Vignettes
Vignettes I
My mother was a dreamer but she was also wise in the ways of healing physical ailments and her time was much in demand where we lived in Cloudsbreak. She dreamed seldom, instead tending those who were ill or injured and being midwife to those in childbed. My father I never knew, and she told me little of him save that he was a man of wisdom, courage and honor and that she loved him deeply but feared she would never see him again. She always said she believed I would meet him one day, though.
My mother had a great store of knowledge, both practical and esoteric, and much of this she passed along to me through her teaching. I must admit to being insatiably curious and was always eager to learn. She made it easy, for to her learning was a great adventure and she had a way of drawing one in with her so that sometimes I did not realize I was having a lesson until later. We were close in spirit and seldom argued; I had many friends but I valued my time with her most.
One day when I was young my mother took me walking. We came to a place that had a lot of paths leading from it and she said, "Which way would you like to go?" I said, "I want to see where they all go." She laughed and said, "That is your curiosity talking. We can sit here and wait, undecided, or we can go one way today and see where the others go later. But that is up to you." So I did choose a way and it led to more ways until it was time to return home. When we reached the place of many paths I was tired and stumbling, but as she began to take the way for home I cried, "I don't want to go home because we have not seen where they all lead." My mother said, "Shadruith, you are well-named for you are ever seeking new experiences, but you are so tired you cannot even walk well." I said, "Then you can carry me and I will sleep on your shoulder but we can still take another way." She sat down with me and patiently asked, "Tell me what you would see or learn if we did that?" I thought a while and said, sullenly, "I suppose I would not see anything if I were asleep." She smiled at me and asked, "Shall we go home then, and come again when you are not so tired to see where they all go?" I nodded.
When I was a bit older, my mother began to teach me the herbs and medicinal plants that grew where we lived. We took long walks and on each day I would point out all the plants I knew saying the name of each and its properties. She would add a new one to my study every day, but always I was to point out prior ones as well. There were many to learn, and I loved hearing all the new ones. But I grew bored with repeating the ones I already knew, for I saw no point in that. One day, as the season was beginning to turn, I decided enough was enough. I told her I knew all there was to know of all these plants and complained that we must walk over the same ground again and again when there was nothing more to be learned there; why could we not skip that part and head straight for the new areas? She said, "Very well, Shadruith, walk the same route today and if you see nothing there to learn, then we will do as you wish." Both pleased that this onerous chore would soon be done and peeved that I had to do it yet again, I began to name off the plants, knowing them and their location so well by now I barely looked at them. After two or three, my mother said, "Shadruith if you will not even look at the plants, then you will surely prove there is nothing more you are capable of learning." Something about the way she said that made me feel challenged and irritable, so I pointed to the next plant and said, "Look, it's a 'rheliath salorn', the leaves are purgative and the root can be made into a salve to sooth burns. I've seen it a hundred times and said it more." She raised a brow and said, "And you see nothing more about the plant to comment upon, correct?" That skepticism in her voice made me start to worry, so I decided I had better make sure I had not made some crazy mistake. I looked at the plant closely for the first time in a week or more--and saw to my surprise tiny dark purple flower, so small they were easy to miss from standing height. "Why, what are these?" I cried in surprise. She taught me then that they were the blooms that came for but a week in this very season, easily missed but valuable in the treatment of excessive bleeding especially during childbirth. They were very rare indeed and I would never have noticed them without guidance because I had ceased to look. The rest of our walk, I was on my knees more than my feet, and I found a type of mushroom I was unfamiliar with and observed changes in many familiar plants due to the seasons turning. I told her that the lesson was well taken and from that day I would remember that there is always more to be seen and learned if you keep your eyes and mind open. She laughed and said, "'Twas well I named you as I did, for I think in time you will see more than even I hoped."
When I was nearing the age of independence, my mother took me to see the Boundary Mists. I looked long and long upon that place of swirling unknowns, my mind tumbling over with awe. It called to me and frightened me terribly as well. After a long silence and contemplation I turned to her and said, "I feel that I will go there someday, but I think it will be a very long time from now. I am not ready for this, and not certain if I will ever be. But I will have to know more if I am ever to be ready." She smiled and took my hands in hers, looked deeply into my eyes and said, "My child, you show prudence as well as a drive to find answers and a receptive mind. Everything you are is a joy to me and I love you well. I am confident that you will always seek your true potential and fulfill the promise carried in your name."
