Two roads, or is it three?

[wolflord_andain]

For all the long years that have passed since the Bael Andarien, since the death of Rakoth Maugrim, enemy of the Light, still the tales say to be wary of Pendaran Wood. The deiena have not left their trees, and the paths through the Forest's dimness are always moving, never still, and what they guide a man toward may be nothing like where he wills to go.

It is lucky for River, then, that her companion in said Wood is no mortal man, though he may wear the shape of one.

That, in itself, is news enough to set the forest spirits whispering.

And they do not speak with voices only.

Comments

[river_meimei]

River's head lifts, tilted as if listening to the air.

It's a beautiful forest. First and fairest, Fionavar is called, and not without cause. The trees are tall and ancient, green with shadows of leaves and dappled with moss. Breezes and leaf-rustles and soft earth sounds wind through it in a net of sound; a net of voices.

River is smiling very faintly.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan makes no comment on the fact that it seems to meet with her approval.

He has no need, it is easily apparent to any who might care to see it.

And they have time -- more time than River might need to look her fill. Save, perhaps, if she is attempting to read patterns of meaning into the spattering of shadows under the trees.

[river_meimei]

No more than usual -- and this is River, so in any case she might be seeing those shadows as birds, or folds of fabric, or circuitry. Or perhaps just leaf-shadows in a wood even more living than most.

Galadan gets a sidelong glance, after a few minutes, and that tiny pleased half-smile hasn't gone away yet.

"It's rearranging the maps." River doesn't sound much troubled by this.

[wolflord_andain]

"The Wood has a will of its own."

River is already well aware of this, but there are some things the inhabitants of Fionavar have no need of knowing.

Will you follow?

He begins moving down one of the paths without waiting for River's answer, though is pace is not what it might have been, once.

And he remains human-shaped.

[river_meimei]

"It's cranky," River says placidly, in what's probably meant to be agreement.

Most of her friends are also cranky. So long as it's not actually trying to kill her, or innocent bystanders, it's all good!

She follows after Galadan without hesitation. Leaves rustle under her boots, as she steps lightly around roots and over rocks, and down the forest trail. There are flowers in the underbrush, small and bright.

[wolflord_andain]

They rustle as the Wolflord and his companion pass, voices fluttering shy and wild under the rest of the forest's noise.

The path before them is always clearer than vision alone would suggest. Galadan's smile is the faintest flicker on his lips as he keeps pace with River; said pace is a great deal more slow than he would prefer were he alone.

It is nothing the world around them fails to miss.

And as they walk a certain smell in the air grows clearer, sharper.

It is the smell of the sea.

[river_meimei]

River has seen seashores, of course. On Santo, on Bellerophon, on New Melbourne; her world is full of terraformed moons and planets, most of them with oceans. Sometimes the sea is edged by houses (of the wealthy, or of poor and rough-handed fishermen), or by boardwalks and tourists, or by fishing boats and processing plants. Some worlds' oceans, she's only seen from pictures and Serenity's viewing window. But all of them were made by humans, and shaped by their needs and desires and industry.

This is different, this wilderness of forest tangling its way to a rocky shore. Humans have had no hand in this. Even before the Pendaran Wood came to hate all humanity for Lisen's loss, it brooked little intrusion.

The scents of leaf-mould and moss and flowers twine with the salt borne on the breeze. River lifts her face to the sky where it peeps blue through swaying branches, and breathes, and follows Galadan in silence.

[wolflord_andain]

They make their way, slow but (perhaps) strangely sure, out of the thickest of the trees and into what passes, in this place, for a clearing, very near to the shore of a river.

This river -- named once, but that was lost to history and forgotten long ago -- runs red one day of the year, for remembrance.

Today is not that day.

Should they continue toward the sea, there is a dock, and a boat tethered there, large enough for three or four to sit comfortably. It is surprisingly well-kept, rocking gently as the waves wash against it.

To the right there is a tower. The Anor.

It stretches up, one lone spire topped with a wall of glass, the better to keep the sea visible from the single room at the top, a thing of unutterably graceful beauty.

Galadan, silent and still, takes no step farther than this.

His gaze, winter-grey and distant, if not cold, is fixed with unerring intensity upon the sea.

[river_meimei]

River's been following, silent, her gaze flickering from her companion to their surroundings. (Silent but for her footsteps. River is a child of cities and spaceships, not wood-wise for all her fondness for nature.)

She's been to Pendaran once before, with Galadan, a year and more ago by her time, and longer than that in Fionavar. But that was briefer, and only to the forest itself. She's never seen this shore. These waves grey-green and beautiful; this tower, built centuries ago by Fionavar's greatest artisans for Lisen, beloved and mage's source to Amairgen; this water, where Lisen of the wood died.

