Tendrils of darkness wrap around me, and through the strange blindness the magic creates I catch glimpses of the forest I am supposed to be walking in, and another land, a land that is a forest of strange trees with notches along their length, strange trees like look like giant shafts of sugar cane that are riddled with narrow paths that are dark and terrifying.  

As suddenly as I’m caught in the magic my legs are coming to life, and I’m trying to outrun the clutches of this bizarre mist, not liking it one single bit.  It triggers every instinct I have to get the fuck out before something worse happens than distortions in reality, and I can’t help but worry that I’m going mad…

And then the bamboo forest snaps into permanence, my legs carrying me with full force through a wall of the thick trunks.  They smack into me and each other with rattles and raps that raise small bruises and make me wince, my mouth letting loose a single shout of surprise that the path I’d been trying to run down along the outskirts of the Threshold have so suddenly become a very painful thicket of bamboo.

On the other side of the wall of stalks is a clearing, and in this clearing are many figures – and to my chagrin, many of them I know.  

Trying my best to recover from the bewildered and frightened expression on my face with some dignity, I straighten my stance and lift my head, trying to act as nonchalant as possible though I just made a rather brash entrance into the fold.  I see Thranduil, Ashamin, the dark pelted equine colt, Ophelia – so many that I recognize, and while I don’t see my friends (surely they’ll be here soon), I pick up my step and walk among them, looking with confusion at the boils that lace some of the bodies of those here.

What is this?

My ears fall back in confusion, wondering what they might be and what it might mean, when I notice at last the Goddess who has stolen this land as the Time God stole the land of the red waters from the Bear, suddenly releasing the purpose of all of this and feeling my ears pin back at the sight of her.

She is a being that I hold in little reverence – the woman who let her people be defeated, the woman who killed in the name of peace, a powerful being of the Darkness and of the Wind that was beautiful as the stars but just as treacherous as those cold, unattainable heights.  In all the ways that I believed the God of the Spark would never fail us, I distrusted the indigo Goddess as much as I longed to caress the perfection of her curves.

Oh, how dangerous the power that wreathes them, the Gods of our realm; her power is palpable, the strength of her blood and her being intoxicating, and yet the thrall of her presence is poisoned by the history that she has written among her people.

I note that others glare at her, some with a hatred that is as pungent as the ethereal strength she exudes; I do not hate her, though I do not trust her, either.  

Can anyone truly trust the Darkness?  I think with a smirk.

I take my spot among them all, not really standing with anyone but not apart from the gathering, either (but closest, perhaps, to the colt with the red dragon) my eyes watching, not the Moon, as the other idiots here, but the walls of bamboo about us, the shadows that may hold a threat as great as the Bear had been.

[ OOC:  Stands in the general gathering and listens to what is going on, while watching the borders of the clearing for anything suspicious.

Mentions: Erebos, Aithniel, Thranduil, Ashamin, Ophelia, Volterra ]