of steel flesh and clothen hide, bereft of the armored adornments that have for so long defined him, Brom feels all the more aware of the exposure; perhaps not to the elements even with the blowing wind so near to the mountain’s peak, but to the eyes of Yumigami as they surely see the lengths in which his battles old and new have taken him... scar after scar after scar, a tapestry woven not from thread and needle but by the bite of blade and bow and battle-axe among so many others.
“Those are old, Yumi.” He tenses at the light touch, though by the breath and the slight chuckle he lets out it’s not from any lingering pain so much as some sensitivity left between the jagged lines of battered skin. They begin at the upper half of his shoulder and go down towards the small of his back at least six inches before they taper out to uneven points-- triplet reminders of what lies in store for any man or woman brave or foolish enough to challenge the wilds of Forossa. “I earned them during my trial.”
“My trial...” Brom seems nostalgic, the words tinged with fondness and some small sadness as well as he explains. “Knights of my order were not simply the sons and daughters of nobility, nor were we guaranteed the right to wear this armor simply for the strength and skill of our hands. To wear these plates, to wear this fleece, you must prove yourself as much a lion as Faraam was said to be. You must see his domain in your own eyes, to treat all of Forossa as your stalking grounds and, from doing so, learn to revere her just as surely.” Leaning back, fingers tapping slowly as though keeping a tempo only known to him, Brom sighs. “Thus, the trial. When you had proven yourself by battle and the glory won from it to be a warrior, you were asked to prove your faith by seeking our god where he preferred to dwell-- not in our temples, where we beseeched and troubled him, but in the wilderness where he as the lord of beasts held his court. Our highest priests, the Northwarders, would anoint you, give you furs and a spear, then sent you on your way. To learn the ways of our land as our master knew them and return with proof... or to perish.”
“And so I learned. I climbed and scaled her highest peaks and peered through the thundering clouds above, hoping I might have glimpse his lightning shape stalking among them. I traversed the length of her deepest forests and learned each tree by their bark and branches as though I had grown among them. From one end of Forossa to another I roamed, even to the places where mere men dared not tread...” His eyes lose their focus, his stare seeing past the goddess that his company keeps and his mind delving deeper into memories even the curse swallowing his spirit cannot consume. “Days spent laying face down on a lake of ice that never thaws, with neither food nor drink save the melt of snow upon my tongue. Nights where the winds whispered to me in the voices of my kinsmen and beckoned to me in the flurries of snow, no fires to warm your flesh for flame was not given their leave to burn. Dreams of a world I could not recognize when I slept beneath the boughs of the black tree, of wingbeats and lightning and flame and death...”
Brom blinks once, twice, before shaking his head. His chest aches, and with a small start he realizes he’d forgotten to breathe. With a deepening breath, he continues. “During the last month of my trial, I realized I was being stalked. Tracks in the snow, brief glimpses as I scaled the bluffs and cliffs, the quiet crunching of branches around my camps... I knew I was being hunted and had my suspicions, but the beast was too cunning to be caught out in the open, and back then I did not trust in the strength of my hands or spear enough to try and challenge it openly. I settled for caution and patience, deciding that I would wait for my pursuer to make the first move.” With a slow shake of the head, Brom seems somewhat chagrined. “It was a mistake. Three days before I would return to the Northwarders triumphant, I was set upon while making my way through a snowdrift that had covered a field I needed to cross. It was a northern lion, young but strong enough to seek out a territory of his own, and when he pounced he nearly grabbed me by the neck-- my slipping in the ice and snow saved me, for he only managed to maul my back with his claws rather than wrestle me down to snap my spine.”
“It was... a hard fight.” He manages a chuckle despite himself. “He was strong, so, so strong he might as well have foregone stalking me altogether. Even with all that I had learned and survived during my time in the wilds, even with the challenges I had faced and overcome, he was like nothing I had ever faced. His claws made to strip the flesh from my bones, his teeth sought to tear out my throat, and the act of keeping from simply being throw down and mauled to death took so much of my own strength... we fought for what felt like hours, Yumigami, and even now I confess that I couldn’t say how I survived.” A light hum, thoughtful and pensive, emanates from him. “When our battle was over, I had broken my spear off into his belly at the cost of him breaking damn near every bone in my body and spilling a fair share of my blood onto the ground. It was all I could do but lay there beside the corpse of him and simply breathe for a long time.” As though in reminiscence, Brom takes a deep breath of his own.
Reaching around his neck, he pulls up the length of twine carrying some of his more personal mementos. A signet of a brigade now fallen and buried, an aged feather given to him by someone long lost and parted ways with, and the curved length of a lion’s claw that even countless years later gleams razor sharp in the firelight. “From his paw, I pried loose this claw as proof of my trial, and as a reminder of what my homeland truly is... truly will be once again. An untamed place, a place of strength and harshness where even her sons and daughters must be tempered and willing to adapt in order to survive. Forossa’s children, with or without Faraam, must be the same in a world that is unfamiliar to us... and the longer I am here, Yumigami, the less I seem to recognize. Of humanity and the gods, of fire and darkness, of myself and my role in all of this madness.”
“So,” he holds the claw aloft and makes to swipe at her with it. “I remember where I came from. I remember what I managed to do with my own strength, with my own hands, that the trials that await me need not seem so insurmountable.” He rises with a stretch and a flexing of tight muscles, pulling back on his tunic and adjusting to the dwindling pain left from tended wounds, and regards her with a quiet fondness. “Perhaps even more so, now that I’ve exchanged a god that abandoned his people for a goddess worthy of admiration such as yourself, Yumigami.”
