Role

Chapter 3

Whispers followed me from the orchard through the mountain pass and across the
northern plains. I started to hear them ever louder the closer I got to
Feanwynn. When I held still to make out what they were saying they would cease,
like an interrupted moment of gossip containing secrets of yourself unknown to
you and shared amongst strangers. I found green apples on the ground and ate
them almost exclusively while I put apple blossoms in my hair, wandering
towards the Emerald Forest. I couldn't stop the whispers. I couldn't decipher
them. So I thought of my second home, until I found my first home, where I saw
my people for the first time and they looked more like me than any mother I
shared in Evermoon. And they certainly looked more like me than a false father,
aging and unpleasant in his final years.

I was shy to approach initially and certainly felt more than uncomfortable to
ask them about myself. I learned about all manner of things by watching, and
then slowly by joining them in their daily lives. I wasn't built for fighting,
I was the weakest wood elf they'd ever met, one pixie told me. I gathered roses
and still more apples, trading with my people and making a small life for
myself. They encouraged me to venture to the Academy, suggesting the path of a
priest of Nature but I was dissuaded they night before I made my way down the
fateful stairs.

It was a lucid dream where I continued to move from the form of my birth to the
form of myself now. There was always a spark, a glowing light which popped
unnaturally right at the center point of the two forms. It seemed to me to
speak to some other manner of transformation than one which was natural. But it
protected me. It felt spiritual, but in a magical way. I struggle now to
describe it, only to say that the colors I saw I have not seen before, nor
since. This spark, this spirit; it was to be why I'm here. So I chose the path
of protector and healer, something to contribute to the world beyond myself in
balance with my pursuit of my own mysteries.