Images of a life

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

First image: watercolor on parchment. Gold-tinted by sunset over the ocean and childhood memory. Two young girls fight on the beach with wooden swords. One smaller, dark-haired, the other with hair of gold, and a Northman's build. We are too far away to see their expressions, but somehow the artist shows their friendship in the tranquility of the setting.

Her name was Maura, and maman didn't approve of her. Of course, there were many things that displeased maman, so it never occurred to me that there was anything particularly wrong with having a friend from the barbarian enclave.

She had come to stay with relatives after her parents were killed in one of the many skirmishes between her people and ours. Our nations were never enemies, as such; we traded with each other, and even lived in each other's cities, but there was usually some trouble on our borders. As maman would have it, because barbarians were so aggressive, and not able to understand our ways.

Maura told a different story, of human encroachment on Northern territory, and dishonorable dealing. Honor was important to her. I thought I believed her, but I kept her version of events from maman, who would probably forbid our friendship if she knew Maura's thoughts.

She would one day be a great warrior. She practiced swordsmanship with her uncles and aunts, many of whom were highly sought-after fighters. What she learned from them, she taught to me. I was never her equal in strength, but she understood the arts of fighting, not merely use of her strength, and was able to teach me skills better suited to my speed and smaller size.

So she would usually best me, but not always, and not easily.

From her relatives she did not only learn to fight; she learned too of her heritage, and this also she taught to me. Of her people's descent from the Marr twins, whom many humans also worshipped. I asked if she was named for the Mother, Erollisi Marr.

"It may be," she said. "I do not know what my parents intended. I can not ask them."

She rarely mentioned her parents' death, and I regretted my question.

Edited by: Dellerys at: 8/18/03 6:41 pm

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

Second image: watercolor again, on white paper. Crisply painted buildings. Crowds in the narrow streets, the bright colors carrying the impression of festive noise.

Maman refused to countenance my Choosing to be a warrior. Although in principle I was an adult on Choosing day, free to make my own decision, in practice most children would follow their parents' will, or risk being cut off from home and hearth. I was no exception, and Chose as my mother desired, to train as an acolyte in the temple.

"I wanted to be a warrior, like you," I complained to Maura.

She sat, cross-legged, slowly honing her sword. No wooden toy, but plain steel, cruelly edged. No finery, this weapon, but a cold and efficient instrument of killing. It had been her father's sword, and his father's before him.

"Perhaps you will be, one day," she replied. "Your path will be guided by the spirits, not by your city's habits."

"We Choose for life," I objected.

"Not always," insisted Maura. "You choose to follow tradition. Or you choose to follow your heart. Sometimes the two are the same. Sometimes you choose only that which is necessary to allow your later choices to be free. Let the spirits guide your path, and do what is needed."

"The priests tell us not to trust spirits, but to deal with the gods directly."

"Through them, of course," she chuckled. "The sprits do the will of the gods, as do any honest priests. How could it be otherwise?" After a moment, she added, "Perhaps the spirits do not want you to become a warrior because they do not want us to face one another on the battlefield."

"You would war with humans?" I asked.

"Not by preference," she said. "But if it is required of me, I will."

She stared into the distance. "Dellerys, soon must I travel North. I will present my sword to my clan, and seek the guidance of our shaman. I will do what honor and the spirits require."

Edited by: Dellerys at: 8/19/03 9:54 am

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

Third image: oil on canvas; the starkness of adult memory. The same streets under overcast skies; colors faded to bluish-grey. Storm-threatening clouds in the distance. Perhaps the darkness beneath them is rain already.

"Be of good cheer, my friend," said Maura. "This is the path the spirits would have me take."

She looked every inch the warrior. Armored and kilted like a - like a barbarian. As efficient and deadly as her father's sword - her sword - strapped to her back.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I know because it is the way for me to aid my people here. Only after I have done that will I be free to head North to seek the spirits' guidance. Thus it is what they would have me do." She frowned at me. "We have spoken of this."

"Aye, Maura, I know." I sighed. "It seems demeaning for a warrior to guard a trade caravan. You should be battling orcs and fighting giants for the freedom of your people."

"What would you have the merchants do?" she asked. "Hire mercenaries? Humans who can be bought? They use Northmen because they can trust us and they know of our skill in battle. I serve my people in this. Soon enough will I serve them more directly."

She gripped my shoulder and bade me farewell.

Barely a week later there was a commotion at the city gates. Word spread that a caravan had returned, its journey unfinished. I ran to see, and it was indeed that which had taken Maura away.

The men and women of the caravan were battered and bloody, with bandaged injuries and pain in their eyes.

I called for my friend, and the guard captain turned to me. I knew him slightly from the temple.

"Lassie," he shouted, pushing through the crowd to me. "Lassie," more softly, "tha'rt Maura's friend?" Without waiting for an answer, he held my shoulder, reminding me of her parting. "She saved us, Lassie. We were set upon. Followers of the plague god." He screwed up his face. "They came on us in force. We 'ad magic, but there were so many - if it 'adn't been for Maura they would'a swarmed us. She were worth three o' me regular lads. Bought us the time we needed, she did, an' barely at that."

