NaNoWriMo - Cymru 2

DYLAN

The sounds of the apprentices chanting drifted through the wooden streets to Dylan, raising the hairs on the back of his neck in a strange mixture of anticipation and crackling, snapping energy that left his mouth tasting flat. He spread his fingers as Siân fussed about his hood, trying vainly to position it on the mass of curls on his head, and felt out the swirling natural energy fields around them, dancing in their own perfect harmonies with the world. He loved Ysbrydnosau. There was an extra edge to everything, a sort of echo of the world that overlaid it and bounced back without ever being heard or seen, and one that very few other people could feel. It gave him an odd sort of thrill; it was an extra sense that no one else had.

Which, of course, made it awkward when the energies were...off. There was no one else to tell Dylan if he was right, and Dylan himself wasn't anywhere near skilled enough to tell. Just thinking about it gave him another bought of nerves for what was to come.

"What if I mess up again?" he asked Siân glumly. She paused in her ministrations, long silver hair tumbling out of her hood as she looked at him, gaze sharp despite her age.

"Then you'll have a new experience to learn from," she said matter-of-factly. "It won't be the end of the world, Dylan. You'll have a full two circles of white-rank druids watching who can step in, and then you'll know what not to do next time."

Dylan sighed. It didn't inspire him with confidence. The last Ysbrydnos had been bad enough. Siân rapped him sharply on the head and he moved obediently around for her to continue poking, raking a series of sharp pins along his scalp in an effort to hold down the hood.

"What if I make the energies explode?" Dylan asked. Siân smacked him over the head and he yelped, ducking out of her range.

"You're not making anything explode," she snapped. "You're perfectly capable if you actually try, Dylan, so try."

"I do try," he muttered irritably under the range of Siân's withered hearing. She finished with the hood and stood back to admire her handiwork. Dylan fidgetted, and tried not to rub his aching scalp. Siân nodded, apparently satisfied.

"You'll do," she said. "Now off with you, go on. You need to prepare."

Dylan scurried from the room, eager to be away. Outside the night air was cool and fresh, the sweet smell of sun-baked wood hanging thickly around and mingling with the scents of bonfire smoke and freshly-cut hawthorn branches above the doors of the houses. In the background he could hear the sounds of children practising May carols, voices shrill around lyrics they mercifully didn't understand, providing an odd backdrop to the ever-present sounds of water lapping at the streets. As Dylan walked down a single-sided street he looked away from the houses to his right and stared at his reflection in the still water to the left. There was something... not quite right about it, a feeling of gathering unease he'd been feeling for so long now that it had almost become part of the background; but suddenly, tonight, it seemed to be sharpening. Maybe it was just nerves for the ceremony to come. It wasn't like his nerves were unfounded.

Dylan stopped and moved to the very edge of the wooden street. The waters of Llangors lay torpidly below him, barely even flickering in the non-existant breeze. The full moon was reflected almost blindingly in it, a dazzling circle of silver light unbroken by any movement of the water and unobscured by any bonfire smoke. It shone almost like a beacon, a great sign of things to come. Cautiously, Dylan closed his eyes, sensing out the woven web of energies around him -

Water surrounding, a vast serous body of mellifluous patience, waiting and frozen to stillness as though iced without the cold, and sitting motionless in the air, in the tiniest drops that moved only between his lungs and the surrounding

Air, aeriform, untouchable, waiting, immobile, slumbering in its own raw ignored power, threading through all things intangibly and stretching, gaping, yawning ever upwards to the sky so bright and cold and dancing, reacting and singing with the water and the

Weather, mild and watchful and ever reaching, all-encompassing, the complex elemental riddle posed by all things and bending all, binding all by its edict as it swirls through its seasons, entombed within its

Cycle, circles everywhere, birth and life and death and rebirth, all things with an end and a beginning and an end and a beginning, flowing and swirling and bringing change and time, the only movement in the world as they twirl through all things, sky and air and

Earth, solid and unyielding and lacerated, layered and shifting and riddled through with emptiness and space and subtle tremoring and pressure, the slow grinding and churning of mass relentless and threaded through with

The sharp taste of minerals, rock and gem and ore, deep beneath his feet and rising all around him, singing in tacit melodies from every corner of cave and home, the pots on the hearths, the hearthstones themselves, the locks on doors and weapons in sheathes, the buildings, the streets, the roads beyond, born of earth and forges in

Fire, ever present yet ever unperceived, roaring its afterglow across the land from east to west in a glorious sweep of residual unpraised warmth, echoed weakly by the steady, inert flames of the City's candles and the well-behaving hearths in homes, producing the twin blessings and miracles of heat and light that heal and nurture

Life, vibrant and singing and strong and dazzlingly bright and echoing from everywhere into a beautiful, glorious, gordian pattern of intransigent beauty; people in the houses, wolves on the mountain, birds in the eaves, merod in the tower, mice in the fields, flies in the harbour, lillies on the lake, grass and trees and ferns in the meadows and seeds in the earth, waiting to burst through and share the miracle; deeper the ores in the rocks slumber on, awaiting the heat and the pressure of life; deeper the fires burn, so deep no one feels them from where they sing, alive and relishing it. And with the life comes the wonderful, dizzying gifts thereof, the slow thoughts of the trees, the quiet contentment of the lillies, the hungers of the birds, the boredom of the merod, the heady, complicated swirl of emotion from the people as they love and laugh and cry; a swirl that bleeds out into the world, bouncing around the rocks and water and fire and air and down into the earth -

- an echo -

- a response -

Dylan's eyes snapped open, heart thudding against his chest as he sank to his knees. What was that? What in the name of creation had that been? Life and mind magics didn't echo. They were absorbed; it was how they worked, all part of the great Cycle. He'd reached down and something had answered.

That was definitely wrong. Dylan didn't care what the others might say; that was not supposed to happen. Even if that had been a simple echo it would have been wrong, but Dylan could swear there had been an actual response; entirely new emotions and patterns emanating up through the earth. That wasn't right.

Cautiously, he gripped the edge of the street and closed his eyes again, re-examining

- too still, the world was too still, it was waiting or trapped or frozen, no weather no wind no movement too little warmth too little feeling -

- an echo -

- a yearning, deep and keen and passionate and -

Dylan gasped, his eyes flying open as he realised there were tears running down his cheeks. Whatever was down there, it was really feeling it.