Estrid Frealaf (northerlywings) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-04-13 01:39:00 |
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Current mood: | pessimistic |
Thursday evening, 17 September 1942, on the Frealaf family estates...
The procession of Frealafs that made its way from their house to their stones was short and slow. Cyneheard and his two living sons Ingweald and Aegenwulf were all old, and although none of them were unsteady in the dark, having walked the worn path many times in their lives, they were not fast. Cyneheard and his regent, his great-granddaughter Estrid walked at the front of the group and Estrid’s sister Mindred together with Gillian Greenwood at the rear.
Mindred watched the sky as they walked, not talking to Gillian; there was nothing she could say so close to the storm. Cyneheard and Estrid had called them out here without speaking, it was time. The birds that came with them, sometimes flying low and sometimes walking at their feet, looked always to the north and the east. Cyneheard had done what he could but seen nothing after the storm, Mindred knew, and Estrid would not speak of what she had seen, could not have spoken by dusk. Mindred did not know what Estrid saw now, or where she saw it. Wind and rain, she supposed. And the lightning they feared. Tonight her sister was all instinct.
Not all the birds were with them, and this made Mindred feel sick. When Estrid had returned home some had gone as messengers to the Leffoys and elsewhere, sometimes carrying the message and sometimes being it. The land needed to know that the raven was home. But at this time, they were all needed here: many had returned before dusk that evening, but not all. Among the Frealafs living, only Estrid could have spoken to them or commanded them, unless as Mindred dreaded, that was part of von Thorwald’s knowledge too. Von Thorwald’s grandmother, Cyneheard’s sister, had stolen much from them: could she have taken this? Now that the half-moon had been covered by dark cloud, the ravens in the air around them were nothing but sound, and for the first time in her life, Mindred, who was in some ways their kin, feared them.
There was no sign of the King that she could see, and that too was like a fist in her stomach. He was never very evident, except in the form of Estrid’s wings outlined against the sky, but on these lands he was also never in doubt. In the wind, or among the trees or through the rain, any one of them could read the signs that said that here at the centre his promises still held and his land was still waiting. But this day had been different: the wind just wind, and the trees just trees. She strained all of her senses to tell otherwise, and perhaps there was a whisper, and perhaps not.
But Estrid had betrayed no sign of fear, or even of having noticed anything absent. Judging from her demeanour, all that was occurring that night was inevitable, like the winds she flew in. And it was her time, Mindred reminded herself, if it was anyone’s but their enemy’s. The forest was waiting patiently, the birds that were home seemed eager if anything. And so she too was patient and silent as the family reached the stones and spread out around them as if their places were ordained, not speaking. The slender, dark-haired forms of those of their people who could still come here moved in between the stones. Cyneheard stood slightly inside the circle and the others of the family at the edges. Estrid stood at the very centre, looking at the sky.
When the storm came, it came quickly. Lightning flashed across the sky once above them, a bird cried out and then another bolt struck the centre of the circle: Estrid.
There was no scream, only blinding light and a terrible silence.
scripsit (Cyneheard, Aegenwulf, Ingweald and Mindred Frealaf), lieundermytree and northerlywings