Story

The Oak and the Rose

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In a far land near the shores of a great salt ocean that stretches unbroken towards the rising sun there lies a hidden shadow dappled glen resembling a wild untended garden untouched by the hand of man. Located at its heart amongst softly waiving grasses there stands a gently rising knoll carpeted with fallen leaves and new spring flowers over-topped by a towering moss-draped oak, its spreading limbs lifting a lush mantle of green high above the surrounding sward. The massive fissured trunk of mottled grays and browns encircled round by the stem of an ancient rose, the two dissimilar species grown together seemingly as one. Gnarled oak bark wreathed by a thick ropey vine covered with talon shaped thorns standing eternal vigil against all, ever ready to rend and tear any foolish enough to venture too close yet never piercing the oak, rather holding it tenderly in a lover’s embrace. At their base among equally entwined and interwoven roots lies the broken and weathered remnants of a marble tomb that once held the remains of two whose names have been lost in the many turnings of the Wheel since their deaths so many Ages ago. But while their names are lost to us, the story of their love has been passed down orally from bard to pupil, mother to daughter, and even sometimes, around lonely campfires, from father to son, for while it is a story of love it is also a warrior’s tale. So year after year as winter turns to spring and slumbering oaks awake to unfurl their verdant crowns once more to the golden sun, then do the bards, mothers, and even fathers once more take up the oft told tale of The Oak and the Rose.