The Wanderer’s Lament in Eldermist Wood

The trees, like ancient sentinels with bark of moonlit bone,
Entwine their branches overhead to form a vaulted throne
Where Memory, that cruelest queen, holds court in veils of gray—
Her ivy crown drips dewdrop tears to mark the passing day.

Ten thousand seasons have conspired to shape this root-ribbed maze,
Where phantom orchards bloom and fade beneath the sun’s lost gaze,
Their petal-words once pledged in spring now rot in autumn’s keep,
Like vows exchanged ‘twixt mortal lips before the final sleep.

He pauses where a brooklet sings its sorrow-tarnished tune,
Its waters mirror not his face but spectral afternoon:
A cottage smoke through autumn mist, a hand that waved farewell,
The crumbling edge of yesterday where present moments dwell.

“O wraith-bound glen!” the wanderer cries, “What alchemy is thine?
To spin gold hours to spider’s thread, sweet wine to brackish brine—
Show me the face I trek to find through this unending night,
Or let thy briars claim my soul and quench time’s bitter spite!”

The wood inhales his anguished plea; the ferns begin to sway
In patterns older than the stars that birthed the Milky Way.
From lichen-crusted monoliths there steps a shimmering form—
Not ghost, nor flesh, but something wrought from quiet after storm.

Her hair cascades in rivulets of midnight’s purest stream,
Her eyes hold constellations lost to waking mortal dream,
Her voice the echo between chimes when frost arrests their song—
A beauty sharp as winter’s tooth, as fleeting, and as strong.

“Thrice-broken man who dares intrude where hours lay their eggs,
Why seek you mirrored sorrows in these primeval oaken legs?
The one you mourn now dwells beyond where hands may clasp or part—
Her essence feeds the bluebell’s root, her mirth the lark’s new heart.”

The traveler falls to trembling knees, his palms press dampened earth
That pulses like a sleeping throat which gave his love its birth.
“By every star that dies unnamed, by each forgotten grave,
I’ll barter breath for but one truth—does she know what I gave?”

The spirit’s laugh makes willows weep and pines release their scent,
A sound like crystal shattering on marble floors unbent.
“Foolish ephemeral! Canst thou not feel time’s patient blade?
Each sacrifice you think unique’s inscribed in leaves decayed.”

She gestures west where raven flocks perform their dusk ballet
Above a clearing choked with thorns in complex disarray.
“Behold your life’s mosaic wrought in bramble’s cruel design—
Each twist a path untaken, every thorn a might-have-been.”

The thicket parts as if exhaling; in its central gloom
There glows a stone engraved with names consumed by mossy womb.
His fingertips trace weathered grooves where lovers’ pledges lay—
His own script, hers, now merged as one beneath lichen’s gray.

“Here knelt you both when summer’s blood ran hot in youthful veins,
Swore oaths on transient deities of harvest and of rains.
She begged you stay, you vowed return—both liars in your way—
Her truth became these choking vines, yours but the salt-sea’s spray.”

The traveler’s sword of protest dies within his aching throat,
For memory’s tide now surges forth in relentless rote:
Her hands, once warm with life’s quick fire, now cold as mountain springs,
The final cough that wracked her frame—the cruelest of all stings.

“Why show me this?” he rasps through tears that scorch like mercury.
“To prove love’s but a brief spark drowned in time’s vast galaxy?”
The spirit’s form begins to blur, her edges merging night:
“Nay, mortal—to reveal the chains you’ve forged from fading light.”

She fades, but as her presence wanes, the glade transforms anew—
The stones exhale forgotten mists that shape what once he knew:
A hundred spectral afternoons dance ’round him in a ring,
Each showing paths where love might bloom had he but broken spring.

Here, stayed to tend her waning breath as autumn leaves turned sere,
There, built a cottage from the pines to house their final year.
Another shows a child’s laugh where now lie rot and mold—
A thousand maybes burn his eyes, each more tragic than the old.

“Enough!” he shrieks to hungry woods that feed on human pain,
“Unmake these visions! Let oblivion cleanse my soul’s dark stain!”
But forest spirits seldom heed such pleas from mortal throats—
They stoke regret’s eternal flame to light their fungal moats.

At last, the mists coalesce into form he’d know in death—
Her smile, slightly crooked, the scar from childhood’s apple theft.
She speaks no words, but in her gaze resides the sum of years
Of lonely dawns and emptier nights, of unshed, salted tears.

He reaches—fingers pass through shades as moonlight through bare trees.
Her image ripples like a pond kissed by November breeze.
In silent tandem now they walk the paths they’d dreamed to tread,
Two ghosts alive yet dead to hope, to futures that have fled.

The stars perform their timeless waltz above the sylvan vault,
As man and memory slowly merge within the wood’s assault.
His flesh becomes translucent where her phantom fingers brush,
Two wounded timelines merging in the twilight’s final hush.

Dawn comes—if dawn it may be called where proper light holds sway—
A gray-green gloaming suited to love’s fossilized decay.
Where stood our traveler now remains but sword and tattered cloak,
His essence drunk by thirsty roots, his voice the crow’s hoarse croak.

Yet sometimes when the mist takes shape of two hands clasped as one,
When nightingales forget their song to whispers half-begun,
The wood exhales a requiem through cedar-shaded glade—
Not for the lost, but those who stay, imprisoned by love’s shade.

So ends the tale in Eldermist where all roads lead to naught,
Where pilgrims seek redemption but find only lessons taught
By patient stones and ageless trees who’ve watched ten thousand fall
To time’s sweet poison, lovingly consumed by wood and pall.

Let this be writ in birch’s scroll for those who dare to tread
Where past and present coalesce to haunt what lies ahead:
The price of love undimmed by years is paid in flesh and breath—
For only ghosts may dance eternal with the mistress Death.