Or, at least, she's only seen it in glimpses from Galadan's memory. Everything is always different seen in person.

There are rocks under her boots, and the scent of salt and seaweed in the air. The tide is going out.

"Mĕilì," she says softly, while the breeze tangles in her hair.

[wolflord_andain]

The Anor Lisen is fair, indeed, but fairer still was the woman -- the wood spirit -- who resided within, who leapt to her death from the tower's edge. She followed a mortal man, mage or no, down and down into the depths of the sea, and down farther still, into death.

And perhaps, had Galadan been other than what he was, less prideful, less wedded to his rage and his thwarted passion --

Perhaps even then Amairgen would have died, swallowed in the maw of Maugrim's Soulmonger, with Lisen following after.

But perhaps not. For many are the patterns made on the Weaver's Loom, shaped by the choices of men and women, andain and god, Wild Hunt and poor child of a twisted abomination, all.

Who is to say which choice might carry the most weight? Who is to say how brightly gleaming a light may have been? May yet be, if the days to come run long and light enough to make it so. And if not, there is still a great deal of worth to be found in the grey.

He doesn't quite smile, the Wolflord, but the line of his mouth eases. In this place, at this time, perhaps that is enough.

[river_meimei]

They're both what they are, for good or ill. What's done is part of the weight of a life, and can't be undone.

But past is not present, and selves can change.

They know this very well.

River crouches, smooth in the golden afternoon light, and brushes gentle fingertips over a cluster of pebbles. They roll beneath her touch, bumping the edge of a clump of moss.

Behind them, leaves whisper.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan pays the whisper of leaves, the chatter of the deiena, and the watching eyes of grudging and restless Pendaran little mind. They are, for the moment, of little account.

Instead, he makes his way toward the tide line, slow and meandering to give River time to look at what she will, even the things the Woflord himself cannot see.

And if such a pace also gives him time to focus on this upwelling of quiet in his heart, a balm laid at last across what has long been only a self-inflicted wound --

What of it?

[river_meimei]

River's gaze slides sideways to rest for a moment on Galadan's back, as he ambles towards the lapping edge where waves meet land.

Then she drops to the ground, and bends to unbuckle her boots.

It's a warm day, sun-gold and balmy, and this harbor's ground is gentle, with smooth-tumbled stone and sand and few barnacles. A beautiful day for wading.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan, observant and quick as his nature makes him, cannot fail to notice River's movements.

Nor, with his shields as open as they are, can he fail to miss her intention.

Which is why, several moments after River Tam makes her way toward the waters of the bay, the watchers in Pendaran will find themselves startled by the Wolflord removing his own boots and padding, quiet and barefoot, down into the water with her.

It is a fine afternoon, in point of fact. And Fionavar or not, the pain of old memories and wounds or no --

Galadan is not about to let River's idle daring exceed his own.

[river_meimei]

Whether this was part of River's calculation or not... well, she'll never tell.

Either way, it's fun!

The salt sea bore her body on, an old riddle says of Lisen. But a quiet seashore's an object: it means what you think.

Right now, it means cool water on River's feet, and seafoam washing over her shins, and tiny fish darting away from her shadow. And Galadan's, too.

She catches his eye and grins, just a little, small and conspiratorially friendly.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan merely offers the barest arch of his eyebrow in return.

The meaning is the same. River knows that more than well.

Were the Wolflord a different sort of man, or if he had ever truly been a child, perhaps splashing would come to play.

But Galadan has always and ever been himself, and wading or no, there is something to be said for dignity and the weight of history.

Of memory.

But a great deal of that has lost much of its power to sting.

[river_meimei]

River understands. (She comprehends.)

But she keeps smiling faintly anyway, as she turns her attention back to the waves.

Maybe she's just smiling at the minnows.

[wolflord_andain]

Surely the minnows would smile in return, if they but could.

But as they cannot --

Galadan turns back to the shoreline even as the very trees pull themselves aside, making way for a naked man crowned with antlers. The fabric of the air itself grows heavy, even as his face is too bright to look at directly.

He heard the whispers in Pendaran, did Cernan of the Beasts. They speak of the Lord of the andain and his human compatriot -- here, of all the places in all the worlds there are. Apprehension would be the easier thing to claim as driving force, but he it was who came at the last, who took his sore wounded son away to have what healing there may be for such a soul, and it is with the beginnings of hope in his heart that the god of the forests stands now at the join between wood and sea.

"Father."

He is all cool control, Galadan, barefoot and damp or no, and stiff with it. But there is no snarl in his voice as he speaks, and even that is more than some might expect.

[river_meimei]

River's eyes flick from Galadan to the hazy-bright air around the great horned man.

She says nothing yet. But she stands slim and erect and unafraid, and waiting.

