Caravans were hefted at this point of the road, hoisted up for fear of the breadth of wheels spilling over into falling. Rolling down air as rain might long in the landing, crashing into green canopy pattering. Seeped and sunk into dense thicket secluded. Into that well of green surrounded by basin of stone shear. Even then with careful heft, with thin path stepped into slow and careful, hand running across cliff smooth and shimmering that gave no assurance, a freakish wind could rush. Winds easy in convincing steady careful boots to slip and tumble free. Such were the hazards of this trip chartered across the Narrows of Mount Mheara.
Firmer the argument of the air when those winds bore things of talons to jostle and deprive the ground of takers of the passage. Flapping and swooning over prospects to sweep away, rushing with the wind en mass in compelling. Their cargos dined upon, things assessed for sparkle. To barter with one another, to decorate cave homes and themselves. The bones discarded. The meat snipped by beak and savoured messy. Those that tumbled to through air that slipped the attention of the flying were granted to the forest tight below. So it was to many that braved the Narrows.
So it had been with Austri.
The cliffs running their sheet of pearlescent stone dip down from path did grant those ejectors their roosts. Senses keen to the roll of wheel, the sound of convoy murmur. The talk of trepidation. Preparation for perilling path, ignorant of those roosting. A delightful event for them, growing all sweeter for the awaiting of it. Roosts numerous were adorned with trinkets of richness from years passed in plundering, glitters that granted cruel soothings to cliff denizen. Seven months now since the last festival of hauls and fallings.
When Austri had fallen.
The bird things began their crowing now, as day rose and stretched it's light. The bird things songs buzzing from bills from neighbour to neighbour as full hue of orange rose from the lowness of the green canopy below, to mid point gaze direct of that narrow path seen level by sun. The high rising cliff the same above as it was below, the height beyond the imagination of any scaffold ever assembled. Rising as impossible challenge from path as it did from below from woodland oasis to challenge of balance in thin stone platform.
Yet Austri had made to ascend to it.
Twice now had he made his efforts.
The first had left pock marks of shod tools of simple metal in the cliff. The climb before to reach zenith of the leaf and branch. A trial all it's own that hosted carnivorous herb and prowl of beast in undergrowth. Leap and stab, chistle and climb begun. The tools were simple, salvaged and on site shaped and formed. Tough enough for purpose. Gleaned from what had been left unaccounted by the bird things wild abandon during the plundering pitfall festivals.
Stabs in the sheen. Alcoves made empty of the sleeping feathered ones as needed. Some silently. Some less so. The things did not care for the noise of protests within each other's caves. Squabbles came easy to them, violence with greater ease than. They slept on as others slumped and yielded their hovels to runefolk climber. Glittering possessions of those that took the tumble before him adorned his brief lodgings. Some he recognised. Liberated from the home to serve remembrance, sequestered. Added upon others.
It went like this the first struggle.
Climb before they flew as one to wherever they did go during wide hours of the day. Find a perch, hide kill and rest and wait. Dine on them as they had meant upon him. Bide and hope and pray a neighbour did not pay a visit. Climb during their absence, repeat the process and slumber the sleep of the hyper vigilant.
The forest life had taught him such thing as habit, now innate as sweat beading was. As winds did howl and the bird things did preen and argue and bicker in their banal squarking, one eye half lidded to movement did he gather rest and strength. Palm on ground to feel for encroachment. Austri Rulvir claimed home each time. Withheld all quarter. Marshalled height day by day in this way and pattern. Flight by flight. Stab by stab. Up rock and within it. On, and on, and on.
Until he was but twenty stabs away from rising up and over. He scarce believed above was close to ending. Back to the Narrows beginning. The pocked cliff face twenty stabs short by his measure of marking the path up with his bootprints. He hefted and struck the scaling wall again.
The galing winds gave rebuke.
