enmuni

Realms of Sun & Shadow

If you are still accepting, I might try to join. Though I am not sure of what to be.

@Theyra

Well, well, well. Look who's followed me here!

Realms of Sun & Shadow

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The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven
_{Interacting with @Dark Light’s Aliseth & @The Muse’s Zephyros}

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As Aliseth turned away to whisper, Nesna’s ears involuntarily picked up as she overheard the conversation in crystal clarity. At the message of the Princess’ disappearance, Nesna’s eyes clearly widened, while her mouth shrunk from her neutral, if slightly nervous expression, into a tight-lipped little frown. She snapped her head up from her averted gazing at the ground and looked straight at Aliseth, at last with a clearly-discernible expression: wide-eyed concern. She slowly lifted her hand to her mouth as he spoke and swallowed as he concluded his orders.

“Of course, I comple—” Nesna began. She stopped and entirely froze in place as soon as Zephyros contested Aliseth, and looked up towards them. Although her eyes showed no clear movement, she did cock her head slightly in the direction of whoever was speaking. As they both fixed their eyes on her, she subtly pulled back, seeming as if she was slowly making herself look smaller before them. Her eyes slowly settled back into their melancholic, tired expression as she looked between them, still evidently unsure whose orders she was meant to ultimately be following. Once it seemed the two had at last come to a consensus on what to do with her, she hesitantly began to follow their orders. At Aliseth’s prompting regarding weapons, she patted her hips as if looking for something, and then responded once he had concluded his orders.

“No, I suppose not,” she responded. Lifting her head as if remembering something, she then held her hands up, close to her chest, “Oh, yes, my apologies. I do have a dagger—a knife, rather—of the sort one might use for hunting. It must be somewhere in my bags. I had forgotten that I had stowed it, anticipating that I would soon arrive here. If it would assuage any, or at least, some concerns, I can leave my belongings somewhere and collect them later. Please, let me assure you both that I take no offence to such precautions. I am, after all, well aware of what it is that you are burdened with seeing. If there is anything else that might help reduce your trouble, please, do not hesitate to ask me to do so. I intend to comply in every way.”

As she spoke, Nesna clasped her hands together in front of her chest, tilted her head, and smiled softly, while maintaining her otherwise dreary, tired expressions. She clicked her tongue and then sighed, opening her mouth wider.

“That is to say, if a muzzle would help as well, I will don it voluntarily.”

Realizing what she had said, Nesna sighed again as her lips stretched into a thin, tight-lipped frown.

Realms of Sun & Shadow

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The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven
_{Interacting with @Dark Light’s Aliseth & @The Muse’s Zephyros}

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Nesna froze for a moment as it seemed two separate guards yelled over one another, as if there had been no coordination whatsoever. She tried to hide her confusion until the less intense of the two repeated what they both had said—or rather, attempted to say. Quickly, Nesna cleared her throat and unclamped her cloak so as to make her following movements more apparent. Moving into a full curtsy, Nesna spoke. As she did so, she attempted to keep her mouth from opening too wide and showing any amount of her teeth. Her tone was flat and steady, though not in such a way as to imply that she was particularly calm so much as she was speaking in a well-rehearsed manner, well-accustomed to potentially less-than-friendly questionings.

“Yes, of course. My apologies for the delay in my resp—”

Nesna interrupted herself to steady her stance, having been quickly reminded that she had not entered such a pose since before she had transformed. Backtracking into a smaller, more polite curtsy, Nesna continued with her head sympathetically tilted and a melancholic little smile on her lips, “Please call me Nesna. I have come here from the east of Lunaris so that I may, in some manner, contribute to this haven.”

Fully rising from her curtsy and returning her gloved hands to be clearly in front of her and unarmed, Nesna then added, “I grant you that I may not seem as if I might be of much use at all here, and I fully appreciate your apprehension upon seeing me. If there was anything that could be done about this nonsense you see before you, I assure you that I would have done so already. But alas, this is my lot in life, and I only ask that you grant me the privilege of making the best of it. I am no sage, but I am eager to continue learning magic. Having done my best to continue to learn despite this affliction, I intend to do so here as well. Be it work as a scribe or a maid that you ask of me, I wish only that I be afforded sanctuary here and allowed to contribute as best as I am able. That is to say, my intentions are to find sanctuary in Dawnhaven and be of whatever use can be found for me.”

As she spoke, her attempt at a smile faded, leaving only the melancholic position of her eyes behind. With no pupils or irises—only four pools of softly-glowing lavender—it was difficult to tell what, if anything, she might have been looking at. For her part, Nesna had made an effort in spite of this to avert her eyes from the guards and confine them to the ground near to them, presuming that there might be some other cue they could draw from if so inclined to gather where her line of sight was directed.

Realms of Sun & Shadow

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The Eastern Gates of Dawnhaven

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Never before had Nesna strayed so far from home. It had been some days’ worth of journey from her home near the eastern shores—how long precisely, Nesna realized she had entirely failed to keep track. Thinking of it, after all these years, she had never anticipated that she would again need any real account for the passage of time beyond a rough guess of when the daylight would show. But since the sun’s disappearance, what real matter was it whether she had flown six, eight, ten, or more hours at once? At varying points, Nesna had been utterly certain that she had somehow overshot something. It seemed so sensible back when she had first made the decision to abandon her home. Once it had become apparent that everything she held in any regard could be packed and carried without too much difficulty, there was little more thinking to be done. If she only flew directly west until she reached the mountains, transverse them, and then followed the southern side of the range, she would eventually arrive that way, if it truly was the case that Dawnhaven sat on the northern shores of the great Frostmoon Lake.

But perhaps she had oversimplified the trip. Rarely had she flown so high as she did to keep alongside the mountains and away from any eyes that might see a blightborn such as her and trouble themselves to rid the world of her. Constant winds and sudden gusts threatened to push her off course, while blasts of snow threatened her ability to even see where she was headed. Whenever it seemed like she had found a decent path through the skies that she could follow the entire way to Dawnhaven, it seemed the fickleties of the weather sought to strike her down for having the utter gall to imagine that travelling through the Lunarian wilderness would by any stretch of the imagination be easy, manageable, or even reasonably possible. Fortunately, if Seluna indeed might have had any regard left for Nesna, if Nesna indeed could feel she had any respectable and tangible virtue left within her, her patience seemed to see her through time and time again. There had been close calls—plenty of them—but so long as Nesna landed in the forests along the foothills of the mountains, found herself something to drink, and made no attempt to spite nature by attempting to do anything more but pull her bundles tighter and find a ditch protected from the wind to rest in.

In these times, between her best attempts at diligently following the landscape and pushing forward, and passing out like an undignified, abandoned corpse in some miserable ditch, Nesna thought, as she often did. It was not altogether rare that she imagined herself speaking to someone else—most often, it was a question or musing on something she’d read, seen, or spontaneously thought of, which she liked to imagine in a better world she might have asked of a mentor or posed to a peer—but this time, she faced an unprecedented circumstance. At some point, if she ever did arrive at Dawnhaven, she would for the first time in ages actually have to speak the words she imagined. In her ditches, before her sleep, Nesna experimented, on some lonely occasions, speaking to herself again. She had long fallen out of even the habit of talking to herself, much less to others. After all, there was no-one to talk to, nothing to say, and to speak in a normal voice was to invite someone unwanted to notice her presence. To speak again at any length or volume felt strange. The muscles in her tongue and her lips had their strength still, for she often mouthed things to feel as if she could at least, if she ever had the opportunity, still speak like a real person. And of course, she still breathed.

No single motion—no single gesture—of the greater act felt at all strange. But the feeling of words actually passing her lips, rather than simply chewing on them and imitating the motions of talking, felt entirely alien. Recalling her voice, before she had changed, Nesna had been told that it was nasally and rather high. If anything, it had been a bit grating on the ears. This notion had not been difficult to believe, for the voice she used to hear when she spoke sounded not altogether dissimilar from how it had been described. As Nesna worked up the courage to experimentally recite passages and then to spontaneously speak to herself again, she found that her old voice, too, had died with age and mutation. This new voice of hers, to her own ear, had lost its youth. For how a normal, reasonable effort to speak produced a quiet, hoarse burbling, Nesna could not help but imagine she sounded like someone struggling against death. For a time, she resigned herself to introducing herself as a haggard creature barely-clinging to life. That if she ever, in fact, made it to Dawnhaven, or if she should mistakenly find another place and plead mercy, she would sound as if the blight were already finishing the job of her execution.

Mercifully, her resignation proved temporary. After reaching the ultimate conclusion that her voice would sound as it did, Nesna encountered a new bout of inspiration as the wind dried her lips. Nesna swallowed, cleared her throat, and then held her mouth open for a time. At a certain point, her mouth felt normal. And then she felt her mouth become dry and cold. Impatiently, Nesna dropped from the sky and sat in a snowbank. After a moment of pensive anticipation, she pushed herself to “Just speak.”

“Blessed Moon, may it be—”

Nesna knelt, began in a spontaneous prayer, and interrupted herself for just a moment as she heard herself.

“May it be that in Your divine guidance, You cast Your gentle light upon one so unworthy as I, that I may be led towards providence. I pray that You might bless me with safety and passage this day and tomorrow, that I may be rightly-guided in my travels, and that I might in some way be able to contribute to the spread of good in this world. Thank You, Oh Pale Lady of the Night, for what I have and for what I may come to experience. In all this I pray. Verily, may it be so.”

Nesna sat back in the snow and traced her fingers along the bottom of her jaw, and then her throat. With a pensive smile, she let out a quiet sigh and closed her eyes. She nodded and then stood still for a moment, as if thinking for a moment longer. Slowly, she stood, and spoke again.

“Thank You, Seluna,” she murmured. Nesna could not help but to sigh again and listen to the sound that reverberated through her throat. It sounded…decent. Nesna could not imagine she might herald divinity or contribute much in the way of song to the world, but for all of this, her voice did not grate on her. With a throat that had perhaps never been properly cleared since it became confined at last cleared, her voice indeed still felt different, but not altogether foreign to her. Her voice had sunk and settled from that high-pitched nasality from before she had changed. But it had not tumbled into the mud, rather, it had settled into something which felt, as Nesna tried to describe it to herself, only proper for her current station. It still held some vestiges of the crackle she had worried about, but it wasn’t so much a sickle crackle as the crackle of effort. It felt, perhaps, kindly and experienced more so than ill. And it seemed to erode as she spoke more and with more confidence, as if it were less so a permanent affliction than it was a sort of sediment that needed to be shaken off from her vocal cords.

