A Pasture of Crossroads

Perhaps Blodaiweth had loved the Deii prince, Lou Mael but his loyalty lay in obligation. He was indeed, considered more of a beast than a civilized folk. The Gwragged Verth, molded beings of which he was were the puppets of their creators. Lou Mael, despite being his husband, was not his creator and he did not pull the strings. And so Blodaiweth’s eyes easily wandered when a neighbouring prince Gron Mael arrived at their court in the Orwen Mountains. No one in their court had ever seen cattle before, and he offered Lou his choice of the herd as a means to make peace. However, the way his eyes wandered to Blodaiweth’s beheld gaze was something of an act of war.

“Who created you?” Gron Mael, whose hair was the same iridescent blond but cropped shorter than Lou’s, shielded their voices from being overheard like a wing, his voice a low, guttural drawl. It sent a shiver through Blodaiweth’s barely-feeling nerves.

“His sisters,” Blodaiweth responded, and Gronu raised an eyebrow, because it was well known the Deii couldn’t consistently reproduce. “I didn’t ask further than that.”

“How trusting of you,” he said, at a feast meant to celebrate his friendship with Lou Mael, having distracted the prince with his retinue of merchants and bards. Each caress of Blodaiweth’s cool, rugged bark fingers, reminiscent from the oak-flower seed from which he was birthed, was initially welcome, until they reached the small buds between his finger, emerging from the joint and muscle, each with two, small, perfect leaves. Blodaiweth winced and Gron Mael noticed. “Do they check for foreign species every morning?”

Every morning, Blodaiweth’s handmaidens, themselves Gwragged Verth, would carefully check his teeth to see if anything had sprouted from his gums, even the smallest leaf or two. To see if the two perfect leaves had grown into something genetically distinct. “Of course.”

Gronu’s brilliant eyes, compound, large, and almond-shaped, fluttered shut. So much of the light which illuminated his face suddenly dimmed. “Forgive my rudeness, Prince consort, but I fear what will happen if you can’t propagate an heir.”

“I suppose he will find another bridegroom to carry his seed.”

“And of your fate?"

"Well.... I had not considered that much at all."

Gron nodded, expecting Blodaiweth’s lack of answer, and then his eyes widened and the hairs on his body stood up on end, checking if Lou Mael was nearby through vibration and chemical signals Blodaiweth didn’t understand. “Would you like to find out?”

Lou had built his grazing pastures for guests around some ruins on his expansive mountainside estate, and had left every crumbled structure's frame like a shadow to cast a completely new atmosphere as the sun rose and set. A nodwillow tree, which gave off a toxic, deliriant miasma, seemed to not affect the Deii. Blodaiweth had avoided them nonetheless, and he found their presence dizzying even as the strange animals, large, herbivorous creatures referred to as ‘wooly aurochs’, roamed the pasture. To see recreations of these ancient animals was a rare sight - a magic no one in Lou’s court possessed, and Blodaiweth was for the first time, beget with a magnetic curiosity.

Gron placed a hand on one of the wooly aurochs affectionately, and it snorted in reaction. The texture of their skin looked similar to the texture of Lou’s tapestries in the palace, woven, far-away places. Trees covered in greying wings and snow. “I created all of these aurochs. I created a hundred of them. I gave them their forms... and for that reason, I can do this."

A sharp gust of wind and loud, sharp crack - like that of a whip - hurled the noxious pollen and rattling leaves of the nodwillows violently around the grazing pastures. The wood of the enclosure creaked. The approaching humidity of the storm. Blodaiweth’s body felt damp beneath his cloak. But then no rain. The ethereal silver-blonde creature he’d known as Gron Mael was gone. Where he had stood was an old bloodhound with sagging skin and glassy eyes. 

The auroch was gone. And a heap of chunky algae-drenched gelatinous masses, a bioluminescent spine that was so frail it looked feather-light. The spine had almost been real. The marrow and collagen however, had now lost its form. And Blodaiweth didn’t know why.

"Should nothing sprout anew,
The sisters three and Lou,
Will do the same with you."

A gutteral, rattling growl came from the drooping jowls of the bloodhound as he looked up at Blodaiweth. His fur was iridescent, and when it caught the noxious pollen floating through the air it blinded Blodaiweth and he screamed, a shrill cry. The music from the palace, however, had drowned the oncoming storm out.