Role

Chapter 4

Stormy Childhood
The sky was a dusty colour of dark blue and snow poured savagely from the cold
skies. All was silent except for the sound of the wandering soul of the wind,
and the soft sounds of snowflakes landing on the ground, layer by layer. A
group of male storm giants were passing through the dark woods, laughing an
jostling each other in the cold which didn't seem to bother them too much, when
the cries of a babe caught their attentive ears. Frowning, they followed the
sounds, and came upon a thin basket made of straw, lying carelessly next to a
huge tree. Opening the basket up with much haste, they were shocked to find a
mere babe swaddled in nothing but a piece of thin cloth shivering and crying
within it.

With extreme caution lest they crush the human child in their hands, they
picked the basket up and hurried to a cave which they had made their home in
for the time being. One of the storms went back out into the cold winter just
to get some milk for this young child, for all they had were beers, ales and
the likes stored up in their cave.

It was this unruly, yet kindly group of storm giants that brought the human
girl they called Lekerjey up. They named her Lekerjey, a name of Storm
descent, meaning 'One Of Us'. They accepted the weak and young human girl,
as compared to them, as one of them without bearing any grudges or
differences between them. As she didn't have a sirname, they merely named
her StormChild, to reinforce what Lekerjey meant. They called her 'Jey' fondly
and treated her as one of them.

They taught the girl as she grew up into a young woman, how to hunt, how to
swim and what they knew, they tried to teach her. As all storm giants, they
loved the seas, lakes and oceans, and spent much time beneath the rolling
surfaces. Lekerjey came to love water as she saw the fun they had in it, and
how comfortable they were in it. She joined them for swims, but couldn't venture
much beneath the surface like they could, and so, they made her a simple boat
of wood and with that, she was able to go anywhere with them on open waters. If
they slept beneath the waves as they did so often, she would sleep in her little
boat snugly, and they would take turns to check on her ever so often. She
grew to love the waves, the sound of waters, the smell of sea salt, and any
water-related thing, because of them.

Not only were her guardians, who preferred to be called her brothers in fact,
kind and generous, but they were also zealous lightwalkers. They crushed
dark souls if they came across any, and the dark souls fell every single time
to their wrath burning deep within their hearts that guided their weapons.
Lekerjey watched in awe at the strength of the light within her brothers, and
the older she grew, the more she became like them. Perhaps it was a sub-
conscious influence on her, but it was a good influence nonetheless. The light
burned with zeal within her heart, and she stubbornly shunned the shadows.
Yet, her guardians taught her never to kill without mercy, for by doing so was
being no better, perhaps even worse, than the dark soul they fell. They were
killing merely out of blind rage, and not one that was filled with righteous
wrath and fire.

However, her brothers had been injured before too, by large groups of shadow-
walkers,