Messages of Twilight Rider
Myth
Common tale told to the islenorian children is that if you need an answer to a question burning your mind, you can always turn to see The Shaft of Light on the night sky, and hope that Araleth Letheranil, the Twilight Rider, will hear your call and give you answers as omens and revelations.
Messages of Twilight Rider are a collection of tales and stories told about mortal elves that received answers to their questions from the Twilight Rider, and either got a happy ending or lived to regret their curiosity.
Summary
Typical tellings of the messages that the Twilight Rider tend to be kin to urban legends, sharing similar ideas and structure with one another but connecting with people, places and ideas that are typical to areas where the storyteller comes from, or they are told to happen to a distant relative or friend-of-a-friend. The most popular stories follow one of the following plot structures:
- Innocent person is lost in the wilderness, trap in situations they don't see their way out of, lost an item or a person or experiencing misfortune that they fear they cannot recover. They send their prayers to the stars and through omens, and lucky coincidences are let to the solution to their blight. Sometimes the Twilight Rider appears to them in their trance or in the reflections of stars on water holding his staff with a star on it and shows them the way, other times the signs are much more subtle, but the protagonist keeps seeing star symbolism and starlight's glimmer as they discover the coveted solution. In the end, they beat the obstacle and their lives are better for it.
- Greedy or impatient (possibly both) person gets obsessed about a goal or piece of information, and against all the warnings given by others or even the Twilight Rider himself, they demand aid from the god to find their way towards what they seek. The Twilight Rider agrees but omens spell the person's doom. They receive what they search for just to realize that the benefits they thought they would get weren't what they dreamed of, and they regret their decision in great misery.
- A person asks for the Twilight Rider's aid for an endeavour, just to receive omens and revelations of doom. Person stops pursuing the goal, just to soon get a confirmation, that they were barely saved from a misfortune, being deceived or from losing their life.
In Literature
Araleth Letheranil's appearances make a rather prominent plot device in fictional literature, though among the modern Islenorian literature critics this is considered a very lazy trope and too often used as a less interesting Deux ex Machina. That said, the trope has been used in inventive ways to raise tension in thrillers by making the messages more subtle and easy to interpret in multiple ways, raising the tension.
Messages from the Twilight Rider are also quite popular in books writen for children.
In Art
Depictions of Araleth Letheranil holding a staff with stars are quite popular in paintings and sculptures in public libraries, observatories and town halls, occasionally also in great crossroads. Quite many of the tales about the messages he has brought have been turned into songs.
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