Looking past that feature she noticed the most, Nesna found herself almost pleased with how her voice had changed as she’d grown up. It wasn’t melodic, per se, but it had a sensible weight to it, and a certain pleasantry that she had not specifically intended to infuse in it. It felt only proper, that her voice leaned towards being acoustically understated and timid-sounding; after all, what right did a monster have to be anything but timid? Perhaps it was in fact Seluna herself who had seen fit to bless her with some small kindness: a voice that would not grate but rather disarm—a voice that suggested neither intelligence, ambition, nor even eagerness—a voice befitting someone entirely cowed and with no expectations beyond being, in some minor way, of use to someone more worthy.

Nesna had often thought like this. It was not, she imagined as she took off once more, fair to demand of herself that she think this way about herself. No, the question of “worthiness” could not be relevant here. Rather, a voice implying a gentle spirit was a necessity here. For a monster to appear ambitious or excessively bright would surely come off as dangerous, and to be dangerous was the last thing Nesna hoped to be considered. So it was, that this sound of hers, was not so much her accurate sound as it was a blessing that she could sound in such a way—a small mercy that might evoke for her some measure of sympathy or kindness from whoever she could venture to encounter at the end of her journey. It wasn’t as if there was anything better to be expected; blightborn were at best unfortunate products of a bad situation. There was no world, so Nesna imagined, where she might be anything other than a monster or a tragically-afflicted innocent.

But the idea that she might have a decent shot at seeing herself considered the latter was comfort enough. With the weather turning for the better, Nesna found herself entertaining an odd sort of relief—a sentiment she had not enjoyed for longer than she had any care to recall. And as if the day could not be filled with any more momentous developments, Nesna had scarcely enjoyed this long-dormant feeling when she saw, in the distance, the vague appearance of guard towards and the shores of a great lake. Squinting and straining to see as hard as she could, Nesna suddenly felt inclined to drop and land. If this was not Dawnhaven, if the apparent bustle was not suggesting a new city, if that was not, indeed, a temple to Aelos—the Sun Goddess of the south—then what else could it be? Nesna landed behind the mountain and resolved to walk the remainder of the way towards the gates.

She pulled out her mirror from her bag, and worked eagerly to groom herself. Or, rather, do the best she could. Thinking of it, there was irritatingly little to be done, in truth. Nesna had not seen fit to try and alter any of her nicer gowns to contend with her wings. Nesna kicked herself as she realized that she would, in all likelihood, meet the resident royals in the loose, drab, poorly-fitted gown that was still the nicest thing she could actually wear, thoroughly battered by the weather as it was. Just as soon as she looked at herself, Nesna shoved her mirror back into her back with frustration. There was no reason to bother fixing her hair or doing anything more than make sure her face was clean and her clothes were brushed off. After she forced herself from tinkering with her hair any longer, Nesna held her hands down by her sides and sighed. Her very first interaction with another person in years, and she would look like she had been sleeping in ditches. The fact that she had, in fact, been doing so was not at all soothing her disdain for her own grooming. All the same, trying her best to avoid making it too obvious how displeased she was with her appearance, Nesna clamped her cloak shut, carefully made her way towards the path, and began to follow it. At long last, she saw the gates in the distance.

Nesna pushed her hands past the cloak and held them in front of her chest before she imagined she’d even been properly noticed. It was only sensible, especially out here and looking as she did, she imagined, that she ought to make clear that she was fully unarmed. Stopping some distance from the gate, Nesna looked to one of the guards and took a breath.

“Begging your pardon!” she exclaimed. Nesna winced suddenly as she felt herself straining to project, but quickly pushed past it, “Is this Dawnhaven?”

Realms of Sun & Shadow

Nesna

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__________________________________________ 21 | Blight-Born | Sage-Aspirant Field Researcher & Test-Subject __________________________________________ Kingdom: Lunaris __________________________________________ Magic Specialty: Psychic & Darkness __________________________________________ ▼ ✧ Height – 5’9” ✧ Build – Athletic/Slight Hourglass ✧ Eye Color – Glowing Lavender ✧ Hair Color – Snow White

