And So It Begins: Chapter One in My Chronicles of Eternity

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sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

And So It Begins: Chapter One in My Chronicles of Eternity

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:08 pm

Note: This chapter just contains my first seven posts already posted here separately. Hopefully this will make my story easier to keep track of as it unfolds as well as take up less space on the bbs :-P

Dear Reader: I have long walked among you and even count some of you as friend, but have been too well trained in detached observance during my long years of obeisance to Silvanus to become involved in the affairs which seem to demand so much of your focus and energy. At least, that is what I have always told myself. Recent events in my life have forced me to admit (to myself first and now to you) that I have, in actuality, been hiding from my own doubts and insecurities. I fear the cost has been higher than I would ever have dreamed. There are momentous happenings afoot and I can no longer maintain the passive role I have clung to in the past, but must take an active part if the troubles that are even now amassing like storm clouds on the distant horizon are to be avoided. In the hope that you can begin to understand the events that force me from my silent observance, I have decided to post some of my personal records written over the past few years. Forgive me, but the self-questioning beliefs of a lifetime are difficult to change overnight so I will begin by merely posting the beginning of my records, written only seven years ago. If these scribblings are received with open-minded tolerance, I will share more of the thoughts I have clumsily tried to capture on paper. Please be patient as my thoughts are mine to share in my own good time and all will one day be fully revealed.


The 7th day of the Month of Vinthar (of the Harvest)
My life began when I was four years old. At least that’s what my Aunt Lana would have me believe. Having no memories of my own to contradict her, I can only listen and watch, hoping to gather the clues I need to piece together who I really am. Being neither elf nor human, neither fish nor fowl, but something of both in a world which seems to fear that which cannot be neatly categorized, you quickly learn to draw minimum attention to yourself so there is probably more unguarded talk around me than even cautious speakers might realize. Being a mystery even to yourself, you learn to recognize hidden meanings and veiled clues in the most ordinary of daily occurrences, all with the increasingly desperate hope of answering the unanswerable.

At some point it occurred to me that I might be wise to record my thoughts as I begin to piece myself together. Make no mistake, my thoughts are no more than that: random snatches of poorly written, most likely ill-conceived pieces of illogic, replete with run-on sentences and poor punctuation. My strengths, what few I recognize, do not lie in the written word, but I hope that from this jumble I will be able to find the thread that, when picked at, will begin to unravel the tangle of half-truths that shape my life. Something in me knows that I am more than the child of a human father and an elven mother, conceived in secrecy and born in shame. What that more is, I have yet to determine. I only know that I will find the truth so I may genuinely know myself and when I do, I will make my own future. And so, with this ambitious yet determined goal, I begin my record.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:10 pm

Dear Reader: All good records should start at the beginning I suppose but, being unsure of my actual origins when I commenced my records, I must perforce begin with my human life in Waterdeep. Of my existence before that time, I had been told nothing beyond the fact that my father had mysteriously left his home, wandering the realm looking for no one knows what until he met my mother after which time I was born. How I came to leave that home to live with my father’s brother and his family is a story for a later time as I was not fated to discover those secrets for several years. Even now, I do not know all but what I do know, I will reveal as my story unfolds.

The 18th day of the Month of Horthos (of the Abandoned)
How does one define a person? Can one take this fact, add it to another known detail and even begin to realize the full measure of everything that comprises an individual? I would think that the answer must be no and yet in my twenty-six years since I arrived in Waterdeep, I have found no words with which to define myself beyond the mere facts of my existence: unwanted niece of Aunt Lana and Uncle Nallin, brought to live in Waterdeep among humans at the age of four for reasons no one will discuss, devout druid in the service of my god Silvanus as is the rest of my human family to some degree or another, of mixed blood and partially unknown parentage....mixed blood....aye, maybe that is the core of my blindness. Living among humans, being treated by peers and family alike as something that must be kept distant, fearing the taint of elven blood. I have accepted their imposed isolation and even found solace in it, being thus free from learning to see others fully as people, and so able to ignore the rejection which might otherwise cut very deep.

