Lonethorn

There are many things I remembered clearly on the day my mother left.

The orange light of the lamp outside my door. The moving shadows on the hallway. The hushed conversations. I did not make sense of it in my sleep-touched delirium, that state of waking where you could not tell dream from reality. My body was beat. I spent the better part of the previous day walking uphill and into craggy terrain till my thighs burned and ached. My mother made sure I ate a serving and a half of her hearty meat stew she and uncle had cooked as soon as we arrived back close to dusk.

It was, perhaps, the best stew I had ever tasted. It felt like exhaustion had given the stew a dozen more flavors and spices.

I was more than willing to gloss over my uncle's warnings of ancient powers and nameless forces hidden in the forest and hills of Sorez. The words he spoke unnerved me. My mind even went to go as far as completely forgetting my mother's earlier declaration weeks prior of handing over the care and wellbeing of me, her son, to her brother. I wanted her to stay with me, in this cold gray land. With its unyielding mists and ancient forests, I wanted her to tell me stories I ever only gleamed about. We had been at my uncle's barely two months as of then.

I remembered going to bed, expecting much more of the same for tomorrow. Do chores, eat and maybe even take a stroll to the grey coast and walk alongside its shores. For some reason, both uncle and mother denied my request to a beachside stroll. The only answer I got then from either of the two was "Sorez's shores and waters aren't like those of the Mare Viridis. You'll learn....soon." As soon as I hit the goosefeather mattress of my bed, the day took its instant toll. I was asleep in under a minute.

I remembered my dreams then as well. Of moving shadows in the mist of Sorez. Of the rolling green hills and the quiet forests that so littered the gray coasts of this rustic land. They looked innocent enough, from afar. But my uncle's words echoed still, even in my dreaming. Of the unseen. The ancient. The supposed powers that slumbers in the hills, the forests and even in the grey waters veiled with its grey fog. In my dreams, I was flying. Or my consciousness anyway. Peering and looking, the lure of curiosity baiting me to see what was the fuss about, as to why my uncle had gone out of his way to warn me? Of something that may or may not exist. And why, for some inexplicable reason, I feel the faintest whispers of dread as I looked and looked?

Half-awake, I remembered a lit lamp. The orange light not obtrusive, and thus did not wake me fully. My mouth had been open and a steady stream of drool spilled unto my sheet. I'm a fitful sleeper. Twisting and turning, I was sprawled out of my covers awkwardly and gangly. Mother had laid out the lamp on the foot of the door, her features completely concealed in the shadows, her steps quiet and weightless, floorboards beneath unmoving. She didn't say anything. She just sat gently on the edge of my bed and smoothed out my hair, stroking it as she had done thousands and thousands of times when I was younger.

I don't remember how long she was beside me. I was in and out of my sleep, never waking fully, stuck in between my flying dream and reality.

One moment she was there.

The next, she was gone.

I remember waking up and my blanket being tucked neat and well beneath, all my limbs well wrapped underneath my blanket.

I remembered my Uncle Arnao siting alone on the dining table. Two earthenware cups on the table. My body walked out of instinct and out of routine. The chores my uncle had assigned having been drilled into the very fiber of my being. I did not notice how hunched his shoulders were. Or how his hands clasped together on the table, a solemn look on his features. He had seemed to me to be absently sipping on his mallaca, though it no longer steamed.

More than an hour later, I had about done with my morning chores, the spears of first light had just pierced the grey mists.

Another half hour would go by, after I had searched high and low for my mother and finding no trace of her did I go to ask my uncle.

I remembered how he looked at me then. Compassionate and calm. An emotion so rarely conveyed on his hard gaunt features. He offered me a seat and told me she had left, two hours before I had woken up. Having bought passage on a vessel, setting sail on the witching hour.

I remembered it, try as I might to not think about it.

Of the years that came after in grey old Sorez.

Of those quiet and carefree days of my childhood.

For some reason, I find myself reminiscing of those times more often these days. Now, close to a decade later.

Here, in Lonethorn.