A submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Oread
Sixty years ago, the very root of civilization was shaken by tumult and malaise. Wars started and stopped, new flags absorbed new subjects underneath their shadow, and sharpened sabers were the length by which royalty were introduced to their crown as well as their regicide.
During one of these wars, two children, a brother and a sister barely a decade on this Earth, fled one of the war-wrought towns and sought a new home in a Valley bordered by stones, trees, and thorns.
One of these thorns watched the two siblings as trembling feet trudged through their route all-the-while orphaned and starving. It wasn’t long until the villagers welcomed them with confusion on their brow, for how bad did the world become, beyond the Valley?
The Thorn pondered on the words of wisdom imparted to her by her siblings, who have long since left this earthy coil to party with Gods and contest elemental counterparts.
“To live among Humans, is to know their particular spirit.”
This “thorn”, really an Oread who was a type of anchoress among her kind, wished to see the growth of this Human spirit first hand.
As the Sun and Moon came and went, the tragedy of the war that brought the children to the Valley became a distant footnote in the minds of the now decade plus a half orphans. Accidents spawned from the wilderness mysteriously coated themselves with pause whenever one of the orphans were around. A falling branch would miss their unintended target by inches. Quicksand did not have the same strength whenever the Sister found her ankles wading through it. Rockslides from one of the mountains harmlessly slipped right by the Brother as he collected rock and soil samples.
All of this of course, was the work of the Oread. That “thorn” that restrained whatever harms menaced the two youths.
The Brother knew the hard values of measurement, alchemical experimentation, and scholarly excess. He scribed the Village’s oldest records, recopying and reformatting them to newer materials, saving countless documents from being lost forever as a result. He manufactured locks that he sold to the Villagers that they may better protect their belongings and homes. Even as a youth, the Village began to rely heavily on his mind.
The Sister preferred dirt under her fingernails, and picked fights with other brats to test her mettle. She challenged adults minding their own business to elaborate contests such as puzzles and other schemes that resulted in their ego being wounded, and formed teams of delinquents that would slip out under cover of darkness to scare away wolves and other pests from the local farms. The Village resented her antics, though farmers discovered that their crops and cattle would no longer be harassed by certain wildlife.
However this was not the threshold which would define both orphans.
Soon, the “thorn” visits both orphans, appearing not as much a walking plant, rather, as a pale willowy woman with bright red hair -the crimson locks being seldom seen throughout the region- wearing a simple juniper green dress. The Oread wagers with the orphans over how far one or the other could go in their innumerable possible fates.
The thorn’s fascination bears fruit. What starts as friendly competition between the siblings, turns into a partnership, steadily merged by what was no longer a wager — but wisdom. The Oread told the orphans about her previously populous kind, in addition to giving them tips corresponding to their interests for the future. The thorn showed the Sister how to mix certain plants and animal fats to form different dyes. She showed the brother where the rarest herbs and stones could be located.
The Sun and Moon went by, and as adults the orphans became invaluable to the Valley writ large.
The Brother became a renowned merchant who traded on behalf of the Village, his leagues of deals radically extending the limits that people knew.
The Sister became a playwright as well as a painter, her dual interests giving the Village boundless entertainment, her soul becoming the ‘theme’ that the Village lived by.
Together, the orphans’ goals became a spectacle that the entire region shaped schedules around. Year by year, they visited the Valley to see the Sister’s theater, as well as purchase the Brother’s merchandise. Year by year, they visited the Oread to tell the tales of their success.
The thorn, drunk upon the glory of what she saw and heard, could not have foreseen what this entrenched fate led to.
Eventually, the siblings visited their muse less and less.
Both, with each a family of their own, diverged.
The Brother, wrinkles and moles now apparent, returned to the previously war-torn town that had prompted escape in the first place, and with his experience eventually became its sage advisor.
The Sister, her hairs now grey, chose to impart her skills upon the youth of the Valley. With the playwright painter’s own wisdom, now they too could tell stories.
The thorn was saddened -even angered- by this at first. Who were these people, daring to drink from taps of knowledge that SHE forged? Who were these wizened and feeble bodies, daring to jail those energetic trailblazers who revitalized entire towns?
The Sister illustrated one particular story which caught the eye of the thorn, that Oread that was a constant influence on the very paint being used, causing the dark thoughts to settle. In the frame was the Oread, seated slacken yet solemnly against a large fir tree with silver bells for leaves, her hair indistinguishable from fire.
In response to the rumblings and whispers from the children asking if the redheaded woman in the painting was real, the Sister confirmed “Indeed she is real.” the Sister said softly, marveling at the painting as though she had seen it for the first time, despite her hands being the very thing that created it.
“She was why war had never reached the Valley, and she heralded the first time my Brother and I truly began to live. Before these lessons were my own, they belonged to the Oread, that gentle soul who befriended two war orphans. For this, I am forever thankful.”
The thorn was hush, choked and cloaked by astonishment and embarrassment.
Who was she, to dare even think of diminishing the legacy of two souls who she spent decades admiring? Who granted her wish, to witness the growth of the Human spirit?
Soon, the siblings would visit the Oread - that pseudo-parental thorn - for the last time, on a peaceful evening in the Valley sixty years since their first arrival.
Each with a cane in hand, they imparted wisdom of their own, in repayment for the many years that this Oread nurtured them.
“To know an Oread, is to live their particular spirit.”
One year later, with the passing of the siblings three minutes apart from one another, the Oread had realized the fulfillment of her dream. Satisfied, she would join her own sisters at last, leaving the Valley to its fate, trusting the condition it was left in by those orphans, and she would tell the story to whichever God or Goddess would grant her their ear.