Author Topic: ❆ Akys Ledo ❆  (Read 1119 times)

Maiden

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❆ Akys Ledo ❆
« on: November 13, 2015, 03:31:50 PM »
❆ AKYS LEDO ❆
Prologue


   The year is 1407.
   Vytautas of House Gediminas rules over the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
   The mood in the country is uneasy.
   Though Lithuania converted to Catholicism some twenty years earlier, the zealous Teutonic Order wage perennial campaigns against the people. They claim that the majority of them have not truly embraced Christianity, and instead, continue their barbaric pagan rites in secret. Captured peasants are used as laborers for the order, and are subject to incessant cruelties.
   Whilst this conflict rages in the west of the country, and the threat of the Golden Horde looms in the east, the southern region of Lithuania is coveted away by the protective shroud of the Dainava Forest.
   Even here, in the most isolated settlements, the people kneel down before the cross. Austras Koks, the Tree of Twilight, withers and fades into memory.
   Downriver from Perloja, one of the first towns to erect a Christian church, the  forest grows thick and wild. Fishermen often let their skiffs drift to the edge of the woodland in the small hours, and return to the village at noon, their nets swollen with bream and perch. Foragers come for morels on occasion and huntsmen tromp through underbrush in search of grouse and wild pigs.
   Few who trespass upon this woodland sanctuary linger until the cusp of dusk. Those who remain until the stars paint the sky speak of a woman's voice, haunting and ancient, resonating between the birch boughs and the river boulders. She sings a Daina of spring and snow, death, and wondrous rebirth.



Spoiler: show
// I'm only a Wikipedia crash-course 'historian'! Corrections are welcome by PM.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2015, 03:49:08 PM by Maiden »

Maiden

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❆ Gimimas ❆
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2016, 10:48:18 AM »
❆ GIMIMAS ❆

   Aušra was traveling home from a Kučios revel. It was a bitterly cold night and air was still and quiet but for the creaking of branches beneath a blanket of snow. As the evening crawled on, Aušra began to regret allowing herself such a vigorous dance around the aukuras, for a deep ache had now taken root between her hips. No. It was too soon.
   Clutching her swollen belly, she stumbled onward as the pains of labor became stronger, twisting at her insides. Before long, her legs were slick with the waters of her womb.

   With scant time to spare, Aušra lifted her tallow candle, searching for a place that might afford shelter and comfort. Among the naked and gnarled branches, she spotted a dark silhouette that stretched four yards across the forest floor. Approaching slowly so as not to lose her candle flame, she discovered the shape to be a fallen Cyprus tree. It had toppled and rotted long ago, leaving a hollow at the base. The roots curled inward, beckoning her, and a sinewy layer of fungus lined the interior, forming a crude cushion. Aušra bleated in pain as another contraction wracked her stomach. She collapsed into the hollow, dropping the candle, where it snuffed against a clod of snow. Trembling, the woman dragged the point of her pigskin shoe through the soil outside of the tree, forming a half-circle around the entrance. Her hands found a knife in the apron fold of her frock, and she pressed it into the skin of her palm with, leaving a thin red line. Extending her arm into the circle, she chanted as a droplet of blood fell into the soil.

   'Ragana, ponderer, healer, all-seeing,' Aušra gasped. 'I offer my blood, and beg you to preserve my life during this ordeal. Preserve the child.' Her spell spoken, she fell onto her back and lifted her knees, her loins burning with pain. A harrowing scream escaped her lips, cutting through the night.

The struggle was long.

   The child emerged at the stroke of midnight, wailing and clawing at the frigid air. It was a boy. Aušra sliced through the cord gingerly and swaddled the newborn babe in her shawl. After a time of rest, Aušra climbed to her feet. Her knees were weak and shaky, but the hungry howling of the newborn bundle spurred her forward. The woods, usually as dark as pitch by this hour, were illuminated in shades of grey by a merciful moon. As Aušra walked, she contemplated a name for her son to take her mind off the pain. Her family line was comprised of outlaws, bastards and exiles. Her own mother had been expelled from a nunnery in Limbaži after falling pregnant to a cloth merchant.

   In good humor, Aušra decided to name the babe Henrikas after Saint Henry of Bavaria, the patron of those rejected by the Catholic church. She would teach him the old ways: of Žemyna and Ragana, Vėjas and Auštaras, and keep him far from the corrupting influence of the new religion. As her mother had once told her, when Catholicism swept across the Baltics, it dragged a tide of silver, ash and blood along with it. Old Miglė had escaped the scrutiny of the locals by keeping to her isolated cottage and providing herbal remedies to villagers who had not been cured of their ailments by way of kneeling before the cross. When Aušra was old enough, the same knowledge was imparted to her. She learned of plants, animals, rivers and rocks, and of the spirits that inhabited them. With an offering provided and the right words spoken, they could be drawn out to impart boons. It was a secret sort of magic, and not without its dangers: one could not know for certain the benignity of a spirit without performing a divination. Thus, Aušra was instructed only to employ this method in dire circumstances, for her actions might draw the eye of something dark.

   Perhaps, now, it had.

    Aušra shouldered the door of the cottage open. The hot coals in the hearth cast a hellish red glow through the single room. The woman lit a taper and sat in a rocking chair, taking the babe to her chest cautiously. As he suckled of her breast, she examined him. His cheeks were a healthy color, and he was not too small in spite of his early advent. Once he had drunk his fill, his lids fluttered open, revealing his eyes. They were as pale as the sky on the foggy day.

   'Now, who gave you those? Not your father. Not I,' Aušra murmured. 'Born on the evening of Kučios, at the moment the old died to give rise to the new. How auspicious.'
   Weak from her ordeal, Aušra sank into rest with the child in her arms. She dreamed of a thick mist rolling in from the woods.