Harbinger Testament

May Our Lady enfold you safe in Her sheltering wings

May the Emissary burn and cleanse you in Her purifying fire

May Our Sovereign everwatch you with Her allseeing eyes

May Her scaled coat of armor protect you in each battle

May She carry you safe through sickness, dark and storm

May She guide you to the next journey as you depart this realm

Blessed be She, Blessed be the Tears of Our Lady

____________

I am Alutrasse aht Bex Homon, formerly of Birche Clan. I served as 127th Drago-consecrated Guardian of the People of the Grovelands. I declare this record as a manifest document, so it may be placed, hardbound and sealed, into to archives of the forsaken library. Its rarely-visited collections are curated and maintained by selected shadow elders of Papiri Clan.

You may find this strange -- a Birche who writes out their thoughts? Are not hand-cast documents the domain of Papiri born? The Birche are adepts in oral traditions. To them, writing is considered inflexible, stiff and lifeless. In my tenure as Guardian, however, I taught myself to write over several lunari, under the occasional coaching of a sympathetic and patient Papiri scribe.

Forgive me for inconsistencies and disordered execution of this account. The loss of my twinborn, my Silpa, has damaged my mind. And my words are clumsy, second taught. I have no one in the Tower with which to share my thoughts, save for my attendant, who is now terrified and silent. He refuses to leave my chamber, refuses to look out my usually shuttered window. So I have hastily penned this draft, revising it to this final version as best as I am able. It may be all I have time for -- a chronicle of my voyage stuffed into a slim codex of scribbles.

We have become blind to the world outside our comfortable realm. Unaware of the roots of the veneration of Our Lady. Unaware of everything. But change has now arrived at our doors. The flames of purification surround us. At the edges of our groveland, and also in the distance, I see scores of Drago, firey blasts announcing Their return. Has Our Sovereign brought Her companions? Is She among them? No matter -- it confirms everything I have discovered. At least I have that much.

Perhaps one day in the distant, yet to blossom future, another open and curious mind will stumble upon my silent words. You will have a taste of how far Silpa and I journeyed from the security of our groves. Perhaps you have commenced your own quest, and travel, as we did, along the ultimate path. If you find this manifest, you will find more. And if my worst fears are realized, I am hopeful that a remnant of the Homon have survived and rediscovered the immensity of Ertha, our homeworld, as did Alut~Silpa, Drago Chosen.

Writing was for my own interest initially, but in time the practice enlarged my understanding of our culture and history. It lead me to a study of the manifest codexes safeheld in the central library. There the Papiri (originally the papercrafters and document scribes of our people) store our critical commercial and cultural records. It is also how I discovered the forgotten halls of knowledge.

What little sleep I manage now is dream-troubled and fevered by visions of our staggering odyssey. The Anointing Fire of Our Emissary engulfs me. I am child again, newly elected. Silpa and I fly into the night on enormous emerald wings. The grovelands shrink to a pinpoint and disappear. We rage through the blue and red electric currents of the polar auroras. We spy miraculous icebound ships waiting for spring storms to melt the frozen seas. Observe warring clans so completely unlike the people of our grovelands. Cities of silver and glass, erected and shattered. We escape the bounds of our home and soar to the sibling planets -- orange Mare, striped Zaternus, green Neptus, lonely Plutis. And return to the circling path of Ertha, a tremendous sphere of life floating in a black eternity speckled with starseed. Stunned, the discovery of Our Lady's ancestor race, far-flung castaways who found the safe caverns of Luna, where they watched fertile Ertha, evolved themselves for emigration to Her shores. And finally, the awful overwhelm of our home by a devasting storm.

Do you see how close we came to madness?

As I followed Silpa deep into the subterranean web of the Mycelia, we united with the whole self of Ertha, our mother, Saviour to Our Lady's Clan.

I do not know what this will mean to you, traveler -- but it was a complete epiphany to us. It nearly drove us into an abyss of derangement.

My people have turned ignorant and stupid in our isolated paradise. Yet there are remnants of all that I write of in the hidden library. Lost fragments of our history -- and a warning that naive bliss can be demolished between an interval of dawn and sundown.

I make this record in part because I failed my people -- I can only indict myself for this reality. I became too single-minded and unyielding in my quest to relay truth, all the while my Silpa counseling that I return to the more yielding Birche way. But I had stopped listening, and as a consequence, no one listens to me now. Council considers me well down the path of insanity. So they have secluded me in the Tower of Our Lady. I have turned to shadow before my time.

