The Green Man
There are no epithets or titles that can truly do justice to this most well known and adored God of the Hyperborean People.
We all know him, we all grew up with him peering at us from the depths of foliage carven, etched. Looking upon us, watching as we grew and loved and made families of our own and finally die, his eyes full of hopeful love and joy and even sorrow. His eyes graven into cathedral pews, hewn from mountain stone, and sculpted into living trees, we find the piercing gaze of The Green Man in books, on bookshelves, overseeing pubs and bars. His presence transcending borders from the Emerald Isle across the Northern lands of our people and back again. He plays a major role in the lives of the Hyperborean, from the shelves of Alpine libraries to the legends of the Round Table taking part as The Green Knight, in his great humility he can even be seen to this very day waving to us with a great smile of greeting from a simple bag of peas.
Over the eons The Green Man has worn countless faces, yet his true form; his oldest countenance is perhaps the most unassuming of all. His visage but that of a humble man, in all appearance as human as you or I. Tall but not overwhelmingly so, strong but not impressively so, his dark hair unkempt as thunder clouds, his beard springing forth from his kind face like so much unruly underbrush. Eyes... his eyes kind and golden like the evening sky, but sad, and so very far away... old beyond measure.
One can see his presence hinted at throughout the ages if one but looks a little closer. The truth that these mystical carvings subtlety reveal, THE GREEN SPRINGS FORTH FROM HIM! Verdant life force emanating from within him as he breaths vitality into the world.
The Green Man is special in that he shares our mortal flesh, our blood. He was once like you and me you see. But his immortality is his blessing... His curse. The price of true sacrifice knowingly made, a sacrifice which sets him apart from all others. Eternal... Everlasting.
His story takes place when the world was young; during the Long Long Ago, when life reigned supreme unfettered and unbound, a time before death. Sounds wonderful does it not? But life without death carries its own horrors. It is life without end but not without pain. Imagine the horror of consciousness trapped within decaying flesh as it rots, is digested and shat out upon the ground. Imagine this incomprehensible horror inflicted by the unknowing, calloused, and yet jubilant hands of life itself!
But balance is required for all things, and so came a time death in the end of this tale. All of the Gods of all of the people who existed at that time, came together to grant death as a mercy to the living, not some of the living but every mortal creature who so desired it. But life itself could not be undone or all would be for naught. So it came to pass, The Green Man who is the direct ancestor of the Hyperborean people, sacrificed himself to both life and death for his children and those who were yet to follow becoming the very keystone which holds this delicate balance between the two. His sacrifice to all that is worthwhile.
With this sacrifice of course our Gods had the foresight and kindness to bestow upon him great gifts. They to granted him an ageless countenance and the ability to heal even from the most grievous of wounds, regenerating from dust if he must. They granted to him strength so that he might never be bound and sight with which to peer through the veil so that he might never be found lest he desire it so. To him they granted the key between the realms so that he might never know loneliness able to visit any of the realms he may desire at his whim. See? ...He is both blessed and cursed as he may never die, time is long, time becomes lonely as age after age passes quietly by. How ever after such a long time might he come to truly know an appreciate another or he him when all others are but a flickering of light then gone?
He has tried, and failed to take the gift of death for himself many times, challenging the courageous, the noble and the foolhardy to but strike him dead. Even the illustrious Knights of the Round Table! But even they with all their might, could not slay him; though he didn't resist, for he is beyond the reach of any. And so, The Green Man endures. He endures as in his Cathedral of Green life ebbs and flows as ever. Quietly, humbly he resides within his simple cabin of timber and stone and mortar, a place that exists everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, a gift to him by Man, Gods and Spirits alike for his unending courage. Should you meet him you will see behind his smiling face and kind eyes lies both a deep sorrow and the purest joy which spans back to the first dawning of Man.
So, let us not forget the sacrifice of The Green Man. As he remains the eternal reminder of the intertwined nature of life and death, a testament to the beauty and fragility of our own existence.