Lost wisdom

I sifted through the papers, aged like torn, brown leaves scattered across autumn's damp, grassy base, and squinted at the smudged, faded letters, attempting to figure out what word they'd once spelled.

An unusually strong gust of wind found its way through the trees from the east and blew my waist-length hair across my face. My vision was completely obscured by the hair, flowing and shining like honey in the pale evening sun that was dappled across the needled forest floor. I knealt, placing the pages beneath my left knee and using both of my hands to tuck the gently waving tresses behind my ears before continuing to search the papers for something, anything. I wasn't sure. A word, not so deteriorated as the rest, caught me eye. "Ëlothrim," I read aloud, in only a hushed whisper. Fear. It was not safe to speak in a raised voice any longer, even here.

I gathered the papers and set them neatly in the leather cover from which they had fallen. I rose to my my standing height - a full 6 foot, 4 inches - and shook my hair over my shoulders. In any direction, one could see naught but trees. The ancient pines stood tightly together, leaving only small spaces through which one could pass and making it nearly impossible for any who did not know the forest Nífyrre well to travel through. The clearing in which I stood was itself only a few metres across and for the most part was ridden with thick, gnarled tree roots.

Another icy blast of wind rolled through the woods, and seemed to push what little light remained far into the southwest. The forest took on a shadowy, blue-green hue and seemed to creak, the moss and needles beneath my leather boots groaning mournfully at the peril that now lay so close to Nífyrre's vast boundaries.

To be continued.