Do Not Go Gentle
Ériu
Albion
Alba
Warnings for death
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Cymru first dies crowded.
He is no stranger to death. It is all around him, every day- something as unavoidable and normal as children being born, or the weather changing in the sky. Lambs die. Birds die. Plants die- the earth turns over and around and things fall forever into the night, whether you understand why or not.
Their humans talk about death like an ending, an inevitable event that comes for them as though life is a rope forever pulling them forwards to a final stop, and Cymru watches from his safe distance as the years pass by hardly touching him. Although one day there will be an end for him, it is so long into the future, longer than any mortal lifespan, that it does not register with the same impact as it must do for them.
But Mama says that their people are right, and that he should listen more carefully.
‘Here.’ She calls him over to her one day, crouched low by a pond, hands cupped and close to her chest. She opens them as he approaches to reveal a small bird within. He cannot tell what kind it is- colours mutes and shape disguised by what he notices first and foremost.
It does not move.
‘Oh,’ He says, saddened. ‘Is it..?’
Mama gestures for him to hold out his hands. He does so, reluctantly, and she gently places the body within. The bird is young, almost old enough to leave the nest but not yet- downy feathers cover the few full, strong adult ones and circle around its neck like a torc. Its eyes are closed and bulging, its bones too loose when he shifts his hands underneath it.
Cymru wants to let go, but doesn’t. Knows he shouldn’t.
‘It was where it shouldn’t have been,’ Mama says. She picks up the bird between forefinger and thumb and turns it over by the head in Cymru’s hands, quick and rough, as if the bird is nothing more to her than a seed or a stone. The movement of it, the dead weight and wide angles, is wrong. She taps the downy feathers which are more numerous on the other side, ‘See here? These feathers are waterlogged. They collected the water and pulled it under, so that it couldn’t swim back up.’
Cymru feels sick. The bird feels dirty, unnatural in the way it lay in his palms, and he longs to throw it away and wipe his hands clean. But Mama is there, watching, and Cymru knows that his brothers would be as unaffected by it as she is.
‘Even if it could have swum to safety, it might have instead died in the fall. Or been caught by a larger bird, or animal. Might have died from sickness before it fell, or abandoned and starved by its parents.’ Mama’s voice is soft but she holds one hand under Cymru’s two, forcing him to look at what he holds. The bird’s head is too big, its beak too wide and closed eyes too round. He swallows back the whine in his throat, and the jerk of revulsion he wants to let out.
‘To live is to be lucky.’ Mama lifts up one of the small wings by the tip, almost adult feathers fanning like fingers, ‘There is no boundary we can cross to pass into safety, and no time limit to survive in order to avoid it. Death can happen at any time, for anything, and everything that lives today is luckier than it knows. One chance amongst thousands.’
Just as Cymru can handle holding the bird no longer, Mama takes it from him and lays it back in the shallows of the pond. It sits there, half submerged and glistening as Mama takes his hands and washes them, before drying them on her tunic.
‘Do not think, as all young things do, that your chances will never run out.’ She meets his eye, catching him by the chin and regarding him seriously, ‘It is just as easy for us to lose the piece of luck we have as the people we watch over. The only difference between us and them, is that we have a few guaranteed half chances to remind ourselves of how precious life is.’
There are fine lines around her eyes, strands of silver in her flame red hair, but her grip is tight, muscles of her arms strong. Cymru nods, and she softens.
-----------------
‘There are so many people.’
On Alba’s shoulders, Cymru grips the wooden posts to keep them both steady. ‘I didn’t know there could even be so many.’
‘There will be more than this in a few days.’ Mama says.
On her knees, she finishes wrapping Albion to her back and glances up at Cymru and Alba where they stand atop the woodstore, peering over the mound’s defences. In the early morning light, shapes and activity emerge from the retreating shadows like a slow retreating tide. Down the hill, all around the base of the settlement, people are erecting temporary shelters and pitching their animals. Winter solstice is here, with its darkest and coldest of nights, but this year it is apparently a particularly special one.
Cymru doesn’t really understand why. Something about the stars, or the years. Or where the sun hits the ancient stones nearby as it rises and falls- a tradition older than even Mama, passed down from the people before her who stood the circles of stones so tall all over their islands. All Cymru knows is that it is busy, with more people than he has ever seen before going to and fro and glancing his way whenever he goes near them. When Cymru and his family had arrived to stay for the winter a few months ago, this mound had been nothing more than home to one clan. Now, the mound and the lands around it was home to people from at least seven.
