Role

Chapter 1

Admund frequently thinks back to that dark swampy forest from where they
came. His memory is hazy, patched, unreliable. It bothers him not to have
a clear understanding of who they were, where they came from, what their
parents had hoped theyd become. Only a few things remain clear in his
memory. The most real thing is his Brother, Idmund. Only he is unmistakably
real and unmistakably his. Without Idmund, there would have been no surviving
the dark forest.

In brief glimpses of instruction or admonishment he vaguely remembers a
mother and a father, but he can hardly remember their voices and their faces
are just a mist along with the village that was maybe their home. He
remembers getting lost with is Brother in that dark forest. How or why that
came to be remained an unreachable fragment of memory. On their own they
survived, one day after the other. Foraging for bugs and plants during the
day and hiding from the unspeakably grotesque predators during the sleepless
nights. In that dark and marshy forest the instinctual brotherly love and the
simple and crude stubbornness of children helped them grow accustomed to
their surroundings. It thought them to rely on each other, to take care of
one another, and with time as they made the forest their home, the space
separating the two all but evaporated. There can be no Admund without Idmund.
Just as a heart can no longer beat with its other half missing.

They both shared a notion that they had to return home to their parents and
they kept searching for a way out, but there was no end to the dark woods.
There were no allies to be found. No humans, no elves, no mortals or Gods or
animals. There were only the predatory beasts, and the trees, and the bugs,
and the wind and the leaves. Admund would occasionally feel a pulling
presence grasping for his attention. A tugging, groping sensation would
overcome him along with a feeling of something trying to communicate. He
could never tell whether they were a friend or a foe and during the nights
when those pleas would be most intense it was dangerous to go searching for
an almost inaudible susurrus. By the time Admund understood that these were
the spirits that inhabit all of nature, reaching for him from the fringes of
the terrestrial realm, it was too late. The Beast had found them.