Role

Chapter 5

The Beginning

My mother, Jasayn, passed away when I was an infant. She had
warded off an attack of the Vale of Arandyl. Two orcs and a
deurgar had raided and where attacking everyone in sight. My
mother was with a few of the village's mages and warriors when
they launched the counter-attack. The fighting was brief and
brutal resulting in the deurgar dwarf taking flight, leaving
his two brutes to die. In the struggle mother caught an
infection, most likely from one of the disease ridden orcs.
Fever hit before she complained, and by the time the healer I
did not know her very well, but do own a charcoal drawing my
father did of her, he's a very talented artist and I am told
that the rendition is very life-like. You can tell by the work
that he loved her, and that she was a beautiful woman.

Father remarried a few years later. This time to a human he met
while painting a mural in Tir Talath. Erressa was her name.
She too was very beautiful, for a human. Her long black hair
framed her face in doll-like fashion. I was but thirteen when
she and my father were wed.

She taught me many things. It was she that gave me my first
piano lesson and introduced me to the one of the forces that
would consume my life. I was no stranger to music. I had sung
with my Father's friends while they were visiting and drinking
wine, I had hit pots with wooden spoons, I had learned a few
childish chants used when learning to count and read. But the
first time I placed my hand upon an instrument and played my
first note, the first time I realized that I had power to
create music, I knew my life had changed. Erressa had a general
knowledge in music and knew how to play several instruments
well enough to lead a song around a campfire, or entertain at
the harvest festival. She loved to read, and owned a few
astounding compilations of tales of adventure and strife in Thera.

By the time I was twenty-five I had memorized those tales and
could dramatically re-count each one. I had exceeded Erressa's
musical ability and started to create songs of my own. I was
expected to play at every gathering whether it be for
celebration or grief. I loved performing and knew that I would
become a bard like the ones that were mentioned in Eressa's books.

Plans were made for me to venture out into the world and train
at the academy. My father and Erressa were very proud of me.
But they forbade me to go until I was a little older. I did not
like that decision as you can imagine, and to this day would
refute its wisdom. All in all however, I am glad that I stayed
back for a time.

It was a mere seventy two years later that Erressa succumbed to
the choking grasp of age. I was still a child, and there, the
only mother I had ever known, my mentor, my teacher, had gone
and passed as her kind tend to do. It was a cruel introduction
to the "curse of the elves" as they call it. My stepmother
Erressa lived a full and wonderful life in its natural entirety
before I had finished puberty. I still cringe at its
unfairness. I have spent much time pondering it and have come
to the same revelation as been made by many a wise sage,
philosopher or local drunkard at the corner tavern.

"Life is short, live it to the fullest