Meren's Introduction

Of Fayiron Meren Eryndiriel I am. Beginning to begin, yes? ... Begin the beginning... Beginning at the start... Blast it! I know my master wants me to write and speak only in Common, but I just can't get that sentence structure down! But you can understand me now? Odd, but that's better than you staring at me blankly, which is usually the reaction I get whenever I open my mouth.

Let me begin again in my own words. I am Meren, daughter of Eryndir; my father is the leader of the wood elves of Fayiron and the surrounding forests. ... but if this is an introduction, I should begin this at the start, right?

Life has never been particularly easy or straightforward for me or my brother and, as a result, neither of us are exactly what we appear. Yes, I'm a wood elf and Kryro, he's... well, he's not here at the moment so I suppose I'll have to be the one to speak for now. What has given me trouble the longest is that I've constantly had to work twice as hard as the rest of my kin to earn equal respect and to show them that I can be just as good a border guard and scout as they are. This is because by their reckoning I am still a child, which is extremely frustrating when I have been an adult for quite some time. Why the inconsistency here? I suppose I can explain, but you have to promise not to tell anyone, okay? ... What? Oh, I wasn't reaching for my blowgun for any particular reason, except maybe some added assurance. (This must be what Lady Kris is trying to break me of. I can't just knock out anyone who asks questions of my kin, as much as that goes against what I am...)

So you'll skip the nap and keep it secret? Then here it is: I'm a half-elf. I don't often let on that I'm not fully elven, as you can probably guess. To all but another wood elf, I look, act and sound the part. When I was sent away from the forest, my father told me it would be easier this way; people sometimes don't approve of those of mixed blood, and my kind... well, it's extremely rare. I'm the only one of my type in the forest, and likely the only one in the kingdom. My father says I may be the only one in the world, but I think that's just him trying to make me feel special... when it does almost exactly the opposite and has me yearning to just be like the rest of my kin. I suppose that's how parents are.

What am I besides a wood elf? It is hard to guess. My mother was a halfling. Strange, I know, but this was never really an issue; she was a healer and came to the aid of my father's people in a time of great need. After this, since she was the only healer the young tribe had, they weren't inclined to give her the kind of treatment most outsiders would receive and she was accepted in as an honorary elf. I became the end result and what held true for her would have extended to me... except for one problem. One very large problem.

Magic. Somehow, despite my only desire being to stay a guard and scout, about a decade ago I began to sense the energy possessed by greenery and became able to use it to make things happen, usually with strange, unpredictable results. This is not a normal ability for a wood elf, or at least it isn't without training as a shaman, so I kept this a secret for as long as I could. But eventually my kin became aware of this fact when I had to use it openly.

You see, magic is both my blessing and my bane. With it I will one day be able to protect my kin and forest in ways no wood elf ever dreamed possible- a wonderful thing. Until I have my magic under control, though, I am exiled from my home- a horrible, awful thing. My father's exact words were "Meren, you're going to burn the place down. I am sending you off to the wizard in Springwell until you can control what you wield. I wouldn't allow an untrained archer who knows not how to aim to scout, so a mage destroying our trees I cannot allow on guard, even if she is my daughter." As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point, and off I was sent to the nearest town.

I suppose I really have no room to complain. Somehow my intellectual brother became one of the strongest warriors of his centaur tribe and is now their scout leader, which I'm sure he wouldn't have predicted, either. ...Yes, you heard me right. My brother is a centaur. It's probably best not to ask. Anyway, at least Kryro becoming a warrior made some sort of sense. Wood elves aren't mages and halfling magic only involves healing. So how did I end up with this skill- or lack there of; numerous fires and explosive plant growth can attest to that- that I never wanted? That's something neither my master nor my father have been able to answer for me.

So here I am, neither fish nor fowl. Not a full mage yet, but no longer just a scout. A wood elf, but not entirely. Sort of a halfling and almost a centaur by association. It's a wonder I look normal and elven when these averaged together should give me one fuzzy foot, one ear much pointier than the other, magic arrows in my quiver and three legs to stand on. ...Hey, those arrows sound pretty good. That would be magic worthy of an elf, anyway!