B I O G R A P H Y “Though I am still young, I feel my story might stretch on longer than most would be interested in hearing. But I am nonetheless happy to share it. Before I speak on myself, I feel obliged to recount a few salient parts of my family history. My mother was always fond of saying that we were, all things considered, of excellent stock. That is to say, both sides of my family are, for the most part, minor nobility in some form or another. I could recount a long family history, but I will only trouble you with what is absolutely necessary. My father’s side once had the better titles, while my mother’s family still actually held land. But it really matters little in the end, because beyond matters of pride, I’m descended from long, long lines of younger children on both sides. My father’s family—the Tamera family—once had full titles to large swathes of woods in the southeast of the Kingdom. They bore the privilege of providing royal lumber, before one of our grandfathers some generations back sold off most of it, and then saw it divided more and more across subsequent generations. My mother’s side —the Cerathur family—never had so much in the way of titled land, but they did well with it for some time. Although my mother was in poor health for much of her pregnancy with me, I think, all things considered, that I enjoyed auspicious circumstances. My father was an oldest son and my mother the oldest daughter, and the only living child of her generation across her maternal line. And for what it mattered, I was the only grandchild by blood across both sides. For once, it seemed we might have seen a consolidation of inheritances rather than a division. As I understand it, I can remember more of my early childhood than most others. My mother’s family still had some amount of money in those days, so I would go so far as to say those first years of my life were a charmed existence. Even after my younger brother was born, I still gather I was the favourite child, swooned over by two entire families as one of only two grandchildren, and on my mother’s side, one of only two great-grandchildren. Though in hindsight, this was terribly unkind, I distinctly recall being elevated over my younger brother, considered to be a bright and promising young girl. I had numerous relatives grooming me to be an excellent young lady and, though there were even then bumps in the road, I understand that I did quite well overall. So I suppose the question is, what ultimately became of this charmed existence? I must confess that I cannot rightly claim to know why exactly things fell apart, as it eventually became increasingly difficult for me to learn anything useful. But I do gather that there were several factors involved. On one hand, one of my great grandmothers on my mother’s side, with whom we lived on the family estate, passed away when I was quite young, perhaps four. I bear few direct memories of her, but she was highly regarded across my family, even into my father’s family. As I understand it, she acted as the functional matriarch of my mother’s family, and kept everyone behaved and sensible. So it turns out, my grandparent’s generation on my mother’s side may be prone towards rapacity and spite. I gather there was no small amount of resentment, especially on my grandfather’s part, that my father did not have both a title and money to match it, not to mention their significant personal differences. On the other hand, it seemed the larger part of my father’s direct family ended up either subsumed into my mother’s or scattered to the winds. My father’s younger brother, as it happened, ended up married to my mother’s younger sister. My paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents failed to find one another agreeable, so I rarely ended up seeing the former as a result. I suppose in a way, the good feelings after those marriages wore off, as did my novelty. And with this happening simultaneously to my grandparents’ generation’s apparent failure to be sensible with the respectable, but still very finite sum they held, I suppose the good times were destined to end eventually. At this point, I recognize this story seems quite typical. Minor nobility, lords, ladies, and so forth, do wax and wane in their prosperity. And what greater trope is there than that of the “poor noble?” But if that were all, I like to imagine I would have ended up on a different path. My father would often travel to Lunaris, for he had taken up work as a local magistrate in order to ensure we could remain comfortable. Sometimes, these trips lasted for quite a while. But then, I think when I was perhaps ten or eleven, he never returned. Usually we received routine word from him by carrier pigeon, but on that trip, word never even arrived that he had made it to Lunaris. I wouldn’t feel right claiming that I know exactly what happened to him, but what I can say is that my mother and my mother’s family spoke quite poorly of him for some time around this, and then my mother announced her plans to remarry less than two years thereafter, despite being well cared-for by the family. I used to lay awake at night wondering what had happened, but I have, a decade on, resolved that there isn’t much more to be said. I never did get to actually see my father’s funeral, because I don’t think there was ever going to be one. But I will do my best not to dwell on the grim parts. After all, I’m still here, aren’t I? Mother remarried when I was twelve. The man she married had two children of his own, both of whom were older than myself. Mother spoke often of my brother and I “at last” having a “proper father figure” in our lives around this time, especially as it became apparent that we—well, I in particular—were not adjusting so well to this new familial arrangement. I, probably in no small part because, out of my brother and I, I was the most reminiscent of our father, had already fallen from being most favoured at this point. But what surprised me most was, for how fixated my maternal family had long been on blood ties, the warm reception my stepbrothers received, and the further cooling of their regard for me. Looking back, I could recount certain specific instances where I noticed that I was losing my family’s esteem, but at the time, it felt altogether sudden, as if I had suddenly become entirely unacceptable. I had grown up with strict figures in my life, so I had thought. My father was always quite diligent on matters of posture, diction, and so forth. So too had my great grandmother been, so much so that I distinctly recall, even at the extremely young age that I had been while she lived, she often corrected my speaking without hesitation. But I suppose these were more so matters of culture rather than exertion of authority. My stepfather was at once austere, authoritative, and plainly imperious. I realize, thinking of it, that for how much my mother spoke of him replacing my father, there was some measure in which the intent was that my father’s influence—that is, the part of me which came from my father—needed to be subsumed and replaced as well. Change is hard! And change one does not understand is even harder! Even more so is it hard when one is a child who has long taken pride in a great many things and was once even praised for some of them, only to then be criticized intensely for the same things. Where once I was well-spoken, now I was being rude for speaking too much. Where I was once well-dressed and well-composed, now I was being messy and improper for overadorning myself. So on and so forth, these criticisms which even now I fail to precisely understand went. Now, upon reaching this point, I must confess that I will for some time now be speaking not only with indignation but also with a fair amount of embarrassment, as my response to stress in those days was perhaps also improper. For any young noble of any rapport to be found with caches of—if I may avoid being too rude—excessively dashing effigies, alongside some other even less proper things, is of course going to evoke rather severe responses from their caretakers. Let me say that I, even understanding the sort of position a caretaker might be in, I felt the response was altogether entirely too severe. I grant that this may have been due to a variety of factors, such as how, as I have recounted, I had already fallen well out of favour by the time my problematic vices were uncovered, and due to the precise nature of what was uncovered—both in terms of content and that I had included in my diary some, let us say, novel stories—but even so, I could never help but feel that the implication that I were some kind of uncontrolled animal, and how I was given a treatment to match, was entirely too much. Let me clarify my circumstances thusly: I was sequestered in my room for the majority of time that I was neither learning, doing some sort of other necessary task, or being berated—the latter of which took far more time out of my normal day than one might expect. Anything that I wrote for any purposes, anything that I did for any purposes—all faced enduring scrutiny from my mother and stepfather together. I often found myself being interrogated long into the night over perceived implications of impropriety within my own studies! And perish the thought that I might see much of any friend, for what acquaintances I had made in this time, I was often either forbidden from engaging with them or placed under intense supervision, lest some sort of impropriety arise. Increasingly, I failed to understand how I had misstepped when I was berated or inquisitioned, but when I earnestly confessed my confusion, I found even more…more harsh treatment. Indeed, when I failed to anticipate what I had done wrong, I was placed under the light of being a chronic liar—a fact which eventually trained me out of my natural expression of nervousness: a smile. I attribute these inquisitions to my difficulty expressing strong emotion, though I cannot solely attribute it there, as I was once praised as an even-tempered, even-keeled child. So let me, at this point, dispose with mourning myself, or, rather, sounding like I am. Being that I had never properly untrained myself to avoid such an undignified response to stress as I had developed, I indeed had periods where I, being so stressed as I was, failed to remain sensible. And as one might imagine, though I had gotten good enough at hiding things that I produced no direct evidence, there was still an inkling, I gather, that I had some source of stress relief keeping me from snapping. Three years hence, I had gotten sloppy. Actually, I had gotten brazen—more so than sloppy. After all, when one is always under scrutiny no matter what, why bother trying to avoid it at all? I kept some of my favourite creations and pictures inside a locked box, hid the key in my pillow, and hid the box in my mattress I don’t know how they found it, but they did, and it wouldn’t take any stretch of the imagination for someone to guess what finding such a thing would entail, especially in the circumstances. I remember that night vividly. It was my brother’s twelfth birthday, as I recall. We had enjoyed a feast and, for what it was worth, it seemed the night had gone well enough. But as we all retired, something I had mentioned about hoping to meet a friend had, I suppose, evoked suspicion. I had planned to take a hot bath that night—one of the few pleasant experiences I still got to enjoy with any frequency. I had just settled into the water and wet my hair when my stepfather and mother knocked on the door, and my stepfather roared about a “box in the floorboards,” demanding I unlock it for them. When I asked to finish my bath so we could speak, they barged in, holding the very same box. As I rushed to cover myself, my stepfather yelled, commanding me to rise and explain myself. Only after my mother affirmed my protestation that I be allowed to dress myself did they relent, if however briefly. I pulled on my nightgown. And then, by impulse, I felt the need to get out. I had thought of this scenario—ones like it, anyway—countless times in my head. I had imagined, perhaps foolishly, that I could have gotten away without such a damning proof of my failures to be revealed before I could find some way to go on, study to become a sage, and find someone sensible and quiet, far from my decaying relations and the ever-grim prospects at home. But that foolish dream had gotten the better of me, and, when backed against a corner, I did something perhaps foolish, certainly impulsive. I did something I’d only rarely genuinely considered, and never believed I’d actually do. I ran. In only my shift, with still-wet hair, I quietly opened the window and crawled out, closing it behind me. I…struggle to explain how I managed to climb down the side of the mansion and get over the wall, for I have never been so athletic as this, but I suppose some strength possessed me. For I ran and leapt in ways unlike myself, looking only to get further away. I on some account did not even register the temperature until I felt that my hair had frozen. But I kept running. My bare feet felt like death and then like nothing in the snow banks. I couldn’t feel my face or anything else, really. But I kept on, until I could barely bring myself to trudge. If I hadn’t seen the blight—that rot seeping out of the ground in a growing patch that we had some time ago heard about—my body surely would have been found frozen and mangled by starving wolves or some other beasts trying to survive winter—if it were indeed found at all. And there it was: the blight. If my nose had any feeling, perhaps it would have burned, as my lungs did. I could see it, and then I could see very little at all. I felt this draw, as if the rot were beckoning me. If the blight took me, after all, then my funeral would not have me to grace it. I was hopelessly lost, and ultimately had no real wish to be found. I remember my dying thoughts. I felt warm, if only for a moment. I felt safe, as if nobody would ever find me. Because if they did, they would surely not live to tell the tale. I awoke feeling comfortable, rested, and entirely unlike I had ever felt before. As I slowly rose, I felt strange, unbalanced, and my sight was entirely foreign to me. Both I and my mother had come to rely upon spectacles—expensive as they were—and yet mine sat in the snow. When I reached for them, I realized that I could see in a way I had not been able to for years. Mind you, I cannot see terribly well even now, but my vision has remained stagnantly mediocre ever since that day. And as I reached for my spectacles, I saw my blackened hand and recoiled backwards, falling onto my back. Then I felt it—alien appendages—what I would learn were my wings and tail. When I blinked, I felt lashes collide and stick in the frost, ways they never had before. As I again reached for my spectacles, I found they granted me little help, and sat in my field of vision incomprehensibly. At last, I felt my face properly, and realized something really had changed irrevocably. Sometimes I wonder if I am indeed in a dream, some sort of nightmare, or the afterlife, for how much I struggle to maintain constancy across my two alien forms. The creature I once was bears little resemblance, in terms of sensation, to what I have become. But no matter, I sat up, breathing in the toxic air, and yet feeling no pain, no harm, and scarcely even feeling particularly cold. I held my hand to my head, recoiling again when I made sudden and unexpected contact with those changed ears of mine, and then scratched my head. To my horror, clumps of hair fell out as my fingers made contact, and I held them in my hand only to realize that my hand indeed looked as if it were dying. But having heard of the blight-born, I think it was that moment where I realized properly what must have been happening—or rather, what had all but already happened. I carefully rose and stumbled around the rotten woods until I found a poisoned puddle and got a glimpse—however imperfect—of what I truly was. I was, in truth, one of those men made demons by the blight. How does one confront this feeling? Already alienated as I had been, now there was no returning even if I wanted to. I felt that I was seeing something in that puddle that nobody was ever meant to see—something unholy, meant to be confined to after death. This deep sensation of unease set deeper into me when I realized that I was seeing my reflection in a dark puddle, illuminated only by the moon’s kindly light. Truly, there was no denying what I had become. So the blight saw it unfit to allow me a death in dignity, I said to myself. Wondering then what else there was, I could only imagine that I owed to myself the opportunity to see what other indignities awaited my memory when it became apparent that the winter had taken me. I felt my wings, and knew suddenly that I had control over appendages no human has ever been graced with in our age. I flew—quite clumsily—as high as I could sustain, and