The Hunter Poet and the Violet Flower

“He ran from the dream, but the AllFather in His great love pulled at his heart until he came running back.” - Templar Southernlight, the Hunter of the Forgotten Winter

Dear River,

                Is this pen in my paw a gift from the angels or is a curse from the devils? On late nights and bright sunny days, I struggled to know the difference between the two. I recall long before father went off to war he would tell me I’ve been blessed with stories. He, along with everyone else would love to sit by the fire on those hard winters listening to me recite the stories I read about in the tiny library of our hometown. Later in those years, I started to simply write my own tales to read out to the family. It was then that father told me what the AllFather had given me … a gift.

                I guess we both knew from that moment on there was no way for me not to become a Bard. And yet, even now as I sat here in the Oak Library the greatest in the Realm, I am filled to the bones with doubt. My name will be lost to history, and all the stories I have locked away in my will die with my last breathe. Those who will recall my name will only see me as a massive dedicated fool, one who had dreams of a state beyond his simply life. I will be what I fear the most �" a nothing.

                The AllFather in His wisdom had given me this longing to be something more. He has called to me to take on this cause and to be the Bard of the Emperor. Who am I to turn my back on that calling?

But the doubted has fallen on my heart for the last few days. I can’t seem to overcome it or shake it off, my brother. It is there deep in my soul, and I’m not sure what to do with it other than to give into it. I know, I should not allow the doubted to take me, but I am far too weak to win the battle.

The look must have been written on my face because a friend in the library gave me a small book from Templar Southernlight, the Hunter of the Forgotten Winter. He wrote only a few works in his life. We know of seven poems penned by him and only three stories credited to him. The stories are short in nature and are believed to be written during a long winter where a small civil war between the Rangers was being waged. The war of the Hunter’s Rebellion during the Bloody Winter.

(I feel I must show my ignorance here for a know little about the Hunter’s Rebellion. Many micro-conflicts were being fought during the Bloody Winter, some which have only be mention in the history books as nothing more than a title.)

It is believed Templar wrote these stories trapped inside a war camp during one of the winter’s long snowstorm, but no one is sure. No one nor does any of the books tell what happened to the Ranger, but it is believed he died during one of the battles. A foe of his, another Ranger more than likely a Royal Ranger, found the writing on Templar at the time of his death.

We can only guess that the enemy Ranger loved his work enough to keep it and pass it down until it reached the library, but we are not sure. The books are not even sure Templar himself had died during the Hunter’s Rebellion. There are a few other reports of Templar or at least, a Hunter matching what has been written about him in other battles.

Either way, I’m not sure it matters who Templar was but what he had left behind. The book I was given had only one story in between its covers, a long form a poem called the ‘The Hunter Poet and the Violet Flower,’ and the story being told in the poem is about a Hunter, who every night would have a dream about a glowing violet flower. A flower he had never seen before in his life and no one knew of what he was speaking about until he came across a dying witch in the woods. The witch unnamed told the Hunter that the flower was a single hair pulled from the AllFather’s tale and whoever touched the flower would be blessed beyond understanding, but the Hunter didn’t understand why he was given the dream.

He was not worthy of touching the flower. He had caused an endless amount of pain and suffering throughout his years in the war. He had killed children, women, and the elderly. The Hunter by all counts was the worse off, the worse to all who were his foes and yet, every night he kept having the dream about the flower. He believed the dream was simply a way for the AllFather to punish him for his sin. It was a Hell for him and him alone.

So, the more he had the dream, the more he ran from the idea of the flower, but the AllFather would not let him go. One night, the poem tells us, the Hunter broke down after being ordered to burn a church to the ground and told the AllFather to save him from this task. He had a vision in the night before the attack of the flower, but this time the dream showed him where to go to find the flower.

On a far off the mountain top, the flower sat alone in a storm waiting for him. The Hunter left the camp during the night knowing he could never return and spend the next four years, four days, and four nights hunting for the flower. He climbed the mountain where the flower sat, and before the arrow of death found him, he reached out and touched the tip of the flower. The arrow fired by the reaper hit him from the hours he spends lost in the storm with no food. He dropped his paw, smiling at the flower.

There in the snows of the mountain,

Lay the body of the Hunter Poet,

                The flower of his dreams glowed in the night,

                He stared into the luminous

taking one breathe closer to the Avalon.

 

                And then someone laid a paw on his back,

                The Hunter Poet gasps, “Who are thou?”

                The voice whispered …

                “I am.”

 

Your brother,

Brain Redtales

(1425)                

Author's Note

Writer's Note:
I’ll try to make this short for the both of us, but I feel, I need to add a little context to my stories on here. All the stories I post on this website are what I call “break stories.” They are either stories I go to when I get stuck in long from novels or I write them to explore a world. So, what does this mean? It means I enjoy these stories, but I don’t put everything into them. So, why am I posting them? A fair question and the reason I’m posting my stories on this website is to have fun, to show you my growth but most of all to give you a little taste of the worlds I work in are like. What does this mean for you? It means you can judge the work as you wish and by all means help me with plot, characters, and building the world, but I ask you to ignore grammar problems as best as you can and the style in which these stories are written. My page on here is my sketchbook and you guys get to see all the rough, nasty parts of my writing.