Ripped from tools he was. There they remained in cliffwall now. Halted. Arrested. Lingered as markers to his effort. The marks a ladder impossible carved independent. Despite everything, he had reached this point. Tools still lodged impotent but proud, never to find hands to grip again them in completing their scaling work.
Ripped away by wind freakish Austri was. Hands already raw yet rough as Runefolk were, slipped by that cruel compulsion of the wind of Mount Mheare. As if the cliff winds themselves shared the feathered one's humour. Revelled in the afterthought of the festival returning. Indulged itself without the ceremony of feathers. Slipping from eye focus those tools did, slithers of mountaineering in the tunnel of sky he fell within. A race of stone. No holler from him.
Another patter into that canopy from Austri, worse than the first. The first a minor miracle he had been able to walk after. This far less forgiving for his audacity. Branch broke into fall and bone. In far more brutal slashing and gouging of his flesh and sinews when he reached the green sheet of primal thinking eating leafs and vine. Lacerations and pummelling in his slowing. Hurled down to tunnel, to the base of the place denied to the bird things by greater menaces that prowled.
They knew better than to dip where they could be smothered by canopy. And smothered Austri was in the second falling complete.
But while the cliff could be thought to have a cruel jest in cajoling with the wind, the trees and root did have mercy. They took him within, the canopy was done with lashings of welcomes, their turn now assembling. Amongst the deep shade and wizened root, he was given diligence and viligence by things he knew not of. Allowed to mend by osmosis. Given roots not is own to fix upon. To have some semblance of nourishment and growth, in fits of sleeping and vigil of soilbed keeping him aloft in the world living.
From that compassion with no bargain or deal struck, long and finally, he was given back to waking, to thinking, to blinking, to knowing himself as whole and more. Added to, given something he had no wit or ken to, at first at least. He discovered much about what was present within quickly. And quick reached conclusion he did. So granted by gifts myterious another manner to scale upwards.
Tools of a different nature that would grant another chance to continue the effort to feel the sunlight without canopy shadow. That stone rising again, impossible task in reaching up, taken up again by his yearning to return, he dared to scale again.
It went like this for the second ascending. No strike of tool of metal. No boot biting in. No hazard of the wind swayed him. No palm that grew raw from gripping. Far slower in growing upward this time, but rooted. Like tendrils of ivy creeping and leeching grip and succour from the stone itself extended him Austri. The nature of this manner of movement Austri did not understand entire was his to move within, as as he did root and grow and lurch up and up and up.
Travelling this way, slow and growing and appearing nothing more as a shrub thing to the bird things preening, he moved past landmarks of his own making. No need for cave invasion. All the previous he had dipped and rested into before with murder in his hands now host to new bird things that knew him not. Austri rested bolder than they did. In cloak of moss and leaf and root and bark, green hued skin growing strength from sun and did shun to glum of nights coldness. Rustling patient and persistent against the rock.
Cycles of the day and night seemed features within a journeyed dream. Irrelevant to the climbing lucidity. Roots about him giving leverage and sensation, compelling onward, dragging by will shared upwards. Vision discarded as a dull thing, as feeling tendril did creak and let him know the rock sure. The wind could not dislodge him, try as it did in ebbs of cruel playfulness. His eyes grew dull, glazed. Pace unknown, but trusted. Until-
His tools of progress, glimmering, pierced his gloom of seeing. There they were, stabbed deep, hanging beside him now. His eyes recognised his dashed point of progress before. Felt daring hope in his heart, and dread of the cliff's humour in his superstition. He returned more and more to knowing himself, felt the argument of runefolk bones and whatever he was granted to possess in his climbing. His bark hands itched. His green lips whispering, “This be it,” as brushed words against the rock.
The climbing tools given a nod. Roots reached with hands attached, entwining up, bolder. So wreathed, so growing, his heart rose as sun did splendourus with each growth lurch creep up, inch by inch successes. He would not allow himself a lapse. He dared not consider recovery from another fall. His body and spirit being dashed thrice from the height he had adopted again. So close to being clear of danger as he was now, he did not let it make fool of his thinking.