"Where is she?" I asked, not yet understanding.

"I'm tellin' thee, lass. She's..." He blinked, and I saw tears in in this veteran's eyes. "She giv 'erself for us. Mebbe we could'a kept 'er alive if she'd backed off, but we'd'a lost others, an' seems she knew that. She did what she could, and she died doin' it." His voice was soft. "Tha should be proud o' 'er, lass. Mark me words, if we'd 'ad a bard, 'e'd be singin' 'er deeds now."

So that was it? No journey North? No serving the spirits, and her people? No... no Maura?

"Come wi' me, lass," said the captain, and steered my numb body through the crowd. He reached into a wagon and lifted something out. "I reckon she'd want thee t'ave this."

I stared at the object he'd given me for several seconds before I could see it. Heavy, plain, black leather. The scabbard for Maura's sword, the blade in place. I fought the urge to draw it and lay about me, or perhaps to use it on myself. I wasn't sure which.

"I'll take it to her clan," I said. "It belongs to them."

"Aye, tha'st the right of it," agreed the captain, and turned away to leave me alone in the throng.

Edited by: Dellerys at: 1/13/04 1:03 am

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

Fourth image: oil on black iron plate. Blood-red slashes of anger on darkness so intense that staring at it drains the soul.

Edited by: Dellerys at: 8/21/03 8:10 am

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

Fifth image: charcoal on paper. Overlaid sketches of a figure in fighting stances with edged weapons.

Maman set my course for me, though I doubt she will ever know that. I was despondent for weeks. Partly because I grieved for my friend. But mainly because her being was not fulfilled. She had not met her own requirements of service to the spirits and her clan. Her life was unfinished.

Then maman chided me for my surly behavior. "You'll find new friends," she said. "Friends of your own kind."

"She was only a stupid barbarian," is what my mother did not say. And she said it so forcefully that it filled the silence between us.

I knew then that she would not understand. That she was not able to understand. In so knowing, I was able to forgive her even while I resolved to turn my back on everything she had planned for me.

I began my pilgrimage not by traveling North, but by heading east, across the mountains, to the temple of Erollisi Marr. With my temple background and Maura's training I worked to become a paladin, learning to fight with weapons of steel and priestly magic.

Training complete, I bade the temple farewell, to return to the west, but not before dedicating my life to the Mother of the Northmen, taking the name, in my mother's tongue, of "Fire of Marr".

Edited by: Dellerys at: 8/22/03 7:56 am

Dellerys · Senior Kin Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 820

Sixth image: white paint on rock, with highlights picked out in black. Mountains. One small figure in the foreground. Streaks of white suggest snow spiraling around her, blurring her form. The only detail we can see is the hilt of a sword strapped to her back.

Doubt is my constant companion on my journey. Do the spirits permit doubt?

I have a holy cause. I know this to be true. Yet knowledge seems not to mask uncertainty. This is a paradox, which might occupy my mind, were I not too cold to think.

Did I say doubt was my companion? Nay, it is frost. Frost, and air so cold it feels solid to the touch. Was I ever warm?

It has been three days since leaving the caves and the bodies of gnolls, and the white woolen cloak I bought for my journey, which seemed so heavy and unneeded when I started out, barely seems to contain any heat now.

Three days without sleep, because if I were to lie down, I would never wake. I would be ice by morning. How many of the boulders I have stumbled against are the frozen bodies of earlier adventurers?

It may be that I am already lost; the cold makes it so difficult to trust my senses. The valleys are all the same: white-sided, steep, just a little bare rock high up. When it snows, which is most of the time, I can not see the sides, and travel by seeking the lowest slope. I follow my compass as I wade through the heavy covering of snow.

Maura's sword is heavy on my back, and my mission, which seemed so right in the temperate lands, now seems unclear. My intent: not to return the sword to her clan, but to yield myself in her place; to take up her sword to serve her clan's honor as a daughter of Marr.

If Maura was right, and she served her people by taking that fatal journey, it can only mean that the spirits meant for her burden of service to pass to another. They delivered her sword to me, whom she trained in lore and art. I am her successor, and will present myself to her shaman, and seek the guidance the spirits intended.

If Maura was wrong...

I won't let her be wrong.

I have turned my back on the goals of humanity for what seems to me to be a cause both more noble and more primitive than those: the survival of the clans of the North.

But there are ghosts in the blizzard. I see them in the swirling snow, when the wind gusts around me, slicing through my cloak. They whisper to me, in voices that strengthen as I grow more weary. They whisper of failure, and rejection. They tell me I will soon be one of them. That I should lie down, and yield to the ice, and to despair, and my fate will find me.

And as I trudge through the thickening snow, I wonder whether my own survival is a possibility. Whether Maura's clansmen will accept me, or see me as an interloper. Whether this cold will claim me before I reach my destination.

Maura, I do not do this for you. I do not make you responsible for my actions. Only I am that. But I hope your spirits have guided me here. I hope that you approve of the choices I have made.

I hope that Halas is close.

Edited by: Dellerys at: 8/23/03 12:55 am

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