The brook

This memory is fleeting, and is still revealing itself to me. This is noted as the moments and feelings return, as I have a feeling they will not be permanent guests.
 
What stands out to me is feebleness. The feeling of our arms weighing heavy as rocks, no matter the rest or exercise. Our view, always lopsided. This life had been cursed. Former-us had gathered our existence and recognized our nature, but it hadn't gone many years before our body had begun to fail. The ancient part of us did not show much concern - we know that each life is fleeting - but that mortal fire, the stubbornness of youth still lingering in our mind drove us to live just a few years more.
 
Nothing of value for determining time nor place is memorable in this instance, but what is shown to me is a land, hilly and coursed through by powerful rivers. Pockets of deep, ancient forests are visible, holding tall, deeply green trees and ample vegetation. Former-us were carried on the back of someone - a brother from our youth? Our legs did not allow for much more than a slow pace for a few minutes before I had to take a break, so to achieve any progress we had to be carried. We had heard rumors of a man, gathering all sorts of people and instilling them with hope, knitting together their wounds, restoring their magic, resolving their pacts. A cleric surely, but he did not heal like the priests of the temple. The authorities had tried and failed to find him, we had heard. Former-us had thought him to be a myth, but as our lungs had started to fill with phlegm we grew desperate. The time of this life was not done yet. Former-us had not accomplished anything. One evening we had stopped to rest, our cold body shivering by the fire although the sun had barely set and it was a warm summer night. We did not have much time. Former-us heard it first. A murmur, a shout of joy, someone singing. It came from the other side of the hill. Our brother - he must have been, who else would care for us like this - had lifted us up, and placed our arm around his neck. Together we crested the ridge. Below us was a multitude. I can not ascertain the number as I write this - but it must have been in the hundreds. All in a small, natural depression in the slope, a small brook running through the middle. And in the water stood a disheveled man. No altar, no clerics, no sigils, no arcane vibrations. We were sure at once, this was the man.
 
As we neared the crowd, it was truly what we had been told. We saw nobles, trying to clumsily hide the signs of wealth, we saw soldiers, we saw strong, dirtied men with unsure and wild eyes - bandits from the surrounding hills but bearing no arms. We saw farmers, children, madmen and those branded with magic. All falling into silence as the man, still standing in the rushing waters, started to speak. I can not remember what he said, but it was words strong enough for my brother to shed tears as we made our way through the crowd. He laid me down on the grassy bank of the river, in plain view of the people, and of the man.
 
His gaze was not fixed on us, it met my brothers. He placed a calloused hand on his shoulder and had said something that seemed to us unintelligible, but that broke our brother into full weeping. Then, he turned to us. He was undeniably human - coarse, woolen hair, a scruffy beard, the face of a common man. But his eyes bore a dual nature, one of warm sympathy, and one of sheer fire and power. He kneeled at our side, his rough linen clothing dripping with water around him, and took our feeble arm in his hands. He was warm. We had not felt warm for months. He could heal us. "Please, this body, it's frail. My legs, my lungs..." we wheezed before we broke into a long and heavy cough, spitting up a red mass beside us. Then he spoke. The world quieted. Our brothers wailing waned away. We only heard the stream, and his words. "Speak easy child. You are safe here." he aid, cupping his hand in the brook and washing the phlegm from our face, and cupping our head. I am unsure what language he spoke, but we understood it to the heart of our soul, and to be honest I do not know whether we reflected upon it. We had tried to shake our head, wanting him to get on with it. "My lungs, I can barely breathe... master, ease my burden, I have so much to see in this life" we had said. His eyes had shown his understanding. A deep, sure understanding. But our lungs continued to heave with difficulty, and soon we launched into another heavy cough. Once again, the man cleaned our face. "This shell has fought bravely, but it is not the shell that has brought itself here. It is the soul. And it is heavy and dirty." he said, his eyes still deep with understanding.
 
