Nestled in twisted and shattered peaks, bound in a cavern so ancient the stones could not remember their birth, a single spark endured. Older than time, colder than stone, as patient as water grinding mountains to dust, it slept. It had a name, once so long ago even the memory of the memory faded, and through countless more grinding ages gifted a hundred more it did not understand, all broken into a confusion of dreams, deep as a river, empty as the desert’s sands. 

And still it slept.

 

The world turning, the day fleeing, night chasing day, chasing seasons endlessly chasing time until none held meaning. And it dreamed, each memory a lifetime built on another, as empty as the wind, relentless as the distant patter of water building great teeth of minerals in its cavern home. The watery echo set a strange tattoo to its slow, dusty breath, its low pulsing light the only thing to disturb the eternal night. One dream chasing the next until the dream dreamed the dreamer, and the dream stirred the dust, and the dust became bones, and the bones became flesh.

Drawing a deep, ragged breath, the spark voiced a silent scream as it awoke in the eternal night of its cavern crypt. Pushing against the time-worn granite slab, she shattered the lid of her tomb and hissed at the pain of rebirth. Shouting at her broken vision swirling with scolding runes, and the crumbling remains of dark chanted chains binding her, she ripped the great teeth of minerals away with a shouted command and staggered toward dawn’s first light. 
Hissing at its long-forgotten touch, she fled into the cool darkness of forest trees and ancient pools; the fading stars echoing her broken memory.

 

And on the spark staggered through the day and into the night, then the night into the day and the day into night, until it slept again, nestled at the foot of a tree beside a towering and ancient stone structure. Its amber light spilled through tiny openings in the snow-dusted and moss-covered walls as smoke drifted from a vent high in its peaked roof. 

And there he found her one winter morning, nestled in a circle of grass under a snow-clouded day, an old man who smelled of runes and powders, of old leather and bones. Of secrets known, and those that should never be spoken. A lined and seamed face with ancient, burning eyes, regarding a tiny wraith curled in spring’s new grass and flowers under a deep winter sky. Grimacing at her pale blue skin, the old man sighed and lifted his eyes north to the towering mountains burning red in the dawning sun.

“And so the ages have turned, and the circle is drawn,” he mumbled, scooping her up from the grass. And so day followed night, and night followed day, season following season, year heaped on year. The old man smelling of runes and old parchment, ink and words tended her, yet the spark remained the same. A silent waking dream, a sleeping memory lost in a memory, drowned in dreams, a dream dreaming of itself, under summer skies and through winter’s secrets, spring’s first flush and autumn’s quiet… until one day in desperation he gave her a name and she remembered. She remembered so much, and for so long the man of parchment and runes bound her memory to set her free, and her memory stretched its paws, curled in her lap, and slept.

 

 

Belia, Queen of Vormer, Guardian of the North.