1.
Moths fluttered for footing where Rhamphus wove himself into the rushes, twisting two handfuls of sharp stem-stuff into wrist-gripping ribbons. He gritted his teeth and he screwed shut his eyelids and he waited to discover a connection to the life around him beyond the simple mutual tug. All it gained him was cuts.
Where King Vismane's men erected scaffolds the earth's pulse became indistinct, less confident; where hard military men sung their joyless, lowing anthems the buzz of the land below retreated like a brass douter overruling the candle's crackle. Grasses greyed where mayors, priests and petty lords felt safe to recite their life-denying gospels, the vivid greens and oranges never to return until folk like Rhamphus found courage to ridicule the words, to deny them from influencing the village life he loved, to crush their arrogant skulls with slingstones, finally to root out the whole doomsday tendency and return the bones of its orators to the ground.
He grimly suffered one more twist of the grass that he gripped, looked for inspiration in the pain it offered. His blood rolled down the blades. As a lone druid sworn to never set fires, he planned to promote the podium's collapse with help from - and all reverence owed to - the plants it overshadowed. Strong reeds and stubborn brambles could pull apart any structure when given the necessary encouragement. If a druid's aims truly concorded with the grain, the grass around him would act as talons. Here, though, he could reach no kind of agreement. The wildlife was subdued by more than its severed link to the sun.