Prologue for August 2025

In days when stars still danced with song

And rivers whispered truths so long,

There lived a fey of ageless grace,

With moonlight silver on his face.

Thandor, prince of twilight air,

With starlit crown and silver hair,

Dwelt in the vale of Elaren’s bloom,

Where night would chase away the gloom.

He wandered wood and wove the breeze,

Played frost upon the slumbering trees

Till one green eve, by ash and oak,

He heard a voice the silence broke.

A lilt, a laugh, a drifting sigh

He turned and met a dryad’s eye.

Her name a song called Thessalune

With eyes like spring and breath perfume.

Her limbs bore leaves, her hair was moss,

A child of root and earth’s emboss.

She moved with grace the forest knew

And made Thandor’s heart beat true.

Seasons passed, then circled round

They wed where holy roots were bound.

But fate, that bitter, ancient thread,

Wove sorrow in the words she said:

"My love, I wither with the years.

No fey am I, I walk with fears.

My time is but a fleeting flame

A candle whispered in your name."

Thandor wept in starlit grove,

With trembling hands and vows he wove.

He swore to still the march of doom

To trap the scythe that ever loomed.

He carved a charm from midnight bark,

Lit runes that glowed with embers dark

And with the blood from fey-born vein,

He cast a spell ‘gainst death and pain.

The forest screamed. The stars went blind.

Time itself began to unwind.

And she awoke, immortal soul

But with it came a heavy toll.

She did not bloom. She did not die.

She breathed, but with a hollow cry.

Her limbs were twisted root and bone,

Her eyes like glass, no longer known.

No bird would nest, no beast drew near

The wind itself would recoil in fear.

The trees would bend to give her path,

Yet whisper not, afraid her wrath.

She wept beneath eternal skies

And met her lover’s haunted eyes.

“You gave me life, but not my own.

Now I remain, yet not alone.”

So Thandor built her tomb of stone,

Where none would wander, none would moan.

A hollow hall where shadows grew

A place where no sunlight ever bloomed.

Its walls were carved with runes and rhyme,

To halt the breath, to still the time.

And deep within, she sleeps unknown,

Crowned in roots and thistle-throne.

It stands there still, in moonlit glen,

Where neither beast nor man dare wend.

And if you pass it, leave a thorn

For love like theirs is both gift and scorn.