Role

Chapter 1

As her brother sang in memoriam by the grave, Rethienne fondly remembered
sitting on her father's lap so many years ago, laughing along with everyone
under the moonlight. No child should see her parents die before she is grown,
but for an elf raised by humans, such was inevitable. Only an adolescent by
elven standards, for years now Rethienne had been caring for the ones she knew
as her mother and father, and somewhat guiltily, suppressing a longing for them
to finally pass on.

A group of men began shoveling loose clay dirt into the grave. Rethienne felt
a small thankfulnesss in the fact that she was not asked to aid them.

She looked up at the stars. "A constellation of light, in the shape of an
arrow on a curved path, filled the meadow when we found you," her mother had
oft told her. "A gift from the stars," her father loved to say. But being
called a gift never felt a compliment. Rethienne smirked to herself as she
recalled all the times she ran away or acted out, just to assert that she
was her own person, not her parents' prize elf. But they always forgave her,
and she liked to think she returned the favor by enduring so much banal
service and caretaking in their late years.

The singing had stopped, and people were now busying themselves for the feast.
Men loaded the boar that Rethienne had killed onto the spit, and women
began setting up a spread of bread and nuts. Rethienne sighed. That boar
had been the first game any of them had killed in weeks - it was as
auspicious a sign as any, with how slow the hunting had been of late.

Life in the foothills had been pleasant, if not easy, and Rethienne was no
doubt blessed to see her parents each live into old age in a land as war-ravaged
as Thera. But something had weighed within her for as long as she could remember,
and after so many nights stealing away to the Sirine Inn, to Tir-Tilath, to the
lady in the cave, and asking this and that... this time, she would not be
coming back.

"It was a curse that night, lass," the old lady had said. "Your life here be
from dark magic, but there be great light in you. Embrace that light, lass,
aye, the world needs your voice!"

Her voice. How they always prodded her and her brother and sister to sing and
dance for them. She had loved to, of course, when she was truly little. But
the group seemed to hungrily harvest the joy the Cobb family projected like
grain reaped too early, using it up before it could be resewn. With her
parents' tale ended, Rethienne felt she could finally live her own life
fully as an elf, and she intended to. She didn't fit in here. That had to
be the reason for the inexplicable heaviness within her.

Continued in part II ->