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Chapter 1 - When Emerald Met Whispering Pines

The man stayed lying in bed, losing track of time before he heard the sound of another person. How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? The rain outside was still pouring. He'd concentrated on it once it got heavier. Thunder clapped in the distance and every now and then. Sometimes there was far-off lighting that blocked the little bit of sun from his window, turning the day as dark as midnight. The day couldn't have passed yet. Gray clouds still hung high in the sky, blocking out the light.

Whoever entered the room shuffled around, paying him little to no mind or so he thought. Where was he going to go? He couldn't move; much less get up and run away. He listened to the sound of glassware clink as his eyes drifted towards the person making them. A woman; tall and fair as a pine tree buried beneath thick sheets of snow. 

It had been well over twenty years since Elbereth Eukanova stepped foot inside the Castle of Glass for the first time, some place he thought he'd never enter the threshold of. Somewhere people like him didn't really belong. That day, he was tried and found guilty of homicide on a public street with many witnesses. The High King hadn't sentenced him to death despite the warnings of his council. Instead he'd had Elbereth sent to jail and in a few day's time, came back with a proposal that was the beginning of saving him from the life he'd led.

"Oh, wonderful. You're awake." Her voice was like snow falling and piling on pine trees in the bleak winters. The woman poured a pitcher of water into a glass with enough grace to be a princess. She was beautiful and bold. She was as pale as someone Elbereth knew. She looked like someone he knew. 

Elbereth blinked. She'd noticed him too easily. He was supposed to go unnoticed; he was supposed to give off an aura of inactivity. There is a difference in a person's presence when they are asleep versus when they are awake. It wasn't something he could fake well. The druids taught him how to notice it in other people. How to feel their unconsciousness. She'd felt his eyes. She'd known those secrets too.

"Would you like some water?" She tucked the glass goblet between her fingers, holding it by the bowl. The corner of her mouth twisted into a gentle smile, reminding him too much of the other person who wore a face similar to hers. 

She wore a ruffled, long black dress as if she were headed to a funeral afterwards. Her sleek, black hair was wild and unruly. And her eyes were a beautiful sky blue that held the calmness of the sea illuminated by moonlight. The silver sparkling dots in her iris' said she'd fight the moon to learn all your secrets. Her face was like a mother's but not in the familiar way of the person who raised you, instead in the way that you felt unexplainably safe in her presence.

"Do I know you?" The words escaped Elbereth's mouth. He hadn't meant to be rude. 

The woman didn't answer as she held the chalice to his lips. She used her other hand to support him from behind, sitting him up slightly so he wouldn't choke. Elbereth only took a couple swallows of water before grabbing the woman by the wrist, practically demanding she answer him.

She set the partially empty glass on the nightstand next to his bed. She wandered back to the desk where she set the pitcher on a tray and began fiddling with a medical syringe, a vial of liquid medicine and magic essence escaping from her fingertips.

"I'm a dream you had once."

When they'd first met she'd told him she'd been given the nickname Whispering Pines by men who'd fallen in love with her voice. People had adored her as if she was a goddess throughout the ages.

"Was it a good dream?" Elbereth asked, watching her from the corner of his eye. 

He hadn't been sure how to reply to a person who only spoke in riddles. He barely understood the languages spoken in the Outside World, nevermind all the metaphors he couldn't wrap his head around. 

"It depends on who you ask. The boy version of you seemed to enjoy it," she said, joking about his adolescent boyish hormones. Her shoulders rose and fell with a small chuckle. He easily remembered who she was thanks to her words. He'd definitely met her before.

"Forest Witch," Elbereth recalled the nickname he'd given her as a boy. He sunk his skull deeper into the pillow as he raised his chest then let his body fall limp against the mattress. 

She smiled. Her expression only sank Elbereth deeper into her hold. It was unusually warm like sunlight. "Hello, Emerald."

"That is the name my mum calls me by," Elbereth whispered, lazily closing his eyes. He was falling into a trance, a dreamlike state. That was the unusual power of Whispering Pines. 

"And the name the world calls an assassin by. But what can we say? You have emerald gems for eyes. You're your mother's emerald." She referred to the color of his eyes that were brilliantly viridescent. A color found in nature, a color that surrounded them. The color of the vast forests beyond the streets of Arün. He may as well have held the souls of all the trees of Oriande prisoner behind his eyes. 

For a slight moment, he felt himself being pulled from the depths of God knew what. 

"Whispering Pines..." Elbereth felt himself sinking into the lull of sleep again. There was something about the woman that felt more magical than a sleep spell.

"I have many names." She continued to mess with what Elbereth assumed was going to be a dose of pain medicine. Then she turned towards him and slowly approached his bed. "Forest Witch. Whispering Pines. The Oracle of Ages. Margoth." 

Margoth was her true name. The others were only titles for the nameless entity that appeared before those who'd given them to her as a mysterious, wayfaring stranger.

"I think...Whispering Pines is my favorite...but I'm impartial to Forest Witch," Elbereth only watched her with half-closed eyes. He wanted to sleep more than anything. Yet he had to remain awake. He wanted to know what Whispering Pines was doing to him. His assassin's instinct was screaming at him to stay awake. Something bad could've happened if he didn't. That's what the druids told him.

Margoth used a bit of magic to roll up his sleeve. Internally he questioned why she couldn't just ask him. He wasn't about to start complaining if she'd noticed his drowsiness causing an inability to want to do things.

"It is a suitable name," she dabbed his bicep with a disinfected swab, "I am a forest witch."

"You told me your real name so long ago...I can't believe I called you Forest Witch all these years." He sort of kicked himself for his own stupidity. She had always shrugged his childishness off. He was a boy thrown into a world a million times bigger than anything he'd ever known and she was the first person on the Outside he'd seen. Of course he attached himself to her with a nickname. Children latched onto anything that gave them the time of day. 

 "You were only a young one back then. Are you ready?" Margoth asked as if he were a child who was scared of needles.

"Why do you always show up at key moments in my life?" Elbereth's eyes flickered open again on the impact of the needle. It was a tiny prick, something he didn't think he'd react to. It'd been so long since anyone medicinally treated him in the way she was.

"This is only the third time we've met. Other than that, you're just lucky, I guess." Margoth drew the syringe out as slowly as she'd put it in. She took a cloth to it and wiped the needle off. "Look on the bright side, you're here in Arün now. The place you were always meant to be."

"The place I belong," Elbereth added onto her statement according to what else she'd told him long ago. Arün was where the rest of his life was going to begin.

Margoth only nodded as a response. She said nothing else and removed the needle from the syringe, placing it back on the tray. Close to the desk again, she produced a magical window once she thought Elbereth was asleep again and no longer listening. Elbereth let the world fade out as he drowned in the vast ocean that was unconsciousness, not really caring what was being said. He'd gone back to walking through the void as easily as he'd come out of it.