Cymru’s eyes pass over all of them, stretched out to the lake on the horizon, his breath clouding in front of him like smoke.
Mama stands with a grunt, testing the weight and position of the wraps keeping Albion -still sleeping- securely in place, and clicks at them with her tongue to come down. ‘There is to be another King and his people arriving today.’ She licks her thumb and rubs a dark smudge of something off Alba’s cheek, ‘I have to meet him properly.’
This means that she will be gone for hours down in the new camp, learning and sharing whatever news this new group of people have to bring. Her children will need to stay away and represent their family on their own. Alba straightens, turning to seriously observe the longhouses and storage buildings as if searching for fault.
‘Ah, a keen guardsman I see before me.’ Mama strokes back Alba’s hair fondly, ‘Today, you can be off duty.’
Alba reddens and scowls, hunching his shoulders, ‘I didn’t do anything.’
Mama laughs through her nose, ‘Good, because we don’t need guards people up here. But we do need ambassadors down there.’ She takes Alba by the shoulders and steers him through the village to the open wooden gates leading to the descent. Their people move aside for them as they pass, Cymru trailing just behind her watching Albion’s fair head against her back.
They stop at the gate- thrown open wide- and move off to the side to let a hunter and his pelts go by: foxes, badgers, and deer.
‘You see those trees and lake?’ A sharp and dramatic turn of Alba to the right, Mama’s hands still about his shoulders.
He laughs, staggering on his feet, ‘Yes.’
‘Oh? What about that field?’ A sharp, wide twist to the left.
He laughs again, stumbling to right himself, ‘I see it.’
‘Good. Well, there are a lot of different children milling about now and they don’t all speak the same tongue. I need some very important people to mix them together and act as a bridge between everyone, in that such field or those such trees. Maybe a game that everyone can play; make them feel comfortable and united.’
‘You want us to play?’ Alba sounds offended, laughter vanishing immediately.
Mama inclines her head, ‘I want you to negotiate amity.’
Alba looks to the swarms of shelters and people, then back up at Mama, ‘…What?’
‘It’s important that everyone here feels part of the same thing.’ Mama says. She drums her fingers like spider legs, fluttering them onto the scarf around Alba’s neck, ‘That’s hard to do when you don’t speak the same language and you’re in a strange place. Not everyone travels like we do. For most, this will be their first time outside of everything that they know.’
Alba doesn’t say anything. He looks back down at the sprawling camp, his face away from Mama so only Cymru can see that he’s dissatisfied. Cymru feels guilty for some reason, although he doesn’t know why. There is something he is missing that Alba understands, and he wishes he were older to figure it out.
‘It is an important job,’ Mama tells them, ‘It is what we need to do. It is what I am doing with the Kings and Queens and priests; their sons and daughters are just as important. I cannot do all at once, but all should be done.’
Alba doesn’t reply. Mama eyes the crown of his head, then winks at Cymru. She lifts her hands from Alba’s shoulders to shift Albion higher, ‘Never mind. There are a lot of them, thinking about it properly. Too many, I think; maybe it’s best I do it.’
‘I can do it.’ Alba says instantly, ‘There aren’t that many.’
Mama pulls a face, conflicted, ‘I’m not sure, it will be difficult. I was wrong to ask you, it will take patience and good communica-‘
‘We can do that.’ Alba grabs Cymru’s hand and Cymru feels panicked. ‘I can take some and Cymru can take some others. We’ll find Ériu and get him to help too. We’ll do a different language each and get together that way.’
Mama tilts her head from side to side. ‘Perhaps that will work.’
‘It will.’
‘And what will you do if they don’t want to play the same thing?’
‘We can play different things between us.’
Cymru looks up at Mama, helplessly. He does not share Alba’s confidence; there are indeed so many people, so many children. How would he talk to them? What would he say?
‘And what if there are arguments?’
Alba frowns, considering his answer, ‘I’ll listen and try to fix it.’
‘How about if some children do not wish to play?’
Alba doesn’t know the answer to that one.
‘They don’t have to.’ Cymru suggests, ‘They can watch, if they want. Or join in later. I could look after those ones.’
