Long Lost Leaves

[Willow Oran]

Haldis woke again as the moon was rising, just visible through the canopy, thinner here in the clearing. She had slept well, dreamnt well during that short sleep and felt better than she had all day.
Humming the rhythm of her favorite chant, the tale of the skinchanging hero-god who first threw down the enemy and gave the men of her people their bear skins, she took out her whetstone and began to sharpen her trusted knife in time to the tale; so that when words broke forth, it sounded something like this:

*shhhnick!*

The Bear-King from the mountain side
went walking by the river wide

*shhhnick!*

to find the place where goblins hide
His hand by which to see them die
Tyr, heroic hunter.

*shhhnick*

No wolf could drag him under cairn,
Nor demon imprison

*shhhnick*

Unlooked for Tyr always returned
against the dark ever.

*shhhnick*

Haldis kept up this soft, puncuated chanting for sometime; telling of how Tyr had been enchanted and thought lost by his tribe, only to return many years later in the form of a great bear. It was a long tale, of which elves would doubt the accuracy, but to Haldis and the other Beornings, though none were in the camp that evening to listen, it was as good as history.