Day 1- Afterlife/Reunuion
Daily Writing Challenge 2021 Day 1- Afterlife/Renuion(doing both)
This is a more in-depth and tangential version of this story here.
Suggested listening
As she stepped through the portal to the shadowlands, Laenne instantly started hearing her own mind speaking to her. While her companions started speaking about the procedure and started to unpack the gear for where they would get set up, she had just started going through the motions as her medical kit and all of her gear was being neatly laid out. A concerned look comes over her friend’s face as he looks at her. The pained expression on her face told all and he walked over to lay a hand on her arm, speaking with a calm tone, “Laenne, you really don’t need to be here. As much as your help is appreciated, and would benefit us, I wouldn’t want it to cause you too much harm to be here.” Breaking out of the looping mantra she was repeating in her head, she looks at him and shakes her head, “No, I’m fine. I will get it together. I won’t even see them, this will be fine, I promise. I won’t even have any idea who they are if I do since I’ve never actually seen them before. Or at least I haven’t for my father. And my mom was just a flash. It really will be fine. I’ll be fine.” It was rather obvious that she was just saying this to lie to herself , doing everything to try and convince herself that it was true.
Days had passed and she kept true to her word and everything seemed to be going alright as she would take care of a number of the injured who were coming into the mobile clinic that they had set up. She was working on the living, so it was all alright in her mind. That was until the day that her friend had cautiously gone to her to ask her to go to a different outpost. This time the fear was apparent in his eyes as he went up to her and spoke with a nervousness that he didn’t really have all that often. His voice was firm, like a professional but he was very obviously worried about the consequences. Her partner’s husband looked at her and said, “I’m going to have to send you out into the actual shadowlands. Into one of the afterlives out there. You are my most experienced medic, and your ability to heal in different methods is needed now. If you would prefer not to go, just in case, I understand and can send someone else.”
Laenne felt her heart drop and she repeated the same lie she had in times past. Doing it more to try and convince herself than anything else. “I’m fine, really. I’ll be fine. I won’t know who they are. I have never seen them. I won’t know who they are.” Looks at him with a rather skeptical look in her eyes, she repeats the mantra, “I’ll be fine. Really. I’ll be fine.” Knowing full well she was not, in fact, fine but knowing that she won’t ever let him send anyone else, Arit had just decided that he would indulge her insistence and sent her on her way to Ardenweald, and trust that she would let him know if there were any problems
Just like before, things had started off fine and she had kept to her word that things would be fine, until things weren’t. She had noticed day after day a few of the people in the wild hunt staring at her from time to time and then as soon as she would look they would go back to whatever they were doing until about a week in and one of them finally approached her. “We have someone who really needs to -'' Interrupting him as she spoke, Laenne shook her head quickly, “No, I can’t. I can’t. All I am here to do is be a healer. I am just here to heal, I can’t see anyone.” Feeling the tears welling in her eyes, the look of pleading made the watcher take a step back and eventually retreat, but the next day they had returned with even more insistence. Telling her that it wasn’t just to heal, that there was a reason she was sent here, that of all the afterlives she could have gone to, it was Ardenweald and not any of the other afterlives.
Reluctantly walking on with them, she leaves her post, letting the others know that she was taking a rather long break and departing to destinations unknown. The entire trek felt like she was walking into her own afterlife Not to mention her thoughts racing through her head, doing her best to try and figure out how they would have known who she was and hoping it was just one huge mistake until they finally reached their destination. Then she knew without a doubt that this was the place that she needed to be.
Looking at her mom, it was as if she was gazing into a mirror. She stood there for what seemed like an eternity feeling like if she moved, something would break in the space-time continuum. Then as the huntsmen stood on either side of her, they had taken her by the arms and lifted her off of the ground and forced her closer to her parents. Then as the woman had opened her mouth, she had repeated Laenne’s same mantra about how she felt like they would never find each other. That there was no way to know Laenne was their daughter until the watchmen came to her.
Standing in front of the older couple, and not able to talk, her gaze drifts from one to the other and back again while they just sit there talking at her. Her eyes drifted back to her father from time to time as they spoke, not able to really grasp the impact of looking at him. Knowing what it meant for him to have a blue glow to his eyes, then finally after several longer glances in his direction, the pair finally ceases their talking at her and frowns at her, “We both know this is probably not exactly the reunion that you were hoping for, or maybe even that you never actually wanted this, but we needed to see you and see what you grew up to be and who you were. We loved you, even if we never really met.” Sighing she shakes her head, murmuring under her breath, “Obviously you guys were the only ones who ever had. I never knew any of my family, and I never really had anywhere that really felt like ‘home’ to me. Do you know what that does to a person. To know that your family never once tried to find you?” The look they gave each other was a mix of relief and like they were trying to hold things back and she couldn’t help but yell, “What are you not telling me?” Again looking at each other, the fear of what might happen makes them stop before she literally screams at them, “Tell me, now. I think you owe me that much!” Then bursting out into tears, her father shouted, “It’s a good thing they never found you. They killed me because I wasn’t sin’dorei. That’s why you’re an orphan. They killed me, and forced your mom to be a pregnant woman on the run!”
Without a second thought, the dancer leaped to her feet and fled the area before she burst out into tears, or worse. Feeling like she had a dagger plunged into her heart, she couldn’t even think of anything besides her pain.
@daily-writing-challenge @river-mist(for arit mentions)