A Song of Despair: Is it Wren’s?

(Crossing, Zoluren: 184 Uthmor 354)

I was on the Town Green, visiting with friends when suddenly a soft voice struggled to sing in my mind, "They said time is never long –" and fell again to silence.

At first I was speechless, and looked up at everyone else. They were continuing on just as they had before, as if they had felt nothing. I did not understand it at all.

"You heard that, right?"

"Heard What?" was the universal reply.

And that began my quest this night. I asked in the Bard guild, and was informed Kortny and Silvergryphon had heard a different scrap of a verse and were looking for more information, too.

I think several of us bards all looked at one another about the same time and said, "Do you suppose this has anything to do with the bardess Wren?"

Deep in my heart, all I could do was think to myself, "I fear it does, I pray it does not."

Before the evening was over, many people had heard many scraps of lyrics, halting and raggedly sung, weaker and weaker in our minds. Here is how we think the entire song goes:

Broken bonds, broken song…
Wings dragged in dirt…
They said time is never long —
Except for this harm and hurt.

My dreams of dying breath
Lips blood’ed and fingers torn…
A deep scar above the brow
Faith bereft, lost, forlorn —

Cold winds that seal the cracks
Hoping for some sound to echo back….
Quiet never screamed as loud as now
Prayers for my final death

This despairing song at last fell silent, chilling me to the bone.

During this same time, Sestina, a moon mage, was in the Forest of the Night, and a vision came to her with a mournful sound reaching her ears and she saw a small bird sitting on a nest. It glances at her and continued to sing a dirge.

Word was sent quickly for bards to gather at the Magic Lute in the Crossing on the next evening, where we would lift our voices as one in hopes that Wren could hear and take heart.

What we took away from there was one last verse, even more dreadful than the first three. I heard the voice, soft, tuneless, the words jarred and echoed through the lute, as once more, we heard snips of dread in each line of the lyrics:

Ravaged, sacked, burned, scorned
Pillaged and left to hate..
What they have done…
Fear for what is yet unlife, unborn

… ’tis worse than Crossing’s fate.

Many of us in tears, we had not heard the fate-tinged words of Sestina’s vision yet. But then and there, we decided to sing and write songs of hope for Wren.

It is time that we do what we can until her whereabouts are known. If she has no hope, then let us be her hope. Keep Wren in your prayers, and sing as often as you can for her. Let her hear hopeful echoes, let her keep in her mind the memories before her time of such despair.

The speculation I leave to the message and discussion areas. These are the facts as they have happened this week.