A Midsummer Night's Dream
Alone in the Dark
Hrafn had set up his tent in a clearing in Braga. After another hunt, he lit the bonfire and sat down to inspect the spoils of the day. His life now was pure silence. There were no conversations, almost no letters. His language had become a dialect of monstrous guttural grunts and exotic body language. Sometimes, when he left the hunting grounds, he would see a relative in the distance, on the farms or on the roads. He no longer allowed himself to be seen, returning to his mantle of shadows. His life was loneliness.
That night he had noticed the movement of the armies, the scent and the sound of battle. He imagined that the young Serpentis was there. For a moment he dreamed about Sigrid; maybe she was there too. He didn’t know. It mattered very little now. His black, dirty fingers flipped over his bag as he caught the rustle of the leaves, the wind hissing and a shadow bulging over him, making the fire almost quench. He felt clean, pure fingers touching his tangled hair.
Erik Eyolf: “Can I sit down and eat with you, son?â€
Erik smiled fraternally while Hrafn covered the ground with a bear hide. All he had for dinner was a little beer and some honeycomb. He was thin, unrecognizable, covered with scars and old blood. Still, at no time did Erik show disgust or contempt. His white and red cloak looked impressively clean; even so, he sat there with his son, drank the beer and shared the honey. Hrafn didn’t know what to say, it was as if there were simply no more words to get out of him. Then Erik just smiled and kept the silence too. Father and son just staring each other for a long time with the fire crackling between them. In the end, no words needed to be said between them. A silent tear left its mark in the crow’s face, like fresh, clean water running through a filthy ditch. He tried not to blink, but inevitably, it happened. Erik was not there anymore. In his place there was only a bear hide over the dry leaves, a fallen keg of beer and a honeycomb attracting the ants. Hrafn wanted to scream, to eviscerate himself with his own bare hands, filling the night with his pain, his blood and his voice.
However, there was only silence. There was no Erik and there was no Sigrid, only the incautious night of Braga and the monsters approaching. The exiled gathered up his things, left the fire behind and disappeared into the darkness.
