October 27, 2002
Storm Rage is a time of reflection for some, and Firemoss, not being of Hunt blood, is one of these.
It is times such as these,
when the winds stir the last of radiant reds,
of golds, browns, leaves all swirling down,
when she realizes, when she looks back upon the years
And remembers what has gone.
Did her mother feel this on cold, chilly days?
Is the plantshaper's child like her mother, in ways?
She has seen these trees,
Some when they were saplings,
grow wide, tall, strong, serene.
They have bent in many a wind,
bending, yet never breaking,
though the brunt of the storm
might break branches, brush away leaves.
Memories swirling, spinning, tumbling
Minds are groping, grasping, fumbling…
She knows the trees remember, in their own time,
the tossing, the turbulence of the seasons.
The coming of the fires of fall that precede
a long and death-like sleep.
Stretching, long arms held to the heavens,
they shudder and cast off their coat of colours
for a blanket of frost. Of near-death.
A swirl of wind moves the leaves through skeletal trees
With a sound reminisce of the turbulent seas.
Strange, she looks back to then
So easy for one never used to the NOW.
So strange, she muses, that though we change,
Winds bring words, faces from the distant past,
Warming a heart long thought numb by the cold.
Not despair. But acceptance. And a longing for long ago.
On Frost's cool breeze her voice is singing,
Softly, serenely, and tremblingly ringing.
"Leaves fall, cold winds call.
Green things sleep, chills will creep.
Come inside, we'll abide by the hearth's dying ember
And though minds forget, hearts always remember."