Ten thousand years ago....
Waves as high as mountains; and as green as glass if they could have been seen in the dark, crashed with steady, thunderous booming, and a constant roar. They rolled up on shores of Handsome Lake; then rattling and sucking they flowed back again to their mother.
Mailefar's lurid light glared as his forked javelin descended again and again on the Forest forces. His brilliant light flared. It split the roiling clouds until if you dared you might have caught a glimpse into That Other Place. Thunder tumbled, rumbled with the booming sound of the waves. A ghastly light lit the shore again for an instant as Mailefar's javellin struck the enemy. There was hot sizzling and a flaring warmth and crackle which added to the chorus the Mangees were wailing for those who would die tonight.
There was the strange, sharp, memorable smell of gods' magic; the whipping flames; and then darkness snapped back to hide the strike, but warm flaring light of a burning warrior struggling on lit the carnage. The Lord of the Mist's fighters were seen writhing and thrashing together. Those rooted creatures, tall stalwarts on the sharp edge where the shore meets the dark forest fought each other in mistaken combat in their bewilderment.
Each warm mammal and bird being lay hid in its nest, snug and dry and scared. Each hoped no javellin of Mailefar would find its little home this night. The man hoped also for war bounty.
The morning sky was clear and blue. There were little, high, puffy white clouds afloat in sky and lake, and a cool, gentle breeze. The night war was over. Wavelets lapped the sand. Driftwood and seaweed and bright new rocks lay tumbled and strewn where they were cast during the battle between Mailefar and Frainard.
The man stood at the edge of the wood gazing in wonderment at the tree where he usually raised his bundled cache high, up to where it would be safe from the hungry or the curious. His tree was shattered. Remaining shards of the trunk stood sharp and stark, black and white, against the green of the fragrant forest behind it. The centre was no more and the pack must have been consumed by the hungry gods. Even sandy soil around the base looked different. It was gobby and glazed, streaked with black from the tree that still smouldered, sending a trickle of smoke up into the freshness of the morning.
The man knew what he had hoped for. He carefully watered the smouldering ashes and hot sand and then dug down into the boiled earth. He found it! A lump of crystallized magic from Frainard and Mailefar, who cared not for the loss of his special tree, but sometimes left magical signs of their power behind. The gods had left a piece of the Treasure of Meland at the foot of his tree. He felt thankful to both of them and began to consider carefully just how the thanking ceremony should go.
Now he would have perfect, sharp, cutting edges for all his best work. A few bubbles he would put into the little leather medicine neck sacks they wore for protection from evil. He dug a little more, found a lump of glass shaped like an ear, almost a cup; another like the horn of a Slar. More were bubbled and looked like the breaths from the surface of the swamp of Inga Nar when she breathed out upon the air, and shook the surface of her world. He wouldn't forget Inga Nar, either.