There is a woman in Waterdeep. My first memories of her are distinct and clear as many of my young memories are not. I saw her one day when I was six years old, humming under her breath as she walked down a crowded street near my Aunt’s house in Waterdeep. Struck first by her self-contained stride and the eerie, colorless beauty in her waist-length silvery hair, pale skin, and almond-shaped ice blue eyes, I then noticed the slightest of points on her ears. I realized with an awe I remember to this day that I was looking at a half-elf....another halfbreed like myself but one who seemed to have found a way to define herself in relation to the world around her. She became an icon of sorts to me, an image of the woman I would like to become which is foolish really as I never even spoke to her. Who knows but what her life was full of the same doubts and insecurities that plagued my own existence yet she gave me something to hold on to as I watched her over the years, some reason to want more out of my life than the shallow, detached reality I have made no effort to shrug off. I doubt she was ever aware of the young shadow that followed her like a ghost through the streets, and in all of my fascination, the only real fact I ever gleaned about her was her name...Lilira.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:11 pm

Dear Reader: In an effort to not overwhelm you any more than I must for the sake of comprehension, I have omitted many journal entries, choosing only the few I feel will share information you need to know in order to understand the journey I undertake today. In my records I have an abundance of ramblings similar to those I have copied below yet have selected merely this one to help you begin to understand the vital role which nature and the animals who inhabit that sphere play in my life.

The 34th day of the Month of Flamerule (Summertide)
Fear is a powerful emotion that cleverly masks itself as so many other emotions for reasons I don’t fully understand. Hate and anger are merely fear redirected. My Aunt Lana has taught me this. I’ve watched the way her neck muscles tighten and both sides of her mouth draw in and down as if she were eating a particularly unsavory mouthful when forced to taste the word “elf” on her tongue (which is, needless to say, not very often). For many years I accepted her hatred of my mother’s family and hence, to some extent, me as...well, not natural, but just the way my life was, until yesterday when I looked past her face and into her eyes and found fear. I suppose I lack the maturity to completely understand what she fears; I only know her fear created an intangible yet very real barrier between us, leaving me truly motherless, to raise myself in a world that will not learn to accept me. Please don’t misunderstand, for my Aunt knows her duty well and will never shirk at raising the daughter of her husband’s brother, even if that daughter is not quite human. My childhood was not unhappy but I have never known the love of which some humans speak that gives without keeping tally, expecting only to be loved in return. At least, if I did once know that love in my time before my human life, I have no recollection of it.

The only place I can truly find peace is outside of the man-made world of Waterdeep, in the forests and meadows that surround the mighty city, among the denizens who make their home in water, wood, and earth. More and more I find the city stifling, escaping it whenever possible to wander further afield, assuming various animal forms as I roam. Wild things have ever been my playmates and the druids who instructed me, noticing this bond, elected to teach me the skill of shapechange at the unusually early age of eleven. From that moment on, I immersed myself deeper and deeper in the animal world, learning to respect their fierce independence and individuality as they speak to me in their wild tongue. There is a simplicity in nature I have not found in the human world. Animals experience fear in its purest state – a natural reaction to a perceived threat from a creature deemed more powerful than itself. There is little subterfuge and even less malice. This has been my means of survival. I know not what unknown hand has shaped the course of my life but I can only thank the powers who saw fit to place me with a family so faithful to a god whose command encompasses the realm of nature.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:13 pm

Dear Reader: We have reached a point in my history when I must begin to share with you some of the more painful memories from my past. Even now, I flinch inwardly, reading my own records and remembering the emotions I battled during that winter. I would omit this portion of my recollections if I could, for my own sake, but the events I relate below provided the path my feet would follow even to this day.

The 29th Day of the Month of Annexes (the Breath of Frost)
A name is such a simple thing yet it is peculiar how much of ourselves we wrap around our name, weaving our very essence into a few consonants and vowels strung together into a simple word. If I had read these ponderings yesterday...yesterday when I still had a name, I would have laughed to think that a name was anything other than a label, revealing nothing of my true self, merely allowing others a handle upon which to hang their impressions of me. But today is not yesterday and today I have no name.