In memoriam: My mother was lost in the lesser destruction wrought by the opening of the Caudal Rift.
I miss her with all my heart.
by Shadruith
Vignettes II
Much of my life has been a patchwork series of events loosely interconnected merely by the fact that I lived through all of them. Sometimes I feel as if I am the cord upon which a small child threads an assortment of mismatched buttons in an arbitrary design that only she can perceive. But occasionally I seem to see bits of a pattern emerging - perhaps not all the buttons are disparate; perhaps she repeats a motif from time to time in her unruly creativity. Or perhaps I myself superimpose the pattern in my search for meaning, in my struggle to bring order from chaos…
Although my mother spent most of her time ministering to the people of Cloudsbreak, there were occasions when she turned her care to sick or injured fauna that came her way. I remember when I was quite young she took in a bird of prey that had been injured in a violent storm. He lived in a makeshift cage while his wing healed and was quite placid in manner, taking food from our hands and perching quietly upon our wrist guards when we had him out to take sun and stretch. I named him Telephion, which means Soaring Spirit in my part of Cloudsbreak. Soon, I had begun to think of Telephion as a pet, although my mother had always indicated he would return to the wild when he had healed. How I loved the feel of his weight upon my arm, and when he began to make the first tentative flights to test his slowly mending wing, the rush of excitement as he would bound from his perch there and then swoop down to light once again! As his health returned, his eyes grew brighter and his feathers took on the deep glossy blue for which his kind are renowned, and I showed him off proudly to my friends who were all most impressed at this magnificent creature. But in time, his manner became restive, and I grew reluctant to fly him, only doing so when my mother insisted, and using a tether with him more often than not, for I did not want my pet to leave.
So came a day I shall never forget: I took Telephion out, allowing him his now-meager freedom upon the tether. He leapt from my arm and strove for the sky, only to be brought up short -- then suddenly he wheeled and dove upon me, striking the underside of my unprotected arm which I barely managed to throw up in time to ward my eyes. I cried out in fear and pain, and my mother was at my side in but a moment. She ripped the wrist guard and tether from me, leaving Telephion free to fly to a perch in a nearby tree. Pulling me inside, she calmed and soothed me as she tended the gashes in my arm. And all the while she talked to me, dragging the tale from me through my sobs, as I expressed my confusion and anger, my feeling of betrayal. Then she asked me very seriously what I had expected. I was momentarily shocked, as if she too had struck me. A rush of words escaped me: words about saving him only to be repaid by attack, about caring for him only to have him try to leave, about how he was mine and how dare he… She let me rant for a while and just looked expectantly at me, until I began to rethink the incident. I had tried to impose limitations upon a wild creature I claimed to care for and then had had the audacity to expect affection in return for my enslavement. That was my first and greatest lesson about how some creatures need freedom and to try to make them over against their nature is not only presumptive, but is an endeavor doomed ultimately to fail. Telephion, still perched in the tree, did prove willing to return that evening. On a bright clear morning two days thence, he took his perch upon my arm for the final time. I remember a great sense of awe as I felt him gather his strength and leap forth, winging to the sky, tethered no more nor ever again, but flying free as was his way.
She appeared one day as if from nowhere, a woman of true mystery with an ethereal look and foreign manner. Some said she must have floated in from the Mists, others that she had been in hiding all these years somewhere, and in later times some were heard to say she must only have been a spirit and not real at all, but the facts belied that last tale. She was the most lovely creature I have ever seen, with hair as black as the darkest chasm, skin luminescent as if dusted with pearl and eyes that shimmered with the iridescence of opals. She was dressed in a hooded robe that hung about her in tatters and had no other possessions but an amulet of silver hung 'round her neck. My mother offered her a place to stay and she accepted. So I came to know her perhaps as much as any but two. Her name was V'ayntyra but of her history she never spoke. As we sat with her that first evening, she said little and though she had a clear lilting tone to her voice she stumbled over our tongue as if it was unfamiliar. But I recall her few words well: "I shall live among you if I may for three years and four days, and then I shall take my leave."