With sun shining, the cliff face across from path rising up from where he had fallen glowing more beautiful to his eyes rising to see crooked lane of path and stone spanning upwards, his palm finally did slam down to level ground. A slap of skin down and crack of thorn lodging into the path of the Narrows. A gasp at that sensation. Stubs of flesh adorned with wreaths of bark and snag and climbing woods went broad. A dogged smile, a rush of relief he fought until he was up proper.
Austri hefted himself up, sweat now forming as the Runefolk made the final effort, dragging himself away from the peril he had known too long and familiar.
He rolled from the cling of cliff onto the walking way as if beset by vertigo. His own fingers burrowing in the knowing of flatness. This place that held him known as the Narrows. Known to him again.
Seven months, back to where he had started. He breathed and made the sounds of the tormented saved.
Like a fellow swept by tide and current to find land again, he embraced it in flatness. Weeping as he knew the cling of himself to where this had begun. A smothered laugh, a wracked movement of the shoulders. The bird things could not know, he muffled the relief irresistible. Nature receded it's hold and blanket, fading and withering. The wind did sweep away quick in it's blustering housekeeping, the sun did return the ruddish bronzed hue to Austri who was regular sight to sunlight.
Eyes went to the path. Both widened.
He crawled at first. Slow but constant. An argument between hysterics and need to press on. Stomach flat as it felt the grumble of the ground, as all Runefolk knew as children.
He dared a knee. Like a toddler paying felty to walking royalty. Held as statue. Smile triumphant, crept back to determined grin as he pressed onward to forward stepping.
Rose to feet. Steady and staunch. Forward those boots did themselves serve again. No staggering. Danger leaving him. Chuckling mixed with sobering doses of mourning of what had been.
The thorning nature that had concealed him left him slow in ebb and sheddings now completed. Greenness in his hue departed, rustling gentle in the winds that been denied their lashful latch. Giving sign of the trappings of himself. What he had salvaged from the woods below in what form they came, repairing. Upon his belt a sword housed in proud bindings of waxed leather. The rest linens underneath leather jacket and leggings, fashioned from beast he felled. His old armour discarded for want to the climb the first occasion. A plain woodsman hatchet he had sharpened and repaired countless in the wood oasis nestled at his back, tight bound in straps of good outdoorsman knots.
He did not cast eye down to that forest so below his vantage. He had no need to say farewell. He carried what to thank. He knew in his time, he knew it in the climb and deep within the roots of his bootprint walking forward now.
So it was that Austri Rulvir made trek. Eyes wet from weeping the consolation of prisoner released by their own expedited efforts, helped by unknowns of rustling and sunlight feeding. Dwelled potential giving way to himself. No fool that this was not over. The mountains knew their perils aside the Narrows.
The dangers of Narrows were behind him. Travelling away he did so on. Away from sunlight, to the touch of snows and rock and things he trod upon. Runefolk knew familiar in the shock of heel to rely upon good stone formations. Adrift at home he was at now. Swept black hair of the wildman hermit, overgrown and knotted. A look of victory that would know another firm chiselled deep within his features.
His fingers went to nestle of necklace underneath leather breastplate he had cured himself, underneath wool and linens with fingertips rough. Across the treasures liberated from the bird things he had taken task to protect. Across mementos in mourning for others before he knew the name the Narrows. The final talisman he rested fingerprint upon. A spent thing of amber cracked within thick tight bind of leather. A salvation long ago.
Austri whispered a mantra as he moved on, fingers across necklaces numerous. The mantra that had kept him surviving in forest and in climbing from it, from long before the Narrows knew his presence, Austri spoke on as boots pressed forward on. Towards unknown in the now snow touched places instead of full sunlight gaze of the Narrows unblinking. His words repeated, steady as his boots, eyes blinking against the wind and his steady weep in surviving so thusly.
“Nought of what passes is in vain.”
