Arastat meets Shay
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Arastat was a Healer from the city of Lindol and his skills were so renowned that he was requested by many throughout the realm of Eriduah. He trained and learned from the likes of Evasun from the river town Elosh. It was from Elosh that he had returned, very exhausted from his long trip on foot. Relaxing in his upstairs bedroom, looking out his window down onto the shoreline beach he was suddenly startled wide awake!
On the stretch of sand, he saw a woman dressed in a sheer gown walk out into the thrashing waves all alone. The outgoing tides pulled her under its currents. Arastat jumped to his feet watching in horror. He barely heard the shouting voice of what must have been her calling husband running over a grassy dune.
Rushing downstairs and running to the shoreline, Arastat was overwhelmed to see the man carrying out of the frigid waters the limp body of his drowned wife. Arastat arrived as the man collapsed weeping over his loss. Desperately trying everything he could think of to do, the exhausted Healer became distraught. Suddenly the two men looked up watching the overcast night skies roll away as a haloed, full moon was lost among an ocean of innumerable stars that scattered across the velvet black.
Ararstat looked the crying man in the eyes and slowly whispered, “I am so sorry, she is gone.” Unable to render aid, Arastat could only watch as the man struggled to his feet with the woman’s limp form in his arms. The silent husband said nothing to the stranger as he left behind him at the water’s edge.
When he was gone from sight, Arastat rose to his own feet and stood looking at the now calm water, even as the skies were covered in rolling clouds. He said aloud, “Fickel is the water god Ulmo, and bizarre are his unknown ways.”
“Yes. Strange also is the unfolding plans of Eru Himself,” came a voice directly behind Arastat.
Startled that he was not alone as he thought, Arastat turned with, “What; where did you come from?”
A strange, older bearded man, with one eye looking around, and a half missing ear, said, “I was here, watching you wanting to help that woman come back to life.”
Arastat was confused, “She - she was dead before I even arrived.”
The stranger corrected him, “She was dead even before she entered the waters,” the odd man’s eye was looking around.
“She was,” Arastat was bewildered by such a comment?
The stranger explained, “Only a few days ago she lost her only son in childbirth.”
“Who are you anyway and how do you know such things?”
“Arastat I am Shay, and Eru told me,” the man’s eye was looking up at the haloed moon overhead.
“Ah - so - God talks back to you?” Arastat was not interested in religion at the moment.
“Do you,” Shay answered with a question of his own?
“Well, of - course I do, does not everyone in a crisis? But Eru has never talked back, seems he is like that.” Arastat smirked at such a concept.
The stranger persisted, “Are you sure you are talking to Him? Eru has much to say.” Shy’s lone, wandering eye now stared directly back at both of Arastat’s own.
“What an odd thing to say,” Arastat sounded indignant.
“There were no wild waves when the two left, now were there?” Shay’s look almost demanded an answer in return.
“Do people really believe in all the old gods anyway,” Arastast retorted as a turned aside to leave his company?
But Shay drew him back with, “They believe in whom they speak with, those same people who expect answers in return.” Then he added when Arastat turned to face him again, “You are a Healer, so where do you think that gift came from? It was not just training and hard work.”
“Well - .”
Shay cut him off, “Which is what I thought.”
“There! You did it again. How do you know such things, like I am a Healer? If your Eru and you talk, and He knows everything why did He not save that woman’s life,” Arastat’s words bit back?
“As I said before, ‘she was dead before she even entered the water’, Arastat, Eru knows all things.”
The Healer shook his head, “Interesting how the conversations always turn to His favor, too bad it was not in that husband’s favor,” Arastat said, dismissing the last vestiges of any faith in the old gods he may have had remaining.
Again he shook his head, turning to leave. But upon a new question, Arastat saw he was alone on the moon-lit stretch of shoreline.
……………….
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