saw the path forward. Shrouded by the night, I began to gather my surroundings and get a vague sense of where I had come from. It took no time at all to arrive home. I landed on the roof, as carefully as I could, and clung tightly there so as to avoid being seen. I admit, now, that the impulse which drove me there was less so specifically that I wanted to see what had happened and more so that I needed something from my former home—something which I had never before and will nevermore go without. I was given a soft lamb-doll of sorts—I suppose it’s more of a little blanket—but in any case, its “wool” is in fact silk, and stroking this silk has, as long as I can remember, been the deepest source of comfort I have ever found. I needed comfort. Needed it more desperately than anything else. More than I had ever needed anything in my life or had ever before conceived of needed anything. As I was flying back that day, I felt my soul wretch for how it longed for some comfort, and the grim thoughts of funeral were replaced by the screaming of a child in need of warmth. I waited until everyone went to sleep that night, and crept in through the same window I had escaped from. I snuck as quietly as I could, picking up my beloved toys and the few other most prized belongings of mine that I could gather, and I left through the window again. This time, I realized I had nowhere else to turn, and crawled along the roof until I recalled how my ancestors had, after a major storm damaged the roof, neglected to refurbish a section of the uppermost floor and instead sealed it off, for there was no need for the extra space or trouble in cleaning it. I pried a window open while my tail wrapped tightly around my toys, and found the space as empty and desolate as I’d imagined it to be when I’d first learned of it. I have no idea how long I sat in there, motionless except for my fingers stroking the silk waves of my lamb-blanket’s wool. I stared at a point on the wall for such a period without blinking that I finally felt myself blinking out tears as I remembered to blink. That’s when I found that I cried—well I call it tar, but it’s not quite as thick, I suppose. But it was after some time of this that I realized how hungry I was. And suddenly, it was all I could think about. I felt myself craving all sorts of things—all sorts of meats. And as my mind wracked through every dish I’d ever eaten, the meats got juicier, less cooked, and then at last, I recalled the times I had hurt a finger and put it in my mouth. Dear Seluna, thinking about that first hunger makes my insides burn as if I had never before eaten, just like that first time. I needed blood. Even as I wrestled with myself over such an insane notion, I could feel myself compelled towards the window, needing to go out and find some blood—any blood! Like some sort of horrid bat or bird, I leapt from the window and flew into the woods, scouring the landscape for anything I could possibly find. Still, recalling this animalistic urge, I cannot help but feel monstrous for having done it. I scoured the countryside until I found a fox, and in movements which I had never before made, I felt compelled to snap its neck and drain it of blood. And like an insatiable creature, I discarded it and immediately began to clamour for more. It blurred together, all in a messy haze, as I felt overcome by this hunger and rampaged across the countryside, licking any blood I spilled off of the snow itself, even. I have no idea how long I was like this for, but when I at last felt sane, like I was no longer starving and going mad, I collapsed and slept. When I awoke, I felt cooler, more collected, yet still hungry. It was then when I realized I had changed in other ways as well—that my teeth demanded this life of me. But rather than spreading carcasses all over the place, I felt it only decent to be more discerning, and so I began to try and hunt reindeer instead. I got kicked no small amount of times, but found myself crawling up and clamouring for more, until I finally managed to get a good bite in and drink. Oh, how the warm, live blood felt so much better than even the freshly dead stuff! But I, even then, even as shattered as I was, had some sense left! I mourn the little beasts I have killed, for I have no wish to be some rampaging beast of the woods! I only drank sensibly from the reindeer, and always let go before they seemed to grow weak. But now, one might imagine, I looked the part of a monster. I felt myself splattered with animal blood—sticky with the entire result of my maddened feast. Now, I at last considered propriety again. And it was at this point that I contemplated what I could even do. I had failed to die. I had failed to be human. What could I avoid failing to do? Could I ever bear a semblance of the future I might have had? Obviously not, but what I did have was freedom. When I at last returned to the family home and snuck into my stolen quarters, I overheard, as I contemplated how I might find my way to a decent bath, my mother and grandmother speaking. My hearing, as I found when I gingerly pressed my ear to one of the chimney, was good enough that I heard it in excellent detail. I would, indeed, enjoy a small, private funeral. And so, in death, there was truly nothing more to be expected of me. A ghost, after all, cannot be held to her living expectations. And ghost I became. I found a routine, creeping around my own home at late hours or when my kin were away, slowly stealing things from my room, which my mother had left entirely untouched out of grief. Though I regretted how she accused the few servants we could still afford of stealing, I realize there was little that could be done about it. I became a ghost, haunting my own home, and slowly but surely, I even nicked things from my mother and stepfather. Like a bird retreating to its nest, I made off with jewelry and all sorts of other beautiful things—inheritances which I would never enjoy, but that I decided should be rended from the hands of those who had, in a way, stolen mine. Time became nonsense to me, as I knew only sleep and activity. I learned and changed, fiddled with my appearance once I stole a mirror, and stole as many books as I could get away with, but I ultimately often found myself sitting up during the waking hours of the household, listening for the voices of my younger brother, and our little half-brother. I could say nothing, but hearing the sound of speech reminded me—if only for a moment—that I was still something that had been human. That I was not some ghostly apparition or some animal that had snuck into a place, but someone who was born in this house, raised in this house, and had as much of a right to be there as everyone else. I heard my brother through the chimney once, saying my old name—the one my coffin took with it. For I remind you now that “Nesna” is not my old name but the moniker I have earned, for what was I but Belonging to the Dead? In any case, in these precious moments I cherished my humanity, and dreamt of what I might have been. Longing, though, is an insufficient emotion. I found myself reminding myself that I had the freedom to cry, to smile, and to feel whatever I wanted or needed to. But in truth, the only feeling I have most often needed is peace. Peace is a quiet, gentle feeling. And I have come to love it more than I have loved any feeling in the world. Perhaps a second life of quiet contemplation is a sort of afterlife, but I am no longer in that old home for a simple reason. My time there, just like everyone else’s, was made to end. When news of the sun’s plight came, my relations, I recall, at first laughed. Our ancestors—indeed, my great grandfather who, when my family last left our ancestral seat, still lived and may still live—fought the Aurelians and still bear them no love, so how delicious was it that they might have at last lost the patron who kept them able to swat us around? I remember at first thinking that, in light of how research into the blight had begun a number of years prior, there might yet be something changing more in the world. In truth, though, nothing did at that point. What ultimately changed was when the blight began encroaching on us. Having already lost much of our estate to it, I was not surprised to learn that the final response of my relatives was utter spite. Over the course of a month, they gutted the property in preparation to move to Lunaris. When I at last heard talk of busting open the confines of my little space to be certain that there was nothing else to pilfer, I realized I needed to leave. Having overheard my grandfather’s bitter complaints over the King’s decisions around my sort over the years, I knew if I ever wanted to hear another person’s voice that I would need to make my way to Dawnhaven. I have nothing but what I have carried here with me, but if nothing else, I beg that you might take my earring collection, sell it, and use the money for this cause of sanctuary, and that you grant it to me. To see a person’s face makes me weak with relief. I never imagined that I would miss eye contact.” B L I G H T - B O R N Nesna has been permanently altered by the blight, resembling her former self in appearance only superficially. Though her face has changed little except insofar she has transitioned from youth to adulthood, her complexion is pallid and grey, rendering her appearance corpselike. As can be seen when she blushes, however, her lips are not black from any sort of makeup, but rather because her blood is black as well. On her face, her eyes have lost their pupils and duplicated, resulting in two pairs of eyes which glow a weak, haunted purple, with her second, smaller pair sitting parallel to her nose on either cheek. Her lashes have grown thicker, duplicating in layers and occasionally show beads of thick black liquid—which, much like her lips, is not makeup, but rather comes from her, for just as her blood is black and viscous, so too are her tears, saliva, mucus, and every other fluid which comes from it. Indeed, when she opens her mouth to speak, even before her teeth, what is most obvious is how the interior of her mouth is pitch-black and how her molasses-like saliva seems to form gossamer strands between her teeth. Over the years, her teeth have become stained grey by this same dark interior, but, looking past her otherwise normal front two teeth, more changes in her mouth reveal themselves. Her secondary incisors form smaller fangs, while her canines extend much like those of many other blight-born. And behind these sharpened teeth are no premolars or molars, but rather dual paired rows of sharp teeth not unlike her secondary incisors. Even Nesna could still keep normal human food down, she could scarcely chew it effectively. Due in part to her black blood, her large, batlike wings appear entirely black, as do her arms and legs past the elbows and knees. Where her wings meet her body near the top of her lumbar, on her lower ribcage, the black fades into her pale skin, with dark veins creeping outwards, making her wings superficially look as if they might be rooting themselves into her back. Similarly, her hands and feet appear entirely black, as do the lower parts of her forearms and calves, then fading into her normal pale-grey complexion as they near the next joints, with black veins creeping further only to fade into her knee and elbow joints, almost giving the appearance of socks and gloves which have started to meld into her. What most obviously disproves this notion, other than how she maintains normal, if not heightened sensitivity in these extremities, is that her nails still grow all the same. Strangely enough, they remain quite normal in the sea of inky black, being entirely unremarkable other than being unusually healthy-looking for nails sitting on beds which seem as if they’d long died. When allowed to grow past the nail bed and left unpainted, their ends appear strong and pearly-white. Atop her head sit horns, which Nesna, having once attempted to remove them, knows have no bony core to them, instead simply growing upwards as fast as her hair used to no matter what is done. Though their thickness and position makes them inconvenient to file down at the best of times, Nesna has made a point of coaxing them into their current shape and filing them to keep them a consistent shape and size, lest they become unwieldy and too inconvenient. While her horns take the show, Nesna has found that the rest of her scalp is not to be underestimated. Her hair is not only snow-white and just as shiny, but shockingly fine, soft, smooth, and cool to the touch—altogether an unusual texture for hair, much unlike the dark, thicker hair she once bore. Despite its other properties, it is unexpectedly strong, holding up much better than would be expected for hair of its density. When she was younger, Nesna had maintained shorter hair, but this changed hair of hers grows quickly and more densely, by her estimation ending up with at least twice as much hair on her head after any amount of time, and so Nesna has become accustomed to wearing her hair long, cutting it haphazardly only as absolutely necessary for practicality and vanity. Poking past her hair are Nesna’s ears, which have not only lengthened to points but grown. They are quite sensitive, both to sound and to the touch, enough so that Nesna has not found it comfortable to sleep on her side ever since her mutation and, much to her chagrin, has not been able to tolerate wearing even the smallest from her once-beloved earring collection. Beyond this, Nesna’s ears seem to have developed more muscle behind them, such that they move slightly in response to sounds and have otherwise become quite expressive—often much more so than her face. Lastly, while she most often keeps it buried underneath her clothes, Nesna possesses a long tail ending in a spade shape—not unlike some old depictions of demons. When it can be seen, directly or indirectly, it is apparent that Nesna’s control over it is much less than any other appendage of hers, as when it is not curled and anchored firmly around one of her legs, it often fidgets and arcs like the tail of a nervous cat. Type: “Classical” Abilities: Beyond abilities such as flight and enhanced hearing clearly bestowed by her changed form, Nesna enjoys other changes which are less obvious. Nesna is shockingly resilient. Blunt-force trauma is of much less concern to her than one might expect; indeed, Nesna has found that she can handle crashing into things mid-flight without much lasting discomfort. Alongside this, though her skin is no less vulnerable to being pierced than before her mutation, the black-blood running through her does not so readily bleed as normal blood might, making a death by a thousand cuts a poor choice in taking her down. Those who come into prolonged contact with her blood can expect themselves to feel increasingly heavy and anaemic. While no less uncomfortable than going days without eating, Nesna can withstand longer without blood than many similarly blood-reliant blight-born can sustain before experiencing genuine ill effects. Beyond this, when not overexerting herself, Nesna has impressive stamina—able to go through a full day of moderate exertion without feeling any more tired than when she began. Lastly, Nesna has found her already-extant affinity for magic greatly bolstered—a fact which she places immense pride in. Weaknesses: Nesna is rather sluggish for a blight-born, largely incapable of reacting at the same blinding speed that many of her fellow blight-born might move at, and arguably less reactive than even some normal humans. Although she can fly much faster than any person can walk, her speed is anything but supernatural—if a pigeon is putting in the same effort as her, she will be entirely outpaced. Nesna is certainly stronger than her build would suggest, but less so than most comparable blight-born. Most notably of all, though, Nesna is sensitive not only to the sun, but to bright lights and the heat as well; most logs around the average fireside would be too close for her. Contrary to what might be expected for someone even more confined to the night than the average blight-born, Nesna’s night vision is not what one might expect for a blight-born, though this is less so an expression of her struggling with the dark and more that Nesna has overall middling vision—she has four eyes, and none of them work exceptionally well. Lastly, Nesna is, much more so than the average person, prone to choking on herself, resulting in her suddenly doubled over and sputtering with a terrible-sounding wet cough. Beyond these more overt struggles, Nesna also faces less obvious physical challenges. Her joints are prone to aching, and can often be heard to crackle and pop, especially after a bout of inactivity. Likewise, Nesna’s limitations are much less flexible than they are for many others. If she overexerts herself, she can reasonably expect to crash as soon as she reaches the next lull in activity.

