Fall of the Earthspeaker

The sickness has not abated; it will take me soon. As I lay upon my bed of earth, I am left to ponder what may have gone wrong, and how we may have stopped it. It came upon us faster than we could understand what it was. A minor infestation in the temple heralded the end of days for Eylis, though none of us could have known. The creatures sapped the strength from the temple and Her power began to fade: the reclamation was underway. The first to return to the Earth was Dendry, then Garrik and Shoea, and after them it was the Earthspeaker himself. He, the highest of our priests, was defenseless against the assault on faith. He can rest now, interred with the Mother herself in his place of peace, while the rest of us live on in the aftermath.   Things have changed greatly in our small town. The birds no longer sing, the wind no longer blows. The air has become impossibly hot, it suffocates us and withers our forests, leaves browning and falling as we cough and choke. Some say this is the end of our time, some say the Mother has abandoned us, and even as I refute their words I live in fear of the truth they might harbor. Whatever era this change of tides may usher, I pray for its survivors, I pray for those who will live on in our shadows; I pray that they will see even the faintest of lights glimmering through the broken canopy, that they will still know her presence even as it fades into the dusk. As I lay here, I can only pray that there is some great, glowing light in the world that I am too small to see, something far beyond the reaches of my understanding, a greater force which will prevail against the blighting corruption, though it may be long after my time has come. As I lay here, I thank the gods for their grace, for the time I have been allotted in these lands of everchanging beauty. I thank my brothers and sisters for their faith, for their love, for their support as I have walked and stumbled through the shrouded enigmas of life, grasping for meaning in the cold, thin air. I love you as I love myself, as a part of myself, as we are all an extension of the beauty of the Earth, its many forms become one in the rolling waves of our being.   I see now my return to the waters of the earth, a spray of mist bound from moment of conception to mortality, yet destined to rise again in the momentum of glorious recreation. The blight upon our people is merely one obstacle of many in the course of divinity, something inevitably overcome by the will of time, no true death but for the death of this brief moment. I will live on in the divine memory of the Earth, seeds of time sprouting in the soil above me. No, this is not an end, but a slight break in the pattern of continuity which encompasses our every experience. Even still it could be the most essential part of that pattern, the stroke of the brush at the very moment of repeating, that which gives meaning to all the rest. As I lay upon my bed of Earth, I cannot despair. The bonds of eternity are ever unbroken.