Whispers first, the quiet disagreements spoken behind closed doors. Old beliefs dragged back into the light. Old powers coveted. My uncle’s counsel turned, his devotion no longer to kin but to something darker. The moment when trust began to rot, slow and unseen.
By the time swords were drawn, it was already too late.
A time best forgotten, it would seem. Especially those near the end when battles waged, and it became clan against clan—brother against brother—leaving the land we so blessedly loved scarred.
I shake my head to clear it and focus on her and the present.
That past no longer matters. Besides Pollock, all those who once lived and loved me are where they belong, awaiting our return after finishing our tasks here.
I look back at her.
“They’re different from mine. Aramaic?”
“Some.”
She steps closer, her gaze moving over the runes across my chest. “These are…”
“Celtic,” I tell her. “My uncle was a Druid.” I hesitate. “He trained me for a time.”
Her brows knit. “To become one as well?”
“Yes, but war came and changed things.” My fingers drift over the older markings, the ones he carved into me with deliberate care, each line placed as if it mattered beyond the flesh it marked.
“What exactly is a Druid? I’m not sure if what I’ve learned is fantasy, myth, or based on real history.”
“Essentially, a learned keeper of law, ritual, and memory—one who upholds the proper order between people, land, and the divine. Not simply wielders of magic, but stewards of it.”
She listens quietly, eyes attentive, so I go on.
“A Druid believes the world—and everything in it—is alive, and he works in concert with it. Not metaphorically. Truly. The soil, the rivers, the wind, plants, all living things—even the ground beneath our feet. He works beside nature, coaxing power from it, guiding it, and never forcing it without consequence. When he’s at one with it, he doesn’t command it to do his bidding—he converses with it. Power shared, shaped to serve the greater good.”
I gesture vaguely to the land around us. “Everything you see, and don’t. The air, the spirits within each tree, and even the weather, like fog and frost. There’s respect for all of it. There has to be.”
Running my hand over my chest, I add, “These are reminders. Of the training I endured, the oaths taken, and the knowledge I earned under my uncle’s tutelage. Some mark what I was taught. Others… what I paid to learn.”
Dropping my hand, I let her take in the ones covering my torso.
“Not many people know that when we master ourselves and that power, we may borrow its forms. Walk as the wolf, take to the air as a hawk, slip beneath water as a fish. Not to escape ourselves, but to understand what it means to live as something else.” I glance back at her. “To feel how the world presses differently on fur, on feathers, on scales.”
There is no pride in my tone, only reverence. My chest tightens because this was what I’d wanted most, and the chance to learn it was taken from me.
There’s a slight part of her lips as her eyes trace my features as if in awe.
“Your uncle… he could do those things?”
“Yes. For a time. Until he began to believe more power was owed to him. Then nature stopped answering his call and turned its back on him, in a sense. Or answered in ways he didn’t like.”
I look skyward, watching the dead drift through the thinning ash. It lingers, as if to remind the world what power in the wrong hands can do.
“Power doesn’t come from domination or prayer. It comes from understanding where you stand in the cycle and knowing you are never at its center. A Druid is a bridge, a conduit by which to use it.”
Her fingers begin to skim the surface, tracing patterns, disturbing it just enough to give her something else to look at. “And your runes… they don’t trouble you?” Her eyes hold mine. Her stare is too intent to be idle curiosity. “Do things they shouldn’t?”
Sometimes,” I say, thinking of one in particular. “But never without reason.”
The tension in her doesn’t ease. If anything, it sharpens. The water around her grows still, her fingers pausing.
“Magic doesn’t turn on its bearer without cause,” I continue, keeping my tone even. “When it behaves strangely, there’s usually a specific reason, or it could be responding to something out of balance. The issue would not be of its own making.”
