This is part of the Community Engagement Challenge: https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/splinterlands-community-engagement-challenge-theme-explore-and-expand-splinterlands-lore-soeofj
Among the plains of Pretoria, Iziar was sitting and watching the sun sinking rather slowly into the dust. Campfires were being lit, the watch changed posts and the hunters swiveled into the darkness. Iziar had wandered of and was now resting on a fallen tree apart from the camp, breathing deeply, the mind troubled with sorrow of long past memories. She did not move, nor did she interrupt her painful meditation, when she felt the Halfling approach silently. He had mastered the light step, and if he had the Dumacke’s Runes, he’d be almost impossible to hear – yet easy to feel. A troubled soul and disrooted heart create a chaotic mind, an effect yet to be proven as being an objective of the Chaos Legion.
“Fenlin. Have a seat.” Iziar spoke with her voice. Her mind was still engaged in the many memories, weaving back loose ends, and quickly raveling up the strings with too many knots and entanglements.
“Thank you, master Iziar.” Iziar liked the halfling’s melodic tone, it was beautiful and showed no marks of the terrors that Fenlin had endured. She liked the dissonance between the voice and the aura that surrounded Fenlin, it remembered her of the music of a skillful Silvershield bard that she had listened to – from afar, as she was not welcomed back then – who intentionally included dissonance into her songs in order to resolve them quickly after. It was that dissonance that elevated her songs, because they were not beautiful, but enhanced the beauty of next harmony with relief.
“Master Iziar…” Fenlin stared at her, but paused. She sensed his fear and smiled warmly.
“Yes, Fenlin?”
“You… Are you crying?”
“Yes, Fenlin.”
The halfling face dropped in disbelieve and confusion.
“But… you’re the great Iziar! One of the strongest!”
“What do you think makes me strong?”
“You have power, you’re a hardened warrior, your strength is incredible. You can’t cry.”
“Yes, I can – and to answer my question you failed to answer, it’s the pain.”
The halfling blushed from the master’s gentle reprimand.
“But why don’t you go to a healer? They can make the pain go away.”
“It’s not physical. It’s a pain from thoughts.”
“But that’s easy, Sola Ranjell says to think positively. She can spin everything into a positive. I talk to her a lot when I’m sad, and she always shows me the good, and makes me feel better.”
“Does she, though? Master Ranjell is a powerful healer and a beautiful spirit. She has a good heart, and truly believes in her words, I’m sure. But though she can heal every wound and illness, she can’t heal souls.”
“But I always feel better after talking to her!” The halfling was steadfast to defend Sola Ranjell. “I just remind myself of the positive things, as she says. That I’m still alive, that I will be able to go home after the war, that it’s worth fighting for. I manifest all that every day, especially when I feel sad.”
“Breath,” commanded Iziar in his mind. She had by now stowed the memories away and shielded the halflings mind against her self, and the darkness that comes with it.
He took a deep breath and let go of his restlessness. He concentrated, and took another breath. Iziar could feel his mind clearing, and deemed him in the state to listen.
“The pain of memories is a powerful one. It can guide us and raise us, but it can also shackle and bind us. So is the pain of uncertainty, it can help us create skillful strategies and brace us for the things to come, or it can push us into the ever-spinning hole of anxiety. The pain of the body can make you more resilient and harden your skin, or it can break you and make you vulnerable.”
Her fingers drew a circle of fire in the air. “This is your energy. When you feel sad, a part of that energy is entangled in sadness.” She carved out a part of the circle.
“But, if you use the rest of your energy to convince yourself of all the positive, you don’t free the energy entangled in sadness. You just use more of your energy, and in the end, you have less energy left.” Again, she split the rest of the circle.
“The sadness won’t go away by good wishes. The suffering will not end through thinking of flowers on a warm summer morning. On the contrary, it will let the sadness invade more of your soul, and take away more energy. Then you need even more to counter it, and so forth.” Split by split, the circle turned into two halves. “And then, you’re exhausted.”
Fenlin sat quietly. She could feel him struggling with all the information, and she scolded herself for treating him like a Warrior of Peace – or even like Sturgis. He wasn’t only small, he was also quite young, still. But then she felt something inside him. Nothing tangible, not light either, but it broke through the cluster of the personality he had given himself, that rock hard ego he had created to protect his self. She smiled as she recognized it as courage.
“Show me,” he whispered with a voice shaking of fear. There was no melody anymore, no beauty, just the rasping sound of determination.
She took a deep breath and kissed Fenlin on the forehead. Her tears fell onto his face and mingled with his. “This is going to hurt so much,” she said while carefully liberating the first memory of his war. “I’m sorry.”
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
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