Peredhil - Images

[Peredhil]

From the Conservatory - Stories.

 

An Introduction...

 

Images remain embedded in my mind, caught as insects in amber. Scenes unchanging spring to vision’s eyes, brief glimpses of Otherwhere.

Thinking, focusing, I can examine each scene, taste the flavor and feel the overtones and echoes. Yet the Images remain frozen, timeless; they are beads on a chain possessing neither past nor future.

Yet in the foggy halls of human thought, man needs to impose relationships on data, shuffling the Images and dealing them in various combinations.

Enter with me to see...

 

OOC: Many of these are seeds to a Story about William, A Hero. - EP,31

[Peredhil]

ONE

 

The Setting: A room.

 

The walls are a non-descript gray. A bland hue of solidified mist. Covering one wall is a garish tapestry. It is a battle scene of ironclad men fighting the Faeroe, Reason battling the horrors and delights of the mind. It seems quite obvious on inspection that the men are losing…

Covering the other two walls we can see are old thick shelves, extending up into the darkness of the ceiling. The shelves seem only partly covered. A curious mixture of parchments in stacks, moldering tomes and scrolls litter several areas. Interspersed among the remaining spaces are strange objects, which gleam and refract the light. Other items tantalize the mind with odd gloves. A skull, yellowed ivory, leers menacingly. Do the eyes show a hint of red within? Are there eyes? Move on.

In the center of the room is a long table. Resting on the table is an open book, (older than your great-grandfather’s Bible and thicker,) whose pages are feathered with age along the edges. The strangely drawn runes are distorted by our perspective. They seem to cover the page with dense writing.

To the left of the book lies a cross-shaped knife. It is thickly covered with dust, as are several shadowy objects even farther to the left.

To the right lies our source of light. A small brazier on a tripod (brass? gold?) sends forth a strong clear light. The light is pure and unwavering. It has a knack for picking up and bringing out the strange character of the room; however, the shadows are correspondingly sharp and of exceeding darkness.

Beneath the table, a lighter blot against blackness, a worn leather pack leans against a carved ornate table leg. Its buckle gleams faintly from a light source somewhere behind us.

 

The Protagonist: The Elf

 

Standing tall, frozen in action, the Elf. He is dressed in a gray tunic covered with a black surcoat. Woven on the coat is a curiously wrought silver rune. It shimmers, refracting rainbows.

Thrown back across his shoulders is a cloak. Where the light hits it directly, it dazzles the eye. Along the folds it merely glows whitely. A golden embroidery dances along its borders.

The Elf is looking down at the book, his eyes (pupil-less nonreflecting pine needle green) wide with wonder. Shoulder-length black hair frames a finely boned face. His skin is purest alabaster.

One of his hands is widely spread over the light. The hand is almost translucent in the intense glow. The faintest tinge of pink may be glimpsed in the drawn skin between the fingers (five) and thumb (only one).

His other hand is tensed and curled in a Curious Gesture. One senses a gathered Power in that gesture, a drawing of immense forces, barely held in check.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

A struggle is taking place. The Will of the Elf is pitted against the awesome forces he’s summoned. We are caught in between the swings of a pendulum. Which way the struggle will resolve, we will never know.

Over-shadowing all is the ominous silence. The feeling is that of a high-pitched string just plucked, a sound felt – sensed beyond hearing. It draws nerves into a taut energy that must be resolved.

But all we are given is a glimpse of frozen time, The Image.

[Peredhil]

TWO

 

We are frozen in the savage flash of lightning. In its monochromatic hues draw harsh contrasts between the scenes elements and the black night’s background.

 

The Setting: The Crag.

 

Tightly focus on a rocky mountain’s crag. The rocks appear as reflective planes of slick wet rock scored with even darker folds and crevices.

Perched on the pinnacle, framed against surly clouds is a Figure.

 

The Protagonist: The man

 

Limned by light as he is, attention is immediately drawn to this standing man. He leans forward, one leg partially lost in shadow, the other braced, bent at knee, set firmly against rock. Light is reflecting strongly off shining chainmail. The tiny shadows and highlights produced by the lightning give a deceptively detailed effect. The individual mail links each appear to shine out in high contrast to the black sky.

A raven mass of hair is plastered back from the face by high winds and rain. A white gash of a nose bridges the pits of darkness wherein hide shadowed eyes. The face is tilted back, straining to look up at the sword.

Both arms are uplifted, with elbows tightly locked. Chain sleeves have fallen back from muscle ridged forearms, leaving them bare to elemental fury. The hands desperately grip the hilt of the sword.

