skulldaughter

3rd Level Elf Wizard

poster at heart, podcaster at export audio


My earliest memories are of the road that stretches between Berthold and Mirria, a strand of dark yarn on an otherwise golden canvas. I remember stalks of grains flowing in the wind and the sound of the wagon wheels trundling along. I remember the dim voices of men in tongues I still don’t know. I remember the sun blazing in the sky, white as a diamond.


My family spent more time on the road than we did at rest. There were six of us in all: me, my older brothers Roland and Jasen, and our parents Iona, Callie, and Heather, who we only ever called Mother, Mom, and Mama. I don’t think there was a single broken thing in the world that Mama couldn’t fix. Books, saddles, relationships, bodies. She was the first person we asked for help, and she taught us about the the things we could hold.

Mom was a born entertainer. She kept us going through more than a few harsh seasons with her lute and frozen fingertips. When we came to a village or town, Mom was the one who would get swarmed by children seeking stories. She taught us about people; how to laugh with them and how to cry with them, and how to tell which was needed when.

Mother held everything together. She was calmer, even cold at times. She was the one who taught us our numbers and letters, and explained the world of the past. A child always thinks her parents are magic, but there’s a part of me, now that I know what magic is, that wonders if she didn’t really have some. It seemed to us that there was no question she couldn’t answer, either alone or with the help of her library.

Roland and Jasen were so often a single unit that it was hard at times to think of them as different people. Puberty changed that, and they chafed at the “and” between their names like an ox. Jasen took to knightly fantasies, dreaming of heraldry and courts and luxury while Roland kept his eyes firmly and the ground in front of him, eager to learn why plants grew here but not there or why the tides moved differently in the north.

I haven’t seen my family in many years. I wonder how they’re getting along. Roland had hopes of sailing away to unknown places, and I hope he found them. Jasen, last I heard, was a smith in a town with a castle. I think he might have even been set to marry.

Most of my life was spent in the shadow of the five most important people in the world. It was inconceivable to me that anyone would ever mean as much to me as my family. But someone did. One person came along and in no time at all my entire perception of the world around me was completely and irrevocably altered. She opened my eyes to things I never thought possible. Her eyes turned stars into glass in comparison, and her hair gold to copper. She was loving and warm and mysterious. She built us a home and I built us a house to put it in.

But the house is mine now, and if she has a home outside my heart it is a mile up the road, just past Josef’s orchard, through a black iron fence with a plain, foreboding gate that only the mayor can open.

She’s cold now, and so am I.


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