Helovia…

It had not been longs since the little mare had forst herd the names, but from that first instance it had been beautiful, magical. Had it really been weeks since she had come here? The warm summer days had drifted by in a haze, blurring into one another while the girl from the Emerald Isle floated along on a wave of joyous discovery. She fell in love with everything and every place she found: The green forest where Kvothe had found her, the hidden willow grove when she had met Finn, the flowering meadow where she first seen a God. All were wonderful and precious to her for each promised the chance for new adventures and she had not yet been disappointed. She had gone with her friends onto the great ship and been delivered from the flood, and both ship hand water had been sent by gods.

Gods…

The land of Aisling’s childhood was no stranger to magic, but in that old country the Power was quieter, deeper, and far less tangible that the wonders she had seen here. In Helovia, magic could be harnessed, wielded by mortals instead of swelling and ebbing like the unstoppable tides at the shore, and it all seemed to stem from these Gods. The little mare had followed the whispers to this place, yearning craving to see more and she could not have prepared herself for the magnificence she would find in the Veins.

Carefully, so very slowly, dark little hooves carried her along the rocky path. Her eyes could not have been wider, staring around herself in wonder at the strange new landscape. It was like nothing she’d ever seen, all black and blue and but glowing. It was alien mixture of darkness and light, and at the end of her path, the volcano lay. She should have been afraid, this was everything she had yet to understand of experience, and perhaps a wiser horse would show more caution but she had no fear, only awe.

The four shrines stood, ruined and almost desolate on the ledge, and the sight seemed wrong to Aisling. Only one seemed to have any kind of decoration, the Earth God’s blue flowers, but it seemed to her that there was no offerings at any of the stones. Aisling knew terribly little about gods, and even less about the conflicts between these four. If these four made Helovia what it was that surely they were all deserving of praise. Each gave beauty and so each should receive. she glanced around, searching for something she could do to tidy the lonely relics. The blue flowers grew at one but it somehow seemed wrong to pick them…

Ah ha! a traveler she was and had nothing much to give, but a fleck of color for each she could offer. Humming happily with her task, she uses her teeth to pluck a small strand of green ribbon from the collection at the end of her braid and laid it gently at the feet of one of the shrines. Three more flecks of green she plucked and laid them for each God in turn and stepped back to gave upon them all and her second offering came almost without a thought. She lifted her chiming voice in a song to break the solemn silence, and gave what she never had to any mortal: one of her own composition.

“One grey pilgrim, small and sure,
Set out from the island green,
And for a year she wandered o’er
Field of heather, rippling stream.

Each land she past held treasures:
Golden field and forest, rich,
But none could hold her restless heart
‘till did Helovia bewitch.

It held her like a faerie spell.
Each day she loved it more,
And magic she discovered there
Was held and granted by the Four.

Wise Time numberd out the years,
Good Earth gave his mercy.
Bright Sun and Beauty Moon, they danced
A whirling waltz across the sky.”



Notes: Using my VOTG pass! Aisling is coming to quest for her Illusion magic:
[Active Magic :: Light | Can create aural and visual illusions in another's mind by singing about what she wants them to see and hear.]