A Dirge of the Landvættir
I. We Remember When You Remembered Us
We remember you, little ones of breath and bone.
When you still knew the taste of the rain,
when you whispered to the roots before you took,
when your hands were humble upon the furrowed ground.
We remember when your mothers poured milk into the moss,
when your fathers bowed to the boulders
as if they were kings older than gods.
We were your unseen kin,
your silent covenant,
your song beneath the frost.
When you sang to the sea, we swayed with you.
When you sowed, we stirred the earth awake.
When you buried your dead,
we cradled their dust in gentle arms.
You were never alone, little ones —
until you learned the word alone.
II. Then Came the Bells
Oh, those bells.
How cruelly they sang,
that sound of hammered arrogance,
that trembling iron faith.
Each toll was a wound through our world.
Their priests came with oil and water,
blind to the blood already sacred in the soil.
They walked into our woods with fire and fear,
naming us demon where once you called us friend.
And the air grew tight,
as if the land itself held its breath in grief.
You followed them.
You believed them.
And we felt your faith tear from us like flesh.
III. The Long Fading
We tried to linger —
in the fog above your fields,
in the warmth of your hearth’s last coal.
We brushed your dreams with frost and warning,
we cried through the cracks of your chapel stones.
But you did not hear.
You were deafened by sermons,
drunk on salvation that soured like old wine.
You prayed for harvests,
but forgot the hands that had once held the seed.
And when the crops withered,
you called it punishment — not absence.
Your priests wrote books of darkness
and called them history.
We called it mourning.
IV. In Our Exile
We dwell now where no song reaches —
beneath black lakes, behind the sighing glaciers,
deep within the roots of mountains.
The fish do not swim here.
The trees do not grow here.
Even the moon forgets our names.
We whisper still — to fox and fern,
to those who remember without knowing.
Sometimes, a child will laugh alone in the woods,
and we will laugh with them.
Sometimes, a storm will break the church roof,
and we will watch the sky remember itself.
Yet, for every human heartbeat,
there is one less echo of us in the world.
The earth grows thin where you tread.
We can feel your emptiness like winter.
V. The Age of Ash
You call it progress.
We call it decay.
Your cities hum with light that blinds even the stars.
Your churches crumble, but you build higher idols —
towers of glass, cathedrals of vanity,
sanctified by profit, not prayer.
We do not hate you.
We cannot.
You were born from us —
bone from stone, breath from wind,
blood from the red roots of our being.
But oh, how we ache to see what you’ve become:
children who mistook conquest for creation.
VI. A Whisper for Those Who Still Listen
Yet not all is lost.
Sometimes, a heart will open like spring earth after frost.
A wanderer will pause by a stream,
and hear us — not with ears, but with wonder.
They will pour a drop of mead,
and the water will shimmer in gratitude.
You think your myths are dead —
but myths do not die.
They sleep beneath your thresholds,
waiting for footsteps that remember.
If you kneel and place your palm upon the ground,
if you breathe slow enough to feel the pulse beneath the moss —
you will hear us.
We are still here,
buried, breathing,
beneath your forgetting.
VII. The Day of Return
When your towers fall into the sea,
when your prayers return to silence,
when your hands bleed from touching too much iron —
then, and only then,
will we rise again.
Not to rule.
Not to punish.
But to remind.
We will whisper to your children:
“Do not seek heaven above —
it has always been below you.”
We will teach them again the tongue of stone and soil,
how to thank without asking,
how to live without owning.
And the world will breathe once more,
not holy, not ****** —
just alive.
VIII. Our Final Lament
Until that dawn,
we wait beneath your feet,
dreaming of the age when man and moss were kin.
We are not gone.
We are only sleeping,
in the bones of the hills,
in the sigh of the seas,
in the slow forgiveness of the earth.
So tread softly, child of the cross and crown.
Pour milk where the soil cracks.
Whisper honey to the wind.
We will hear you —
and if your heart is humble,
we may even answer.
