Inollowyn the Elven Cleric

I lift my hands, the cleansing water from the sacred spring drifting down the rising cliffs above and pouring into my outstretched hands.  My eyes are closed.  I want to think of Purity, about the Earth-Mother, about the thoughts and fears and unity of my people, about the eastern shipping lanes and about the message from the Sun King’s emissary, but all my thoughts lay upon my brother, just a boy that joined the ranks within the House of Drow almost half a century ago.

The Earth-Mother blesses me anyway, and the path of Purity opens my mind into herself, and I trace the roots of a thousand trees feeding and sheltering a thousand creatures, providing safety and food for generations of families within its boughs for numberless centuries, connected and joined to one another like the roots of a giant forest, spiraling, bending, uncurling themselves like a hundred thousand fingers and claws and teeth and talons and wings and legs and eyes, searching, finding my wayward brother, my brother who left the House of Vul to be with so many of our brothers and sisters, kinsmen who have forsaken the path of Purity to protect our path to Purity, until my mind finds him and the other members of the House of Drow, waiting in the trees, watching a goblin raiding party riding their woolly boars in the snow.

Sybling. 

I call out to him.  My hands ache to cradle his face. Through the bark of the trees, I feel the weight of his feet press on the branches.  My skin is burning, burning.  I wish I could hold him up forever, but I want to tear my skin so that it would not touch his feet, to not touch his hand, to not feel his back resting against me.  My hands ache to cradle his face, to touch the flesh that once was white as oak, to caress the white tresses that once were as azure as mine.  I cannot bear to hold him up much longer, but I must hold him up.  I’m looking at him through the bark of a tree, and I must hold him up.

Sybling.  My dear, dear brother, why did you leave us for this? 

“Inollowyn, what do you see?  What news from eastern shipping lanes?” Asks the Sun-King’s emissary.

“Just a moment.”  I murmur to the emissary.  “Just a moment longer please.”

I watch as my brother quietly unsheathes his sword and jumps from the tree, bearing down on the goblins below.