Jude
The Greatwood had been home to him once. A home split in two, spread across more parents than most would know and distances more vast than a child had any right being tugged between, but a home nonetheless. It’s a familiar ghost he doesn’t feel he has any right to claim, but which makes him bleed nostalgia with every step he takes within the forest’s reach. Nothing feels like home to him these days but memories of the Greatwood are ones that remain otherwise untainted. That makes them unique enough to make him long for something he doesn’t think he can have anymore.
Mathair is a presence so grand he can scarcely breathe beneath her boughs. Mighty in a terrifying way that makes you feel tiny and meaningless. Jude’s mother had laughed that away when he was a child, tried to tell him how Rae and Frey and Mathair were interconnected and only smiled fondly when Jude would shake his head and urge that they were each different degrees of intimidating. Even as an adult - questionably, but he’s twenty and considers himself one, which is all that matters at his age anyway - his knees feel a little weak when he looks at the mighty tree.
Offerings aren’t necessarily standard for the seasonal gods. They don’t have shrines as far as he’s aware. But the Greatwood, the Fae, his mother - they’d instilled a reverence that has him bending knee willingly to offer one anyway in the shape of a thin line across his palm that bleeds slow onto the moss. Protein, calories, life. More meaningful things than baubles and trinkets for a god that would find no worth in them. Jude would reserve those for his own herald.
Standing, he clenches his hand past the sting of the wound and the way it spreads crimson across his palm as he looks up into Mathair’s canopy. “Let me find one. Please.” Let him save his best friend.
Mathair is a presence so grand he can scarcely breathe beneath her boughs. Mighty in a terrifying way that makes you feel tiny and meaningless. Jude’s mother had laughed that away when he was a child, tried to tell him how Rae and Frey and Mathair were interconnected and only smiled fondly when Jude would shake his head and urge that they were each different degrees of intimidating. Even as an adult - questionably, but he’s twenty and considers himself one, which is all that matters at his age anyway - his knees feel a little weak when he looks at the mighty tree.
Offerings aren’t necessarily standard for the seasonal gods. They don’t have shrines as far as he’s aware. But the Greatwood, the Fae, his mother - they’d instilled a reverence that has him bending knee willingly to offer one anyway in the shape of a thin line across his palm that bleeds slow onto the moss. Protein, calories, life. More meaningful things than baubles and trinkets for a god that would find no worth in them. Jude would reserve those for his own herald.
Standing, he clenches his hand past the sting of the wound and the way it spreads crimson across his palm as he looks up into Mathair’s canopy. “Let me find one. Please.” Let him save his best friend.
I LEND EVERYONE MY EAR, BUT NOBODY MY HEART
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
