Post by Teague Walthon on Feb 8, 2015 16:48:40 GMT
In the face of death all men meet it alone. There's a bit of irony in there. For most of my life I've tried to live in solitude. I took peace in it, wrapped myself in it as if it were a second skin. Yet, as I sit here, the life's blood gushing from me, I find that I'm afraid to be alone. I assume most men would seek comfort in deity at this point. Plead for just a moment longer, just a bit more time to take care of unfinished business. But the gods are strangers to me. Maybe others would seek their final comfort in a lover's embrace. Whispering false promises of forever and eternal waiting. I've only known one woman in my years and such promises would be lost upon her ears. For those without deity or lover they might call out for their mother. Their origin and protector. I would not lie and say that I do not long to see her. To hear her whisper false comforts into my ear, promises that everything would be alright. I would believe them, I might pass happily from this shell of flesh, but I gave up claim to those niceties when I struck off on my own. No matter what words are exchanged, promises are spoken, or love declared. We all fall alone.
Once nimble fingers, shaking as death approached, struggled across a dirty page of parchment. Stained with blood and charcoal they carried the last musings of a young man, leaving words and gore upon the page in equal measure. Teague Walthon glanced up from the small book clutched in his failing hands and glanced around at the copse that would be his final resting place. Not once had he expected to meet his end in such a manner. For years he had thought he would fall to the creature that had stalked him in his first years acclimating to the Dark Woods or, a more hopeful outcome, that he would simply live among the forest until he was too old to care for himself. Neither of those had been the case. At twenty six summers he was in the prime of his life, bearing potential for great deeds. He should have had near three scores of years left. There he sat, however, back pressed against an old conifer, sitting among it's fallen needles and the freshly fallen snow. His life ebbing from his body in a slow withdraw. It left him to to think, to muse, to consider the actions that had lead up to this point. Looking inward had been how he had spent most of his life and it seemed only fitting that he end his journey in the same manner. Before him splayed out in dichromatic simplicity was the story of his fall.
A bright, arterial red steamed and cooled atop the glistening snow. It would have been a morbidly, serene sight if not for the weapons scattered about and the two dying creatures of the forest. Teague's eye followed the trail of broken snow and blood, reading the story in reverse. Revisiting the painful crawl, the shedding of his weapons that only served to encumber him, and finally stopping at the creature no more than four meters from him; a common boar. An arrow with a shaft three fingers thick protruded from the beasts left flank, the coups de gras was a slender knife jabbed up to it's leather wrapped hilt into the creatures eye. A hunter must posses a healthy respect for all of it's quarries, it was simply the nature of the hunt. Kill or be killed. Despite this, Teague couldn't help but feel the sting of embarrassment to accompany the pain in his leg where the beast had gored him. A soft chuckle made it's way from his heaving chest. It started off as such, but as he continued to think upon his feelings of indignation his laugh grew into a rancorous howl. His hands scrabbled for the bit of charcoal and began to move across the page once more.
Even on the cusps of death I can still gather the strength to be annoyed at my murderer. Still grow red in the face at the notion that I, Teague Walthon, the Woodsman of the Dark Wood, hunter of creatures that most men have never seen, friend to the forest, was laid open by a lucky shot from the tusk of a boar. Let it be said that my vengeance wrought upon the creature brings me no peace in my final moments. I'd give anything to have avoided this slayer of men on this day...The soft scratching of the written word stopped and Teague read his words through blurry eyes. It seems I've found my lover and deity in the form of this book. Confessing my inner most thoughts and asking for just a bit more time. I have no unfinished business to barter for. My only task having been survival. Depending on how one looks at it I've either failed or succeeded. Fourteen years scouring the floors of the most dangerous forest man has ever come across is no small feat, I'd assume. But dead by twenty six? Hardly the long life most dream of.
For a moment his hand faltered, falling from the edge of the page leaving a black and crimson score. Teague took in a shuddering breath as he felt something gnaw at the corner of his consciousness. His vision began to fade all together, darkness intruding upon the outer edges of his sight. With his free hand he sought out the leather strap wrapped tightly about his leg, just above the oozing wound. His extremities felt numb, whether it was the cold or the blood loss he could not tell, but both were a death sentence. With what he could only imagine were the last bits of his strength he brought his hand back to the page and wrote the last thoughts of a dying man.
If someone one should stumble across this journal let it be known that I've lived a good life. A hard life, but it was mine.
The darkness came for him then, after his proclamation of contentedness. Consuming him and lulling him into a deep slumber; the place betwixt life and death.