The sword is the precise center of this image. All else, however detailed seems to pale around it. The lightning branches from the clouds in twined tongues to the sword’s tip, and is cast back to clouds again. A slender needle of purest light piercing the skies, we sense that its weight is nearly more than mortal hands can bear.

Eventually the eye must wander, if only to seek relief from the light. Finding wonder we strain to piece out from the dim shadows a second figure, obscured and hinted, several feet lower than the Swordbearer.

Difficult to perceive, hidden in sword cast shadows, it seems to be heavily cloaked and hooded. A hunched human form seated in a slight crevice to the lower right. Straining for detail, we might piece together the smudge of an open book, the line of a writing hand. Further resolution is frustrated and veiled by the driving rain.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

There is a sense of urgency and indomitable purpose. The Swordbearer is sensed to be triumphing against overwhelming odds to even be there, holding up the sword. The sword is the obvious focus of everything within the Image. The sense is overpowering that it is the source of the lightning which lights the scene, and has drawn the storm with covers and shapes it. The lightning makes the sword’s point incandescent.

In such a furied tempest, we become suspicious of the obvious, however powerful. The Scribe is easily as important and easily overlooked. But once seen… our eye is drawn again and again, striving to pierce rain’s veil and shadows as the sword pierces the skies above.

As we study and strain our perceptions, concentrating on this mysterious figure, the feeling grows that the entire affair is for his purpose and would be useless without him. His is the power concealed, contrasting and harnessing the more flamboyant power of the sword.

We cannot be sure. Does the Swordbearer look upward, exulting, while the Scribe crouches low, downcast eyes ignoring the pyrotechnical display to craft knowledge of the hidden?

[Peredhil]

THREE

 

The Setting: A Forest Glade

 

We are peering between two trees at a small glen. It is thickly surrounded by tall tree boles, extending out of sight. There is little that can be seen beyond the glade, dense trees merging into brown gloom.

The scene within the glade contrasts highly with the dull background. Here everything is brightly lit by a golden shaft of sunlight, tinged lightly green about its edges, within which reflective motes of dust are frozen in a lazy swirling fractal dance.

The glade has a close-cut carpet of grass, intensely green. Cupped like jewels in the grass are small delicately white flowers, with a hint of blue at their scented centers.

All within the image have the unnatural clarity shared by things newly made, things caught up in a dream, or the visions brought about by fevers.

 

The Unseen Impressions

 

All is lucid and clear on the surface. The undercurrents are feeling of beauty and tranquility. Even though there is no one present, the glade has the living silence that is shared by the pause found between spoken words in a sentence. The sense overwhelming is that of a quiet lull between ongoing actions. This Image is felt as intensely Alive.

[Peredhil]

FOUR

 

A Boy and his Dog, or A Woodland Pastoral.

 

The Setting:

 

A study in muted greens and browns. The trees blend into each other rapidly. There is much ferny undergrowth, and may mossy boulders. The remains of a fallen tree are to be seen to the right. A large pig roots single-mindedly at the base of the old stump, far right.

 

The Protagonists:

 

The boy, (perhaps seven years of age?) has blond hair and laughing face. He is dressed in a plain blue tunic which extends to mid-thigh. His sandals have leather straps crossing to his knees. A red ‘kerchief knotted about his neck lends color.

At one arm’s length, he holds without visible effort a wolf. It is gripped tightly by the scruff of the neck, back to the boy, while its body writhes and claws to be free. White fangs are framed by a crimson mouth. Yellow glazed eyes contain flecks of red. The wolf is much larger than the boy; its head the size of his chest.

The boy is laughing.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

The boy is remarkable in many obvious ways. Most amazing to my mind are his eyes. They are as clear a blue as an American Great Plain’s summer sky. They seem to have endless depth. Plainly the boy has never feared or had to turn that clear gaze inward in searching doubts. He is Innocent.

The wolf is an Archetypal Powerful Killing Machine. It slavers and its yellowed eyes strike terror to its victims and unease in we, the viewer. In this instance the terror of its presence is muted by its obvious impotence. How ironic that Fear incarnate is deathly afraid of death at the hands of the boy. If it dared to look into his eyes, it would see no death waiting.

[Peredhil]

FIVE

 

The Setting:

 

A high sheer cliff, a setting sun blood-shines on it. Pounding waves throw slick mists on the jagged rocks below. Above, the cliff merges into a wall of great shaped stone. Atop the wall fair-haired men stride. They wear royal insignia on their chest, pride in their faces, halberds in their hands.