His words, to himself, boots moving through the broader places that did lead to the Narrows proper, to find another doubtlessly. Such was the way of it, by humour of this place of Mount Mheara, to grant greetings of unknowns between strangers, be they from rock or root or height or falling.
To whom that was, was to fickle fate to answer.
Firmer the argument of the air when those winds bore things of talons to jostle and deprive the ground of takers of the passage. Flapping and swooning over prospects to sweep away, rushing with the wind en mass in compelling. Their cargos dined upon, things assessed for sparkle. To barter with one another, to decorate cave homes and themselves. The bones discarded. The meat snipped by beak and savoured messy. Those that tumbled to through air that slipped the attention of the flying were granted to the forest tight below. So it was to many that braved the Narrows.
So it had been with Austri.
The cliffs running their sheet of pearlescent stone dip down from path did grant those ejectors their roosts. Senses keen to the roll of wheel, the sound of convoy murmur. The talk of trepidation. Preparation for perilling path, ignorant of those roosting. A delightful event for them, growing all sweeter for the awaiting of it. Roosts numerous were adorned with trinkets of richness from years passed in plundering, glitters that granted cruel soothings to cliff denizen. Seven months now since the last festival of hauls and fallings.
When Austri had fallen.
The bird things began their crowing now, as day rose and stretched it's light. The bird things songs buzzing from bills from neighbour to neighbour as full hue of orange rose from the lowness of the green canopy below, to mid point gaze direct of that narrow path seen level by sun. The high rising cliff the same above as it was below, the height beyond the imagination of any scaffold ever assembled. Rising as impossible challenge from path as it did from below from woodland oasis to challenge of balance in thin stone platform.
Yet Austri had made to ascend to it.
Twice now had he made his efforts.
The first had left pock marks of shod tools of simple metal in the cliff. The climb before to reach zenith of the leaf and branch. A trial all it's own that hosted carnivorous herb and prowl of beast in undergrowth. Leap and stab, chistle and climb begun. The tools were simple, salvaged and on site shaped and formed. Tough enough for purpose. Gleaned from what had been left unaccounted by the bird things wild abandon during the plundering pitfall festivals.
Stabs in the sheen. Alcoves made empty of the sleeping feathered ones as needed. Some silently. Some less so. The things did not care for the noise of protests within each other's caves. Squabbles came easy to them, violence with greater ease than. They slept on as others slumped and yielded their hovels to runefolk climber. Glittering possessions of those that took the tumble before him adorned his brief lodgings. Some he recognised. Liberated from the home to serve remembrance, sequestered. Added upon others.
It went like this the first struggle.
Climb before they flew as one to wherever they did go during wide hours of the day. Find a perch, hide kill and rest and wait. Dine on them as they had meant upon him. Bide and hope and pray a neighbour did not pay a visit. Climb during their absence, repeat the process and slumber the sleep of the hyper vigilant.
The forest life had taught him such thing as habit, now innate as sweat beading was. As winds did howl and the bird things did preen and argue and bicker in their banal squarking, one eye half lidded to movement did he gather rest and strength. Palm on ground to feel for encroachment. Austri Rulvir claimed home each time. Withheld all quarter. Marshalled height day by day in this way and pattern. Flight by flight. Stab by stab. Up rock and within it. On, and on, and on.
Until he was but twenty stabs away from rising up and over. He scarce believed above was close to ending. Back to the Narrows beginning. The pocked cliff face twenty stabs short by his measure of marking the path up with his bootprints. He hefted and struck the scaling wall again.
The galing winds gave rebuke.
Ripped from tools he was. There they remained in cliffwall now. Halted. Arrested. Lingered as markers to his effort. The marks a ladder impossible carved independent. Despite everything, he had reached this point. Tools still lodged impotent but proud, never to find hands to grip again them in completing their scaling work.
