Dark Moon of the Red Dawn

Chapter 19 Gilmore OR Nightmare

Dark Moon of the Red DawnBy: LadyDawn

2013 Copyright © All Right Reserved

Chapter 19 Gilmore OR Nightmare

Head bobbing, neck straining to stay upright, candle light dwindles as they slowly burn down. A shadow of a figure set upon a favorite cathedra, though now found to have gone hard and cold. Fire that danced brightly among the hardwood longs early in the night, a mere amber glow. Tea cold and forgotten, from pots long since pored. A tomb of ancient knowledge, the wise ones. Those that come before. She sits and studies the night away, pondering.

Head bobbing. Bobbing. Neck creaking. “OUCH” THUD The tome hit the floor. She is awake now.

“Morgana… Morgana… Ya OK down there?” Patience called down from her bedroom.

“I be fine… fine,” she rubbed the back of her neck with the palm of a hand while reaching down with the other to pick up the tome she had dropped. Just then Patience popped her head out of the stairway carrying her fur boots in one hand and a towel in another drying her hair.

“So what was the noise that woke me up?” Patience picked up the tea cup off the table and the empty teapot and headed into the kitchen to light the stove to begin making breakfast.

“I fell sleep and the Greats Gilmore fall off ma lap” She flipped through the pages quickly trying to find the last page she remembered reading. “Can ya make a strong wake up tea for me? I be right back.” She place the tome on her seat stirred the glowing embers in the fireplace and added another log to the fire then headed out back to the privy. It was time to take care of business after a night fill with a couple of pots of tea and endless reading.

By the time Morgana entered the living room, Patience had a full pot of tea sitting by her chair and a cup pored, a fluffy pillow setting at the back of the chair and a bowl of fruit and berries with fresh cream to eat ready for her. “Thank ya Patience.” She picked up the Gilmore and placed it back in her lap with a tray over the top of it fill with her breakfast. Patience came back in with her own cup of tea to join Morgana and sat on her chair across from her. “Did ya find anything last night?” Patience looked up from her tea when Morgana started to talk.

“All night I searched,” She shook her head side to side thinking. “so many Greats so many to read.” Again she shook her hear side to side. “I be here for many suns so—,” She shifted the tray back over to the table so she could get back to work again refilling her cup of tea.

“OK I be in the other room cleaning up if ya need me.” Patience picked up the tray leaving the pot behind with the rest of Morgana’s tea. Morgana looked back down at the tome sitting across her lap hanging over both arms of her chair and sighed. This may take her several more days to go through.

The Gilmore of the Greats has been around since the very first Shaman and the time of the Dark One—Skylartar—the great evil one. Every Shaman that ever lived left her mark in the great book along with all their life’s work just as Morgana and Patience are doing. Now Morgana has to go through the entire tomb to fine that one needle in the proverbial haystack of life of the Shamans of the Red Dawn.

By nightfall the lightning can be seen, and thunder heard from every direction in the village, it is as if the entire village has been surrounded by the lightning, but is not in the village as of yet. Morgana at this point is only about half way through her research, and it is the end of day two. Still no luck with finding a cure for what is going on around the village, though there have been may call outs for frightened and injured farm animals to which Patience has had to handle herself. She has become quite the healer of animals as of late.

Day three and a half, night fall. Morgana is still at it though she has moved to the kitchen table and is standing up to read for a change and moving from foot to foot to try to get the circulation back into her lower body. The cooking stove is stoked with wood and a roaring fire is going to heat a pot of stew and also to heat the kitchen and adjourning rooms it has begun to get very cold out. Morgana has been so busy doing her research she hasn’t been out doing her normal earth magic to control the temperatures around the village. It has plummeted.

On the morning of day four Morgana was back sitting by the fireplace, a roaring fire going within. She sits in her favorite recliner with a fur wrap around her to keep her shoulders warm, feet in her fur lined boots aimed toward the fire, a steaming mug of cocoa in hand. The Gilmore, open close to the end of the oldest entries, written in the original language of the old Shaman—the first one.

‘And the fire ball in the blue up above shines. The lights flash. Evil walks the dirt, little ones cry, all will die. Lights flash in the blue, the fire ball high, ya cast out the dark or, little ones cry, all die.’

“Patience… Patience comes here!” Morgana yelled up the stairs in the middle of the night. Startled Patience comes staggering down the stairs wrapped in her blankets and nightgown barefoot tripping down the last two steps into Morgana’s awaiting arms. “Whoa I got ya girl,” Morgana righted Patience then led her over to the table in the kitchen where she has laid out the Gilmore along with several candles to read by. “Lookie see what I find.” Morgana led Patience to the book and pointed to the page she found. Patience looked down at the words that were written there on the old onion skin parchment thin with age then back up at Morgana and frowned with a shrug of her shoulders.

“What it say? I no read anything here.” Morgana looked down and realized that she never taught Patience to read the first language of the Shaman. Morgana proceeded to point out each word and teach her word by word what was said on the parchment before her. They now had a starting point on how to fix what was going on around their village.