The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010]

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Lalaith
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 7

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Oct 17, 2018 12:16:37 GMT -5

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Post by Lalaith on Oct 17, 2018 12:16:37 GMT -5

“Talla,” Lalaith whispered, nudging against the warmth of the sleeping young woman in the bed beside her. The winds had shifted, blowing now through the eastern window of the room, coming overland from the mountains; a piney, leafy, loamy scent compared to the sea breezes. Carefully trained ears canted in the direction of the disturbance.

“I hear it off in the forest again,” she murmured, pulling herself from bed, suddenly alert. Lalaith wore just a shirt which brushed over the tops of her thighs. She had never enjoyed the tangling of night dresses, and her bare feet padded along across the warm, woolen rug, moving to stand before the window.

There were plenty of rooms to be used for guests at the Starlight Inn, though none of them were as fair as sharing a room with her cousin in the stone house beside the inn, where they could whisper and plot and make fancies into the hours of the night. Lalaith was never truly weary, though it had been a long day, working with her family, preserving the game they had taken on their autumn hunt up in the mountains along with her parents, and several of her male cousins. They had used the large kitchens of the inn to do their work efficiently, all the meat divided between various family members, and while her parents had returned home, Lalaith had petitioned her Aunt in request to stay the night with Talla.

Lailaith had not been weary, yet she had drifted to sleep beneath warm blankets watching the rise of the slight crescent moon. At least until the breeze had shifted. There was an aromatic zest, and a smell of whirling smoke on the air. She could see up to the balding on the foothills, the flickering orange beacons. Not the beacon towers of western Gondor, but the autumn fires burning. The moon had inched up the sky, though not far; it was perhaps only an hour past full dark, and the nap had invigorated Lalaith.

She was not supposed to have interest in such things, as it was, her Aunt and Uncle would be horrified to know she was even watching, yet they burned every year at this time, and Lalaith heard the distant song and voice, and drum beat, when the winds came just right. She could almost see the yonder shadows; anticipating the dancing figures. The fires would burn til the morning’s sunrise, and while they had been lit the last nights, this night there were more, and greater.

Lailaith pushed the window open the rest of the way; cool breeze of autumn prickling at her skin from her shoulders down to her toes. Leaning over the easement she turned her head, listening, and tapping her finger against the stone. Her braided hair fell over her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, imagining for a moment the flickering fires close up. “Let’s go see.” Her second wind was full upon her.

The young woman grinned at her cousin, then crossed the room in a rush to find her stockings and breeches, beginning to redress. It had not been her intent, yet Lallith was prone to impulsive actions, and this night marked the halfway point, the cross quarter which signaled the ending of the harvest season, and the beginning of the cold dark to come. The fires may flicker a day or two thereafter, though none like tonight.

Talla
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 4
Application: https://image.ibb.co/jyOOSU/The_Progressive_Playwright_1080x380.jpg

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Oct 22, 2018 13:11:24 GMT -5

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Post by Talla on Oct 22, 2018 13:11:24 GMT -5

The masks were various shades of purple, gold, brown, and yellow, rich as they were mysterious. The music that filled the Prince’s hall played to the full moon, drawing various people to the floor to dance. She was there, Lirtalleth, clad in ruby and gold, standing along the sidelines of the Harvest Ball as if she were little more than an ornament herself.

First one way then another, her eyes flickered in interest. A great commotion was coming in from the entry—the Steward himself was said to be coming. Perhaps this was him now; a visit when for many a year he had stayed stalwart in his tower.

Drums.

No longer was it just the musicians of the hall, and the whispers from the front of the palace turned quickly to murmurs, and then to shrieks and screams as silk and velvet made dashes through her vision toward the back.

Something smelled atrocious, and beneath her mask Talla wrinkled her nose. The drums grew louder, the smell more pungent. Soon, Lirtalleth knew why the people were frightened. Orcs, great in number and hunched in malice, leapt inside. Their swords, gnarled knots of iron and steel, were raised, their tongue strange as they called out orders. “Father!” Talla called, turning herself.

Behind, she heard another voice rise. “A troll! They have a troll!”

Talla’s eyes flew open, a small gasp raking across her lips as she lurched from her pillow. She blinked, slowly her bedroom coming back into focus. It was cooler in the room now, and it took but a moment for even Talla’s bleary sight to note the upturned quilt upon her bed.