 

The Protagonist:

 

A shadow on the cliff-face resolves into a figure clothed in black. From the shape we may assume a women. The head is bound with a strip of fabric, from which a single red lock of hair has escaped. More strips cover her face, missing only a pair of storm-chased grey-green eyes. Her hands and feet are bare and blackened with dye. They bleed slightly from scrapes and small cuts

A long black swordsheath is tied across her back. The handle of the sword is nearly eight inches long, and is tightly wound in black cord shot through with silver thread.

She is eaglespread on the time-smooth lava-formed rocks. Her right hand reaches, straining, to test a tiny ledge before transferring her weight.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

A beautiful golden sunset, the palace walls gleam. A shadow blacker than most the fading light brings creeps silently up the cliff of weathered basalt, concealing inside its shadow depths a bitter dark heart of flesh, blacker yet.

“Vengeance” screams the assassin’s heart.

[Peredhil]

SIX

 

The Setting:

 

A glorious day! The vast meadow stretches to meet a dark line of distant trees with full summer leaves. Two people are positioned just off a dirt track which winds from left to right. A head of swine feed on the swampy edges of a pond just beyond the track.

 

The Protagonists:

 

Within a circle of blackened soil stands a young man of the honorable age of ten. He is tall, with the promise of being taller, and well tanned. Sun-streaked blond hair is restrained by a red cloth headband, while sapphire eyes contrast with a dirty blue tunic and homespun breeches.

He gazes off at a solitary cloud, fleecy white in the liquid blue day.

The other figure is an old man, bent and cloaked in worn gray. One gnarled hand clenches a peculiarly carved staff, while the other is outstretched in a pointing gesture to the boy. On this hand is a massive golden ring, set with garnet. The joints of this hand are excessively twisted and swollen. His tightly drawn cloak conceals his body; despite the heat a hood extends up over his face to shadow his face. A knobby beak of a nose severely divides deep-set worn eyes. A drop of perspiration trembles and dances on the tip of his nose as he talks. The words emerge reluctantly through thin pale lips.

His shadow forms a misshapen blot on the ground. In it the grass has begun to wither and brown.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

The boy is uncaring of the words spoken, more interesting are his swine and the lonely cloud. Impatient patience, he is youthful invincibility ignoring the advice of an elder. Innocent fearlessness may provide its own cloak to a shallow lack of wisdom.

The old man has wisdom dearly bought and fiercely kept. From his menacing aura, perhaps the price was too high. He has involved the boy for in his unsavory purpose. A hidden fear of using the boy haunts his eyes - he would rather do this task himself; however, he lacks the naivete and trust which will armor the boy in the task.

[Peredhil]

SEVEN

 

The Setting:

 

A grim rocky mountain with a silver road winding up through lemon moonlight. High black, gray, and white clouds flee across the sky. The stone atop the mountain has been twisted and drawn into a many turreted castle. A light shines crimson from the tallest tower. But it is not the only light.

A tile roof is supported by six slender columns of stone. The circular floor is bare to the elements. Six lit candles burn unwaveringly erect around the star inlaid in the floor.

 

The Protagonist:

 

Within the star and the flame is a woman. Thick red-gold hair cascades down to a shapely waist. Locks writhe and toss in the wind like tormented flames. Upraised arms welcome and shape an unseen lover. The fierce gale winds paste her silken dress tightly against her body, molding with a sculptor’s delicate caress the full breasts, taut belly and tautly muscled thighs. The dress streams behind her into a whipping emerald-green mist.

The moon is full, the sky starless between restless clouds. The crag castle has many towers but no walls. The candle flames burn unmoving as woman and wind unite.

[Peredhil]

EIGHT

 

The Setting, and Protagonist Three:

 

A warrior in glinting plate armor sans helmet stands back toward us. He is in an empty stone cell. On the wall he faces is set a large gilt-framed painting. A distorted image of a closed oaken door is mirrored in the back of his polished armor.

The painting is seven feet in width and six feet in height. Meticulously detailed, the textured oils impart a startling intensity to the dragon which fills it.

The dragon is of myriad hues and few colors. Red, gold, and yellow glint and race across razor scales. The eyes are swirling pits of powder blue in which bronze flecks dance hypnotically. Even in a painting, those eyes project enormous power. Steam streams twin jets from the cavernous nostrils. A seven forked tongue plays among fangs much too big for the gaping muzzle. (They must fold, much like the fangs of a snake.)