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Realms of Sun & Shadow

Putting this in brackets before it's reviewed, as I got rather carried away XD

Nesna

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__________________________________________ 21 | Blight-Born | Sage-Aspirant Field Researcher & Test-Subject __________________________________________ Kingdom: Lunaris __________________________________________ Magic Specialty: Psychic & Darkness __________________________________________ ▼ ✧ Height – 5’9” ✧ Build – Athletic/Slight Hourglass ✧ Eye Color – Glowing Lavender ✧ Hair Color – Snow White

B I O G R A P H Y “Though I am still young, I feel my story might stretch on longer than most would be interested in hearing. But I am nonetheless happy to share it. Before I speak on myself, I feel obliged to recount a few salient parts of my family history. My mother was always fond of saying that we were, all things considered, of excellent stock. That is to say, both sides of my family are, for the most part, minor nobility in some form or another. I could recount a long family history, but I will only trouble you with what is absolutely necessary. My father’s side once had the better titles, while my mother’s family still actually held land. But it really matters little in the end, because beyond matters of pride, I’m descended from long, long lines of younger children on both sides. My father’s family—the Tamera family—once had full titles to large swathes of woods in the southeast of the Kingdom. They bore the privilege of providing royal lumber, before one of our grandfathers some generations back sold off most of it, and then saw it divided more and more across subsequent generations. My mother’s side —the Cerathur family—never had so much in the way of titled land, but they did well with it for some time. Although my mother was in poor health for much of her pregnancy with me, I think, all things considered, that I enjoyed auspicious circumstances. My father was an oldest son and my mother the oldest daughter, and the only living child of her generation across her maternal line. And for what it mattered, I was the only grandchild by blood across both sides. For once, it seemed we might have seen a consolidation of inheritances rather than a division. As I understand it, I can remember more of my early childhood than most others. My mother’s family still had some amount of money in those days, so I would go so far as to say those first years of my life were a charmed existence. Even after my younger brother was born, I still gather I was the favourite child, swooned over by two entire families as one of only two grandchildren, and on my mother’s side, one of only two great-grandchildren. Though in hindsight, this was terribly unkind, I distinctly recall being elevated over my younger brother, considered to be a bright and promising young girl. I had numerous relatives grooming me to be an excellent young lady and, though there were even then bumps in the road, I understand that I did quite well overall. So I suppose the question is, what ultimately became of this charmed existence? I must confess that I cannot rightly claim to know why exactly things fell apart, as it eventually became increasingly difficult for me to learn anything useful. But I do gather that there were several factors involved. On one hand, one of my great grandmothers on my mother’s side, with whom we lived on the family estate, passed away when I was quite young, perhaps four. I bear few direct memories of her, but she was highly regarded across my family, even into my father’s family. As I understand it, she acted as the functional matriarch of my mother’s family, and kept everyone behaved and sensible. So it turns out, my grandparent’s generation on my mother’s side may be prone towards rapacity and spite. I gather there was no small amount of resentment, especially on my grandfather’s part, that my father did not have both a title and money to match it, not to mention their significant personal differences. On the other hand, it seemed the larger part of my father’s direct family ended up either subsumed into my mother’s or scattered to the winds. My father’s younger brother, as it happened, ended up married to my mother’s younger sister. My paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents failed to find one another agreeable, so I rarely ended up seeing the former as a result. I suppose in a way, the good feelings after those marriages wore off, as did my novelty. And with this happening simultaneously to my grandparents’ generation’s apparent failure to be sensible with the respectable, but still very finite sum they held, I suppose the good times were destined to end eventually. At this point, I recognize this story seems quite typical. Minor nobility, lords, ladies, and so forth, do wax and wane in their prosperity. And what greater trope is there than that of the “poor noble?” But if that were all, I like to imagine I would have ended up on a different path. My father would often travel to Lunaris, for he had taken up work as a local magistrate in order to ensure we could remain comfortable. Sometimes, these trips lasted for quite a while. But then, I think when I was perhaps ten or eleven, he never returned. Usually we received routine word from him by carrier pigeon, but on that trip, word never even arrived that he had made it to Lunaris. I wouldn’t feel right claiming that I know exactly what happened to him, but what I can say is that my mother and my mother’s family spoke quite poorly of him for some time around this, and then my mother announced her plans to remarry less than two years thereafter, despite being well cared-for by the family. I used to lay awake at night wondering what had happened, but I have, a decade on, resolved that there isn’t much more to be said. I never did get to actually see my father’s funeral, because I don’t think there was ever going to be one. But I will do my best not to dwell on the grim parts. After all, I’m still here, aren’t I? Mother remarried when I was twelve. The man she married had two children of his own, both of whom were older than myself. Mother spoke often of my brother and I “at last” having a “proper father figure” in our lives around this time, especially as it became apparent that we—well, I in particular—were not adjusting so well to this new familial arrangement. I, probably in no small part because, out of my brother and I, I was the most reminiscent of our father, had already fallen from being most favoured at this point. But what surprised me most was, for how fixated my maternal family had long been on blood ties, the warm reception my stepbrothers received, and the further cooling of their regard for me. Looking back, I could recount certain specific instances where I noticed that I was losing my family’s esteem, but at the time, it felt altogether sudden, as if I had suddenly become entirely unacceptable. I had grown up with strict figures in my life, so I had thought. My father was always quite diligent on matters of posture, diction, and so forth. So too had my great grandmother been, so much so that I distinctly recall, even at the extremely young age that I had been while she lived, she often corrected my speaking without hesitation. But I suppose these were more so matters of culture rather than exertion of authority. My stepfather was at once austere, authoritative, and plainly imperious. I realize, thinking of it, that for how much my mother spoke of him replacing my father, there was some measure in which the intent was that my father’s influence—that is, the part of me which came from my father—needed to be subsumed and replaced as well. Change is hard! And change one does not understand is even harder! Even more so is it hard when one is a child who has long taken pride in a great many things and was once even praised for some of them, only to then be criticized intensely for the same things. Where once I was well-spoken, now I was being rude for speaking too much. Where I was once well-dressed and well-composed, now I was being messy and improper for overadorning myself. So on and so forth, these criticisms which even now I fail to precisely understand went. Now, upon reaching this point, I must confess that I will for some time now be speaking not only with indignation but also with a fair amount of embarrassment, as my response to stress in those days was perhaps also improper. For any young noble of any rapport to be found with caches of—if I may avoid being too rude—excessively dashing effigies, alongside some other even less proper things, is of course going to evoke rather severe responses from their caretakers. Let me say that I, even understanding the sort of position a caretaker might be in, I felt the response was altogether entirely too severe. I grant that this may have been due to a variety of factors, such as how, as I have recounted, I had already fallen well out of favour by the time my problematic vices were uncovered, and due to the precise nature of what was uncovered—both in terms of content and that I had included in my diary some, let us say, novel stories—but even so, I could never help but feel that the implication that I were some kind of uncontrolled animal, and how I was given a treatment to match, was entirely too much. Let me clarify my circumstances thusly: I was sequestered in my room for the majority of time that I was neither learning, doing some sort of other necessary task, or being berated—the latter of which took far more time out of my normal day than one might expect. Anything that I wrote for any purposes, anything that I did for any purposes—all faced enduring scrutiny from my mother and stepfather together. I often found myself being interrogated long into the night over perceived implications of impropriety within my own studies! And perish the thought that I might see much of any friend, for what acquaintances I had made in this time, I was often either forbidden from engaging with them or placed under intense supervision, lest some sort of impropriety arise. Increasingly, I failed to understand how I had misstepped when I was berated or inquisitioned, but when I earnestly confessed my confusion, I found even more…more harsh treatment. Indeed, when I failed to anticipate what I had done wrong, I was placed under the light of being a chronic liar—a fact which eventually trained me out of my natural expression of nervousness: a smile. I attribute these inquisitions to my difficulty expressing strong emotion, though I cannot solely attribute it there, as I was once praised as an even-tempered, even-keeled child. So let me, at this point, dispose with mourning myself, or, rather, sounding like I am. Being that I had never properly untrained myself to avoid such an undignified response to stress as I had developed, I indeed had periods where I, being so stressed as I was, failed to remain sensible. And as one might imagine, though I had gotten good enough at hiding things that I produced no direct evidence, there was still an inkling, I gather, that I had some source of stress relief keeping me from snapping. Three years hence, I had gotten sloppy. Actually, I had gotten brazen—more so than sloppy. After all, when one is always under scrutiny no matter what, why bother trying to avoid it at all? I kept some of my favourite creations and pictures inside a locked box, hid the key in my pillow, and hid the box in my mattress I don’t know how they found it, but they did, and it wouldn’t take any stretch of the imagination for someone to guess what finding such a thing would entail, especially in the circumstances. I remember that night vividly. It was my brother’s twelfth birthday, as I recall. We had enjoyed a feast and, for what it was worth, it seemed the night had gone well enough. But as we all retired, something I had mentioned about hoping to meet a friend had, I suppose, evoked suspicion. I had planned to take a hot bath that night—one of the few pleasant experiences I still got to enjoy with any frequency. I had just settled into the water and wet my hair when my stepfather and mother knocked on the door, and my stepfather roared about a “box in the floorboards,” demanding I unlock it for them. When I asked to finish my bath so we could speak, they barged in, holding the very same box. As I rushed to cover myself, my stepfather yelled, commanding me to rise and explain myself. Only after my mother affirmed my protestation that I be allowed to dress myself did they relent, if however briefly. I pulled on my nightgown. And then, by impulse, I felt the need to get out. I had thought of this scenario—ones like it, anyway—countless times in my head. I had imagined, perhaps foolishly, that I could have gotten away without such a damning proof of my failures to be revealed before I could find some way to go on, study to become a sage, and find someone sensible and quiet, far from my decaying relations and the ever-grim prospects at home. But that foolish dream had gotten the better of me, and, when backed against a corner, I did something perhaps foolish, certainly impulsive. I did something I’d only rarely genuinely considered, and never believed I’d actually do. I ran. In only my shift, with still-wet hair, I quietly opened the window and crawled out, closing it behind me. I…struggle to explain how I managed to climb down the side of the mansion and get over the wall, for I have never been so athletic as this, but I suppose some strength possessed me. For I ran and leapt in ways unlike myself, looking only to get further away. I on some account did not even register the temperature until I felt that my hair had frozen. But I kept running. My bare feet felt like death and then like nothing in the snow banks. I couldn’t feel my face or anything else, really. But I kept on, until I could barely bring myself to trudge. If I hadn’t seen the blight—that rot seeping out of the ground in a growing patch that we had some time ago heard about—my body surely would have been found frozen and mangled by starving wolves or some other beasts trying to survive winter—if it were indeed found at all. And there it was: the blight. If my nose had any feeling, perhaps it would have burned, as my lungs did. I could see it, and then I could see very little at all. I felt this draw, as if the rot were beckoning me. If the blight took me, after all, then my funeral would not have me to grace it. I was hopelessly lost, and ultimately had no real wish to be found. I remember my dying thoughts. I felt warm, if only for a moment. I felt safe, as if nobody would ever find me. Because if they did, they would surely not live to tell the tale. I awoke feeling comfortable, rested, and entirely unlike I had ever felt before. As I slowly rose, I felt strange, unbalanced, and my sight was entirely foreign to me. Both I and my mother had come to rely upon spectacles—expensive as they were—and yet mine sat in the snow. When I reached for them, I realized that I could see in a way I had not been able to for years. Mind you, I cannot see terribly well even now, but my vision has remained stagnantly mediocre ever since that day. And as I reached for my spectacles, I saw my blackened hand and recoiled backwards, falling onto my back. Then I felt it—alien appendages—what I would learn were my wings and tail. When I blinked, I felt lashes collide and stick in the frost, ways they never had before. As I again reached for my spectacles, I found they granted me little help, and sat in my field of vision incomprehensibly. At last, I felt my face properly, and realized something really had changed irrevocably. Sometimes I wonder if I am indeed in a dream, some sort of nightmare, or the afterlife, for how much I struggle to maintain constancy across my two alien forms. The creature I once was bears little resemblance, in terms of sensation, to what I have become. But no matter, I sat up, breathing in the toxic air, and yet feeling no pain, no harm, and scarcely even feeling particularly cold. I held my hand to my head, recoiling again when I made sudden and unexpected contact with those changed ears of mine, and then scratched my head. To my horror, clumps of hair fell out as my fingers made contact, and I held them in my hand only to realize that my hand indeed looked as if it were dying. But having heard of the blight-born, I think it was that moment where I realized properly what must have been happening—or rather, what had all but already happened. I carefully rose and stumbled around the rotten woods until I found a poisoned puddle and got a glimpse—however imperfect—of what I truly was. I was, in truth, one of those men made demons by the blight. How does one confront this feeling? Already alienated as I had been, now there was no returning even if I wanted to. I felt that I was seeing something in that puddle that nobody was ever meant to see—something unholy, meant to be confined to after death. This deep sensation of unease set deeper into me when I realized that I was seeing my reflection in a dark puddle, illuminated only by the moon’s kindly light. Truly, there was no denying what I had become. So the blight saw it unfit to allow me a death in dignity, I said to myself. Wondering then what else there was, I could only imagine