“I hear it off in the forest again.”

The drums. She could hear them too. Quickly, the young woman slid from the sheets as well, her long nightdress brushing the tops of her feet as she padded to stand beside her cousin at the window. “What do you think they are doing?” Talla asked in reply, eyes gazing out at the dot of orange light in the midst of the forest’s shadow dark.

Her own mind seemed active with possibilities; summoning orc, perhaps they were orc. Perhaps it was of the elves that Father had mentioned gave Edhellond its name and history. Her brother had mentioned the elves were likely not all gone; too great had their numbers been to have waned so completely. Aside, the Woodland Realm still boasted their own Elvenkind—why would their own lands be barren?

“Let’s go see.”

Lalaith turned, her dark braid whipping so quickly Lirtalleth had to duck away. “You know Father won’t be happy,” Talla remarked in a dreamy drawl as she, too, moved to her closet to pull out some warm coats before setting off for her own stockings. “If it’s orc, we come back,” Talla added definitively. Likely, if the tales were true, they would smell them before they saw them. That, at least, seemed reasonable—her own curiosity was piqued.

“The drums happen every year,” she added as she looked to Lalaith in dreamy consideration. “Maybe it’s time we stop asking Father.” Faeldor never desired to answer. It was time to finally know. They were twenty-five summers; well, almost. Still, plenty old enough to learn. It was, after all, something that could make a very telling story to be recounted at Gilraen’s Ladle.

Lalaith
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 7

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Nov 7, 2018 21:01:36 GMT -5

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Post by Lalaith on Nov 7, 2018 21:01:36 GMT -5

Lalaith awaited the protestation. She knew it would come of her cousin, though it was only a necessity of their adventure. Talla always gave argument and reason to their plights, and in the end if they should be called upon by family members to explain themselves, Lalaith had never minded taking the blame and allowing her cousin to announce that she had ‘attempted to dissuade’ her. It was all part of the act; and there was no need to be caught in dishonesty if it was truth which Talla would proclaim to her Father.

“You know Father won’t be happy.”

Lalaith responded with an offhand wave of her hand, a flick of her wrist, and a curl of her lip. “Of course he will not.” Her Uncle Faeldor was an old man, who seemed never happy with explorations and curiosities. She had often wondered how her uncle and her mother had grown in the same household for the differences in attitude they possessed.

“If it’s orc, we come back.” A nod from Lalaith, though she knew it could not be orc upon the high hills. The people would have run them out, rather than let them persist year after year. Lalaith had only met a goblin once in her years; well… twice. It had been some years past that she was hunting with her father high in the mountains; seeking a bear, fat in the autumn, and they’d spooked the creature in the early hours of morning. It’s arrow had whizzed past and it had ducked into a crevasse so quickly they had only seen it’s grey skin, and smelled the fell reek coming from the mountain cave. They had trekked back to the cabin, while the men went back to the hunt, but Lalaith knew the caves nearby. She had grown playing in them, and she would not wait while the others had all the excitement. Taking to a back way, she wound through the caverns within, her bow at the ready, and her lantern, until she had come upon the stench and found the creature eating vermin. It had been chewing too loudly to hear the young huntress approach, and she had stuck an arrow through it’s black heart with no worry.

Her Father had not been well pleased that she had gone alone, and her Uncle had seemed near faint at the news when they had returned, but Lalaith was proud of her kill. Nonetheless, she knew her cousin would not stand against such a creature, and did not wish to worry her. She added to Talla, “If it’s orc we return, but I shall have my bow nonetheless. We shall be fine, cousin.”

“The drums happen every year. Maybe it’s time we stop asking Father.”

“I did not plan to ask,” Lalaith answered pertly, and ducking around beneath the bed the young woman pulled out two of the inn lanterns and a satchel of which she had earlier stashed. The bow she had used earlier leaned against the wall, and her fresh fletched arrows were ready; though the weather was cool and she took the coat offered by her cousin. Uncle Faeldor should ruin their fun if he knew. Lalaith watched as dutiful Talla scripted a note to leave upon the desk, should someone check in upon them, though she found it unlikely. They need not have reason to send the hounds after them; merely be assured that they should return before dawn.