Ripped away by wind freakish Austri was. Hands already raw yet rough as Runefolk were, slipped by that cruel compulsion of the wind of Mount Mheare. As if the cliff winds themselves shared the feathered one's humour. Revelled in the afterthought of the festival returning. Indulged itself without the ceremony of feathers. Slipping from eye focus those tools did, slithers of mountaineering in the tunnel of sky he fell within. A race of stone. No holler from him.
Another patter into that canopy from Austri, worse than the first. The first a minor miracle he had been able to walk after. This far less forgiving for his audacity. Branch broke into fall and bone. In far more brutal slashing and gouging of his flesh and sinews when he reached the green sheet of primal thinking eating leafs and vine. Lacerations and pummelling in his slowing. Hurled down to tunnel, to the base of the place denied to the bird things by greater menaces that prowled.
They knew better than to dip where they could be smothered by canopy. And smothered Austri was in the second falling complete.
But while the cliff could be thought to have a cruel jest in cajoling with the wind, the trees and root did have mercy. They took him within, the canopy was done with lashings of welcomes, their turn now assembling. Amongst the deep shade and wizened root, he was given diligence and viligence by things he knew not of. Allowed to mend by osmosis. Given roots not is own to fix upon. To have some semblance of nourishment and growth, in fits of sleeping and vigil of soilbed keeping him aloft in the world living.
From that compassion with no bargain or deal struck, long and finally, he was given back to waking, to thinking, to blinking, to knowing himself as whole and more. Added to, given something he had no wit or ken to, at first at least. He discovered much about what was present within quickly. And quick reached conclusion he did. So granted by gifts myterious another manner to scale upwards.
Tools of a different nature that would grant another chance to continue the effort to feel the sunlight without canopy shadow. That stone rising again, impossible task in reaching up, taken up again by his yearning to return, he dared to scale again.
It went like this for the second ascending. No strike of tool of metal. No boot biting in. No hazard of the wind swayed him. No palm that grew raw from gripping. Far slower in growing upward this time, but rooted. Like tendrils of ivy creeping and leeching grip and succour from the stone itself extended him Austri. The nature of this manner of movement Austri did not understand entire was his to move within, as as he did root and grow and lurch up and up and up.
Travelling this way, slow and growing and appearing nothing more as a shrub thing to the bird things preening, he moved past landmarks of his own making. No need for cave invasion. All the previous he had dipped and rested into before with murder in his hands now host to new bird things that knew him not. Austri rested bolder than they did. In cloak of moss and leaf and root and bark, green hued skin growing strength from sun and did shun to glum of nights coldness. Rustling patient and persistent against the rock.
Cycles of the day and night seemed features within a journeyed dream. Irrelevant to the climbing lucidity. Roots about him giving leverage and sensation, compelling onward, dragging by will shared upwards. Vision discarded as a dull thing, as feeling tendril did creak and let him know the rock sure. The wind could not dislodge him, try as it did in ebbs of cruel playfulness. His eyes grew dull, glazed. Pace unknown, but trusted. Until-
His tools of progress, glimmering, pierced his gloom of seeing. There they were, stabbed deep, hanging beside him now. His eyes recognised his dashed point of progress before. Felt daring hope in his heart, and dread of the cliff's humour in his superstition. He returned more and more to knowing himself, felt the argument of runefolk bones and whatever he was granted to possess in his climbing. His bark hands itched. His green lips whispering, “This be it,” as brushed words against the rock.
The climbing tools given a nod. Roots reached with hands attached, entwining up, bolder. So wreathed, so growing, his heart rose as sun did splendourus with each growth lurch creep up, inch by inch successes. He would not allow himself a lapse. He dared not consider recovery from another fall. His body and spirit being dashed thrice from the height he had adopted again. So close to being clear of danger as he was now, he did not let it make fool of his thinking.
With sun shining, the cliff face across from path rising up from where he had fallen glowing more beautiful to his eyes rising to see crooked lane of path and stone spanning upwards, his palm finally did slam down to level ground. A slap of skin down and crack of thorn lodging into the path of the Narrows. A gasp at that sensation. Stubs of flesh adorned with wreaths of bark and snag and climbing woods went broad. A dogged smile, a rush of relief he fought until he was up proper.