He does not know what games or activities Alba is thinking of offering, but none that Cymru can imagine will be things he is good at. He cannot run very fast, nor throw as far as his brothers can. He cannot climb to the tallest branches, or hunt on his own. The idea of embarrassing his family, of damaging the way they are seen by their people, is more than he can bear.
Cymru worries that Mama will see through his selfish suggestion but she smiles at them both. ‘Wonderful ideas,’ she says. She bends to brush down Cymru’s front and slides her fingers under his scarf to the fat, gold torc at his neck, ‘What clever ambassadors I have.’
-----------------
It works out better than Cymru expected.
Alba does the talking, as Cymru thought that he would. He moves amongst the groups, collecting children as he goes and directing them all to the field away from the campsites as Cymru follows at his side. Most they ask choose to join in, eager to be away from the tedium of moving and the tense atmosphere of being somewhere unfamiliar. Some have been walking all night but still want to come.
It is awkward, at first. Cymru does not know what to do with himself, does not know how to begin when people know who he is but don’t know him at all. But then he speaks to one girl on his own, hands shaking, then another. Then a boy, taller than he is, who grins down at him and follows where Cymru points him without question. Alba finds an empty pig’s bladder and blows it up, and before too long there is shrieking and running and Cymru forgets himself amongst it all.
Ériu runs over to join them with some older children not long later, fresh from hunting and eager to take part.
‘What else?’
A good while later, the poor pig’s bladder lays between their feet, finally deflated after numerous games kicked about the open field.
‘I’ll find another bladder. I’m sure there are lots going spare.’
Ériu shakes his head, ‘No, it’s getting boring.’
‘Chase, then? “It”, or something.’
Ériu makes a face, ‘I don’t want to do any more running.’ Cymru heartily agrees. ‘What about stories?’
Alba snorts, ‘How will that work if they can’t all understand it.’
‘We can translate.’
‘That’s just stupid.’
‘You’re stupid.’
‘How about the lake.’ Cymru cuts in quickly. The human children are close by, some running about on their own and others beginning to drift and talk in clumps. ‘We can slide on the ice and have races. Less running and we can use a rock instead of a bladder.’
Ériu looks at Alba, who avoids his eye to look down at Cymru. He then turns to observe the lake behind him. It is a cloudy day and the lake’s surface is dark, swallowing the reflections of the hills behind it so that it seems bottomless.
After a moment, Alba turns back, ‘Not a bad idea. Men were out there yesterday and it’s still cold today. Ice should be solid but we’ll need to get someone to check before we tell the others to follow us. One of the taller hunters; if he says it’s safe, we go.’
Ériu doesn’t seem convinced. ‘With all of us at the same time though? It might crack.’
‘There were deer on it the other day.’
‘That was the other day. It was sunny yesterday and what if the sun comes out again?’
Alba tuts and throws his hands up. Cymru knows that Alba will not take them on to the lake unless he was sure it will hold them, and also knows that Ériu will worry regardless of what Alba tries.
‘Hide and seek in the trees.’ He offers, ‘No one has to run, or talk to each other, and even the smaller ones can join in. And the hunts have already happened today,’ he adds for Ériu, ‘So the forest should be clear of anything dangerous.’
Cymru is satisfied when Ériu relaxes and Alba grins, impressed, ‘Yeah. That’ll do.’
A mad dash for the trees, Alba counting loudly at the edge in a mixture of languages, 1 2 3 in one and 4 5 6 in another.
With the field, campsite, and lake working as their designated hiding area, Cymru watches children scatter as Alba’s counting begins, his back to them. Cymru waits for them to clear and settle, keeping an ear on Alba’s voice, and searches for somewhere unique.
He knows not to stray too far. Mama has told them many stories of children who have become turned around forever by ancient trees, too confused and lost in the press of their trunks to ever find their way home again. The fae live within and they are tricky, fickle things- eager and hungry for wayward travellers. Everything can look the same if you’re not careful, Mama says, fae or not, so always find somewhere high above the treeline and keep it in sight when you walk somewhere new.
Luckily, there is a lot here to choose from- lake, hills. Cymru chooses the largest hill that crests over the trees to be his marker and begins.
The woods breathe. Whispered wind in the empty boughs of trees follow him above the high laughter of children, the hollow thumps of their feet on the forest’s earthen floor.