A devilish grin offered, and a nod of the head, and Lalaith silently pulled the door, leading her cousin to creep down the hall and through an old, narrow servants passage which was seldom put to use by anyone other than the two young women these days.

It was no hard feat; and they were not stalled in their departure by any than a nickering in the stables by a horse who heard their footsteps passing; and the two fled as ghosts over the long bridge which connected the Island Inn to the mainland. Guiding way by the sliver of moon overhead, it was not until they came through the meadow to the very reaches of the forest and entered beneath the eaves that Lalaith paused, panting for her hurry and excitement, and fumbling about her satchel for a match of which to light the lamps.

The flicker of flame came forth and, and Lalaith’s blue eyes were sparkling as they caught sight of her cousin. The drums were muffled somewhat by the trees, though the direction was obvious, and a little used path leading through the thick forest would take them right to the baldings where the fires were burning. “Keep track of everything,” Lalaith told her more observant cousin. She knew she was likely to get caught up in the excitement herself and miss something. “We’ll need it for later.”

Last Edit: Nov 7, 2018 21:02:15 GMT -5 by Lalaith

Talla
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 4
Application: https://image.ibb.co/jyOOSU/The_Progressive_Playwright_1080x380.jpg

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Nov 13, 2018 19:55:08 GMT -5

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Post by Talla on Nov 13, 2018 19:55:08 GMT -5

Fleet and light of foot Talla stepped in time with Lalaith over the footbridge. She glanced backward but once, when her boot touched the road of the mainland away from the Starlight Inn, though she found the cottage windows dark and sleeping, and she pressed further along.

Straight to the edge of the wood they went, unhampered and ready to delve into the dark to follow the glowing orange flame that danced and flickered within the wooded confines it kept. Her heart was humming, and she felt the chill breeze whisper and murmur by her ear.

Already, her mind was penning the start to the tale. Starless night above, with winds of a thousand whispers, and deep in the forest sprang the fire…

“Keep track of everything. We’ll need it for later.”

Talla blinked, and looked to her cousin with a nod. “Always,” she assured, as was often her response in situations such as these. Lalaith was eager, steadfast, and true; yet it was always Talla who kept track of their things—lanterns, cloaks, gloves, sometimes Lalaith’s kirtle, shoes…and it was her eye that marked and knew the details so they could return once more to write.

Lalaith, though, was always first to move.

…Breathless, a smile alike the moon’s upon her face, she lead the way into the dark…

Talla was soon treading askance her cousin’s shoulders, eyes peering ahead through the dim of the forest to make out the fire, and those around it, ahead. Black shapes bobbed and swayed around the fire, faint ghosts of their voices lifting and filtering through the trees back toward them. The nearer they tread, the larger the fire gleamed and grew. “Greater than any campfire,” she whispered to herself, though Lalaith very well could hear it also.

She looked to her cousin, brow lifted. Dancing, a pyre—she had never seen anything of the like before. “Is…that music? Do you hear it?”

It was nothing like what her father played, or indeed her brothers. Or herself! Heavy were the drums, and hypnotic did the notes seem as they drew through the air toward them.

Sped along they were, by song and drum, toward the pyre that gleamed alone in the void of the wood…

Lalaith
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 7

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Nov 17, 2018 16:15:06 GMT -5

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Post by Lalaith on Nov 17, 2018 16:15:06 GMT -5

The young women came through the forest, they had no difficulty following the wandering trail, though here and there Lalaith wondered if they were alone. She was great a tracker and huntress for her age, and the wood seemed not quite… empty… surely animals scuttered here and there through the moist leaves which had fallen to earth though sometimes, the nearer they drew the drumming she felt as if there were eyes watching, and she tried to keep track all around her, listening for voices in the forest.

“Greater than any campfire.”

Talla was whispering, though clear her voice came to Lalaith’s ears as she was fine tuned to silence. “It is no campfire,” she chorused back in a mutter. Curious blue eyes flecked toward the light which was cascading; flickering; between tall trees, casting long shadows in the night.

She stayed near to her cousin, as she always did when they ventured alone. Though Lalaith had a penchant for wandering far from her other cousins if they should take to the forests with her on the hunt, she never did so with Lirtalleth. She knew the workings of the girl’s imagination, and did not want to leave her in fright if she should vanish into the shadows.

“Is…that music? Do you hear it?”

