Baermak vignette

General Summary

Darkness, like a womb, encroaches on my small circle of candlelight. The faint sussurating of my traveling companion’s breathing, rhythmic and unhurried. They have been asleep for a short while now, perhaps hastened there by my recounting of trade customs among the riverfolk of the southern continent during the early years of the Sylvan age.
It is quiet here, so deep underground. But it is good to again be fire-warmed and full-bellied; though the fare may be unsettlingly foreign. Within my cocoon of yellow light I remove and unwrap again the skull of Arryn. Turning the artifact over in my hands I imagine the features that once covered this frame; the things his living eyes must have seen. What things made him laugh? Cry? Scream in fury? I feel a connection. I feel he must have stories to share with me, his ultimate destiny intertwined with my own somehow.
I tear a strip of cloth off of one of the rags I carry, and with some of this strange ale clean away the grime of ages past. A bit of beeswax from my candle on a cleaner portion of cloth; polishing and preserving the relic, turning him over and over as my mind wanders shadows of antiquity deeper and darker than even these unlighted caverns.

Report Date

28 Aug 2021