They have closed their minds to my perspective. They blind themselves to what is directly before them. They want nothing to do with the vast complexity of the world beyond our groves. Potential foes and cataclysms frighten them, so they cast out the messenger and chant prayers of rescue.

I am blighted, infected, and may not even reclaim my own Birche Clan, as is customary when a Guardian passes out of their duties while still in the light.

I am maintained with the minimal necessities while my fate is determined. A small portion of food and drink is still delivered to my high chamber, as is the custom, but I am little hungered. I wait only for the smallest phial, the clouded tears of Our Lady that grant peace and clarity.

Without my birthtwin, my beautiful Silpa, my mind has become unfocused and disabled. I feel cleaved in half without her. I am in poor health and often in a fog of despair.

I decided long ago (after befriending the forsaken library's initially distrustful, taciturn staff), that the forgotten hall of records should remain concealed. So I convinced staff to make copies of selected pages of knowledge and fragments from the dark time. I took them into my possession, and brought them to my domicile. I considered presenting them to Council to support my position. But I soon realized they are uninterested in what lay outside our Grovelands. This will be our downfall.

I fear the current mood of Council may lead to a spasm of destruction if the collection is found and investigated. I'm now afraid that my copies, if revealed, will lead them to the doors of the old library. Before enough people are convinced of my claims, harbingers of the deluge may transfigure our realm.

Their minds have turned inward, rigid and fearful. They cry bewitchment. This is what strict attendance to ritual and hard-line adherence to tradition brings. Any thriving grove dweller, be it tree or animal or homon, must bend and adapt to new weather, to unanticipated changes in the seasons. I pray daily to Our Lady for a clear, early sign so that Council members and our people wake from their slumber in paradise. Perhaps a swarm of signs has now appeared in the sky.

With all the turmoil of my thoughts, I still enjoyed moments of comfort during the morning and at twilight. At first and last light the window of the tower was unshuttered so I could survey a bird's-eye view. I saw the grand, living roof of our forested abode as daylight dawned, and when darkness descended. I tried to widen and cleanse my mind during these two precious occasions. See as Our Sovereign does as She surveys Her dominion from above.

Usually I only see smoke from homefires spilling up into the heavens; our dwellings and public houses are either hidden or easily blend with the entangled canopy of treeleaf and needle. Only once during my confinement have I spied another homon with my glass (a childhood possession kindly provided by my Passagy attendant). A boy had climbed to the crown of a tall oaken to watch as the sky turned to sunset colors. I waved, hopeful that he might see me. But I was too far away.

It is strange to be so far above the Grovelands. The only other time I enjoyed such a vista was as a small child, when Our Lady plucked me from the forest edge and deposited me onto this very spire. If a Luna archivist were available to me, I would inquire as to which portal moons have waxed and waned since then. Perhaps there would be something meaningful. I did spy the thinnest crescent a few evenings past, it pierced the horizon like an unearthly talon. It unsettled my already fragile, fractured condition. An omen.

My increasing agitation and distracted conduct played a significant part in the growing climate of distrust among Council members and the coup that abruptly deposed me. Some felt my ascension to Guardian had been a momentous error -- mostly grown from a branch of belief that Birche are too mystical, too aethereal. Unsuited to the practicalities of governance. We have often been a minority voice due to that attitude, and our own reserved nature. I imagine there is now a power struggle to form 'appropriate' leadership, as well as a strict review of maturing drago-birthed candidates.

I do not wish to be remembered as 'Alut the Addled, Birche Bruised.' I am not a deluded madwoman.

A hundred moons ago, a library elder told me the forgotten archives were the best method of preserving my people's history. Its chambered tunnels are shielded by the massive stone cap of Dendra Mount. I only hope my Passagy 'escort' will obey my wishes and deliver these pages to the proper recipient. I believe he and I formed a bond during my isolation, but I will never know what is truly in his mind. Perhaps he will take my belongings straight to Council upon my death. Yet they may not find what they are looking for.

For as long as we can recall, twelve clan babes are chosen during each lunari. These drago-borns are then prepared for the Choosing. They are brought by bronkoe caravan to the offering seats: twelve oaken stages built at every compass point along the outer edge of the Birche ring grove that binds our land. Each stage opens to Afeerti Reach, the vast wasteland surrounding our Grovelands. It is their first occasion to witness where our domain terminates and the greater world begins. As if this were not terrifying enough for a young child, the greatest shock was yet to come -- the arrival of Our Lady.