“Mhm...” a simple hum. The drumbeats had grown louder all the while, and the sound of eerie pipes drifted through the trees. Pipes and flutes, and something else; as stringed instrument though no that which she knew. Droning and weaving. A soft breeze sent a shiver down Lalaith’s spine. So soft, it should not have frightened her, but as it filtered through the shadows of the firelight, she heard a chime. The chime was not ahead near the orange glow, but behind her. A quick glance to Talla, and Lalaith continued on; stepping soft now, though not tremulous as she urged her cousin off the trail. They were reaching the space where the forest would give way to the balding hill. The very fire they had seen from the windows of the inn.

People danced, and the sounds made Lalaith wish to dance. Not the fancy dances and steps taught to her by her Uncle and her Mother, to be performed at balls held by the Prince of Dol Amroth, but the sort of wild dance; the dance that came with spinning and leaping and movements which were not choreographed nor predicted until they came from somewhere within.

Another chime; and singing. Singing. What was the language? It was not Westron, nor Sindarin. Nay, even the phrases in Quenyan which she had been forced to learn as she was of the family of nobles. Though little she had truly learned in that language, the sounds were not similar. A large boulder ahead, large enough they could duck behind and watch around as figures moved. Figures, surely the shape of men. They were not goblins, they were not elves.

Lalaith was peering ‘round the mossy rock, listening as the drums thrummed with the sound of her heartbeat, and Talla near, she clutched at her cousin’s slender arm, and drew her lips near to Lirtalleth’s ear. So near that her lips were against the shell of it as to not be overheard, and in the quietest whisper Lalaith could manage. “Do they sing Adûnaic?” She knew her cousin knew better the languages than she, yet she guessed, and it was similar. The language not often spoken, she knew, but by a certain peoples. And if it were the people she guessed… Lalaith swallowed, and wondered if it would not have been better they stumble upon a band of goblins in the forest, then to walk in the midst of those who danced the footprints of Morgoth.

Last Edit: Nov 17, 2018 16:15:22 GMT -5 by Lalaith

Talla
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 4
Application: https://image.ibb.co/jyOOSU/The_Progressive_Playwright_1080x380.jpg

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Nov 27, 2018 18:31:42 GMT -5

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Post by Talla on Nov 27, 2018 18:31:42 GMT -5

“Do they sing Adûnaic?”

The chanting, came as steady as the drums that it accompanied, and the young woman held her breath as if it would help her hear better. It was not Sindarin, nor Quenyan; those she knew the same as the names of her siblings, the stories of her parents’ lives, and the long roads of Belfalas. Adûnaic. Talla’s lips pressed a tight line, and she looked to Lalaith with a furrowed brow.

Black was the tongue of the dark wood, each chant a spark of flame amidst the shadows long. Feet, eyes, and hearts alike trained and honed upon the footpaths of doom long ago traveled by one who was blacker yet.

“Lally,” Talla prompted quietly, her voice low and careful for the proximity of the cultists ahead. “Followers of Morgoth,” she uttered quietly, voice flinching in a way around the name of the deceiver.

Hearts were beating in time with the drums, escape seemingly as sweet as the King’s table to a beggar. Yet heavy and still we perched, for stone and weight made up now our limbs.

This was worse than running across orc. Talla’s forehead wrinkled in concern, and a single hand rose to grip at Lally’s sleeve. “Maybe we should go back—I think we have enough for a new play.”

--

A knock, and the hounds went wild, bounding and barking over the bear rug and the two pale figures upon it. “Down, down!” A voice grumbled, waving a hand with a groan as sleep slipped from his eyes. “Who in Belfalas…”

Again, the knock—this time harder, hurried. Calon sighed, looking toward Beleth’s dark hair with a sigh. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” He stood, gripping the sheet up with him, and wrapping it about his waist. He took a glance to the sky, though he could not tell much beyond that it was dark for the angle he kept. Late. Whoever was there needed to have a good explanation.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called as the knock once more frantically sounded, and the man lumbered to the door and threw it open, letting the hot air of the small home rush into the chilled autumn night.

The man blinked, his mop of darkish curls tossing over his brow as the tall, muscular form shook his head. No; he was still standing there. “Faeldor?” Calon asked, his voice a dredged grumble still heavy with sleep. The wind was chilled and cold against his bared skin, the clutched sheet about his middle billowing light in the breeze.