There is too much to choose from, yet also not much at all. Cymru is proud of himself when he finds a shallow cave, the top most rocks mossy and topped with a small, wizened tree, but several pairs of eyes already blink out at him from the mouth and so moves on quietly. The slope of a small hill has several bushes, but others have got to them first. Feet dangle overhead from branches he cannot reach, and some lay as half hidden shapes under old leaves, laying themselves down flat and still in the earth. One Cymru finds in the hollow of a fallen tree, and the tall girl presses a finger to her lips with eyes that plead with him to leave her there alone.
Far away, Alba stops counting and Cymru runs.
He jumps down a slope but at the bottom the hill with which he is marking his direction falls out of his sight so he scrabbles back up. He is tempted to press himself into its bank like some other children he’s seen, but he knows that Alba- keen, observant eyes- will find him. He wants to not be found first, wants to be good at the game he’s suggested- wants to win.
He hears running, hears footsteps come closer, and a mix of frustration and shame brings tears to his eyes.
Then, as he stands frozen and unsure, his mind blank, he spots a burrow. It is narrow, a stretched oval under the roots of an old tree which cover the entrance. Small and dark, it looks like a squeeze even for him but the leaves around it are undisturbed and a cobweb spans the top corner, from one root to the base of some nettles. Noone else has found it yet. Cymru sprints to it with relief.
He goes head first, arms brushing away more cobwebs that wait inside. The dirt floor of the burrow, damp at the entrance, dries the further he goes in and the air is cool and still. He is in to his chest when he catches it- the smell of animals, musky and heavy. He cannot tell how old this burrow is; it hasn’t been used long enough for the cobwebs to form, at least.
Cymru hesitates.
Then, he hears the shouts of Alba’s first victim, a cry of wounded glee, and he makes up his mind. It’s tight. He has to wiggle on his belly to go in further, the space too tight for him to crawl on hands and knees. He can feel his feet sticking out, kicking freely as he shifts, but he finds purchase on a root and, with one last firm kick, he is fully inside.
The earth holds him still. He breathes in, slowly, carefully, and feels the walls around him push back on all sides. His heartbeat slows as he relaxes and then all he can hear is himself, the outside world muffled and removed and distant. Inside the burrow it is silent, with no breeze or movement apart from himself.
It is a comforting feeling, to be contained so completely. He wonders if this is how babies feel, inside their mothers as they grow. Wonders if he had ever felt this way before, when he was wherever he had come from. Maybe he’d come from a burrow such as this, pushed up from the earth once fully grown and ready to be found by Mama. He cannot see how far ahead the burrow continues but when he stretches his arms out ahead, he meets nothing but air. Satisfied, he lays his head on his outstretched arms and closes his eyes.
Time passes. Then more.
Cymru can sometimes hear children, shouting and screeching as they’re found and Alba gives chase. He hears Ériu once, cackling and stomping somewhere nearby. Someone comes near enough to Cymru’s tree that he can feel them, the earth vibrating gently with each footfall as the muted sound reverberates through the ground. But no one finds him, and slowly but surely the sounds of the other children in this area of the forest soften, before disappearing altogether.
‘Ris!’
Then he jolts, hitting his head in the dark.
It is later. He knows this because he needs to relieve himself, and because his arm is numb underneath his head. One or both must have woken him.
He stretches as much as he can, and yawns, wiggling his fingers to relieve the needles that spike through. He wonders what is for dinner tonight, for surely it must be time for something to eat. From outside, there are voices.
At first, he doesn’t know what they are saying. They’re faint, far away. Then-
‘Ris!’
He thinks he hears Alba.
Then again-
‘Ris! Come out!’
Ériu.
If Cymru strains he can hear several more voices, all calling for him. The game must be over. Far from feeling elated though, he feels panic.
The children- he can hear them now, louder- call for him as ‘Cymru’, his true name. But his brothers call for him by the name which Mama gave him. It is a name that no one but family knows, a name that is just for himself, not for who he is, and his brothers using it means that something is wrong.
The thud of someone running, then Ériu is closer. He screams Cymru’s name, breathless as though he is running, and there’s a sharp edge of fear to his voice that Cymru has never heard before.
Cymru’s stomach goes cold. Ériu‘s fear flows into him and his mind works fast. How long has he been gone? How long have his brothers been looking? Mama is going to be so angry; he hopes that his brothers haven’t gone to her yet.
His brother’s voice grows quieter, he is moving away. The wrong way.
‘Ériu! Wait!’
