Paradise Mourns
The White Knight dressed in black kneels amidst a sea of yellow grass, where wild Angel Truffles grow, their black flowers protruding from fragile stems. His skirt flows behind him, a shroud of darkness, a blanket covering the ground. Held tightly in both hands is his helm whilst his bowed head obscures his masked face. A paladin neither of light or dark but of grey whose posture is of a man with a burden quietly gathering his strength. Throughout the field shadows restlessly flutter like ghosts weaving in and out of existence. The wind blows harshly. The sky reflects his mood: Dark. Sombre. Brooding. A harbinger of a storm yet to break.
Just as Eden after The Fall.
Opposite him is a growing portal displaying a vista of an alien landscape. Nature the natural photographer captures trees, clouds and sun in a lake’s glassy reflection. A pathway leads to the lakelet where heady aravis flowers seduce pilgrims to partake of serenity and renewal in this tranquil virgin land. The sun is setting not only here but also in the knight’s heart as he watches undines, satyrs and other forest folk celebrate.
Maidens clapping hands in an arrhythmic staccato beat whilst entranced fauns dance wildly: dervishes making complex rhythms and patterns with their hooves. Drawing energy from themselves that spirals, turning, funnelling, undulating into the open sky.A peninsula of light kisses the heavens only to dissipate replenishing nature. A true thanksgiving ceremony for the bounty that Gaia bestows upon them in this land of innocence.
As was Eden before The Fall.
While the man straightens, lightning and thunder ripples across the skyline. He also acknowledges nature. In his mind it is a force majeur something to be utilized aggressively, forcefully, to be bent to his will and wielded as a weapon. In destruction he thinks, there is beauty, symmetry. As in life so too as in death. This is a powerful warrior-mage who would seize this summer land as though it were a man he wantonly covets in his heart.
As magnets drawn together, the earth feels the pull of the portal. Sensing something is amiss the festivity abruptly halts. Arrested, curious, akin to enraptured deer in headlights: the Fae stare wide eyed at the phenomena ahead of them.Adryad boldly calls out to the seemingly solitary figure in a foreign tongue signalling him to join.
Some things should never be invited into ones own home.
Accepting the invitation he steps through the portal. The shadows around him shimmer becoming translucent then solid revealing their true nature. A dark legion dressed similarly to the paladin, with strange weapons drawn, inevitably crosses into the inviting alien landscape.
An invasion.
A deafening crack is felt and heard. An unscalable chasm appears. A global disaster. A single manifestation of a broken heart: a terrible soul wrenching horrified cry persists. Paradise: the sentient land. Grieving. Mourns the loss of Her peoples’innocence.
As did Eden during The Fall.