Wildling Spring

The valley was comfortable, cooled by the waters of the many streams that gurgled through its floor, and the spring-fed river that graced its center, silver and rippling, filled with fish. In the center, a lake, home to beavers and birds and more fish. Once upon a time, there had been freshwater seals here, but that was long ago, they'd been hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago, before the vale's guardian had taken up residence, and scared the locals out of the birch-thick woods. That had been a time of fire. Now was a time of despair, but for the moment, an interlude of freedom.

There was a town in the valley, but the people stayed clear of its wilds except for the road. Superstition sculpted their tales of warning passed down between generations. Maybe it was the ominous skulls that occasionally could be seen hanging from the trees, or the unnatural canniness of the wild beasts. Maybe it was the dark aura of the place, pierced with light, beautiful and terrible and unsettling. Maybe it was the propensity of the woods to grow the most toxic and beautiful mushrooms and flowers nearest the steps of people; a warning, perhaps. Or the sudden ominous silence of the birds when a hoof was placed where it shouldn't be, a step too far past theearthen boundary of the road, only to resume once trespass was ended. Or the ill wind that sent shivers down the spines of interlopers, for that is what all visitors felt intrinsically they were.

Today, for travellers, that aura of dread maintained its edge, but danced with the syphony of something wild and untamed throwing a trememdous celebration for its allies in the heart of the woods. Traders, tinkers, wanderers, Witchfinders, and storytellers felt the palpable tang of zeal upon the wind, alluring and perilous all at once, something fey and unruly and tumultous. A Witchfinder might take heed of such a feeling, and hunt; they often had, but they never found anyone there. Duskprancer had eyes everywhere, and he was not about to be found if he did not wish it. He did not wish it.

There was music on the wind, only faintly audible, with no discernible instruments aside from percussion. It was voices. Beastial voices, singing. In tune, but not a familiar one. The key was off in a keening, sharp, shivery way; it made it al the more wild and achingly alluring. Deep in a circle of birches wild beasts were calling out and dancing, screaming and ullulating and howling and cawing in a chaos of almost harmony. A wicker thing of sticks in the vague shape of a person with the suggestion of an empty and angry visage burned in the center of the whirling creatures, sending a plume of smoke into the air that was danced around by those with wings, and the ghostly, stylized dark forms of the feral mage's familiars.

Their master needed no sapient company to celebrate the Feast of Flowering. Today there was no fear, only power and the relishing of what he was.