that I owed to myself the opportunity to see what other indignities awaited my memory when it became apparent that the winter had taken me. I felt my wings, and knew suddenly that I had control over appendages no human has ever been graced with in our age. I flew—quite clumsily—as high as I could sustain, and saw the path forward. Shrouded by the night, I began to gather my surroundings and get a vague sense of where I had come from. It took no time at all to arrive home. I landed on the roof, as carefully as I could, and clung tightly there so as to avoid being seen. I admit, now, that the impulse which drove me there was less so specifically that I wanted to see what had happened and more so that I needed something from my former home—something which I had never before and will nevermore go without. I was given a soft lamb-doll of sorts—I suppose it’s more of a little blanket—but in any case, its “wool” is in fact silk, and stroking this silk has, as long as I can remember, been the deepest source of comfort I have ever found. I needed comfort. Needed it more desperately than anything else. More than I had ever needed anything in my life or had ever before conceived of needed anything. As I was flying back that day, I felt my soul wretch for how it longed for some comfort, and the grim thoughts of funeral were replaced by the screaming of a child in need of warmth. I waited until everyone went to sleep that night, and crept in through the same window I had escaped from. I snuck as quietly as I could, picking up my beloved toys and the few other most prized belongings of mine that I could gather, and I left through the window again. This time, I realized I had nowhere else to turn, and crawled along the roof until I recalled how my ancestors had, after a major storm damaged the roof, neglected to refurbish a section of the uppermost floor and instead sealed it off, for there was no need for the extra space or trouble in cleaning it. I pried a window open while my tail wrapped tightly around my toys, and found the space as empty and desolate as I’d imagined it to be when I’d first learned of it. I have no idea how long I sat in there, motionless except for my fingers stroking the silk waves of my lamb-blanket’s wool. I stared at a point on the wall for such a period without blinking that I finally felt myself blinking out tears as I remembered to blink. That’s when I found that I cried—well I call it tar, but it’s not quite as thick, I suppose. But it was after some time of this that I realized how hungry I was. And suddenly, it was all I could think about. I felt myself craving all sorts of things—all sorts of meats. And as my mind wracked through every dish I’d ever eaten, the meats got juicier, less cooked, and then at last, I recalled the times I had hurt a finger and put it in my mouth. Dear Seluna, thinking about that first hunger makes my insides burn as if I had never before eaten, just like that first time. I needed blood. Even as I wrestled with myself over such an insane notion, I could feel myself compelled towards the window, needing to go out and find some blood—any blood! Like some sort of horrid bat or bird, I leapt from the window and flew into the woods, scouring the landscape for anything I could possibly find. Still, recalling this animalistic urge, I cannot help but feel monstrous for having done it. I scoured the countryside until I found a fox, and in movements which I had never before made, I felt compelled to snap its neck and drain it of blood. And like an insatiable creature, I discarded it and immediately began to clamour for more. It blurred together, all in a messy haze, as I felt overcome by this hunger and rampaged across the countryside, licking any blood I spilled off of the snow itself, even. I have no idea how long I was like this for, but when I at last felt sane, like I was no longer starving and going mad, I collapsed and slept. When I awoke, I felt cooler, more collected, yet still hungry. It was then when I realized I had changed in other ways as well—that my teeth demanded this life of me. But rather than spreading carcasses all over the place, I felt it only decent to be more discerning, and so I began to try and hunt reindeer instead. I got kicked no small amount of times, but found myself crawling up and clamouring for more, until I finally managed to get a good bite in and drink. Oh, how the warm, live blood felt so much better than even the freshly dead stuff! But I, even then, even as shattered as I was, had some sense left! I mourn the little beasts I have killed, for I have no wish to be some rampaging beast of the woods! I only drank sensibly from the reindeer, and always let go before they seemed to grow weak. But now, one might imagine, I looked the part of a monster. I felt myself splattered with animal blood—sticky with the entire result of my maddened feast. Now, I at last considered propriety again. And it was at this point that I contemplated what I could even do. I had failed to die. I had failed to be human. What could I avoid failing to do? Could I ever bear a semblance of the future I might have had? Obviously not, but what I did have was freedom. When I at last returned to the family home and snuck into my stolen quarters, I overheard, as I contemplated how I might find my way to a decent bath, my mother and grandmother speaking. My hearing, as I found when I gingerly pressed my ear to one of the chimney, was good enough that I heard it in excellent detail. I would, indeed, enjoy a small, private funeral. And so, in death, there was truly nothing more to be expected of me. A ghost, after all, cannot be held to her living expectations. And ghost I became. I found a routine, creeping around my own home at late hours or when my kin were away, slowly stealing things from my room, which my mother had left entirely untouched out of grief. Though I regretted how she accused the few servants we could still afford of stealing, I realize there was little that could be done about it. I became a ghost, haunting my own home, and slowly but surely, I even nicked things from my mother and stepfather. Like a bird retreating to its nest, I made off with jewelry and all sorts of other beautiful things—inheritances which I would never enjoy, but that I decided should be rended from the hands of those who had, in a way, stolen mine. Time became nonsense to me, as I knew only sleep and activity. I learned and changed, fiddled with my appearance once I stole a mirror, and stole as many books as I could get away with, but I ultimately often found myself sitting up during the waking hours of the household, listening for the voices of my younger brother, and our little half-brother. I could say nothing, but hearing the sound of speech reminded me—if only for a moment—that I was still something that had been human. That I was not some ghostly apparition or some animal that had snuck into a place, but someone who was born in this house, raised in this house, and had as much of a right to be there as everyone else. I heard my brother through the chimney once, saying my old name—the one my coffin took with it. For I remind you now that “Nesna” is not my old name but the moniker I have earned, for what was I but Belonging to the Dead? In any case, in these precious moments I cherished my humanity, and dreamt of what I might have been. Longing, though, is an insufficient emotion. I found myself reminding myself that I had the freedom to cry, to smile, and to feel whatever I wanted or needed to. But in truth, the only feeling I have most often needed is peace. Peace is a quiet, gentle feeling. And I have come to love it more than I have loved any feeling in the world. Perhaps a second life of quiet contemplation is a sort of afterlife, but I am no longer in that old home for a simple reason. My time there, just like everyone else’s, was made to end. When news of the sun’s plight came, my relations, I recall, at first laughed. Our ancestors—indeed, my great grandfather who, when my family last left our ancestral seat, still lived and may still live—fought the Aurelians and still bear them no love, so how delicious was it that they might have at last lost the patron who kept them able to swat us around? I remember at first thinking that, in light of how research into the blight had begun a number of years prior, there might yet be something changing more in the world. In truth, though, nothing did at that point. What ultimately changed was when the blight began encroaching on us. Having already lost much of our estate to it, I was not surprised to learn that the final response of my relatives was utter spite. Over the course of a month, they gutted the property in preparation to move to Lunaris. When I at last heard talk of busting open the confines of my little space to be certain that there was nothing else to pilfer, I realized I needed to leave. Having overheard my grandfather’s bitter complaints over the King’s decisions around my sort over the years, I knew if I ever wanted to hear another person’s voice that I would need to make my way to Dawnhaven. I have nothing but what I have carried here with me, but if nothing else, I beg that you might take my earring collection, sell it, and use the money for this cause of sanctuary, and that you grant it to me. To see a person’s face makes me weak with relief. I never imagined that I would miss eye contact.” B L I G H T - B O R N Nesna has been permanently altered by the blight, resembling her former self in appearance only superficially. Though her face has changed little except insofar she has transitioned from youth to adulthood, her complexion is pallid and grey, rendering her appearance corpselike. As can be seen when she blushes, however, her lips are not black from any sort of makeup, but rather because her blood is black as well. On her face, her eyes have lost their pupils and duplicated, resulting in two pairs of eyes which glow a weak, haunted purple, with her second, smaller pair sitting parallel to her nose on either cheek. Her lashes have grown thicker, duplicating in layers and occasionally show beads of thick black liquid—which, much like her lips, is not makeup, but rather comes from her, for just as her blood is black and viscous, so too are her tears, saliva, mucus, and every other fluid which comes from it. Indeed, when she opens her mouth to speak, even before her teeth, what is most obvious is how the interior of her mouth is pitch-black and how her molasses-like saliva seems to form gossamer strands between her teeth. Over the years, her teeth have become stained grey by this same dark interior, but, looking past her otherwise normal front two teeth, more changes in her mouth reveal themselves. Her secondary incisors form smaller fangs, while her canines extend much like those of many other blight-born. And behind these sharpened teeth are no premolars or molars, but rather dual paired rows of sharp teeth not unlike her secondary incisors. Even Nesna could still keep normal human food down, she could scarcely chew it effectively. Due in part to her black blood, her large, batlike wings appear entirely black, as do her arms and legs past the elbows and knees. Where her wings meet her body near the top of her lumbar, on her lower ribcage, the black fades into her pale skin, with dark veins creeping outwards, making her wings superficially look as if they might be rooting themselves into her back. Similarly, her hands and feet appear entirely black, as do the lower parts of her forearms and calves, then fading into her normal pale-grey complexion as they near the next joints, with black veins creeping further only to fade into her knee and elbow joints, almost giving the appearance of socks and gloves which have started to meld into her. What most obviously disproves this notion, other than how she maintains normal, if not heightened sensitivity in these extremities, is that her nails still grow all the same. Strangely enough, they remain quite normal in the sea of inky black, being entirely unremarkable other than being unusually healthy-looking for nails sitting on beds which seem as if they’d long died. When allowed to grow past the nail bed and left unpainted, their ends appear strong and pearly-white. Atop her head sit horns, which Nesna, having once attempted to remove them, knows have no bony core to them, instead simply growing upwards as fast as her hair used to no matter what is done. Though their thickness and position makes them inconvenient to file down at the best of times, Nesna has made a point of coaxing them into their current shape and filing them to keep them a consistent shape and size, lest they become unwieldy and too inconvenient. While her horns take the show, Nesna has found that the rest of her scalp is not to be underestimated. Her hair is not only snow-white and just as shiny, but shockingly fine, soft, smooth, and cool to the touch—altogether an unusual texture for hair, much unlike the dark, thicker hair she once bore. Despite its other properties, it is unexpectedly strong, holding up much better than would be expected for hair of its density. When she was younger, Nesna had maintained shorter hair, but this changed hair of hers grows quickly and more densely, by her estimation ending up with at least twice as much hair on her head after any amount of time, and so Nesna has become accustomed to wearing her hair long, cutting it haphazardly only as absolutely necessary for practicality and vanity. Poking past her hair are Nesna’s ears, which have not only lengthened to points but grown. They are quite sensitive, both to sound and to the touch, enough so that Nesna has not found it comfortable to sleep on her side ever since her mutation and, much to her chagrin, has not been able to tolerate wearing even the smallest from her once-beloved earring collection. Beyond this, Nesna’s ears seem to have developed more muscle behind them, such that they move slightly in response to sounds and have otherwise become quite expressive—often much more so than her face. Lastly, while she most often keeps it buried underneath her clothes, Nesna possesses a long tail ending in a spade shape—not unlike some old depictions of demons. When it can be seen, directly or indirectly, it is apparent that Nesna’s control over it is much less than any other appendage of hers, as when it is not curled and anchored firmly around one of her legs, it often fidgets and arcs like the tail of a nervous cat. Type: “Classical” Abilities: Beyond abilities such as flight and enhanced hearing clearly bestowed by her changed form, Nesna enjoys other changes which are less obvious. Nesna is shockingly resilient. Blunt-force trauma is of much less concern to her than one might expect; indeed, Nesna has found that she can handle crashing into things mid-flight without much lasting discomfort. Alongside this, though her skin is no less vulnerable to being pierced than before her mutation, the black-blood running through her does not so readily bleed as normal blood might, making a death by a thousand cuts a poor choice in taking her down. Those who come into prolonged contact with her blood can expect themselves to feel increasingly heavy and anaemic. While no less uncomfortable than going days without eating, Nesna can withstand longer without blood than many similarly blood-reliant blight-born can sustain before experiencing genuine ill effects. Beyond this, when not overexerting herself, Nesna has impressive stamina—able to go through a full day of moderate exertion without feeling any more tired than when she began. Lastly, Nesna has found her already-extant affinity for magic greatly bolstered—a fact which she places immense pride in. Weaknesses: Nesna is rather sluggish for a blight-born, largely incapable of reacting at the same blinding speed that many of her fellow blight-born might move at, and arguably less reactive than even some normal humans. Although she can fly much faster than any person can walk, her speed is anything but supernatural—if a pigeon is putting in the same effort as her, she will be entirely outpaced. Nesna is certainly stronger than her build would suggest, but less so than most comparable blight-born. Most notably of all, though, Nesna is sensitive not only to the sun, but to bright lights and the heat as well; most logs around the average fireside would be too close for her. Contrary to what might be expected for someone even more confined to the night than the average blight-born, Nesna’s night vision is not what one might expect for a blight-born, though this is less so an expression of her struggling with the dark and more that Nesna has overall middling vision—she has four eyes, and none of them work exceptionally well. Lastly, Nesna is, much more so than the average person, prone to choking on herself, resulting in her suddenly doubled over and sputtering with a terrible-sounding wet cough. Beyond these more overt struggles, Nesna also faces less obvious physical challenges. Her joints are prone to aching, and can often be heard to crackle and pop, especially after a bout of inactivity. Likewise, Nesna’s limitations are much less flexible than they are for many others. If she overexerts herself, she can reasonably expect to crash as soon as she reaches the next lull in activity.