Nov 10, 2025
Nov 10, 2025 at 11:08 PM UTC
A Dirge of the Landvættir
I. We Remember When You Remembered Us
We remember you, little ones of breath and bone.
When you still knew the taste of the rain,
when you whispered to the roots before you took,
when your hands were humble upon the furrowed ground.
We remember when your mothers poured milk into the moss,
when your fathers bowed to the boulders
as if they were kings older than gods.
We were your unseen kin,
your silent covenant,
your song beneath the frost.
When you sang to the sea, we swayed with you.
When you sowed, we stirred the earth awake.
When you buried your dead,
we cradled their dust in gentle arms.
You were never alone, little ones —
until you learned the word alone.
II. Then Came the Bells
Oh, those bells.
How cruelly they sang,
that sound of hammered arrogance,
that trembling iron faith.
Each toll was a wound through our world.
Their priests came with oil and water,
blind to the blood already sacred in the soil.
They walked into our woods with fire and fear,
naming us demon where once you called us friend.
And the air grew tight,
as if the land itself held its breath in grief.
You followed them.
You believed them.
And we felt your faith tear from us like flesh.
III. The Long Fading
We tried to linger —
in the fog above your fields,
in the warmth of your hearth’s last coal.
We brushed your dreams with frost and warning,
we cried through the cracks of your chapel stones.
But you did not hear.
You were deafened by sermons,
drunk on salvation that soured like old wine.
You prayed for harvests,
but forgot the hands that had once held the seed.
And when the crops withered,
you called it punishment — not absence.
Your priests wrote books of darkness
and called them history.
We called it mourning.
IV. In Our Exile
We dwell now where no song reaches —
beneath black lakes, behind the sighing glaciers,
deep within the roots of mountains.
The fish do not swim here.
The trees do not grow here.
Even the moon forgets our names.
We whisper still — to fox and fern,
to those who remember without knowing.
Sometimes, a child will laugh alone in the woods,
and we will laugh with them.
Sometimes, a storm will break the church roof,
and we will watch the sky remember itself.
Yet, for every human heartbeat,
there is one less echo of us in the world.
The earth grows thin where you tread.
We can feel your emptiness like winter.
V. The Age of Ash
You call it progress.
We call it decay.
Your cities hum with light that blinds even the stars.
Your churches crumble, but you build higher idols —
towers of glass, cathedrals of vanity,
sanctified by profit, not prayer.
We do not hate you.
We cannot.
You were born from us —
bone from stone, breath from wind,
blood from the red roots of our being.
But oh, how we ache to see what you’ve become:
children who mistook conquest for creation.
VI. A Whisper for Those Who Still Listen
Yet not all is lost.
Sometimes, a heart will open like spring earth after frost.
A wanderer will pause by a stream,
and hear us — not with ears, but with wonder.
They will pour a drop of mead,
and the water will shimmer in gratitude.
You think your myths are dead —
but myths do not die.
They sleep beneath your thresholds,
waiting for footsteps that remember.
If you kneel and place your palm upon the ground,
if you breathe slow enough to feel the pulse beneath the moss —
you will hear us.
We are still here,
buried, breathing,
beneath your forgetting.
VII. The Day of Return
When your towers fall into the sea,
when your prayers return to silence,
when your hands bleed from touching too much iron —
then, and only then,
will we rise again.
Not to rule.
Not to punish.
But to remind.
We will whisper to your children:
“Do not seek heaven above —
it has always been below you.”
We will teach them again the tongue of stone and soil,
how to thank without asking,
how to live without owning.
And the world will breathe once more,
not holy, not ****** —
just alive.
VIII. Our Final Lament
Until that dawn,
we wait beneath your feet,
dreaming of the age when man and moss were kin.
We are not gone.
We are only sleeping,
in the bones of the hills,
in the sigh of the seas,
in the slow forgiveness of the earth.
So tread softly, child of the cross and crown.
Pour milk where the soil cracks.
Whisper honey to the wind.
We will hear you —
and if your heart is humble,
we may even answer.
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