I had a name once, long before I was brought to live among humans where I was quickly deemed inadequate and hastily renamed with a safe, comfortable, human name in an attempt to deny the blood that reveals itself in so many small ways. But yesterday, I did not know of that other name...my first name. I might have lived forever in ignorance had I not prodded my Aunt a little too far this morning. I had tired of her silence in response to my increasingly urgent queries and vowed not to give up until she would tell me something, anything of my mother’s family. ( I have heard you should be careful the vows you make but did not understand then how the truth could cause me more pain than the ache of not knowing this integral part of me.) At my incessant questioning, her anger and frustration finally broke past her armor of silence as my Aunt Lana spat hateful, hurtful words at me, yet I knew I had to endure them, hoping against hope that they would bring the answers I was seeking. For a time I listened, sifting through her prejudices and fear and, at first, was rewarded for my efforts. I discovered that my mother was a full blood grey elf, originally from a city named Leuthilspar on the isle of Evermeet; she had actually married my father not merely lived with him as Aunt Lana had so often hinted when in one of her darker moods. My attention captured by these new details, I was completed unprepared when, thoroughly lost in her vitriol, Aunt Lana revealed the existence of my elven name and, with that admission, the callousness with which she had claimed the right to strip a young child’s final tie to a lost home. I don’t know what she hoped to accomplish with that information but quite suddenly I found I could bear to hear no more, regardless of what other small treasures might be buried beneath the poison words that dripped from her tongue. I fled her home, the one home I could remember yet it still never having been my home, seeking the seclusion and safety I could find only in the forest. I ran until my steps faltered, both feet numb in the iciness of the snow, my heart hammering in my ears. Yet even at that small slowing of momentum, I felt the loss relentlessly rushing up on me, threatening to engulf me and bring me down. In the next heartbeat I changed my form to that of a small white fox, invisible against the frozen world around me and I continued my blind flight with renewed energy, seeking to outrun the pain that was surely waiting if I so much as stopped to catch my breath.

More than ever before, I do not know who I am. I am no longer Sotana. I am lost. I am nameless.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:13 pm

Dear Reader: I do not possess the words to describe the winter of my 32nd year...maybe because all my impressions of that time were gained through animal senses instead of my regular human senses...maybe because I have never learned the skill of expressing emotions felt to the very core of me. Whatever the reason, I find myself somewhat relieved that I have no detailed record of that time. I feel no shame in saying that there are some things for which I would rather not have a reminder out of fear that the wound would, through constant revisiting, forever have the fresh rawness of that winter.

35th Day of the Month of Mirtul (the Melting)
I could not bear to record my thoughts for some time after my conversation with Aunt Lana but I find now that I must write again or lose myself entirely. Following my one entry on that terrible day, hastily scribbled when I paused for a short time to snatch some sleep, I put my records away, perhaps in the foolish hope that I would never have to face the truths they contain. For five dark months I wandered, changing from one form to another as the mood took me...any form but my own. Even now I feel awkward in my human skin, unsettled and clumsy, but the winter is ending and my sharp pain has faded to a dull ache provided I don’t probe the wound too closely (I fear it will never be healed enough to be called a scar). It is time to reclaim my life. So one calm moonlit night I appeared on the doorstep of the only home in my memory, half-wild and desperately tired but with some sort of fragile, hard-won peace.

I have been back in Waterdeep one week and it is as if I never left. My aunt has retreated behind her wall of silence while my uncle is too preoccupied with his own affairs (or disinclined to involve himself in mine) to even notice either my absence or presence. Somewhere there is someone who knows my name but I will no longer seek these answers from my human family. I have learned there are some truths I am not yet strong enough to hear – at least not from those so disinterested in my welfare. I can now only seek the aid of my god to guide me and it is to this end that I must employ a Vigil. Following the strictures of my faith, I have quietly gathered acorns and crushed them to be mixed with my small store of mistletoe leaves and the rain I collected from last night’s storm. I have spent many long hours wandering the forest in search of the tree I need... a monstrous, still-developing oak covered with green, growing moss so that when I lie down on that tree tonight after anointing myself with the prepared powder, I will be open to the message Silvanus might send to me. I only pray he will see fit to send me the guidance I seek.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:14 pm

Dear Reader: You have cause to wonder why my god might still answer my plea after I had ignored him during those five lost months when I fled from myself. I do not know the full answer but I know enough now to realize that more than Silvanus was watching my Vigil that night. I have since come to a greater understanding of the powers that roam this land, vigilant in their own fashion, interfering from time to time for reasons mortals cannot often comprehend yet always with a purpose which may or may not become clear during a short human lifespan. The elven blood that flows through my veins grants me a few additional years to consider the whims of the gods but for now I can only take each piece as it comes, patiently trying it here and there until it slides into place, allowing another small, revealing glimpse into the puzzle that is my life.

