Depths of a Dream

The old faerie king,
watching, waiting, eyes closed.
One hand on the gnarled staff,
the other resting in his lap,
beckoning me closer.
Hair as cold, and without color,
As drab as the iron outside the ring.
Eyes closed against the world,
A world in which they brought me to.
A world which I never knew,
And one in which I always believed.

The hand which held the branch,
stripped of all it's bark and yet still strong,
was without it's own youthful protection of fat,
and still as strong as his first day.
The other, a twin of the grasping one,
beckoned me ever closer.

"My son of a different world,
Into our ring you have stepped,
Into our ring you have waited.
Ever have you believed,
Never have you known."
The voice was like that sound,
on the nights and days I walked,
of the wind through the leaves,
ever calling to me.

"I did not know, Father.
How could I? The stories, the myths,
ever told to be just that.
What was I to know?
What was I to do?"
There was so much here, and yet,
I knew, I knew, all was dying.
Even the ever eternal man before me.

"Hush, Child, let me speak my peace.
You know, you see, our world dies.
We wither, we fade, we've been
gone for too long."
The leaves were rustled by his words, or
the rustling leaves that were his voice,
they let me know sadness, more than
I could ever know.

"Take the staff, my Child,
know our legacy, be our link to the
future. You are our child."
They knew hope, through me.
My hand, of their volition, and
perhaps my own will, covered his hand
on the well-worn finger grips, impressed
since the beginning of every time.

No longer was I, no long was he.
Through the staff, into his hand,
Through his hand, into mine.
The world I knew before was ended,
ever to be denied to me.
The world they knew breathed for one last,
one last moment of eternity.
And was reborn, as I was reborn,
An ethereal phoenix from the winter's chill,
the spindly, bare fingers.

My blood, warm and flowing through my veins,
pulled from my body, to the trees around.
With every last breath I took, the leaves
grew around me, the flowers bloomed, and
I knew life no more. Not the life I
once knew.

Rebirth, as the world around me was granted
it, so was I. No longer stood I
before the Father, for the Child had
grown. The child was the Father of all.
In my hand, sitting against the tree, I
held the staff.