Quickly, Cymru tries to push himself backwards. His hands slip on the walls, dirt crumbling into his eyes, his mouth, and he coughs. He tries again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, his hands slip. They cannot hold the force his arms need to move his body backwards. He tries, the floor, the ceiling. Tries with his feet, toes digging into the earth and smacking against the sides. Knees to floor, elbows to walls and hands everywhere at once but nothing gives. He is stuck. The more he wiggles, the more he can feel himself slip further inside, and mounting terror soon overwhelms him to leave him sobbing.
‘Alba! Alba, I’m here!’
His heart pounds like a drum in his hearts, blood rushing to his face, his neck. He wants to get out. He doesn’t care that Mama will know; he wants her to find him. Even if she drags him out in front of everyone he doesn’t care, he wants to go home. The walls around him grow tighter, the darkness blacker, and Cymru fights for breath and he chokes against tightening lungs.
‘ADAIR! PADARN! Help!’
As he struggles, he hears movement from within the dark. Something soft at first, a rustle under his crying, but then there’s a growl- warm breath on his knuckles, something wet dripping onto his split skin.
He is where he doesn’t belong, Cymru realises the moment before pain hits. He is a creature that is not where it should be, and what is going to learn the truth of what comes next.
He closes his eyes, crosses his arms across his face, and screams.
-----------------
He wakes to white hot fire.
It is all over him- his chest, his neck, his arms. A burning, searing agony that rips a cry from him as he twists, the darkness swimming and churning.
‘Shhhh, shhh my love.’
Cymru hears Mama. He feels her touch him, gentle and light on his shoulder but his skin shreds itself anew at the pressure and he arches away. He cannot see, cannot think- the pain is too great. Life has returned to a body that is not ready, a soul to a house it cannot call home. Cymru pushes his head back against whatever lies underneath it as the walls of his mind close in, biting down on a life too new to taste.
-----------------
When he awakes next, the shapes can move.
The agony is duller, arms stiff and wooden when he moves them.
‘Don’t.’ Ériu says. He sounds scared, nervous. In front of something he doesn’t understand, ‘Don’t touch it.’
Fingers on his chest, something cool laid over his eyes. Albion laughs in the background at the bray of a goat, and Cymru slips away.
When he returns to himself fully, confused and tired, he finds that it is Spring.
-----------------
Cymru does not consider himself a cautious man.
He is wary, as any living thing is, but not foolishly so. Life and death come together, he understands, and the possibility of death will not keep him from living. He has suffered many worse deaths than his first, and more of the same. Burning, beheading, quartering- so many terrible ways that man imagine death for themselves, on top of all the organic riches that nature provides.
He does not fear the ground, nor the dark. Not like Alba and the endless deep, nor Ériu and his complicated feelings. Still, Cymru knows himself to be changed.
Sometimes, when the voices around him are too loud, or the tensions in the air too high, Cymru feels the edges of his mind grow dark. Invisible earthen walls press closer on all sides, his breathing tightens, his heart races, and he finds himself walking- up up up. Up into the sky, up to the tallest thing he can see, where the world can swing freely under his feet and the ground cannot swallow him. Back where he should be and where he is safe, above the earth with nothing but the airy sky around him.
There are times when he does not even know what he is doing until he is up there- the sun sinking lower in the sky when before it had been morning. Sometimes, he takes himself before he needs to go, knowing what will come if he doesn’t. The world changes, humans move in with their cement and brick, but there are always places left for him to go. Untouched hikes, lonely crags of his northern mountains where humans fear to walk lest they become lost and topple off the sharp, unseen edge. Cymru knows his lands like he knows his people, knows them more than he knows himself, and knows that his land will always hold some places hidden, just for him.
Perched on the edge of perilous drops, his feet far above the floor below, Cymru feels more himself than he does anywhere else. For this, he knows he is luckier than most.
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AN:
This came from a very old headcanon explored in Wind Walk, Afterlife, and even chapter 2 of this fic. I hope my Wales makes more sense to you now!
For anyone who had questions about Wales from Ériu’s chapter, you’ll just have to wait for the next update to see if you can unpick things 😉
As for their names: ‘Adair, Padarn, Ris’- the names I usually use for the British Isles siblings are actually newer than the time period I am writing this fic in. But, I wanted the affect of their human names to be used and so chose the closest approximations I could for them to still be recognisable.
Thanks for reading!
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