Austri hefted himself up, sweat now forming as the Runefolk made the final effort, dragging himself away from the peril he had known too long and familiar.
He rolled from the cling of cliff onto the walking way as if beset by vertigo. His own fingers burrowing in the knowing of flatness. This place that held him known as the Narrows. Known to him again.
Seven months, back to where he had started. He breathed and made the sounds of the tormented saved.
Like a fellow swept by tide and current to find land again, he embraced it in flatness. Weeping as he knew the cling of himself to where this had begun. A smothered laugh, a wracked movement of the shoulders. The bird things could not know, he muffled the relief irresistible. Nature receded it's hold and blanket, fading and withering. The wind did sweep away quick in it's blustering housekeeping, the sun did return the ruddish bronzed hue to Austri who was regular sight to sunlight.
Eyes went to the path. Both widened.
He crawled at first. Slow but constant. An argument between hysterics and need to press on. Stomach flat as it felt the grumble of the ground, as all Runefolk knew as children.
He dared a knee. Like a toddler paying felty to walking royalty. Held as statue. Smile triumphant, crept back to determined grin as he pressed onward to forward stepping.
Rose to feet. Steady and staunch. Forward those boots did themselves serve again. No staggering. Danger leaving him. Chuckling mixed with sobering doses of mourning of what had been.
The thorning nature that had concealed him left him slow in ebb and sheddings now completed. Greenness in his hue departed, rustling gentle in the winds that been denied their lashful latch. Giving sign of the trappings of himself. What he had salvaged from the woods below in what form they came, repairing. Upon his belt a sword housed in proud bindings of waxed leather. The rest linens underneath leather jacket and leggings, fashioned from beast he felled. His old armour discarded for want to the climb the first occasion. A plain woodsman hatchet he had sharpened and repaired countless in the wood oasis nestled at his back, tight bound in straps of good outdoorsman knots.
He did not cast eye down to that forest so below his vantage. He had no need to say farewell. He carried what to thank. He knew in his time, he knew it in the climb and deep within the roots of his bootprint walking forward now.
So it was that Austri Rulvir made trek. Eyes wet from weeping the consolation of prisoner released by their own expedited efforts, helped by unknowns of rustling and sunlight feeding. Dwelled potential giving way to himself. No fool that this was not over. The mountains knew their perils aside the Narrows.
The dangers of Narrows were behind him. Travelling away he did so on. Away from sunlight, to the touch of snows and rock and things he trod upon. Runefolk knew familiar in the shock of heel to rely upon good stone formations. Adrift at home he was at now. Swept black hair of the wildman hermit, overgrown and knotted. A look of victory that would know another firm chiselled deep within his features.
His fingers went to nestle of necklace underneath leather breastplate he had cured himself, underneath wool and linens with fingertips rough. Across the treasures liberated from the bird things he had taken task to protect. Across mementos in mourning for others before he knew the name the Narrows. The final talisman he rested fingerprint upon. A spent thing of amber cracked within thick tight bind of leather. A salvation long ago.
Austri whispered a mantra as he moved on, fingers across necklaces numerous. The mantra that had kept him surviving in forest and in climbing from it, from long before the Narrows knew his presence, Austri spoke on as boots pressed forward on. Towards unknown in the now snow touched places instead of full sunlight gaze of the Narrows unblinking. His words repeated, steady as his boots, eyes blinking against the wind and his steady weep in surviving so thusly.
“Nought of what passes is in vain.”
His words, to himself, boots moving through the broader places that did lead to the Narrows proper, to find another doubtlessly. Such was the way of it, by humour of this place of Mount Mheara, to grant greetings of unknowns between strangers, be they from rock or root or height or falling.
To whom that was, was to fickle fate to answer.
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