The Exile’s Lament: A Letter in the Haunted Glen
A youth named Silas treads with weary eyes,
Through forests old where whispers coil like mist,
His orphaned heart by fate’s cold hand dismissed.
No hearth nor kin to warm his nameless nights,
He seeks the truth in spectral, half-lit sights,
Where roots entwine like veins of buried time,
And echoes hum a dirge for crimes unnamed.
The trees, like sentinels in cloaks of gray,
Lean close to murmur secrets gone astray,
Their bark etched deep with tales of woe untold,
Of lovers lost and graves left in the cold.
Yet Silas walks, his lantern’s frail embrace
Casts trembling light on every leaf-strewn trace,
Till through the fog, a cottage, crumbling, dim,
Emerges like a specter, gaunt and grim.
Its door, ajar, exhales a breath of mold,
As if the past within its walls lies cold.
He steps inside, where dust, a silent shroud,
Clings thick to memories the dark has vowed.
A desk, askew, holds time’s arrested flight—
A quill, a vial of ink dried black as night,
And there, beneath a ledger’s yellowed sheet,
A letter sleeps, its seal still faintly sweet.
He breaks the wax, the scent of rose long dead,
Unfolds the page where careful script was spread:
*“To you, my child, though years may blur my face,
I write this plea to Time’s unyielding grace.
When fire claimed the halls where you were born,
We gave you life, though left your hearts to mourn.
The woods, they said, would keep you safe from harm—
A nurse of shadows, veiled in twilight’s charm.*
*But know, dear son, though exile parts our souls,
Love threads the air where raven’s wing unrolls.
Seek not the ones who cast us to the flame,
For vengeance blights the blood it claims to tame.
Yet in this glen, where sorrow’s roots run deep,
A mother’s cry on every breeze does weep.
Forgive the earth that cradles you in strife,
And build your peace where silence shapes your life.”*
The words, like arrows tipped with bitter rue,
Pierce Silas’ breast—his breath a staggered dew.
For in his veins, the truth now courses wild,
A storm unearthing years he’d been beguiled.
The flames, the flight, the parents turned to ash—
Their ghosts had paced the dreams he dared not cache.
Yet here, the proof in ink’s enduring stain:
He was not forged from chaos, nor from pain.
But lo, the walls exhale a mournful groan,
As shadows twist to forms once flesh and bone.
A woman’s figure, wreathed in mist and thorn,
Appears, her eyes with tears of centuries worn.
“My son,” she breathes, a voice like autumn’s end,
“The forest’s heart could never truly mend
The wound we bore when torn from your small hand,
Yet here we dwell, where time’s stern edicts stand.”
He reaches out, but grasps the empty air,
Her visage fades, a wisp of dark despair.
The cottage shudders, planks decayed and thin,
Collapsing inward, burying all within.
Yet Silas flees, the letter clutched to chest,
Through brambles tearing at his threadbare vest.
The trees, once still, now writhe in gnarled rage,
As if the glen resents this unveiled page.
The earth beneath him moans, a hollow sound,
And pulls his feet to depths where light is drowned.
Vines snare his limbs, their thorns like serpents’ kiss,
As fog descends to cloak the world’s abyss.
“I curse not those who left me to the shade,”
He cries, “nor fate’s unkind, relentless blade.
But let me know the touch of kin once more,
Before the grave claims all I’m searching for!”
A flash—the sky ignites with lightning’s vein,
Revealing silhouettes, a spectral train:
A man and woman, etched in sorrow’s art,
Their hands outstretched to clasp his breaking heart.
“We walk the edge where living breaths decay,
Yet love survives beyond the bonds of clay.
Our exile ends where yours must now begin—
The forest’s child, yet free from mortal sin.”
They fade, and in their wake, a chilling hush,
As twilight drinks the glen in one cold gush.
The letter, lost to thicket’s clutching maw,
Is swallowed by the maw of ancient law.
Now Silas stands alone, the truth his pyre,
The ghosts’ farewell his only funeral choir.
The trees, their whispers softer now, implore:
“You are the exile Time cannot restore.”
His tears, once fierce, now freeze in autumn’s grip,
As frost extends its lace on leaf and lip.
The haunted glen, a cradle and a tomb,
Enfolds him in its ever-deepening gloom.
Where once he sought the past’s revealing spark,
He melts into the shadows’ endless ark—
A son of echoes, bound to whispered lore,
The truth his chain, the exile evermore.
And travelers who dare those woods at night
Report a voice that hums in pale moonlight,
A tune of loss no mortal tongue could sing,
Where ivy chokes a ring of ash and spring.
The letter’s dust, now mingled with the loam,
Feeds roots that twist in secrets none will comb.
Thus Silas joins the chorus of the pined,
A soul exiled, yet tragically entwined.
