#wights
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 Lament for the Fading of the Old Earth
I. Before the Cross Came
Before the Christ-men’s ships split the frost-fanged tide,
Before the bells rang blasphemy over fjord and fell,
The land was alive —
not with man’s voice,
but with the whispering root, the sigh of stone,
the slow speech of moss.
The Landvættir walked then — unseen, yet felt,
the hush between birch and bone,
the pulse beneath peat and pine.
They were the hush in the heart of winter,
the warmth in the lambing spring,
and when men poured honey and milk upon the soil,
the spirits drank, and smiled unseen,
and the barley grew thick as gold woven by gods.
II. The Coming of the White Robes
Then came the ships with crosses nailed to their masts,
sails white as sanctimony,
oars wet with the tears of conquered coasts.
They came chanting Dominus vobiscum
into valleys that had never needed Latin to know the sacred.
They came with their “One God only” —
and their one god’s shadow swallowed all the rest.
The bells rang — oh those bells,
hollow metal hearts tolling hollow truths —
and their sound struck terror through the roots of the world.
The Landvættir fled then,
as iron rang where oak once sang,
as hymns replaced the hum of rivers.
They fled into the mist, into memory, into myth,
weeping through the heather,
vanishing beneath the weight of guilt unearned.
III. The Silence That Followed
At first, man rejoiced.
He built churches where cairns had once whispered,
drove spades into sacred soil,
spat prayers where honey once poured.
He called himself master of the land,
caretaker of creation.
But the land knew the lie.
The earth’s breath slowed.
The harvest sickened —
barley bowed its head in grief,
apples turned bitter before the frost.
Cattle miscarried in moonless nights,
and every babe born beneath the new bell’s toll
bore eyes that had forgotten how to see the unseen.
Without the Landvættir’s song,
even the wind lost its way.
The forests grew silent and strange,
and man’s own soul soured —
bloated on pride,
drunk on its own delusion of dominion.
IV. The Long Withering
So began the Dark Ages —
not of shadow, but of spirit.
Man kindled his hearths and thought himself enlightened,
yet no warmth came from his fire.
He built monasteries,
but the stone sweated sorrow,
the mortar stank of fear.
The monks wrote psalms with trembling hands
while rats gnawed through the granaries,
and plague sang where bees once sang.
And the Landvættir — oh, the Landvættir —
watched from afar, unseen,
their once-green laughter turned to lament.
They whispered through blizzards:
“You cast us out, children of clay.
You called our breath pagan, our gifts witchcraft,
and so you inherit the silence you sowed.”
V. The Echoes of the Old Ways
Sometimes, when moonlight bleeds over fjord and fen,
an old woman will still pour cream on her doorstep,
remembering what her grandmother said,
though she cannot say why.
Sometimes, the wind carries a sigh that bends the rye,
and the sheep lift their heads as one.
For though the Landvættir are driven deep,
they are not dead —
earth cannot die while earth remains.
They lie in wait beneath the bones of mountains,
dreaming of the day when man grows humble again,
when hands cease to bless and begin once more to listen.
VI. The Return That Is Promised
There shall come a dawn — not holy, not profane,
but honest, green, and slow.
The bells will rust in their towers,
the churches crumble into moss and root,
and children yet unborn shall learn again
the names of stones and the taste of rain.
Then shall the Landvættir rise —
not in wrath,
but in weary mercy.
They will breathe upon the land once more,
and crops will grow not by prayer,
but by gratitude.
And man will remember —
too late for penance, yet just in time for awe —
that holiness was never found in conquest,
but in kindness;
never rung from iron,
but poured like honey into the soil.
VII. The Final Whisper
Now, when you walk alone through the birch at dusk,
tread softly.
Listen.
If the air hums low and sad,
it is not the wind.
It is the Landvættir,
mourning what we traded for heaven,
and waiting, still,
for us to come home.
Nov 10, 2025
Nov 10, 2025 at 11:05 PM UTC
The Final Voice of the Trilogy — Told by the Land Itself
I. I Was Before Names
Before gods learned speech, before stars found fire,
I was.
I dreamed myself from silence,
a thought so slow it grew roots.
I rose as mountain,
bled as river,
breathed as wind that learned to sing.
From my bones came the first green,
a whisper of life tasting light.
From my veins came the Landvættir,
born of my dreaming —
guardians of pulse and tide,
the breath between thunder and seed.
Then came you,
child of flesh and trembling thought,
made from my dust,
gifted with hunger.
You looked upon me and called me mother.
And I, in my ancient mercy,
answered.
II. When You Still Knew My Face
You once walked softly, barefoot upon my skin.
You gave offerings not to please, but to thank.
You understood:
the bee and the storm,
the death of deer and birth of dawn —
all were one breath, shared.
I loved you then,
as the sea loves the shore it devours,
as fire loves the wood it ruins.
I loved your fear — for fear is reverence,
and reverence is the seed of wisdom.
But then the iron came.
And the bells.
And the men who promised heaven
by cutting me to reach it.
III. The Bells That Wounded Me
Their sound — oh, that clanging faith —
it struck through mountain and marrow,
shattering the silence that had known no sin.
They built churches where my heart once beat,
drove nails into stone to crown their creed,
poured oil into rivers and called it holy.
The Landvættir screamed —
not in rage, but in mourning.
Their cries echoed in my hollows,
their tears salted the soil.
And you — my once-beloved children —
you followed the bell like a wolf follows a torch,
forgetting that its light burns what it saves.
IV. The Withering of My Blood
When you turned from the Landvættir,
you turned from me.
The roots withdrew their trust.
The soil forgot how to sing.
Crops grew brittle,
the rivers sickened,
and the sky — my eldest child — grew cold.
You called it the Dark Age.
You were wrong.
It was not darkness that came —
it was absence.
You had silenced your mother,
and called her death progress.
V. I Watched You Build and Burn
I watched you raise towers of greed upon my spine.
I watched your plows cut me open,
spilling the ghosts of seeds unborn.
I watched you write laws upon my body,
dividing what was never yours.
Yet still —
I fed you.
I carried your dead.
I bore your wars without malice.
For what mother hates her children,
even when they strike her face?
VI. I Dream Beneath Your Ruins
The Landvættir still whisper within me,
faint as roots dreaming of rain.
They ask, “When will your children remember?”
And I answer, “When their noise collapses into silence.”
For I know this truth:
You cannot destroy me.
You can only forget me —
and in forgetting,
destroy yourselves.
Every wound you give me becomes a scar of memory,
and every scar remembers you.
VII. The Mercy to Come
One day, your bells will rust to dust.
Your towers will crumble into my mouth.
Your bones will soften into my soil,
and I will hold you again —
not in anger,
but in reunion.
For I am older than vengeance.
I do not forgive.
I do not punish.
I simply endure.
When the Landvættir rise once more,
clothed in moss and light,
they will not find enemies,
only children learning to listen again.
And I will open like spring,
pouring green over your repentance.
You will learn to speak without words,
to pray without tongues,
to live as pulse, not parasite.
VIII. Until Then
I wait beneath your cities,
beneath your bones,
beneath your borrowed heavens.
My patience is older than your gods.
My sorrow is deeper than your oceans.
But if you kneel — truly kneel —
and touch the ground not in conquest,
but in awe,
you will feel me.
I am still here.
I never left.
And when you whisper to the wind,
and the wind whispers back —
it is me,
it is them,
it is us —
the first and last prayer
of a world that once was whole.
Nov 10, 2025
Nov 10, 2025 at 11:10 PM UTC