Cardiff of the Tuatha’an, Novice
Written By: Mark
Created: March, 2010
Curriculum Vitae
- Gender: F
- Hometown: Other, She’s been all over :)
Channeling Information
- Elemental Strengths (strong to weak): Water, Spirit, Air, Earth, Fire
Biography
My first nineteen years were a blur of caravans, bright cotton shirts, nonviolence, seeds and berries—you know, exciting things like that.
You’re familiar with us Tuatha’an, yes? Our people go by any number of names: Tinkers, Traveling People, Lost Ones. We journey across the Westlands making home of forest and fen alike, residing in both thicketed plains and the craggy faces of towering bluffs. We live off the land, making camp in any number of locales before eating our share and, eventually, moving on. It’s what we do. It’s how we live, plain and simple.
And I know what you’re thinking. You probably feel like we’re a bit on the odd side, that we’re maybe a couple of trees short of a stedding. You think we’re pickpockets or cowards, perhaps. Right, well, good on you. So does everyone else. Move along. Truth be told, I don’t much care about these one-note designations. Compared to the Way of the Leaf and our quest for the song, the judgments of blind men don’t really register.
But still, I can’t say I never wondered. It was a passing fancy, a rare impulse that sprung up from deep within me at the most unexpected of times. A desire to be part of the world, rather than a mere spectator to it. I’m not even sure if that articulates what I felt. Was it so bad to want to do, rather than be done to? To act rather than always be the one acted upon? My people seemed to think so. I was unsure.
It was our search for the song that was lost which carried us to Kandor, actually, and which led to where I am now. I should recognize the atrocities this place portended as soon as we entered this cursed wasteland. Snowstorms this late in spring? Oh, Light. My, the Borderlands are lovely pace, yes? I think I’d sooner go rolling with a Fade than return to this horrid pit, truth be told.
Anyway, dusk was just settling as Father and brothers were off foraging for what edible mugworts and bracken might linger beneath the snow cover. I was with my sisters and Mother keeping our pitiful cookfire alight, wishing I were on some beach in Tear, when I heard the thunderclaps. Dead echoes in the cold, barren air. We shared glances, quick shots of fear, before turning back to the flames. Nothing of importance, surely, or so we foolishly thought until a low-running breeze swept through camp and the flames petered out to nothing.
The shouts then followed.
A wave of our men came running from over the nearest hill, screaming and shouting their terror, and chaos broke out over camp. Bursts of fire arced through the grey sky and the thunderclaps increased in both number and volume. And behind our men, he stood: a single figure cresting the hill and pressing through the snow. Something about his staggering gait and the tangles of dark hair that framed his face spoke to his madness. I didn’t need to see the lightning dancing from his fingertips to recognize the danger inherent in him.
Now, the Way of the Leaf does not permit violence in the defence of one’s life, but it says nothing about running like mad when the situation warrants it—and if any situation ever called for running, Light, this one took the cake.
“For the treeline!” one of our men cried before turning back to stare down the attacker, a bright purple spec against the madman’s sprawling blackness. “Hurry!”
The madman laughed at this sacrifice as he threw a ball of fire.
Gripping my skirts, I bolted from camp, darting past wagon and packhorse alike as I sprinted toward the treeline. Turning my head over my shoulder, I glimpsed the man brandishing his hand as one of the caravans went up in flames.
Treeline, I thought, panting. Treeline, treeline, treeline.
I’m not sure if I can convey that odd mixture of terror and relief as I passed into the forest, watching the sky blaze overhead as the madman launched another assault. Who was he? Why was he doing this? As if to answer these questions, I could hear his wailing cry as my people sank into the cover of the trees: “Swear to me, Traveling People! Your trees and leaves cannot save you! The Dragon is Reborn!”
The forest was a ghostly mix of bodies, scratching branches and darkness. I could see little but my breath silvering before my face. Then, at once, I gave an oomph as my body collided with that of another and we went tumbling into the snow.
“Cardiff?” a voice sobbed through the darkness. I recognized it to be that of Len, the youngest of my six siblings. “Where is everyone?”
Instead of answering, I pulled him close. His tears ran hot against my frigid arms. There we spent the night, shuddering and weeping and exchange scarce whispers. My ears occasionally caught sounds in the nearby undergrowth, but I could not steel myself to look. More thunderclaps and echoes raged in the sky above, but I could not understand. The sounds were too close to one another. The madman could not be calling forth all of these, could he?
The answer was given by dawn. As the noises died away to nothingness, Len and I ventured from our hiding place, our bodies convulsing for either fear or the cold. Both, likely. As we stepped out through the snow into the blue dawn, my eyes fell upon the scorched remains of our wagons and the felled bodies of our band’s horses. I flinched. The air carried a stench unlike any I’d previously experienced, one of kindle and burnt flesh and—and something else I cannot explain. Something simpler yet infinitely more complex. The air stunk of something primal.
And as my people ventured alongside us from the trees, our collective gaze fell upon the center of the camp where the madman kneeled between the figures of two red-garbed women. Their shawls and ageless gazes said enough. Though no ropes bound the man, he remained motionless.
Four dead. Many others injured. Our supplies reduced to cinders. In the days to follow, these women remained with our people and helped us rebuild in the wake of the False Dragon’s attack. In payment, they administered a test on all the women in search of the ability to use that… that gift of theirs. That same gift the man had wielded against our band. The One Power.
I won’t even waste my breath by telling you the outcome of my test. You know.
And even as the heartbreak of leaving beside my parents and sisters and brothers had its hold on me, that impulse flickered up again. To be a participant in the world rather than an observer. To be more than a leaf drifting slowly from the most distant bowers.
With a tearful goodbye like some tawdry old cliché, I left. Along with the sisters, the bound madman and the few of my people selected for training, I left. Gone. Like that.
And now—and now, we are gone from the cold, from those hideous Borderlands and that hanging stench. Now, as I pass through the cobbled streets of Tar Valon, my eyes never stray from that white spectacle in the distance, that tall sight of beauty and of wonder. I know without thinking or speaking the words aloud what this place is. As its arches and parapets stretch into the clouds, I know what this place will become to me. A grin cracks across my cold cheeks.
My first home awaits.
Writing History
- It Begins – individual role-play
- To Learn of Embracing – Embracing Lesson taught by Accepted Sorcha