We had been filled with anger. How dared he say such a thing. Former-us, and our brother, had gone through great pain to get here. To find him, this man. We were asphyxiated in our own fluids, and yet this man spoke of our soul and not our failing lungs? What did our deep memories have to do with this? Those lives had never had to handle this pain, this disability, this scorn. "Then aid me in fixing it, if that is what will heal this body. I am not done. I have so much to do, to experience like this" I had said with all the power and anger I could muster. The man did not recoil, or even look at the red splotch on his cloak that had resulted from our anger at him. His gaze remained steady and warm. "I am not speaking of the shell, the vessel. I speak of the one that inhabits it. The traveler. The cursed one." Former-us could feel our face relax. We did not understand, but we felt understood. The vessel, the body, the frail, broken chalice, was warm, safe, held. But it was apart. His words went past it, as its time was quickly running out. "You have walked many roads, some long, some short, little one. More than many. And there are many paths still on the horizon." he said, softly. We tried to argue. "But this path is not finished, it has barely begun. Right my back, free my lungs, heal my legs. Let me walk this path, master." The sounds, formerly suppressed, now completely quieted. The man once again cupped his hand in the water and brought it to our face, but now wiped our brow with it. He then placed his rough thumb on our wet forehead. We were alone, and his eyes bore an ancient fire again. It told of deep memory, untold power and total knowledge. He spoke. "No. You are tired. The paths wear you down, they take their toll and leave nothing behind. You are searching for the place to stop, to anchor your mind, to allow yourself to learn to forge your own path on which to build your fortress." His eyes had bored through us, through that frail youth. His eyes bored into mine. "You know of the corruption that has sprung from yourself. You see his reasons and fear that the rot is not in him, but in your very being, that it is in the root and can not be expunged." He pauses. He looks at me. I can still feel the thumb on my forehead. "The anomaly, the breaker, the one that was you - he sought to build his house such that he could finally find his rest. He feared the paths such that he corrupted himself to avoid walking another one. Do not fear the broken vessel. Pity it." The heat of the thumb intensifies, I can feel it now - a clarifying heat, a focusing heat. "Two cups are never the same. If a cup is cracked and moldy, does the servant not pour the wine into a new cup and discard the old? You are not the broken vessel. You will not become a broken vessel. You will walk the paths, and dare to walk them back. You are the one that dares to remember, and dares to trust in what will be."
 
I notice now that I am not seeing the man from the perspective of the dying youth anymore - The hacking cough of the youth faded into a dull echo. The pain in my chest vanishes, replaced by the sturdy, familiar beat of my own heart. I look down and see the boy lying on the bank, his chest heaving, but I am no longer inside him. I am standing. I am whole. And the man is different - his coarse hair grown and golden, flowing in long strands around his face. His eyes, still bearing that same warmth yet with that ancient fire shone the warmest of yellows. His roughspun linen now a resplendent white, still marked with the red taint of the dying youth, arms covered in a deep gold down. And he is looking up at me and puts his large hand on my shoulder - I feel as if it is still there - and says this: "This vessel ends here, with me, as was always the case. The wheel rolls on. It will come to a stop, but that time is not for you to know, neither is it for this sick vessel, nor for the corrupted one. Time will tell." He smiles at me - and at once the sounds from the banks of the brook come rushing in, our former brother wailing, the crowd watching and former-us taking his last struggling breath as the man carries him to the middle of the brook. He says something that I can not understand, but that breaks our former brother, and lowers former-us into the brook. As I realize that the crowd does not see past the roughspun linen and coarse hair, the world floats away as if it was leaves on a tree in autumn. He still remains, his resplendent coat dripping with water. "The work is not finished. The rot is not in the root, it is in the fear. Do not be tempted to let the fear build another fortress. Understand it. Go home, Jane. Walk the path." He smiles, a knowing and sharp smile. The memory fades, but the warmth on my shoulder and forehead remains.
 
For memory: this was an unprovoked memory, coming to me shortly after waking up in the Paramont Residence after a particularly eventful day and night. I need a drink.