Role

Chapter 2

I know not how I ascended to the surface of Thera, to be perfectly honest.
Hook Horrors and Displacer Beasts, things only whispered of in the slave pens
ripped at my flesh, and confused my already lost mind. Yet, something,
perhaps the determination for Life itself drove me and protected me.

I came forth from the ground, the first night, amid what I later learned was
called a Blizzard. Winds whipped, and snow fell. The rags of my shoulders
and waste could not even begin to help me keep warm. I lay there exhausted,
snow piling on and around me. Was this to be my fate, to run so hard and so
fast, that I would only succumb to something, at some point?

This was when a man, reached into the snow, and grabbed me by the arm. He
pulled me into a sitting position, and shed his own robe to put around me.
He gave me a kindly smile, as the winds lashed at his own now bare skin. He
stood up, with out a word and strode directly into the wind, still smiling.
I knew not what to make of this kindness, for all I had ever known was
betrayal when things were given so freely.

I shivered and shook for a few minutes until my wits gathered. I knew that if
I laid there, even with this new found warmth I would die. I stood and
trudged forward, following this mans bootprints deeper and deeper into the
woods. At long last I found him, coaxing a fire to life in a circle of trees
that grew so tightly together that hardly a draft passed through their
boughs.

With the fire crackling lightly beside him, he sat there with a deep
contemplative look on his face.His eyes were closed and a low humming could
be heard. I sat across the fire from him for hours before he looked up with a
smile.

This is when my life changed. This is when I learned how slow and long
conversations with an Ascetic can be. This is when I vowed myself to learning
to survive with little, to give what I have, and to nurture all of life.