Summary: Enough is enough.
Tags: Mentions rape, Alludes to Shianni’s rape
Numbness creeps in, the elven coping mechanism for the inevitable death one experiences simply through the unfortunate act of existence. It overtakes in subtle ways, a learned complacency, a shrug with an “oh well, maybe they shouldn’t have angered the shems.” This, too, is tradition, accepted with heavy heart for the good of the people, much like the beatings, the rapes and the bastard children thus produced.
Erenya stares down in horror at a half-naked Shianni, Nelaros’ corpse outside in the entry hall. She reflects on how only hours before, she overheard children in the alienage claim not to know any elven heroes. Her mother, she recalls how the shemlen men killed her for raising her sword to them, how Erenya ran back to her father with blood on her clothes. Her father’s words of, “She invited trouble in with that blade. I knew this would happen eventually.” How bitter those words tasted as she swallowed them down, rearranged with every death that entered into her young life.
Her father, for whom she conceded into tradition, gave into the ghastly customs that made up life at the alienage, defined only by the point of her ears.
Erenya doesn’t shed tears for Shianni, who spills anger down her cheeks as she seeks to redress herself without rising off the floor. No, what boils inside Erenya comes thick and bitter, a grueling discontent that refuses to quell, one she fought hard to ignore, to pretend that she owns the gentler nature for which her kind is known.
Enough, it screeches within her, primal, years of grief for her people bubbling out of her throat in a guttural scream. No more.
Erenya, never one for tradition, prepares for war.
