Winter 608/609 –
January – I think my father had a dozen names for that damn boar – Tusk, Ripper, Bastard, etc – his old bar friends certainly had hundreds of more colorful names as well. He was supposed to have weighed 200 kilograms, have teeth a decimeter long, and whose blood was nothing but piss and vinegar according to the tale. My father supposedly impaled it fully tip to tail yet it still managed to tear his arm off. I think about those stories a lot now – it seems to be the only thing anyone remembers of my parents. Supposedly, the boar’s jaw was on display in the bar for years, but after the fire the tavernkeep decided to put it in storage – he thought that with my dad gone no one would recall the tale – and yet it persists. So if he didn’t want it, I decided it would be better served in a new role – I liberated it from the dusty attic above the tavern, and saw the truth in it – a jaw around my forearm in length, a small pair of incisors, and stains implying it had been buried outdoors for awhile before being mounted to a tacky plaque. At that moment – I knew it would be a perfect tribute to Aspen – sure the jaw may not be from the boar, but that jaw is central to its story – a part of nature my father and his friends could point at and speak of how the wilds must be respected – of how the truth can become a tale, and how a tale can become the truth.
February – For those who have risen to it, responsibility is a gift – for those who have it thrust upon them it is a burden – The standing one’s powers are waning and the evil beneath the ground is stirring. The mists are weakening and our very way of life is in danger. To combat this, Aspen has granted me a stave of power – that should I determine it necessary, I can remove my circle from harm’s way. But doing so would leave the lion folk at the mercy of the enemy, whoever they may be. It is now up to me to decide when to withdraw and when to stand and fight – I do not understand the ways of the sword and pike, nor am I a grand healer – my only weapon in these dread circumstances is my knowledge, and yet – this is not a tool of knowledge, it is a tool of wisdom. With this gift, Aspen implies that they support my ascension to mother – I’m not as wise and commanding as Etienne, nor am I as loving and supportive as Colibri – I do not know what I can do to aid in these times, nor do I know how what the future holds for us. All I know how to do is run.
March – There were a number of strange happenings at market – the straight forward ones – Court of trees in the tavern, werewolf confusion and panic, and the descent into Chriopholer were at least experienced by the whole town – and all can agree on what happened afterwards (though in the moment the events were quite vexing). Yet there were two events in particular that were quite peculiar – the first I experienced myself along with several other gatherers – we stumbled upon a cottage in the woods none of us had ever seen before, being built of candies and baked goods – my musings on the structural implausibility of this were curtailed by a self-proclaimed “ginger-dead-man”, and the unarmed were quite literally forced to seek refuge in the hut. There we discovered a gruesome scene of blood and baking – following this we were able to escape the hutch and aid in defeating the confectionary foe. At this the scene before us dissolved to nothing, leaving more questions than answers – at least I wrote the recipe down, though I know not if it’ll ever be useful.
The second was a man of snow appearing during the stonewise – accounts say it was trying to assault the gatherers, and that it reacted to Étienne’s ritual eye-stone. These absurd events are… perplexing and difficult to explain – could it be fey? A strange malefic trick? Maybe a manifestation by Chriopholer? I don’t really see how these events could be explained by logic, so I may have to ascribe to absurdity and whimsy to make any sense of them.
