The next day I'd spent completely holed up in the library, reading books on things that might be of interest for the mission while thinking about my home country for the first time in half a decade. I thought about the people who actually cared for me other than my brothers while I was there, and I thought about how loving my mother used to be before she married Loryian. I told her he'd be the death of her, but she refused to listen.
Now she's laying dead, buried in the ground next to the man who led her there. You never did listen to me after you fell in love with that devil. It had been a complete contrast to how she used to listen to me whenever I told her something that my instinct had told me.
After him, she'd always come up with excuses: 'I'm going deaf, could you repeat that?', 'It's just a fickle of your imagination dear', 'This is an adult’s worries. A child wouldn't understand the complexities of such things' and a load of other crap.
I'd always go crying to my brother about it, and he'd hug me and say 'Mother's become delusional. Your instinct has always been right' and he'd comfort me until I stopped crying. I smiled at the memory.
Sometimes, I recalled with a wince, when I'd hug him real tight, his face would contort in pain as his wounds from the most recent whipping would groan under the pressure of a surprisingly strong hug from a child. I'd ask what's wrong, and he'd never reply, instead always commenting on my amazing strength. It always made me completely forget about his expression from before and made me smile proudly at his praise. I suppose that should've been one of the many raised red flags that had been flying over my head. I thought bitterly, trying to continue reading the book I had in front of me, titled Everything You Need to Know About the Unspoken. I'd stumbled upon it while searching for books that might be useful and this tattered, ancient book had caught my attention from the corner of my eye.
But going back to reading was useless at the current time, and I laid down on the floor where I was, looking at the high ceiling and contemplating what else had gone over my usually attentive head when I was in my brother's presence. Everything was always a wonderland around him, as he always knew what to say to distract me from certain topics and how to avoid others. He knew what to say and when to say it, having been the only one constantly at my side whenever he could. And thinking about this had made me remember ka pyto [informal, loving version of my Father, like my papa, or daddy] as well.
When he was alive, he'd surprisingly been more attentive than my mother, which was a shock to the whole household and clan since that was a hard thing to do with how closely my mother watched her only daughter. I had been the only female born in a household of sons and the main family of 5 children, and was the youngest. She had tried her hardest at first to hide that I was her most favoured but all my brothers - just a week before my first birthday - had, with a loving smile in my direction from what ka pyto had told me later on, told her to stop trying since it was way too obvious. She'd chuckled and kissed each of them on the head in turn, telling them they're all her children and before giving me the biggest smooch on the cheek had said "And I love you all equally. But this child, she's the first one to have been a girl and it's easier for a woman to connect to another woman you know?"
Ka pyto then had told me how they'd all laughed, me and mother included, and we had spent the rest of the 3 days of the week together as a family. All my brothers had taken days off work to spend those days with their little darling sister, and that was the last days we'd spent together as a whole family. When I was one, my two oldest brothers, Mythro and Karia, had gone together on a mission two months before my second birthday only to never return. They'd gotten news that their bodies were found, bloody and beaten, just outside the reaches of our family property on my birthday. They had tried to keep up the happy mood for my sake, but I remember (even at the tender age of two) telling all of them they didn't have to force themselves.
Mother and pyto had been surprised while my other two brothers looked at me with a sad smile. I'd asked yark lorem [dearest brother] about the incident years later and he said that he and my other brother had both thought "How proud they'd be if they saw you and knew how clever and understanding you are at only two."
A year later, at three I was supposed to start my training, just like the rest of the nobility in Lyncian culture, but being the overprotective brother he was, Qira challenged the Daxut Elder to a duel, with the proposition that "If I win, she won't have to endure that for the rest of her life unless she wishes to train herself." They signed the contract in blood, making it absolute. The opposition was that if the Elder won, I'd have to train harder than anyone else.
The latter wasn't hard to do, they'd quickly realised, as I had turned out to be not only their prodigy child, but also a genius, though rebellious as hell. The fight was even for the most part, and Qira had nearly beaten the Elder but someone had interfered with the match. They killed my brother, and pinned it as a win for the Elder, but he marked the match as unfinished in the records, so with the battle incomplete, I trained like any normal child with some leniency in memory of my brother. The Elder died the week after, and after a thorough examination, they'd found out that he had sustained incredible amounts of damage from Qira, and the internal injuries had been what killed him, not old age.
Though marked unfinished, everyone realised the Unbeaten, as had been his reputation, would have actually lost against my brother. And not because of old age, but because of a substantial gap and difference in their abilities.