1st day of the Month of Bestanth (the Renewal)
I saw a man seated in front of a campfire. His back was to me but he had long, brown hair tied neatly into a queue with a bit of leather and he looked to have a fit, lean frame clothed in natural fabrics dyed to match the colors of the forest. He appeared to be carefully engaged in the crafting of some object as his hands rhythmically moved, whittling a long stick, pausing every now and again so he could feel for rough spots. As time went on and the man made no movement other than the steady activity of his hands, I found myself willing him to turn around so that I might see his face. I knew this man held answers and every fiber of my body called out to him to turn so that I should see him and know him. Suddenly, as if he could sense my need, his body tensed, his hands ceasing their motion as his head came up. Without warning, my perspective changed and it was as if I were standing in front of him, staring directly into his upturned face lit only by the dancing flames as my body threw no shadow. The very air around us seemed to be waiting for something as my breath caught painfully in my throat and my heart stopped its beating. I had never seen this face before yet I _knew_ this man beyond any doubting. His green eyes and pointed ears betrayed his elven heritage but there was a sturdiness in his features and frame not generally found in true grey elves. Who was he? As I looked fixedly into this face only a few years older than mine, time suspended for a moment, I became aware of a gentle whispering somewhere just beyond the limits of my hearing. With great effort I forced myself to close my eyes, concentrating fiercely on that whisper, pushing my ears past their ability to hear, trying to understand those few words being repeated over and over until, quite suddenly, the murmuring became clear – He is your brother. He knows your name. At that, my eyes snapped open to the rising sun lighting the tree which had cradled me all night. My Vigil was over but my journey had just begun.
sotana
Sojourner
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:11 am

Postby sotana » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:16 pm

Dear Reader: In spite of all the years that now lie between me and that night, I remember my vision as if it were yesterday. I have searched the face of every stranger in every region I have traveled, from remote, barely populated wastelands to the great teeming cities of Waterdeep and Calimport. Although my hunt has continued in vain for five long years, I am no less determined now than I was when I began my journey. My search did not commence immediately following my vision however, as events and emotions intervened to distract me for a short time from all that mattered most.

3rd Day of the Month of Bestanth (the Renewal)
From long experience, I am well aware that the consequences of rash action can be swift and painful. I can only excuse my foolishness by supposing that I must have been too caught up by hope, excitement, and confusion to remember lessons I had been taught far too many times already. Or maybe I thought I was strong enough to deal with anything my aunt might choose to tell me. Whatever the case, when confronted with the discovery of my brother’s existence, Aunt Lana was silenced for a short period by some emotion I can only hope to be shame, before recovering the customary shield of indifference she used to mask her fear as she recited her tale in a flat and emotionless voice. It seems that my parents are dead, killed by an unknown hand when I was four, the reason I was brought to live with my human family. The brother I glimpsed in my vision had also been brought with me but lived in Waterdeep for only a short time before disappearing in the afternoon of one long summer day. No trace of him was ever found which may well have been because only the most cursory attempt was made to look for this unwanted addition as my aunt decreed his disappearance to be the hand of the gods.

In a haze of disbelief and confusion I packed my few belongings and, barely registering my aunt’s accusations that with my departure I was turning my back on my very god, stumbled out of her home and away forever from the city of my childhood. I dread the grief which will surely come when I begin to feel again. Although I know I may one day regret my precipitous flight from Waterdeep, I cannot find it in myself to care at the present time.

After all the emotion I have invested in my search for knowledge it is peculiar that I should find myself at such a loss now that I have some answers, a direction to focus my efforts. The shock of all that I experienced two days ago has brought a blessed numbness yet, without the emotional energy which has driven my actions for the past few years, I now sit here idly, a stranded ship in a becalmed sea, indescribably weary and recording my thoughts in the hope that I will find something here to jar me out of my paralyzed state. The only course I currently have set for myself is any that will take me away from the life I have known, away from the lies and deceits I have been raised to accept as truth. For I now know some truth and have not yet found a way to live with my knowledge.

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