Beginnings

I am on vacation. Obviously, as I said before, this was written before and thus there should be no problem updating it. However.

I am on vacation.

Which apparently means I have paint splattered up to my elbows and am drinking every night and watching whatever I please and doing as I please. It's recharge time, as I haven't had vacation since back when Partners began. Tonight I feel myself craving to write and before I go at Aftermath, I figured I best update Begninnings, as I've already got it written up for a few more chapters.

Beginnings is the only story that I've ever read before I update and then after I update, searching for errors. Any other mistakes made during writing can be dismissed as the character's point of view and I haven't that option when writing Una. He is highly observant, makes comments on everything and yes, can be entirely and wholey facinating when you get him talking.

Try being all those things.

Reviews would make me feel much better, but I update nonetheless. Most especially for Una.

Read, Review and Enjoy.






The group was kind to me, despite labelling me as daemon. Hand mirrors were not common at the time and so I had no idea why they called me such a thing, what about my looks, my existence made them think that I was a daemon. Or. What a daemon was in the first place.

We had heard about shadows and strange creatures in the dark but never had they been called daemon, had they been labelled at all. Thus I had no idea what they called me, though in my gut I knew it was a bad word. A dirty word.

I thought it was me, my village, my existence was a lie. That we were all daemon that entire time.

I could not understand at the time the changes that I was going through. There were no looking glasses at the time, water could show a man his reflection but not the colour of his eyes, not the small amount of changes that I was going through. My hair, I now know, was no longer the dark brown, through and through. At the base of my scalp, where neck met skull, was a patch of blond hair, beginning to grow. Likely had been growing for some time. My eyes were definitely new, around the pupil, that small black dot that everyone has, was purple. Creeping into the brown of my irises.

As it was, I healed slowly that first time. My body healed what was broken, what absolutely had to be healed. But the shoulder would not heal for a good long time and aches to this day. On and off, but more so after I had slept for a century or two. There were lacerations up and down my body. Bruising that seemed to last forever.

And my wrists were torn. Limp and all but useless. I could walk myself along but could not carry anything on my shoulders and could hold nothing for more than a few minutes. I would tremble when I fed myself, but Noran made me eat and fend for myself as best I could. Strengthen my muscles once more.

Noshern, the healer, kept a constant eye on me, walking beside me always. Several times a day the healer would insist he check my forehead for heat. While I overheated easily, I was still able to keep up with the others. By the third day, the day when we met up with the Delune, I was tired of walking and was getting warmer by the day.

Noran turned me over to the Delune leader, but it would not be the last time I saw Noran. He would join me at Vera’s temple three months later.

The Delune leader was a cold man, one who had little interest in caring for me and while travelling with them my wounds went untended. I grew warmer and thought I would be sick every day, at least three times a day. The boys my age pushed me around, the girls my age called me whore and slut behind their hands. The men.

Well the leader made it very clear he didn’t care about me and come night time. I was too tired to fend them off. I had no strength left with which to defend myself. At least four men, one night, hurt me and they visited almost every night. My body reacted the same as it had to those first two. I reacted the same. I blamed myself, blamed my body for acting as if I enjoyed it even though I didn’t.

For a month I suffered this treatment, until I was too delirious to walk. Then all of a sudden we were magically at Vera’s.

The walk there, from where Noran traded me off, is about two weeks travel, I’ve measured it out time and again, trying to figure out what happened, what had caused the lag. Delirious, wounds infected, feverish and abused, I had not been aware of my surroundings.

The Delune had me dragged from the cart they had carried me in for the last two days and dropped me at the feet of a woman. Who looked down at me with disgust and distaste.

“Delune, I don’t want it. Take it away.”

“Noran sends this. Filth to you. Daemon,” Delune spat to the side, “don’t get free rides from me.”