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Wild Beasts of the Earth (Gothic Horror)

Masako Yamamoto

Speaking to Helmut, Masako simply shook her head and responded, “I don’t have the right tools to say. But I will see what I can find to help figure this out.”

That night, Masako had found nothing. She did not participate in the stakeout. The next morning, that Saturday, however, she returned with a small satchel. Ignoring the police officer’s commentary, she knelt by the body and opened her bag. From it, she produced a roll of measuring tape, a few clothespins, an eyebrow pencil, a pen, and a notepad.

On the notepad, she wrote the date with the pen, then 噛み跡の測定, and finally 噛み跡1 on the next line. After that first heading, she wrote four measurements:

• 弧
• 幅
• 深さ
• 歯の長さ

Then, she set the notepad on her satchel. Taking the brow pencil, she wrote the number 1 in Arabic numerals near it. With the measuring tape and clothespins, she pulled the tape along the arc of the bite mark, measuring it from end to end. Using the pins to mark where her finger sat, she then wrote down a number in millimetres after 弧. She repeated this process, measuring the straight width of the mark, from edge to edge, tracing a faint line with the pencil along her measuring tape before moving to take down the measurement. Then, using what seemed to be a rough estimate of the midpoint based on her napkin maths on a separate piece of paper, she made a mark along the previous line and took two more measurements. First, she took a measurement of the distance from the point to the outer edge of the bite mark—where the incisors would sit in the jaw. Then, for her last measurement, she found the distance from the outer side of the tooth mark to the inside of it, at last filling in the last section of her little list.

She repeated this for several bite marks, before stopping in the middle of measuring one when Sonja finished speaking, and said, “If the bodies are still around, I can also look at them.”

Looking at her notes for a moment, she added, “The bites I have measured are all from the same person, I think. I will measure the rest, but right now, it looks like there is only one person who did the biting.”

Wild Beasts of the Earth (Gothic Horror)

Masako Yamamoto

Masako stood up slowly from the body she had crouched over.

“I am a nurse,” she began. Looking at the body again, she squinted in the extra light. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it quickly with one of her matches, drawing a deep puff in before continuing.

“This is bad news,” she added ominously. She put the cigarette back in her mouth and fumbled for a moment, before pulling out a pen from her chatelaine. With it, she crouched down again and gestured with it towards one of the most prominent bites.

“That’s a human bite,” she stated. Pointing towards another, she repeated, “That is too. They’re all human bites. None of these are dog bites.”

Returning to the first bite, she followed the curve of the mark with her pen, and added, “Look at the shape—it’s like a half-moon. It is deepest here,” she continued, pointing to the centre of the arc, “Where the front teeth—the biggest ones—will make contact. If somehow there was a dog with a mouth shaped like this, there would be many deep points, from the sharp teeth. I have stitched up a thousand dog bites, so I know it is definitely not a dog bite.”

She sighed, clearly becoming increasingly frustrated with her explanation.

“あのう...” she murmured for a second, before suddenly taking her cigarette out and biting her free hand hard enough to leave a temporary mark.

“Look!” she exclaimed, holding her bitten hand beside the bite mark she had been examining, “Same shape. Same features. These are human bites—they cannot be anything else.”

Masako withdrew her hand and flicked it for a moment before replacing her cigarette and standing up again.

