The Shining Hero

Author: * Amlaidh Niafer - 10 Posts on this thread out of 385 Posts sitewide.
Date: Jul 18, 2006 - 03:11

I emerge from the black, densely foliated coill, still thickly lathered in Iúr's soma-mead. A long switch of alder, a bedewed wand for world-walking, is my sword. A great almond-shaped leaf of the same clan is slung across my back like a shield. Moon-sheen plays within the tiny stars of silver fire across my lacquered body, giving my skin's markings an otherworldly finish.

I search my memory for my name, but it has escaped me entirely. Truly have I become the nameless hero of old, my name a simple boatman's murmur, commoner among the quaintness of bruidean and magh than in the wilds of shadowy sídhe realms.

Like Lugh and Cuchulainn before me, I enter the camp as the Shining Hero, a firebrand sun-god in a world of moon-rule. I can feel Branán's watchful eyes upon me, from above, and his caw descends upon my ears with assurance that I have come home. Even as I am greeted at the edgewood by a host of deirfiúracha sgáith, I make a riddle of a question to which I honestly know not the answer. To enter the Sgaith is not to learn the answers to unearthly mysteries but to see firsthand that they exist, to experience them. Such mysteries will be celebrated, in time, at a great feast. But first I know my task is not yet complete. I have no name to give my patient sisters.

I turn my head when I feel a twig fall upon it. Hazel? I examine the piece of wood as I feel another descend upon me. A third and fourth follow. Each twig between my fingers carries an unspoken message that I listen to carefully.

Leaves shower around me, lightly at first and later with great insistence. They pass through their lives as the wheel turns swiftly around me. From rich, sharp shapes of shining green silk, they become brown and brittle before becoming buried beneath a mantle of winter. Then the bare branches above bloom and leaf anew. The wheel returns to its starting place, where birth and death align, and I am again standing before the deirfiúracha sgáith, who await my answer.

"I am Branán, a poet of the air.
I am Fearn, a warrior of fire.
I am gun ainm ábhar, hero of the earth.
I am Amlaidh, a traveller upon the water.
I am...