once-placid

Updated: May 18, 2025

He had grown familiar with every cadence of that mysterious voice now a whispering and laughing as the water chased over the sunny shallows then a harsher note where the current, fretting and chafing, as it were, was broken by multitudes of stones again a low murmur as the black river swept, dark and sullen, through a contracted channel finally a fiercer tumult as this once-placid Aivron, increasing in pace and volume every moment, flung itself, lion-like, over the masses of rocks its tawny mane upheaved to the daylight and then fell, crashing and plunging, into a mighty chasm, the birchwoods around reverberating with its angry roar.

William Black - Prince Fortunatus