“Daemon?” The woman’s voice had an odd lilt to it, a different way of speaking than the rest of the world, “interesting.” she poked at me with a foot and rolled my limp form onto my back. I sprawled in the sun and prayed. That she would take that foot and crush my windpipe. Thusly putting me out of my misery, hopefully for good. “Hmm. Not very good condition. I’ll give you three bronze for him.”

“He ate more than three bronze worth.”

“Not by much, by the looks of him. Nothing but skin and bone. Five bronze.”

“Ten.”

“Six.”

“Nine.”

“Seven.”

“Fine. Seven.”

I heard the tinkle of coins changing hands. I tried to pay attention but my heart was beating in an odd fashion. My skin tingled and was cooled by a light wind fluttering through the place where we were.

“Erit, take him.”

“As you will, my lady,” soft but strong hands pulled me up and carried me out of the cool air.

I was too out of it to be able to remark on which way we went, how we travelled or which bathing room we went into. The hands lowered me into a shallow bath and I was scrubbed until my wounds reopened. The water ran dark from dust and dirt, then from blood. The water was emptied and more poured directly over me. By the time they scrubbed me the second time, she had joined us.

“By Mother and all that is gracious and good in the world. Look at what has happened to this poor boy,” She snapped out, “surely Noran did not send him to me in this condition.”

“He burns with fever.”

“Oh, I know why he burns and no amount of treatment will help him. That one on his back, it is festering. Pull him out and dry him, pat him dry. Then see about putting him into the sick bed in my inner rooms. I will tend him myself. Quickly now, before he begins slipping out of consciousness.”

And I was already slipping. The world slid and moved in a fluid and disgusting manner. I could feel myself being dried very carefully, though each touch of the cloth was too harsh, it rasped at my skin and only fired my fever. I dimly recall being moved from the bathing room and I must have been moved to Vera’s room for that is where she commanded I be taken. I do remember being set on the cool stone and feeling the wonderful sensation of hot against icy cold. For the briefest of moments, the stone cooled me enough to make me lucid.

The fire that had begun in my home village boiled through my veins. For six days and nights my skin burned and fever wasted away the little flesh that was left on my bones. I had nightmares of my family. Of my village. I relived my rape over and over. Sometimes my family watched from a distance, blood flowing from where their eyes had been. My sister’s throat was slit, the child on her hip was broken and battered. The village burned in the background, a reflection of the fire that threatened to consume me.

But I held on.

I dreamed of the gods.

I dreamed of standing before Mother, deep within her body. A great white ethreal form that spread before me. The shape of a woman, of every woman in the world and yet none of them. Her dress fed the world at her feet, her hair grew into the heavens above. Her hands were bound in the flesh of the earth, in the body that was hers. Not imprisoned, but simply bound to her body as a soul is bound to any other body.

At her feet I kneeled and begged her forgiveness and to me she came, gathering her form to that of a woman, of large breasts and wide hips, of a mother she was old enough, perhaps, to bear children, but besides being old enough to have children I could tell no age. She was beyond age. Her hair was of every colour. Eyes all of black. And she smiled kindly upon me and placed a hand atop my head.

“Every child of mine I love and adore and you are an acceptation to the rule. You have the will to survive. The ability to lead. The mind to learn, the body to continue on in. You shall be perfect in all but one way.”

“What way?”

“Tell me. What way would you be incomplete, child?”

“I need to protect myself, I need to live.”

“Then,” she wrapped her strong arms around me and pulled me to my feet, “live. For now and forever. But there is something I need from you. For you cannot be perfect. Like unto the gods you shall be. No draw in your breath. And live.”

“Breath.”

I gasped back to life on the third day. Rallied, only to fall back into a feverish state. What happened afterwards, I have no recollection. Fear was my constant companion, I knew that, nightmares and daemons. I cried out for my mother in my fevered state and begged them to stop. Begged them all to stop, stop hurting me, stop abusing me. Just stop.

Vera stayed by my side constantly and in later years she would explain to me what I had said in my fever, what I had done. How I had cried like child.