By the conclusion of my own Choosing, six children were abandoned to the wild menagerie of treefolk, fleeing the frightening emptiness of the Edgeland, losing themselves in a primeval wood, never to be seen again (save for remembrance in our shadow tales). Four remained at their posts, bravely surrendering to the divine flames of Our Lady. The eleventh child found me, and we were companions for a time, but he perished as a terrible thunderstorm passed us close-by in the long dark hours. By his garments, I knew he was of Beyst Clan.

We never exchanged names, as we were without them, this in keeping with the ritual of Choosing. He was fragile by the time he arrived at my waiting place, sick from days of walking over barren ground while fasting and with little to drink. When I ascended to Guardian I decided to name him in my diary: Phille et Tril Homon, drago-birthed babe of Beyst Clan, the community who cares for our service animals and flocks.

My survival and subsequent selection by Our Lady was not a courageous beginning, nor was it because I had foreknowledge of my destiny, as the old hero stories and songs often tell. It was because my mother had prepared me in the Birche tradition, taught me how to deep trance my fears. And most importantly she gave me a crown leaf from my betrothed, Silpa Birche. Our clan tended the Birche Ring Coppice, whose fruit nourished Our Lady, Supreme of the People. As I sat on my offering seat I would speak to my Silpa leaf as I would when I reclined in her limbs in the eastern extent of the ring grove.

When you are born into Birche clan, a seedling is planted. It grows beside you, with you. You come to know each other intimately, you and the Birche sapling become like twins. And if the bond is close enough, your Birche speaks for the forest of life, and you, Homon, speak for the people of the forest. The Birche Clan connection fuses us with Ertha.

The Birche twinning is paramount -- at least, that is what our clan elders tell us. Without this critical bond, our people will go astray as in the before time, when all balance was lost and we descended into savagery. Unfortunately, this truth devolved into folk tale. I recall a certain council member scolding me: 'I suggest our Alut may be nursery-addled by too many shadow stories -- trance-bruised by Birche dreamtime nonsense!'

No matter. At Winnoe Moon clan meetings mature dragon-born elects must strive to speak the best truth and best action. If your judgements are proven out, your initial election by the Emissary is consummated. You rise to Guardian. Your fate is sealed as Most Wise, Protector, Cardinal Prime. Each clan votes in a Council member to maintain and support the grove on the ultimate sojourn, the Path of the Wise.

Since my time of Choosing I have been fortified and clarified at every new moon by Our Lady's tears. At our clan's bleeding ceremony, where sap and blood meld -- Silpa iht Fen Birche infused Alutrasse aht Bex Homon, Alutrasse aht Bex Homon blended with Silpa iht Fen Birche. We worked in tandem to lead our forest community.

Our groves flourished. We convened the Wise Council. Mating agreements were fulfilled, foods were planted according to the cast of the season, woodlands and groves were harvested, traditional worship rituals were kept to please Our Lady. Harvest houses were erected when the daylight began to dwindle. We divined which of our service creatures and flocks would sacrifice themselves to feed each clan.

Silpa and I shared thoughts with Ertha, and Ertha acted in kind. We grew, putting deep roots into the land, our sap fresh, both transparent and crimson. The flowering of our minds intertwined. During an especially fertile season, my Silpa reached a subterranean layer unknown to us. It was as if we had tapped into a current of the Unseen. A labyrinthine web of mycelium tendrils that girdled Ertha in colossal spirals. It was an awesome and overwhelming discovery -- the web communicated with every leaf, each blade of grass, every tree and bush. Ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans. The Mycelia tasted every soil and mineral. It knew every creature, both large and minuscule.

And it lead to my demise. I began neglecting my Council duties, I grew tired of the many rituals and ceremonies. They had little purpose as far as I was concerned, they needed pruning so that new and vital shoots could grow. I came difficult to work with, distant. I ignored Council's growing concern and gossip. I discovered the passages of the forgotten library, shared my travels through the hidden spiral webs with the shadow elders. They shared their knowledge of lost works and time-shrouded worlds.

When I could not sleep, or was preoccupied with the new paths Silpa and I explored, I would take long evening walks, stopping in the meadows to stargaze and lose myself in the deep. I would rise early and visit the different groves and gardens of our realm, enjoying the cultivators as they worked, either in silence or in song. I contemplated the multitude of different leaves that shaped and fashioned the tree canopy.