Billowing well enough it was as if he had no cover at all.

“And here I thought Bel and I would have the night to ourselves,” he hummed lowly. His mouth gaped wide in a yawn, and the man leaned against the door he held propped open. “You look like you hurried,” he observed in amusement, a playful smirk turning his lip as he nodded to the innkeeper’s plump figure. “Must be important for you to come all the way here. What's going on?”

Lalaith
Ghosts of the Third Age

Posts: 7

The Autumn Fires [Talla] [October 3010] Jan 11, 2019 13:38:53 GMT -5

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Post by Lalaith on Jan 11, 2019 13:38:53 GMT -5

“Oh, not yet,” Lalaith gleamed at her cousin as she bid them back. “Not yet.”

Followers of Morgoth be they? The young woman had never witnessed such, and though they lived not the ways of her own family, she was curious. Not that she would bid herself join them; heavens no, but to see what they did, after all these years watching the burning of the fires on the gloomy balding of the mountain.

Her family had never gone into the forest to witness this, of course followers in all ways of Eru Illuvatar, and they might be the only who had seen such an errand in the recent age of the earth; Lalaith’s mind was overflowing with adrenaline. It did not harm to simply watch, and not partake.

The fires kindled and the drums sang, and her heart beat along with them. It made the young woman wish to dance as she had done with her mother in the days of her youth upon the hunts while her father would rattle the antlers of the deer in jest as a musical chorus. She did not need abide wickedness to observe.

The clouds were pulling inward over the crest of the moon, and the light around them was dim save the burning fires as starlight grew dark, and the pace of the drums came great to her ears. Lalaith crept along the edge of the rock, for who would see her exposed in this darkness? Only red firelight now remained. More frightful the figures with the black pines behind them dancing, she heeded not the protest of her cousin as she kneeled on the earth and watched their frenzied gestures. Their eyes glinting as pinpricks in the firelight.

And then, one looked their way, and her blood was frozen. Eyes cast just too long for it to have been a coincidence.

--

Faeldor heard the voices from within; his brother in law’s proclamation that he had heard the frantic knock, and his sister’s protest that her husband not take too long in returning.

“For pity’s sake...” muttered under his breath, as the door was flung open into the cool autumn night, and a white sheet billowed out at him. The innkeeper took a flustered step backward at the ghostly assault of the cloth as he looked startled upon the face of yawning Calon. The man looked hardly different than ever he had, save some lines of wrinkles aside his his blue eyes.

“Why are you not...” Faeldor hissed furiously, as the winds gave him a sight to behold and he no longer wished to think upon the answer to his half spoken question. “Get dressed Calon.”

“What’s the matter, Fael?” came a woman’s low tone from inward. “Is Gilwen unwell?” she asked, for there had been many times during the years when her brother had engaged their door in the night due to Gilwen’s state of health; not that she had always been poorly, but Faeldor had always been a worried husband, especially during her pregnancies, and his wife had brought forth many children.

“Beleth, no, it is the girls, they’ve… Narbeleth,” Faeldor rattled, and he turned around on the doorstep. If Calon’s billowing sheet had not been a sight to make sore his eyes, his sister had trod about in nothing, and seemed not embarrassed for it. She had turned into a heathen since her marriage, and that had been many, many years ago.

Narbeleth sighed at her brother’s state, and tugged at Calon’s sheet to wind it partially around herself aside him, though still too revealing to the brother who averted his eyes. “Fael, why don’t you come in and sit down?”

“I would rather not,” Faeldor answered. “It’s the girls… they disappeared.”

“What do you mean disappeared? Are they playing hide and seek in the halls, you know how they always have loved to play that game with you… jump out when you’re not looking...”

“Bel, they’re not five any longer,” Faeldor answered, staring up at the night sky.

“I suppose they are not,” Beleth hummed.

“Calon, Narbeleth. Please take this seriously... they’ve gone up the mountain. Up the balding I believe, where the fires burn. Get dressed, Calon, we need your dogs.”

“Oh...” Narbeleth gasped. “I’m coming too.”

“NO,” Faeldor shot out to his sister. Then turning quickly a side glance to Calon, for he had learned well indeed over the years that his manner of speech could send the lighthearted brother in law into a flurry. “I mean… Gilwen is frightened. Just… come back to the inn and sit with her while we go...”

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