The claws are curved scimitars. They appear to be needle sharp and drip a pale fluid. Both they and the spines charging down the serpentine body are formed from scales which have grown and fused together.

The dragon rears off a huge mound of gold and silver, body bent into a large “S” shape. Great bat-like wings stretch from one side of the cavern to the other. Tiny veins run threads of fire throughout the wings. The tail arched up to hover between massive shoulders is like unto a scorpion’s sting made to ballista proportions. Streams of jewels and gold run stream waterfalls from the rearing chest.

Cowering in front of the dragon a figure in scored mail gives proportion. He is a quarter inch in height. The scarred shield with which he covers his body and head from the steam is smaller than a scale on the dragon’s breast. The long sword dangling numbly from one hand is the merest toothpick. He is knee-deep in trouble and treasure. He sought glory, but now fruitlessly seeks survival.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

Study the back of the painting’s observer, the noble set of the head. He studies the painting intently while his hand clenches the chased-gold hilt of a sword. He has power this one – whether in wonder or contempt, we sense his is going to unlock the painting’s portal and enter the scene inside.

Of such stuff are heroes and fools made. The definition depends on who survives.

[Peredhil]

NINE

 

All Combined we present the Juggler…

 

The Juggler is frozen in a whimsical dance step. Seven multi-colored balls hang suspended in the air. Another ball is lightly clasped in his left hand. His other hand is an empty blur of just released throw. His head tilts back, eyes so dark as to be called black focus on and around the ring of balls.

On his rouged face is a domino mask of black felt. Small black horns project from the temples and the bridge of the nose. He bites lightly on the tip of his pink tongue, which extends ever-so-slightly from the left corner of his mouth. The concentration in his expression is total.

His is dressed in torn and faded satins and silks. Once they must have been resplendent with glory: bold reds, gold yellows, robin egg blues, light AND dark greens. Now they limply lie on his bony frame. His boots are darkest green leather, scuffed, scarred, and stained from hard travel. Depending from a strap across his chest a large rectangular pouch with a broad flap bumps his hip. Among the identifiable bulges outlined in the supple leather are the forms of three small bowling pins. A small silver-capped baton peeks a shy inquiring head from one corner.

The Juggler dances alone in the old mansion’s ruined courtyard. Stained corridors lead no where from the rooms, broken walls enclose nothing. Granite blocks once proud bulwarks of vaulting ceilings are tumbled carelessly about like forgotten children’s toys. Gleaming weather torn columns extend imploring fingers to the sky. Dirt and hummocks of grass barely conceal the outlines of broken idols once sheltered in fallen niches.

Directly in front of our Juggler a crevice smiles in anticipation.

A broad board stretches across the crevice, extending a few feet on either side. The board is old and warped, weathered splinters peel in porcupine arrays. It sags low in the center, tired of resisting the crevice’s invitation.

The Juggler blithely dances a line several steps to the right of where the board lays.

[Peredhil]

TEN

 

The Setting:

 

The pale light washes across ragged hills. Sunrise: A study in pastels: rose pinks, soft yellows, gentle blues.

The hills stand out in high relief. The soft lighting lends warmth to the harsh browns and dull greens of splintered ridges and knife-cut ravines. Pools of shadow still hide midst grainy barren rocks.

A white wisp of road winds through the ravaged lands. It fades in and out on the parched soils and flinty rocks, tenaciously providing guidance to the lone traveler in this desolate land. His shadow is long and solitary, a stretched finger pointing the direction he’s come.

 

The Protagonist:

 

Close-cropped blond hair bristles in the morning light. Broad shoulders easily carry the enameled black chainmail up the hills. An ash spear doubles as a walking staff. About his waist is a thick leather belt from which hang several leather pouches, and a short thrusting sword.

Across his back is a terrible rune-scribed Great sword. Six feet from hilt to point, it clears the road by scant inches. It is carried scabbardless, slung and secured by leather cord.

Around his wrist is a faded pink rag, much stained with old blood, sweat, and travel.

His face is tanned, weathered and scarred. The worst of the scars is a long thin streak of dexter white from hairline to mouth. It twists his mouth into a hideous leer, a mockery of humor. Were it not for tranquil blue eyes, this would be a face to frighten children. Calm wise eyes they are, looking at nothing and seeing all.

 

The Unseen Impressions:

 

Boldness must finally yield to confidence, innocence to experience. Experience must temper with awareness to yield wisdom.