The Druid [on hold]

Steel Chains and Stone Walls

Time is a fickle thing.  When you wish for it to pass slowly, all you have to do is watch it.  Keep track, and it shall torment you with a sense of urgency that can never be sedated.  Lose track, and it will pass by unseen, unheard, and as mysterious as a chill up your spine.  Time was something Derek was starting to hate.

As a human raised in modern society, he had been trained to keep track of time.  And locked in his cold cage of stone and steel, he did so.  First in his head, then by scratches on the stone walls.  But eventually, when this did not ease his burden of imprisonment, he gave in and let it slip away.  The days were filled with pain and suffering as he was questioned over and over.  Bones broke.  Blood flowed.  Consciousness fled.  A reoccurring cycle.  Meals were bland if they came at all.

Derek was a twisted shape.  Something else corrupted by the darkness of man.  His dirty blonde hair grew wild and long.  His green eyes turned into that of a beast.  Less sentient everyday.  He was incapable of standing on his own from repeated having his legs and knees shattered and left untreated.  He was a beast in constant pain.  He urinated and defecated where he could and usually ended up on top of the piles and puddles.

His cell had a single window to which allow air inside.  He had cursed this opening many times.  For it brought the wind and the rain and the cold.  It brought him misery to add onto his torture brought on by man.  But he blessed it more often than cursed it.  It brought him warmth of the sun to fight against the cold of the steel and stone.  It brought him fresh water from the rains.  It helped him cleanse himself if the shower was strong enough.  Eventually, he even stopped cursing the cold and the winds.  The cold gave his body numbness from his constant pain.  The winds cleared his cell of the stench ml his waste.

One day, he woke up.  He noticed something.  Dirt.  Mud brought in by his tormentors, dragged in from the outside.  His first smile broke his face.  His lips cracked and bled.  He gathered the mud and put it in a corner where no one could see it.  No one could take it from him.  His human greed had taken hold.

For a while, he hoarded it.  The mud dried, cracked and flaked.  Then the wind took it.  In the end he was left with nothing.  This process repeated itself.  Before long, his cell had a fine coat of useless dirt, dead ground.  It rubbed his skin raw and made him itch and tear at his flesh.  He began cursing nature again.  Then the cooling rains came.

The water soothed his burning and itching.  It made the dirt cool and malleable.  He caked the little bit of mud on his skin and found it soothing.  His cuts and scratches healed a little faster blessed by the nutrients of the dirt and water.  He blessed nature once again.

One day, something else was brought in on a muddy boot.  A seed.  Derek had long forgotten what seed, but he knew this seed was special, for it came to him.  For the first time in years, his heart stirred.  His eyes flew open and he dove for the leg of the one who was torturing him.  His fingers grasped at the toes and the mud of his tormentor.  He was able to get the seed.  It cost him.  Three fingers were broken and his ears were cut from his head.

Bleeding and in more pain than he had been in a while, he cradled the handful of mud that now encompassed the little fragile seed.  He screamed in misery.  But he did not curse nature.  As he bled, he gently put the beginnings of his garden right where the sun would enter his cell.  His eyes filled with a determination he had never felt before.  He would make sure this seed grew and lived, even if he died trying.  He gave the seed its first drink.  One of spit and blood from his own mouth and gave it its first breath that came from his own lips.

As time passed on, the tormentors saw how much the seed meant to him.  How much this little patch of dirt cost him.  They used it to torment him further.  The physical pain, he was beyond used to, but the thought of his little seed being destroyed by these monsters drove him to insanity.

When they went to step on it, either intentionally or by accident, he shielded it with his own body.  He fed that seed and that patch of mud his own blood on an almost daily basis.  When the cold came, he did not curse it, it fueled his passion for the seed.  He kept it warm with his own body.  He gave the seed more mud from the boots of his tormentors, nurtured the mud with his blood and bile and feces, kept it soft with his tears and water melted from snow.

When the cold broke, Derek opened his eyes and took a deep breath.  He blinked.  A sprout had emerged.  Like that sprout, a new life filled him.  A slight hope of continuation.  He now knew that his efforts were not in vain.  He knew that even if he died, this sprout had taken root.  It would live.

He forced himself into a relaxed lean against the cold stone wall and let the sun touch the sprout for the first time.  Again, his lips cracked into a smile.  Something stung his eyes.  He closed them and a warm wetness flowed upon his face.  A single line of cleanliness ran down his gnarled cheek and fell upon the stone floor.

Suddenly,  the room lit up.  It grew warm.  Even the always cold stone floor took in this warmth.  He blinked a few times and shielded his eyes from the bright glare.  His eyes adjusted quickly.  Before him stood a woman.

This was no human woman.  No human woman, even his mother, had ever looked upon him with such warmth, adoration, and love.  Her skin was darkened and rough like aged stone, but Derek could tell, if he touched it, it would be as soft as the fur of a rabbit.  She was clothed in leaves of all kinds.  None of them were bound by anything but they did not fall.  Her eyes were as deep and dark and blue as the seas.  Her hair was as green as grass and fell upon her shoulders like vines.

"Derek, my child.  Stand," she said.  No words came from her mouth, but Derek felt them in his soul.  Words older and more ancient than the stone of his cell.  He had not stood in what felt like ages, but this woman had commanded, no, she had requested him to stand.  And he would be damned if he did not stand.

Pain lurched through out his entire being.  Forcing muscles that had not worked properly in years and bones that had never healed to hold his weight was no small feet.  He dared not cry out.  He dared not break the solace and quiet.  Even standing at his full height, this woman still towered over him.  It was as if she were as tall as the mountains, but somehow, she was able to stand upright within this small cell that was barely taller than he was.

"I am Gaia, Derek.  Mother Earth.  Nature.  I have need of you.  You who have brought life to the lifeless while giving your own.  I have need of you," Gaia spoke to his soul.  No words were spoken, but all was heard and understood.  Her smile deepened, and Derek's pain faded.

"In this moment, you have breathed your last as a mortal man bound by the constraints of humanity.  I do not come to save your life, but to give you purpose to keep it.  You who have given all for a simple sprout," Gaia said kneeling to touch the sprout.

It grew.  Right before his eyes, the little sprout that Derek had given more than he had ever given before matured into the very same flower that had saved his life many years earlier.  There was a difference though.  Where Derek remembered the veins of the flower being a deeper blue than the leaves, they were red.

"Do you remember this little flower, my son?" she asked.  He did.  It was the same flower, red veins included, that was given to him by the stranger when he was still a man-child.  The potion that had saved his life came from this plant.

"This is a very rare flower.  It is the culmination of both the life of nature and the life of man.  When man gives his life to nature, great things are possible, even the creation of something that can cure any disease.  You carry this power within you.  It was given to you when you were cured.  That seed that you clutched and saved.  The seed that you kept warm with your own body and nurtured with your own blood.  It was the seed of a weed.  A poison so powerful, it can take any kind of life if used that way.  But grown on tears and blood given willingly, it is what the Celtics call 'Fola Saoil' or the Blood of Life.  It is something that only grows once in a millennia."  Gaia stood once again taller than the heavens.

She reached out her hand towards him.  She had no need to say anything.  Derek, incapable of speech for his tongue was cut from his mouth years ago, had no need to say anything.  He took her hand.