Evening is upon this place at last.
The day had been devoid of cloud cover and the sun brought its late summer heat down upon the landscape. The barest breeze stirred among the trees sometimes, fluttering leaves and swaying grasses, but otherwise it had been still and somewhat oppressive. Darkenhold’s residents had finished their work outside before the temperature rose and then sought the cool corridors of the keep to wait out the day in peace.
And here as evening finally approaches, clouds that had begun forming over the mountains drift in and loom massively overhead, with the coral colors of sunset painting their rain-wisped underbellies with shocking hues. The temperature has fallen, but the land still harbors its heat; there will be mists come cold morning.
Since his return, after the retirement of all pressing foreign affairs that long kept him from home, the architect has undertaken a process of interacting with this place, and with neighboring Aithne, his own estate. Whether by horseback or on foot, he traveled the landscape, exploring familiar ground and taking inventory of any and all changes that differ from his memory of goings-on. The condition of the keep’s interior, as well as its entire grounds inside the curtain wall and out — gardens, orchards, fields, pastures, meadows, the groves, and most importantly the people who live here.
This evening, and having no issue with the possibility of oncoming darkness, there being these eyes that do not require light to see, the man walks the pastures well beyond the majestic black walls and towers of Darkenhold itself. There is a remarkable quietness here these days, a kind of calm generally available here, but decreasing the nearer to Myrkentown one might go — in the past, at least. It appears the region enjoys a period of mundanity without imposing threat; a calm between storms. He is aware of it but chooses not to trouble all of their good fortune by musing on what hazards the future brings.
No, the mind is clear of thought here during intentional wandering, focusing only on observation and nothing else. But wandering is perhaps too loose a word for what he does, for though his pace is unhurried he has purpose for being here. A narrow and unobtrusive waterway was constructed to supply the fortress and it is this he inspects, following its minimal footprint along the perimeter of the pastureland toward the trees.
Is it possible to design a ditch system to be elegant? If this is any indication, then yes. The stonework is pale, creating a deep v-shaped channel down which this glittering mountain water runs clear and cold and brightly-hued under the radiance of the setting sun. Along the top of masonry on both sides of the channel, beautifully sculpted capstones arch outward, smooth and rounded. As he walks along its line, he searches for signs of stress in the stones themselves, looking for cracking in the blocks and weakness in the mortar. Occasionally, he fetches a small branch out of the water, or some other minor obstruction, jacket sleeves folded back to allow for reaching in.
At the tree line the channel continues on, no longer open to the air, but covered over by arched masonry to prevent the intrusion and transport of debris that would invariably clog the screens of the reservoir beneath the keep. Intermittent portals allow access to the duct in the event maintenance is required. At one of these portals, the architect pauses to dust leaves and tree litter from the hatch, then grips its steel bolt and slides it back to heave the hatch open that he might lean and look inside, filtering the shadows and confines with sensitive eyes and equally sensitive hearing. The echo of the water comes to him constrained by the arched canopy and he listens for drag in the water, a sign something is caught up inside, washed down from higher up the terrain. Hearing nothing but normalcy, he closes the hatch and bolts it.
While he is stopped, he turns to face the pastures still visible beyond the trees and he takes time in this relative silence — not true silence, for the forest is alive with activity — and observes the colors of the fading day, the mighty clouds high above, and both feels and hears the stirrings of a welcome breeze folding down through the canopies, pushing leaves into one great cumulative voice; the song of the forest itself. A melody he lends himself to with stillness of thought and body.