Role

Chapter 1

The screams of my mother and sisters haunted me for months as I slowly
recovered. It was almost two weeks before I could draw a full breath without
collapsing in agony and almost a year before my flesh mended enough to move
about without leaving bits of myself around. I do not know who they were or
why they came, I was but a child then, naive to the ways of the world. They
strung my father up from the apple tree and locked the rest of us in the barn
before setting it on fire.

I vaguely recall us desperatly trying to break down the door as the flames
and smoke raged about us. The looks of terror and desperation on my family
as the flesh peeled from their faces and my world went black.

Hodra, the forest witch found me the next day. She said the bodies of my
sisters had shielded me from the flames enough for me to live. She tells me
that at first she went to end my misery but that I feebly attempted to stay
her hand. She took pity on me and took me into the wild forest and nurtured
me back to health. For the next twenty years she raised me as her own.
Teaching me the ways of the forest, of the spirits of the trees, the herbs
that can both ease and cause suffering.

Hodra was but a human, and while she was not so old when she, "adopted" me,
the lives of humans are short. She passed away but not before sharing her
dream with me. A dream where men and nature once more existed in beautiful
harmony, a dream she called Thar-Eris.