[wolflord_andain]

"Why do you bring them here, Galadan?"

That great horned head remains unbowed, waiting tall and proud and steady halfway between forest and shore.

There are many answers Galadan might make, here and now. Some may be true, some may be only subtle shadings of the true answer.

Or he can remain, still and all, himself.

"My business is my own."

He does not look toward River. Nor does he move to interpose his body between the human girl and the god.

There are many reasons for that.

[river_meimei]

"Nobody's hurting the trees," is River's contribution, after a moment.

It's a statement of the obvious, of course, but earnestly said.

"They're very pretty," she adds, with a smile that's small, but very real. River's seen other wonders in her life, but she still appreciates them. And Pendaran's beauty is different from anything in her world, and in Milliways too.

[wolflord_andain]

"Alas," Galadan says dryly, winter-grey gaze fixed on his father, "that they are unlikely to appreciate the compliment."

It's not a declaration, merely a statement of simple fact.

Cernan's voice is sonorous when he replies, "No mortal born can harm Pendaran. The spirits of this place have little need to fear."

[river_meimei]

Cernan's voice is resonant beyond a mortal's, and the air around him is bright with power. He stands at the forest's verge tall and antler-crowned, a god on the land of his strength.

But River has never been easy to over-awe.

(And she's known his son for years. That's relevant, but it's not the deepest reason.)

So when she makes a face, it's one Galadan has seen dozens of times before: the mild, amiable version of her well, duh face.

"Trade it for crankiness. I know it."

Like several of her friends! Er.

[wolflord_andain]

"River," Galadan says, voice still so very dry.

But one corner of his mouth twitches -- not quite helplessly.

It is its own kind of concession.

Cernan neither startles nor steps back, but in the air there is the faintest sense of increased attention. Some developments are apparently unexpected, even three centuries or more after the Bael Andarien.

"Ah. I see that you are both in good hands, for the moment."

[river_meimei]

River blinks at Cernan, and her instant of blank bemusement is genuine.

(It's not that she doesn't know what is and isn't between Galadan and his father. And it's not that she doesn't know that their friendship and their conversations confuse people frequently, with less cause than this.

But she still tends to forget, often enough, that others don't know everything she knows.)

Even after that instant's past, though, her expression shifts only slightly towards dryness. "No," she says. "We're standing."

Whether River is being excessively literal on purpose or not, no one knows!

Well. Galadan might. But.

[wolflord_andain]

"In the sea, at that," Galadan observes, in his turn. "Hands are hardly involved."

He looks away from Cernan as he speaks, every motion deliberate. But then he turns back to his father.

"But if there is nothing of import that brings you here, Father -- "

The rustling of Pendaran increases in intensity for a few moments, brief backdrop to this half-suspended moment --

"Surely there will be a better time to speak when next I am come home."

[river_meimei]

If Galadan were someone else, and if they were elsewhere, River might contradict herself by using a hand to splash ocean water lightly in his direction.

She doesn't.

But she does make a thank you for being sensible, exactly! face at him -- and this, too, is deliberate -- before he carries on speaking.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan allows one corner of his mouth to curl upwards in the beginning of a smile, in acknowledgment of River's appreciation.

The gaze he keeps on his father, however, remains cool, if less distant than it might have been.

Cernan merely watches him in turn for a long, still moment.

"As you will have it, my son. But know that I will hold you to your word."

The Lord of Beasts turns, then, and paces back into the trees from whence he came.

[river_meimei]

River watches the bright (and naked) form recede into the forest for a moment, before she glances sideways at Galadan.

"Clothes are a societal standard," she says, with friendly dubiousness.

(A human might be out of earshot, though sound carries over the water. Cernan... probably isn't.)

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan muffles a laugh, quick and unexpected.

Cernan -- Cernan holds a moment, just to hear. And then, with one last long look -- at River only -- he vanishes into the trees.

Galadan exhales and closes his eyes.

"He has not much cause to mingle, in the everyday scheme of things."

His voice is very dry.

"As you can see. Or could, when he was present."

[river_meimei]

It's hard for a mortal to look directly at Cernan of the Wood, in the bright oppressive glory of his power. But River returns his gaze, and holds her own level and serious, for that moment.

There are a few reasons for it.

And then he turns away, and River's gaze flicks back to Galadan, though her attention never fully left him.

"It's underrated," she agrees, placidly, and bends to brush light fingertips through the crest of an incoming wave. It splashes the hem of her skirt, but River doesn't seem to mind.

"You can tell him sometime." About clothing, and its advisability. (Maybe.)

Or, you know, Galadan can not. Either one.

[wolflord_andain]

"Perhaps I will," Galadan replies, voice much less dry than is his wont.

"Someday."

Though not, alas, about the advisability of at least a breechclout.

Perhaps that is for the best.