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"Mother," Aife called, bouncing up to the Omphalos Chamber with a sapling in tow. "What should - "
The Pale Tree's avatar held up a slender, white hand. "Shh, daughter. A moment is required for me to honor the lament of another of my children."
Aife folded her hands and waited in respectful silence, motioning the sapling to save his questions until after.
When the Tree finally looked up, Aife asked, "Mother, who was that, that their lament reached you so powerfully, and whose grief you honored so fully?"
The Blessed Source met Aife's eyes steadily, and in them Aife saw a grief and reverence born of responsibility that she had never seen before.
The Tree said simply, "Trahearne."
Aife reeled back as if slapped. "Mother - Tr - but he... Oh thorns..."
The Tree's avatar spread her hands helplessly, but she was trembling. "He wanders Orr desperately, and desolately..." she folded her hands as if to stay their trembling, but now her voice held tremors, and Aife saw the beginnings of tears. "...and with no hope, help, or encouragement." Her voice trembled a moment. "He sings my song~!" her voice broke into a sob.
Aife rushed to her side. "Your song?" She sang the first few notes - "fear not this night... You will not..." but the Pale Mother only cried harder.
The white avatar clasped Aife's hand in her own, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You sing it so beautifully, Aife, and so full of hope, but - " and she broke off again to take a deep breath and sink to the ground. "But Trahearne... if only you could hear him! - he sounds so forlorn and miserable. My song is his only anchor in a dark and desolate and hopeless place. He sings it with a - with such - he's so desperate for - for something... to cling to..." The avatar swallowed her sobs again. "Oh, Aife... He doesn't sing it like it brings him strength. He sings it like he's begging himself to believe it."
Aife stared, struggling to wrap her mind around this.
The avatar turned to the sapling. "The undead in Orr are not like the ones who wash up on our shores. Here they are blights on a green and flowering and vibrant forest, to be eradicated so that balance might be restored. In Orr, they are the landscape given motion, for that land is as they are, and no green thing grows. The shadow the dragon's corruption casts on our hearts and our gardens is nothing compared with the death it casts over Trahearne." The avatar closed her eyes and released a trembling breath. She clasped her hands in her lap and fell silent.
Aife and the sapling remained likewise silent.
Aife knew she had never experienced such desolation, despite being more well-traveled than most other Firstborn. Quietly, she said, "I would never have guessed. He's so reserved all the time when he's at home, but... this level of distress..." Aife breathed a heavy sigh.
"Nobody cared to listen - or to believe him - when he told of it," the Tree murmured.
The sapling spoke at last: "and yet everyone speaks ill of him and his Hunt. And I don't know why even Caithe does not help him, when her Hunt is similar. Where is their faith in the Dream?"
"I do not know," the Tree whispered. "He no longer thinks of the Grove as truly home. Trahearne's distress challenges my own faith, yet if I abandon it, neither he nor I have anything left."
Her eyes went distant, and shifted to Aife. Her voice was filled with tears. "He weeps with every word. He clings so, so valiantly to hope."
Aife nodded quietly. "He is an example to us all."
~oOoOo~
Twenty years passed. "Valiant" became a word associated with those of the Wyld Hunt. The sapling, whose name was Laranthir, became co-founder of the Vigil, whose motto was "some must fight so that all may be free." He thought of Trahearne when it was spoken.
Aife was kinder to Trahearne when she saw him, but the damage was done and it was not until the advent of the Commander that Trahearne would really open up to anyone but Caithe.
In the meantime, he sang Fear Not This Night over Orr and the undead and his Wyld Hunt, and wept bitter tears, and clung to his desperate hope like a lifeline that only hurt him.
~oOoOo~
The Commander opened him up with kindness and a listening ear, and fulfilled, piece by piece and bit by bit, old hopes that Trahearne had thought dead and buried, until he was able to trust in the fulfillment of his Hunt. And then the Commander helped him fulfill it, and earned Trahearne's undying loyalty and support.
But that is a tale for another day.