I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
Theshe-elf was the spitting image of anything and everything bitter, yet shecould not say she had had the privilege to truly live. Her kind had always beenon the run, dissuaded time and time again to pick up arms and fight theiroppressors, thereby forced to live in conditions of uncertainty. Emra had attempted to resist in her youth, or at the very least, had beenstubborn enough to speak against each effort to pick up what little belongings they had and carry alongas soon as the tides grew tense. Those were strained times; she’d been born at the end of a war, a warthat was not their own, and for which they had paid all the same. They had always been the bystander, and more often thevictim than they were not. Clans of shem’len insisted on distinguishing themselves,but she could not tell them apart. Their crimes were one and the same.
Ithad taken many years for her to ease into the obedience she did notquestion, for the good of the clan. Her fighting days would come, she promisedherself in earnest, and it would not serve to challenge the Keeper by conductingherself as the child of old. She bore her vallaslin now, an adult to her clan,a recognised hunter and protector of her kinfolk; but also an abandoned child,discarded by a mother best erased from their history altogether. She wasresentful of the mother name she bore, as was their custom, and swore a daywould come where she would be known otherwise. Her wishes had been fulfilled,though it was not in the manner she would have hoped for.
❝ What of those who have onlyknown bitterness? ❞ She returns sharply. It was not to sayEmra had never known tender hand or tender heart, but always she had borne something resentful inward. ❝ Would you say a child whohasn’t yet reached their fifth year has truly lived? ❞
Itwas nigh impossible to tell whether she jested, a chuckle lumped inside herthroat, or whether she posed this query gravely, triggered by the very subjectof conversation – bitterness. She could easily see herself as such child,having seen the end of the ravages of the war, the heightened fear of kindred, and the tales hey recounted in justification.Her innate desire to fight back, to reclaim the history that had been snatchedfrom their fingertips. There was even a time when she resented her lack ofmagical force, bearing knowledge of her father’s possession of the unique traitthat likened them to their members of old. Her weak mother had tainted herblood, no doubt about it. Her resentment gave way in time to a detachmenttowards her people’s preoccupation with their ancestors. It was clear to herthat they were too focused on what they lacked, on protecting themselves fromfurther harm, condemning themselves to a life on the run, more than anything else. The outside world was perhaps one thing she had enjoyed in the midst of their plight; she did not mindthe nature she courted. Animals were far better companions than the shem’lenthey would find should they come to share their world.