As you may know, Birche leaves are the same shape as Our Emissary's scales, a serrulated spade. Her predominant colors arise from Birche pigments. I remember first seeing Her high in the blueness as I waited, unclothed, on the Choosing platform -- I thought it was a local bird in the distance. As She moved closer, I was sure Our Lady was a ravex, one of the larger feather creatures that hunt and feed in our land. But then the sun glinted off her kaleidoscopic coat of scales, and I knew. Our Lady's great outspread wings threshed the invisible aircurrents, her body growing to horrifying dimensions as the Sovereign neared my stage. Perhaps She had sensed my anguish as I babbled at my drying tattered leaf, fretting over Phille's silent corpse.

One of my most potent memories of that time is Our Lady's advent and her reaction to Phille's body. The Emissary loomed directly above us, bright sol behind the Her, an enormous flapping silhouette churning the air around me. Awestruck hardly begins to describe my reaction as She descended to ground and stood beside us.

I had only seen Our Lady in the painted murals of our temple -- otherwise, She was only known to me through the folk stories we were told as children. With all my tutelage, I felt completely unprepared -- my mother tried as best she could to ready me for this moment. But how can a parent prepare a toddler for a visitation of Deity?

I was twenty-seven moons when Mother took me to the Redbeard grove, a day's journey by bronkoe. They were the greatest of trees in our forest, often twice the height and many times the girth of other species in our woodlands. Their lush, ruddy 'beard' fronds hung along every limb, bottom to top, as far as the eye could see. The wind made the entire grove sway. Great curtains of sumac-colored robes swaddling each giant as a towering garment.

The bark of the Redbeard we stood before was black and shiny, composed of overlapping, geometrical plates. We could see our reflections in the mirror bark. We had mirror bark in our home, it was a common sight in our community. The tough plates harvested from fallen Redbeards had many uses. As did the beard fronds and robust cuts of wood. But it was an entirely different thing to see the tree as whole being, seeing its entirety -- a living colossus in its own community of being. I wondered what it would be like to be in the Redbeard Clan, tending to their needs.

My mother kneeled and took my small hand. "The Unseen maintain our world, my drago-born Alut. We nurture and live among the elements who nourish Them. But soon you will meet their Emissary. Since you were born, I've strived to ready you as best I can for the Choosing. This is the closest thing I know of that might compare to the reality of that moment." She had never experienced the terrible majesty of Our Lady, only the towering sublime beauty of the Redbeards.

I am afraid I am unable to adequately describe my Choosing with these inert words. The Birche perform an entire Operi spectacle about the day of my conversion. A library elder once told me of a damaged codex he was in the midst of translating. It described ancient versions of the Choosing. It was illustrated. The Choosing stages closely resembled those of our own time. He called it a masterpiece of words and artistry, but admitted it did not compare to the emotive power of my clan's Operi tales.

At first, Our Lady paid no attention to poor Phille and me, naked as our birthdays. I was glad of it as Her disinterest gave me time to adjust. I roused from my trance meditation into full communion with Her frightening presence.

The Lady's first concern was to sample the specially cultivated fruit that grew in ruby-red clusters around the crown spike of the Birches nearest to my stage. As she ate, I accustomed myself to Her sheer immensity.

When She was sated, she lay on the ground, positioning Herself much like our field animals do when they rest. I actually giggled at that thought -- comparing Our Emissary to a grazing beast! But I was an innocent child.

That was when Our Lady first gave notice of me. She leaned toward the stage, extending Her long scaled neck. Turned Her head so that great star-flecked eyes could examine Phille and myself. I remained as still as my dead companion. Our Lady drew back, her ruby-colored earcloaks fluttered against the moss scales of her skull, creating a loud buzzing. She seemed confused by the two of us. I left my seat to approach Her and in that moment She lunged at Phille and plucked his body from the platform.

It so startled me that a scream flew from my throat. Our Lady dropped Phille and he lay before Her like a broken doll. Suddenly the atmosphere was stifling, The scales of Her neck turned scarlet. I knew what came next but I stood frozen on the stage. Twin jets of flame exploded from her nostrils. Phille's corpse transmuted to a fiery smog of ash. The heat was searing and I crumpled to the floor.

I do not know how long I lay unconscious on the stage. When I woke, my skin felt raw and blistered. My hair was singed on one side. The air was fogged. At first I thought Our Lady had departed to the next compass point. But then I saw the Leviathan -- She was fast asleep against a stand of Birche.

My mind was a snarl of chaos, yet I knew my next action. I staggered down the stairway and around to the back of the platform. I withdrew several phials from a cabinet attached to the stage. I groped my way to the Emissary. Our Lady did not stir as I pressed my fingers against the fluid sacks beneath Her lidded eyes, collecting pale glowing tears in as many phials as I could manage. A wave of fatigue passed through me and I went to my knees. I held the containers tightly to my chest as I once more sunk into the shadows.