My brother had later been given the funeral and burial of a hero, the whole Daxut Clan knowing he would have become one had someone not interfered. They'd banished the one who had, not only because he'd killed a future hero, but also because the fact that he did meant not only interference with the duel, which was prohibited by the ancient rite and the law of the Moon Goddess, but also because it meant lack of faith in the Elder, the one person everyone in the clan looked up to and respected without question.
That had left me behind with yark lorem and mother, and decades later had left only me and yark lorem behind to fend for ourselves in an increasingly difficult household with one hell of an abusive stepfather and a neglectful mother who'd pretty much become a ghost in our life.
I sighed and closed my eyes, putting an arm over them, trying to shield them from seeing the things I've seen. It's useless and you know it. A spiteful little voice said in my head. In these kinds of situations, it seemed like everything within myself had gone quiet. Sarcasm went to sleep, snarkiness went on holiday and anything humorous had stepped out to go entertain someone else.
Once you step in, you can't leave until you've lived through it again, you know? Something dark within me commented. I sighed again and resigned to my fate, knowing that it was just another way of telling myself to just accept the past and stop trying to go back to when I was one, before ka pyto, Qira, Mythro, yark lorem and Karia died. A time when ka myta [informal, loving way of saying my Mother, like my mama, or mummy] paid attention to my warnings and doted on her one and only daughter. Before he came when I was 65, and ruined what was left of my family to a point where he'd broken me enough to kill them both after he'd stepped a step too far and whipped yark lorem to death, simply for defending me and trying to keep me from being used as a weapon of murder for his sick and twisted ambitions.
He never loved you, ka myta, but you never did listen to me after you fell in love with him. He used your love to get higher on the social ladder, and then started using the prodigy of the clan for his own means since he was now a part of our so-called 'family'. He used me right under your nose, and you did nothing. So can you really blame me, ka myta?
After everything had been said and done, I'd buried Lycan under his favourite tree in our garden, and moved the bodies of Mythro and Karia to rest with him, not really being able to do the same with Qira who'd been buried in the Tariota Hajore Millio [Place of the Brave and Faithful is the literal translation but because it's a cemetery it's used more to mean 'place heroes lie], along with the Elder. That was one grave I couldn't disturb unfortunately.
Mother's and Loryian's bodies had been burnt by me, and I'd buried their ashes in a small hole out in the middle of the forest on the Devil's Ground. He had been her downfall to hell, and that's where they were both buried. The devil and the fallen one.
Our household had fallen into a state of mourning for the next year, and that was for more than one reason:
1) All but one of the family members from the main family had died
2) They'd lost a great hostess to the hands of a devil (during this year, everyone had also been praying for the Moon Goddess to forgive all her sins and accept her into the after-death)
3) And they'd lost the heir to the household, me, as I'd gone into seclusion and then disappeared shortly after the mandatory 3 months of mourning.
I had stayed to watch what else had happened for the rest of that year before realising there was nothing left for me in that house, and left for the other continents across the world that we'd stayed away from for so long. It was an unspoken taboo within our culture, which had made it the perfect place to disappear to.
Despite having decided, and actually doing so, to send a letter back to tell them where I was, and that I'd never come back, they had replied by saying I'm the only true heir and that the household shall not have another host or hostess until my death.
Though the sentiments had warmed my heart, as they still do I realised with a smile, it was too hard for me to go back there again and I never did.
I opened my eyes and stood up, getting a move on around the place and starting my research on probable useful things once again to try and distract me from entertaining the idea of going back there. It's been long enough. The wounds have healed, despite the massive scar they've left behind. I told myself. Why not go back? But I shook my head and picked up my next book of interest: The History of the Verdant Wave.
The idea was that if we knew where the religion came from, along with the why Ixis think they're the chosen ones, I could find a root cause and then a solution for the whole mess we're in.
And for the rest of the day, I'd spent it shifting between memories that came flooding back and researching things of interest, trying to keep my mind from taking yet another dip into another part of the memory pool. After the main nostalgic breakdown I'd had, it was a bit easier to focus on the task I'd given myself, the huge bulk of the reason why I'd decided to stay away from thinking of anything involving my homeland gone.
But here and there little snippets of an old life would appear, and I'd entertain them before going back to work. And so, the supposedly 'relaxing' day had ended up flying by, drowned in books and memories of days gone.
This story was written from the perspective of one of my D&D characters. As part of the campaign, she had to do a lot of research, so she just spent a day in the library. I wrote this as a way to try and go in depth with her history and he motives for getting to where she did.
