The Druid [on hold]

Cold Hard Steel

Cold hard steel. Not at all like wood. Wood breathes even after it is dead. It requires attention and care to continue living, and even when left alone, it gives back. It came from death and lives a part of nature's course. Metal was taken from nature by man's greed and lust for death. When it is left unattended, it only poisons and pollutes. It does not bend or shape after it has been shaped. It holds no warmth and provides no comfort to those in contact with it. It has ever been used as a means on control and fear.

Like controlling this man, Derek Last. He has ever been at war with the corruption of man. In a more subtle way than most would wage war. His is quiet and peaceful but diligent and ever-pressing. A constant nagging in the backs of every mind he's touched. But all other men, he used metals to accomplish this.

Derek was born in his parents' home in the United States. He has very few memories of that time. When he was still a child, his parents were forced to flee. They settled in Nicaragua. A land of green and nature. Mostly unspoiled by man's touch. Still the presence of corruption is there. As well as potential.

Within a year of moving, Derek became fluent in the native tongue, as all children do. He absorbed it. He became a part of the land and people and culture. His father became a locally famous artist, for his eyes saw what other could not, and his hands had the ability to put those images on paper. Due to his wife's influence, he used paints he created from nature, berries, dyes, all taken from nature so that in time, it could be given back. Derek's mother was a more hands-on individual and preferred to be encompassed by nature and trained by her. She became a mountaineer. Guiding people across the maintain ranges of Nicaragua, telling the tales that were long forgotten, except by the old folk.

Derek never spent much time with his parents as they were always busy. But when he did, he listened intently onto every word spoken. His parents instilled in him a deep love of the planet and all this living and breathing. Even the rocks, that were so still and cold had life. They could grow and change just as quickly as he was. His mother always pointed out the mountains that had become a second home to her. She told him how every time she climbed them, they were different. Not much, and most people would never see the difference, but she could. She saw them change on a daily basis.

The one person who Derek spent his time the most was a simple police man. A man who instilled into Derek a sense of justice and right and wrong. That man's justice was sometimes corrupt and full of holes to allow evil through. Evil's that hurt more than the law helped. This man saved Derek's life.

"Justice goes hand in hand with Righteousness," the man told Derek. "But when righteousness is forced to take a step back, justice is nothing more than a tool for the wicked to used for their means."

Man's laws do not dictate nature's rule. At the gates of Derek becoming a man, about twelve years old, he was stricken with a disease that had already killed many. His parents, in desperation to save the life of their only child, turned away from their ways of nature and sought the poisons of man to cure him of his ailment. The modern medicines did nothing but hasten his demise. At death's door, the policeman arrived with some one no one had ever seen before.

The man was a Druid. In all sense of the word, he lived in Nature's Arms, accepted her blessings, and did her bidding. Never questioning, always accepting, for he knew, that no matter what path he chose, even if he ran back to world of steel and hid from her, he would one day end up back in her arms. The druid mixed a potion. He never said a word. He never accepted payment. Derek never fell ill again.

After Derek had become a man, 18, his intelligence won him a place as partner of a mercenary guild. Derek was no soldier, but he relished the idea of traveling to foreign lands and seeing things he had not seen before. This was a fool's folly. On his first trip overseas, a simple act to pluck a flower he had never seen before cost him the lives of his entire squad. Eight men died because his attention was on nature. But it was nature that saved his life. As the first bullets began to fly, he had knelt to touch this plant. It was steel that took away lives. It was a simple flower that had saved his.

And soon after, he was in steel. A prisoner in a foreign land. No friends, save for the plant that had saved his life. No hope of ever going home to his abode with his mother and father. Everyone believed he had died.