Telrao

Boon and Bane.

Open eyes, dream wide awake.
Pray no one stumbles across your path.

Darkness encroaching, hold back,
Pulled by the soul to some unmarked track.

Bleeding, broken, desperate,
Reach the warm whispering forests.

Dark silence flows like thick smoke,
Through the trees and vines, grasping, gasping.

Stumbling, falling face first,
Looking up to see the stark nightmares.

Screaming and bright. Burning flames.
Thousands buried in burnt wood and stone.

The Nightwatcher comes, creeping.
Sleek, eerie, haunting, unnatural.

Breath comes desperately now.
Another figure, lucid and green.

She moves, one with the forest,
Vines curling and purring at her touch.

One boon to speak. One to wish.
The figure grants pruning from the pain.

Emerge from the tang’ling brush,
The pain is gone. What was the boon wished?

Shake head, breathe deep, smile wide. Strength.
No matter. Idiocy was spoken.

But there is something new here.
A hollow, empty space in the mind.

Shrug, walk tall and strong. Prideful,
The Nightwatcher’s Boon and Bane ling’ring.