The wood cracked in the campfire sending sparks into the sky. It was a cold night, but the warmth from fire allowed for a comfortable evening. It was a perfect night for story-telling, and Lilu spun her tale, revealing one more of the Dunlending legends from the treasury of her folklore.
The Widow’s Tears (Dunlending Legend)
A long time ago, there was a russet mountain in the South of Dunland. It housed the Avanc, the dragon-kind worms that for some unknown reason did not venture too far out.
A clan of Men, Dunlendings, shared the mountain side there. The Dragon clan, Avanc-Luth, we called them. On one dark night, a raiding party on big horses combed the glades beneath the mountainside. They killed all they could track, swinging their merciless swords and launching their sharp spears as they rode, with no remorse.
A hunter from the Dragon clan stood on their way, and he, too, was not quick enough to hide from the raiders.
They pierced him with a ruthless spear and cut his head off while riding by. His wife, widowed in a single moment of unbelievable injustice, was stricken with deepest grief.
She and her dead hunter’s body were carried high on the mountain, where she could spend her time crying in over his remains, anguished.
The widow cried for days and nights, and her tears were so bitter that they started melting the stone of the mountain… She cried for his life, for her loss, for the cruel injustice.
She cried for days and nights, and when she stopped crying all the rock beneath her has melted from that bitterness. And the Avanc-Luth no longer lived on the russet mountain, but in a tawny bog.
It spread exactly on the place where mountain rocks melted from her bitter tears... When the widow lifted her head and saw what happened, she said farewells to her clan and left to find her eternal sleep within the Dunbog.
