The Mourning Man

Interlude: Meanwhile in the Forest

Unknown to the Hogsmeade residents, on the shore of the lake was a small cabin. It had obviously been there for several centuries, perhaps even thousands of years. It's stone walls were crumbling beneath the wall of vines, the wooden roof had long since been replaced by the branches of a tree that had grown through the floor, which, if there ever had been one, had rotted away decades ago. The cabin held no furniture, all of it having long since decomposed. There remained only an iron chest. Inside an assortment of different objects, each one in pristine condition. One can only assume that magic was keeping them this way. There were tunics and trousers and neckerchiefs. The clothing of a servant. But nestled in a small silk pouch, was a ring. It was a ring made of silver, with gold details. On the top of the ring, were the 5 smallest purple and blue gemstones ever seen, carefully crafted into a beautiful display, surrounding a perfect diamond, no bigger than the end of a cuetip. One would normally wonder how a servant came to have such an object, but not a single person knew of the object. Even the cabin's resident seemed to have forgotten the ring's existence.

The cabin's resident was huddled up in the corner of the building, neither asleep nor awake. The sun was up, so he was in his cabin, catatonic. The man did not care for the tears that stuck to his cheeks, black from the illness that had taken him, nor did he care that he was covered in centuries worth of filth, or that he walked the forest with no shoes. He sat in the corner, only aware of the indescribable pain throughout his entire body. And at night he'd wander the forest unable to remember why he was in such pain, where he was or even how long he'd been there. He held no memories from before the pain. He'd wander, unaware of the forest around him stilling, mourning the man's grief. For even though the man did not remember, the forest did.

The forest remembered the day that the man lost everything, on the shore of the lake. They remembered the centuries he spent waiting for his love to return, and it remembered the day the man lost hope, and began his transformation into the thing that wandered the woods. It has watched the man, every day and every night, as he fell further and further into his grief, and when he returned from his quest to die, the forest watched as his mind left him, and his body wasted, only his magic keeping him from death.

The forest watched as every night the man would wander, and inevitably find the shore where his love was lost. It watched as some part of him, deep inside would remember, and the man would wail and beg for something to be returned, something he could not remember losing.

The forest watched, and waited for the day Merlin's love would return to him, and bring him back from the darkest pits of his mind.

The forest waited.

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