When I came to on the sixth day, the room I was in smelled like a sick room. Unwashed sheets, the smell of old sweat, diseased flesh and my own urine had penetrated the room. My first thought was the overwhelming smell of myself. My second thought was to wash myself, the feeling of sweat and dirt of just being unclean clung to me. It was a time when washing was not what one did wantonly. Washing was dangerous, one could catch a cold and die very easily from a simple bath. But I so craved to scrub my flesh clean despite having been washed so shortly before.

Upon a slab of stone I lay. A thin sheet between myself and the unforgiving bed. Atop my form was a sheet as much as thin as the one under me. I turned my head towards the light source and found that there was an open door whose breeze would reach me at odd times, as if the door did not reach directly outside, but into a breezy area. Beside the door sat a woman, head back and to the side, against the stone wall. Her eyes were closed, face slacken and a book teetered precariously from her long fingers.

She was beautiful. Even in soiled clothing, even with the large smudges under her eyes and her silken black hair sticking out in odd places from the tight bun she had placed it in. There were bruises on her bared arms, four lines exactly the size of my fingers. Her clothing had never been rich, but had been the clothing that a servant might wear. Or. A whore, now that I think about it.

A tightly laced corset, that pulled in her well shaped breasts and yet somehow kept them contained without spilling them over the unforgiving fabric of a corset. Her skirts were of a coarse fabric that was stained and had originally been some brown colour but was so faded from time and use. While tending me, Vera had run her dirtied hands over her tied back hair and rubbed and cleaned them on her skirts. She, and only she, had tended to me while I was sick, never leaving my side.

When I finally settled down, sometime in the sixth night, Vera had sat down in the chair and begun reading, to engage herself but stay close enough that she could be at my side in a moment, should anything go wrong. She claims that she fell asleep some few moments before I awoke.

There are very few things that Vera will not admit to. She will never admit where she was born (a fact that I have debated with many scholars) how old she is (by the time I was born she was old. Which led me to believe, for the longest time, that she was over a hundred thousand years at that time. But the world had not existed long enough) that she, I and Harella-shay are technically brother and sisters (a fact that somehow disturbs us immortals but has no effect on the gods) and that she snores. The first two facts I can not be certain of. The second to last has been the source of many debates, though it is purely by name that we are related. Mother born, are we three, Harella-shay (first born) Vera and then myself. The last.

Just as I blinked, wondering who this mad woman was, I heard the smallest squeak followed before a low, quiet snore. When I opened my eyes, Vera was still asleep. I counted my heartbeat, a thunderous sound to my own ears, one, two, three… four… and Vera took in a sudden breath and her eyes fluttered open. Her eyes were the first indication that she was not some mortal woman.

Red, red the colour of blood, red, the shade of the Mountain line tens of thousands of years later. Red so bright and ripe I swore I could smell strawberries, overripe but still oh so sweet. Her eyes moved from the wall across from her, to the bed and then, in startling realisation, to me.

Vera’s mouth dropped open when she met my eyes. She dropped her book and moved towards me with a feline grace like that of no man or woman I had ever seen. Vera bent at the knee to bring herself closer to me. Eyes roved over my face and then fumbled for the sheet as if not believing what she saw. Her fingers were cool compared to my still warm flesh, a relief to aching skin. That same relief then turned to pain as Vera prodded at wounds.

“Oh, thank Mother and the gods,” Vera whispered, “still hurt, but alive and. Full and healthy. No deformities.”

“What. Happened?” my voice cracked, my throat hurt with each breath. Between my eyes was a throbbing pain and everything seemed too loud. The small doorway that let in light seemed to make the entire room so bright, so full of light and sensation that it was nearly too much for my senses.

“Small breaths and easy,” Vera murmured, moving away and to the door where she called for a servant. She returned to my side a moment alter and set a hand, not on me, but on the stone by my shoulder, “you, my dear boy, have just survived a fever that has killed hundreds before you. You are very special. Mother must have grand plans for you.”


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