Festival of Darkness

They tell us that it is our birthright, our strength, our defense, our way. We stand together yet apart and this they teach us from the beginning. Once upon a time we were a cowering, small community preyed upon by those that come from the darkness. We shivered in our beds each night as we slept uneasily to the sounds of graceless robbery. They stole our food, our drink, our tools, and unforgivably, our children.

When the sun rose again we were forced to look into each other's eyes once more, every face smiling with shame, every step heavy with hatred and fear. Powerless yet hardened, hopeful yet resigned to our fate, until he walked among us so many, many years before.

He came as they did, from the darkness, but different, he seemed to be of the darkness, quiet like the wind, piercing like the moon, cool like the night. A new day dawned that first day out of memory now. We awoke refreshed and confused. No thieving in the night, no choices of sacrifice, no muffled sobbing, something had changed and we slowly stepped out to see the darkness in the light.

There he sat in meditation amidst all of our fears, bodies from the night, dead without a sound. Many feared the worst, a new threat, a more powerful creature of the night, the end of freedom. One halfling approached this new menace emboldened by that first sleep filled night, “You would be our savior yet we would not be saved. Kill us or teach us, o angel clothed in the skin of night, teach us to be free.”

And so a new way was born, our way, the way of the shadows, together and apart.

Outsiders come now to our festival each year, our festival of darkness. They sing and dance, but they do not tremble in fear. They can not know our history, nor understand our way. I was afraid that night, when I was still a child living in safety and protection. That night he took me from my home without a sound. A reminder, an explanation and my birthright.

He takes the children each year in the night. Their parents are vowed to the same secrecy sworn when it was their time. When the carousing wears out and every good halfling retires, locking every door and window, they are allowed to tell you one simple phrase, “Do not be afraid my child, he comes for each of us when it is our time.” They look down at you with love in their eyes as you try to fight the fear welling up in your own.

“What do you mean mother?”

“Hush now little one, there are no more answers now.”

And they leave you alone in the darkness, trying to sleep as you see every shadow move, imagination sculpting them into horrific beasts until that moment when one finally steps towards you, reaches out as your throat closes in fear and your mind cannot explain this betrayal and you are taken in his arms. Whisked away with strength, speed, and elegance as if being led in a dance you never knew existed.

Fear slowly gives way to excitement and wonder. Is it a dream? In the darkness you cannot see where you are being taken, you cannot even see the arms that bear you yet you feel their strength, their will, unseen motivation. Before your mind clears enough to ask is it him, of story and legend? You are alone again in a grand hall you have never seen before. Finally, a voice to break the dream.

“Who dares to see the truth of the night?”

“What, where are you, who.....”

“What is your name?”

“Tava. What is this?”

“Your birthright, Tava. Step forward into the darkness.”

Swirling, spinning, dancing, they appear from the shadows without a sound. Halflings I've never met stood silently holding open a solid black cloak waiting to embrace me.

“Step forward and know the truth.”

Then it all begins. The bedtime stories you were told all your life come alive. You are taught fact from fiction and you are made to understand and you are sworn into the clan Lightfoot forevermore.

They teach you the beginnings of our way that night so that you also can defend and protect from those that would see the old ways return. There are dark secrets to our methods that come from the darkness itself as he had taught the elders that first new day so long before.

And so is the clan Lightfoot preserved and patiently holds the night at bay on the borders of darkness. As he said to them that day, they repeat to you, “and one day you will be needed when the darkness rises.”

I am Tava Lightfoot, sworn.

-- by Jon