When my mind returned to the world, I was in the Tower, attended by my parents and an agony nurse. Once I was well enough, they regaled me with crowd stories that recounted the spiraling flight of Our Lady as She proclaimed Her choice in deafening bellows over our groveland treetops.

And so I was Twelve Who Becomes One.

Night shadows preoccupy my thoughts now. That distant time fills me with misgivings. Did Our Lady somehow make a mistake in choosing me? Was I there to help Phille regain his health, so that he would be the Chosen?

Why did the Lady seem uncertain -- had two drago babes confused her mission?

When did our precious balance begin to teeter? Did my people's future become clouded in that moment?

Now there is a political struggle to regain equilibrium. My bouts of indecision and distraction as Guardian have led me to Her tower. A contingency Council of the Wise works to understand our situation and concoct remedies. I pray that they will reconsider the journey through the Mycelia web with my twin, and the insights that I have described. That they will study the documents that reflect a past previously unknown to all, save a few toiling librarians.

At the very least, the forsaken library remains safe under the expanse Dendra Mount. It will never be located -- the shadow elders are clever in concealment.

As I try to sleep I feel the ground shifting beneath our realm -- the vast Mycelia web senses changes in the atmosphere that is inhaled by forests and grasslands and oceans. Ertha perceives uncertainty and threat in the great current of the Unseen.

Soon I will be emptied out (like Silpa, like Phille), returned to the deep well of being. Perhaps my passing will allow me to somehow aid our forest dwelling from shadows, as eidolon.

Silpa and I witnessed the ultimate perspective. In my time of guardianship, I have realized the world beyond our groves holds many realities that are unexplored -- at our peril. We live on a small island of unknowing -- and an unwelcome tide is rising.

I look out from the tower across our forest; nothing seems amiss, the skies are empty. The cold season approaches, as it always does, the colors have left the forest. Far in the distance is the sparkling Eastern Sea. Soon the first snow will fall. The Birche forests that ring our lands will grow silvery in anticipation of the frosts of winter.

I've asked that they bring me one fresh leaf of my Silpa Birche. A single leaf as a token of remembrance, the last thing I shall gaze upon before my time passes and I ascend. She was the only thing that truly meant anything to me, was truly my own, my first and final love.

But the council will not grant this single kindness -- it is not the way of final things. I fear that Silpa has already been felled and dispersed to the foundation elements. I only feel her now as a grieving mist, a concluding memory that briefly hazes our dwelling forest.

Soon I will be cut up as well for my failures. Before the passing ceremony, my mediator will ask where I wish to last sojourn. My own raw pieces shall be dispersed to the greater realm. When she is dressed in the robes of death's servant I shall tell her thus: River of Ponds. Elder Clouds of Long Afeerti. Rag Plain of Kull. The Green Waters of Blunkilda Gulf. And Whitehomon Peak of the Santris Mountains.

I have picked these places to force my executors to travel outside the confines of our groves. I traveled to a few, using maps from the old library. If my final wishes are obeyed, perhaps it will jog their caged minds. Maybe they will come upon the mysterious nemesis that stalks Ertha's psyche.

My head of course shall be buried for a time in our forest, along with the crown spike of my departed Silpa. Both shall be resurrected and ground up at the new moon, whereupon our elements will help to fertilize the spring-planted fields. For a time undetermined, groveland life will continue down its well-worn path.

The shadow librarians once showed me a pieced-together codex of tales they gleaned from partial translations of the deluge remnants. They speak of traditional ways that grew outmoded as the world around them transformed. They chronicle an age when a wandering Drago first encountered our Grovelands and its people. They speak of terror, of rebirth, of amazement.

I stand at the tower window for a final time, wondering about ancient Ertha, spinning toward us, the future. And the underworld sanctuary of Luna. As the light of the day ebbs, I take a small sack from my pocket. Inside is a pale wrinkled scrap -- Silpa's leaf, that which comforted me as Our Lady examined a child of Birche Clan long ago. I bring it close to my nose -- it has a smell of eternity and shadows. I place Silpa in my mouth and swallow. After a few moments, I see outspread wings in the distance, ringed by fire. I recite my prayer.

May Our Lady enfold me safe in Her sheltering wings

May the Emissary burn and cleanse me in Her purifying fire

May Our Sovereign everwatch me with Her allseeing eyes

May Her scaled coat of armor protect me in each battle

May She carry me high through dark and storm

May She guide me to the next world as I depart this realm

Blessed be She, Blessed be the Tears of Our Lady