She was always quiet, and was avoided by many as being quite too strange, but never did lack for suitors. She lived with us for a year and a day, and perhaps I shall say more of that time in a later tale, but 'tis not for this one. She had grown fond of a young man who adored her, by name of Shomnan, and the two were wed, so she left us to go to him. And at the end of another year and a day, my mother delivered her of a baby daughter, and to my delight I was allowed to assist in the midwifing. As my mother handed me the tiny child, and I cleaned her and wrapped her tenderly in a soft blanket, I knew I loved her. She was a delicate creature with silver hair and pale moonstone eyes, and in semblance bore little of her father or her mother save that she was also ethereal. They named her Ladhnyia, which means 'delicate balance', and within a month's time we knew that Ladhnyia's beautiful moonstone eyes were blind. The babe was given often to my care and I own that I volunteered my time willingly, as I loved her more as each day passed. She was of bright spirit and fussed little, and grew quickly to recognize and respond to the voices of those around her. And when a year and a day had passed, V'ayntyra came to our home, bringing Ladhnyia with her and asked if we would keep the child so that she and Shomnan could have their last night alone with each other. As I watched the babe, I listened to the soft words between this still-mysterious woman and my mother, of how she knew Shomnan did not wish to let her go and how her own feelings were mixed but she felt the call to leave too strongly to fight it any longer. And how she carried within her womb Ladhnyia's brother-to-be, but had yet told no one of that. Then she came and kissed her babe and shed tears of iridescent hue as she bade her farewell, and looked once to me and said in her strange lilting way, "Shadruith, I know you love her well and I depend upon you to care for her as I am sure that you will." I nodded silently in acquiescence. She said one last farewell and departed to her home and husband. And upon the morrow she was gone. He had tried to keep her, begging and pleading and even at the end locking her in with him where she could not leave, but when he woke she was nowhere to be found, and only her amulet lay in the hollow her body had made in the bedclothes. My mother grew concerned for Shomnan and we kept Ladhnyia with us for the time, as his mood was fey and despairing. He spoke little, only to give to her care the amulet, saying V'ayntyra had surely left it for her child. One evening about a week after she vanished, my mother sent me to his house to take him food. I found him in tears of anguish and I sat with him while he rambled and as I listened it called to me a hurt I had thought healed long since. Though I could see his was much deeper than ever mine had been, still I was moved to tell him the tale of a young girl and a wild bird of prey named Telephion, and then I laid bare my arm upon the table and showed him what I called my scars of learning. He seemed to listen, and then grew quiet and I was able to persuade him to eat a bit and then take a rest. Shomnan came the next day to us, and when he saw Ladhnyia he burst into a loving smile and scooped her into his arms and held her tight as she babbled gleefully to him. We knew then that he would heal and that she would bring him to that faster than any other could. He gathered her things and thanked my mother and I for our care, then he looked at me and said, "This one is very special, she showed me another way to see what happened. I too shall have scars, though they are not visible but graven on my heart, and I believe I shall always call them my scars of yearning."
When Ladhnyia was five, her father sent her to begin daily study with my mother in the ways of herbal and healing knowledge. It was fun to watch her learn as once I had, and though she was blind it did not seem to deter her much; she learned to know the plants by feel and smell and taste and had a seemingly uncanny sense for what would work from even that early age. She was bright and cheerful, and I loved having her along to share my discoveries and fill my mornings with her carefree imaginings. One day not long after she began her studies, as we tended the garden, we heard a cry and I turned to see a glossy blue-feathered bird of prey plummeting through the trees, careening out of control. As he struck the ground, the three of us rushed to the spot and my mother and I saw to our dismay that he had been pierced through with a hunting arrow. The wound was wide and gaping, the arrow broken in half and lodged there. My mother gently removed it and surveyed the damage, then slowly shook her head. It was too great an injury, she feared nothing could be done. We told Ladhnyia what was happening and she came close to the bird, looking quizzical as if listening to something we could not hear. Then the amulet she wore always upon her breast began to glow and pulse and to my utter amazement her moonstone eyes took on an unearthly shimmering pulse to match. As if by instinct she reached her hands gently to the feeble creature and laid them upon the gaping wound and hummed a strange tune as if to herself for the space of a few minutes. When she removed her hands, we looked and there was no sign of wound or damage upon the bird although his blood had left stains upon her fingers. He righted himself and ruffled his feathers, called in his piercing cry, and hopped to my unprotected arm. I do swear he looked at me as if at an old friend before he launched himself toward the sky and swiftly winged out of sight. And Ladhnyia said, in a clear, lilting voice that was her own and not her own, "There are links to everything if we seek deeply enough; the task is for us to find them and know how to call upon them." Then her eyes resumed their normal sightless quiescent state and she went back to the garden just as if nothing unusual had happened at all.
by Shadruith