“I have seen other bites from people before. There were many desperate fighters in Siberia. But I have never seen anything like this. So I will say a human mouth must have done this, but I do not know what kind of person would do this.”

Masako looked around the group with a grim expression and took another deep puff of her cigarette.

Wild Beasts of the Earth (Gothic Horror)

Miss Masako Yamamoto & Mr. Adam Temple

Cowritten by @Dyelli Beybi & @enmuni

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Masako furrowed her brow for a moment, and then sighed, seemingly accepting that Temple knew little more than she did on the nature of the choices for who was to be here. After her pause, she looked him in the eyes again.

“Then, you receive groups often, do you?” she asked, “Have you received people for this “Night Watch” in Munich before?”

"Not in Munich, no," Temple shook his head, "Nor have I ever received a group quite of this size. I was based in Oxford. Occasionally there would be one new person. They would enter a little like this and be welcomed by a seasoned organisation. Unfortunately, our Chapter in Munich was destroyed during the civil war. Many of our German chapters have been weakened or destroyed in recent years so I was asked to step in and reform this one. Having so many new members at once is... unprecedented."

Masako seemed surprised at first, and then grim in her expression.

“Unprecedented…” she slowly repeated, trailing off before responding, “But you will remain here for a time, to help us prepare, then? Do you just host, or do you also work in the field?”

"I am more familiar with the field work," Temple assured her, "I am here to take you through this first incident. Probably the one beyond that and after that. You will not be left out of your depth."

“Then, even though there are some here who do not believe anything odd happened in this case,” Masako asked, cocking her head in curiosity, “You have seen such supernatural things, Mr. Temple?”

Temple gave a grave inclination of the head, "Yes, Miss Yamamoto, I have. There are, more things under heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies and it is only a fool who would dismiss the accumulated knowledge of all who came before and label it mere superstition. The cynic is necessary for balance... but I do not believe we are dealing with a pack of hungry hounds."

Masako nodded gravely, and looked over at Rudeanu and Quinn,

“So it is. But I am curious, with how there seems to already be an argument. Is there any sort of leadership structure that we can know about—someone we can look to when we disagree?”

"I am the Night Watch Captain," Temple repeated, "If there is a serious disagreement or one which endangers people, I will step in. At the moment," he nodded in the direction of Quinn and Rudeanu, "I am inclined to allow the churls to sort out their own troubles."

Masako nodded again, as if everything worked in her head now.

“So then…are we paid upon the completion of a task, or before?”

"Weekly, starting today," Temple replied, nodding towards Nelly, "It would not be fair on all to expect that you self-fund."

“How nice! I look forward to buying some new clothes!” Masako remarked. Looking towards some of the others, she then clasped her hands together, “But please excuse me—it seems some of us are already beginning our work—and I wish to join!”

Wild Beasts of the Earth (Gothic Horror)

Masako Yamamoto

Character Description

Name: Masako Yamamoto (山本正子)
Gender: F
Age: 23
Nationality: Japanese
Appearance:

appearance

Personal Effects: Aside from normal everyday clothes, Masako possesses a fully-equipped nurse’s chatelaine, a lighter and pack of cigarettes, a flash, a small bottle of laudanum, and a combat knife. She has tentative plans to purchase a pistol.

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Background:

What is your job Registered Nurse with the Japanese Red Cross
Backstory: I was born in 1900—that is, Meiji 33—perhaps two or three weeks after that year’s Hanami. I do not actually know when I was born, exactly, which I must admit is the greatest disappointment my father probably found in me. I can say that I was born at my father’s work, where my mother was visiting him after classes had finished for the day. I was told growing up that this was an omen of my studious nature. I performed well in school; from the beginning to the end, I was one of my father’s best students. Certainly, I imagine this was helped by the fact that my teacher followed me home! But I always found the praise from hard work attractive, and further enjoyed most of my studies then.

I must have gotten my will to be studious from my father, as my mother was always more concerned with tradition and with my grooming than these academic matters. I still do not understand, to that end, how they became married, but my mother always suggested to me that my father had only ever become more liberal-minded in his time as an academic. I remember that they often fought, as my mother felt my education should not come at the expense of my potential as a mother myself, while my father was particularly delighted by my interest in the sciences, and only ever disappointed by my lack of a sense for literature. In that time, I learned English from my father, who was an avid reader of the latest works on education, many of which were written in that language, while the others often were translated into it.

I had, when I was younger, accepted that my mother had already made up her mind on which sorts of men she wanted to see me with; two of her closest friends had sons, and it was my understanding that I had a choice between the two of them and only the two of them. I got along particularly well with the elder of the two, named Katsuo, and it was felt with great excitement by both of our mothers that we would marry soon after our primary schooling. But as we grew from children into young people, I felt as if we grew apart, though I do not know if he felt the same. “It is only natural that people change,” my father told me then, and so at this point I understood better how he felt about the matter. He did not want his young daughter to be married so soon, imagining that I would instead, after completing primary school, go on and continue my education, to become more than a wife and mother, but rather, at the very least, a good wife and wise mother, as it was said. With such encouragement, to my mother’s outrage, I chose to study nursing under the Red Cross with my father’s support, rather than to follow Katsuo around on whatever path he chose. If the two of us should reconvene in our paths, my father imagined, then he would surely approve of whatever we chose to do, but he firmly refused to insist upon any relationship, despite insistence from my mother and from Katsuo’s.

For my ability in English, I was delighted to have the opportunity to serve as one of the youngest nurses in the squad sent to Southampton. My father greatly encouraged that trip abroad, while my mother was beside herself. Little did any of us know that we would be asked to remain for the entirety of the war! I will admit, then, that this time awoke something within me. I imagine a keen mind must be inclined to thinking on its own, and if this is the case, then my own was left to its own devices. I was young and silly then, and at such a time in my life as I was, I learned a great many things there. If my mother should ever learn how I came to know the German language, I would imagine she would die on the spot, unless she managed to induce me to kill myself first, so I will ask that my writing of my experiences abroad not be shared outside of my confidence.

Although the majority of the Prisoners of War we cared for in our time in Southampton were of no consequence to me, I found myself picking out several of the most dashing, and considering what I might do. I told myself and my fellow nurses, then, that the extra time I devoted to the injured among these dashing sorts was to learn the German language, so that we might better be able to care for them. I did make good progress with the language, but I cannot say that this was the only product of my time among them. By my second year around these—shall we call them crippled gentlemen?—I found myself perhaps more bold than sensible. Although my fellow nurses said nothing of the matter, perhaps for at least one of them also considered a fling as I did, the surgeon indeed took notice when I turned entirely red as one of the new men in our charge requested me to care for him by name, despite us having never been introduced. He presumed, in a sort of kindness to me, that it was simply that I was better with German language than any of my fellow nurses. But I will admit that I did care for him as I cared for some of those other handsome fellows; after all, I had found that I greatly enjoyed going “above and beyond” in my care.

I suppose it is poor form to say that I enjoyed the war, but my experience was surely more lovely than most. The stress and activity of my work and the sort of entertainment I could access, both in the forms of the United Kingdom’s extensive scientific literature and in the nonetheless handsome forms of the crippled Germans in our care, brought me to feel almost mournful when I was on my way to return to Japan. To go from intensive medical work and intensive leisure to a possible quiet domesticity felt entirely unacceptable to me. I remember, as I sat in my bed on the way back, thinking of ways to prolong my time in the service. How fortunate I was that Russia was in shambles and that our country was engaged in a massive intervention! I had no sooner greeted my parents than I announced that I would be departing north shortly. My mother screamed at me then, while my father stood in stunned silence. But I had already enlisted to go there, and it could therefore not be helped, even as I then felt a sense of remorse for abandoning them so soon after my return.

The Siberian Intervention, I suppose, was less excellent than my time in Southampton, but despite the unpleasant material conditions and good reading, I made up for this with socialising—of the normal kind, to be clear. That is not to say, though, that I did not maintain my previous hobbies. At the time of my departure to Siberia, I had known a number of Germans, a Hungarian, two Englishmen, a Scotsman, two Canadians, and an American. By the summer of last year, when that disappointing announcement of our withdrawal from the intervention came, I realised in my tally that whoever I married would not be my first anything. I had known, in addition to those previous fellows, a particularly handsome Cossack, as I learned he was called, a Buryat fellow, two Yakut gentlemen in rapid succession (they called themselves Sakka, as I recall, and needed only a bit of patching—it was their visit where I was almost caught!), one of my fellow nurses (on several occasions, actually, we slept together specifically to stay warm, but found ourselves enjoying one another’s company more than I had imagined I would), five or six Czechoslovak legionaries, perhaps twelve White Russians and one Red, if I recall, out of my own curiosity and as an odd sort of kindness to him, for he was to be executed when the Whites returned, and a significant number of our own soldiers—enough of whom, anyway, that I cannot recall all of their names, though for a certain number of them, I believe it is because we had both drunk far more than we ought to have. I admit, writing it, that I make it sound as if I were immensely promiscuous, but disregarding recurring incidents, I rarely engaged more than a few times a month—twice in a week, at the very most.

But when that conflict ended, I could not bring myself to return home at all. I wrote a letter to my father, saying that I intended to immigrate to America. But instead, I boarded a ship heading to Germany—a place I imagine few who know me would bother to consider—intent on finding one of my old flings to perhaps help me find some nursing work in their area. Perhaps fortunately, it is unusual to see an Oriental woman of any sort in this part of the world, and I had managed to track down several of them. So it seems, I sound like a Southern German when I speak, and not a proper one at that. Munich is home to not one, but three of my old flings! Werner, Julius, and Eduard are their names—sadly, only Julius greeted me warmly. Though I could not stay with him, on account of his mother, he was kind as to give me directions and assistance in finding temporary employment while I made arrangements to become properly certified in accordance with German law. While modelling for artists is by no stretch of my imagination anything I would have ever done under normal circumstances, with how fascinated they are to have a “genuine Oriental subject,” as they say, I would be silly to try and find other temporary work. Artists are, even in such a case, stimulating enough company that I cannot find myself too disappointed. But I still look forward to when I can return to my nursing work, and find more situations as I have in the past to enjoy excitement in work and leisure at once.