((Say hi to Meren- she's my next protagonist. I'm currently working on a long story for her like I did for Raff last year, so that'll be posted sometime in the summer. I'm still not entirely sure what it's going to be, but it'll involve a lot of chaotic magic and likely a bit of memory loss; there's a reason Meren doesn't recall why as a teenager she suddenly picked up the ability to work magic.)

Raff's (Delayed) Introduction

Hullo! Nice to meetcha! The name's Raff. ...Okay, if you're insisting on my full name it's- don't laugh- Rafion Goldenstrings. Please just call me Raff, though. My full name is the unfortunate result of being the offspring of an elf and a bard. Oh, and tack on "of the Order of the Fleet Fox", and you have a name that's far too long for any one person, even the ones with pointy ears where long names seem to be compulsory.

Right. Moving on. As you can probably guess from the fox thing, I'm a Messenger. A priest of Hermes. I know, I know- that's a human god and I certainly don't look like someone who'd fit into that priesthood. I'm not the only half-elf, but there certainly aren't many like me in the order. But, hey, Hermes is a Trickster, right? An almost-ranger-bard was probably a requirement to add more chaos to the ranks. Yup, you heard me right. I'm a priest with both warrior and minstrel training and was well on my way to becoming a ranger when I was Called by Hermes. Now that was an entirely unexpected, drastic change, let me tell ye! Unexpected and drastic, but absolutely amusing and different, so I was quite fine with the sudden change of plans. Well... except for the "no harmful weapons" thing. That irked me- it still irks me, really. But the mischief, magic, and traveling more than make up for the fact that I can now wield little more than a stick. A stick with a silver fox on the end, I'll give you, but still a stick. Which now has teethmarks in it from my dog trying to fetch it, by the way.

(... oh, hush. You did so try to fetch it. ... Just sit, would ye? ... No, you can't play with the mouse- you scare him when you chase him around.) Sorry, the shaggy mutt is annoyed that we're ignoring him and is reminding me that I should introduce my companions, too. ... Yes, I can talk to the dog, but no, I'm not crazy (shut it, Jack). That goes with being a priest of Hermes- most of us can speak with animals, although usually they're not as vocal as Jack here. The mouse hiding on my shoulder is Rhy and that cardinal perched in the tree yonder is Neru.

Okay, now that I've got all the introductions finished, I can continue. I'm a Messenger errant- this means that I don't work out of a particular mosque and instead travel from place t'place with whatever delivery I'm handed at the time. My home, as well as my heart, is back in Woodland, though; that's where I had my training as a youth. I'm not really sure why that wasn't chosen as a home base for me. Maybe the higher ups thought I'd do the most good always traveling? Maybe they needed a token non-human traveling out there openly? Who knows? I'm pretty happy with that decision, whatever the reason was.

Do I mind being a half-elf around humans? Nah, that's never been a problem. Personally, it's never bothered me and I'm all for being unique (and, okay, strange). I did spend the first half of my life mostly around elves before joining up with humans, so I've had the best of both worlds- 'though that does mean that my speech is a mishmash sometimes, ye ken? Anyway, as for outside forces... well, people don't generally mess with Messengers. Only the very stupid would insult those literate people who carry important news and correspondences, and the wisest recall that we're tricksters as well as letter-carriers. It's never a good idea to mess with practical jokers. Trust me on this.

I'd stay and chat, but I really haveta get going. I have a message I must deliver that's already been delayed too long. Maybe we'll meet again in another city someday... although I'll warn ye: you may not recognize me if our paths cross again when I'm not on an assignment- and even if you do, I'll likely answer with a different voice to a different name. There's a chance it'd be more unusual than my real one, but I doubt it.


((I realized as I was writing up an introduction for my next character that I never posted one for Raff before I started putting up his story. Whoops! The next part of his story will be posted soon- I wanted to get this finished first.))

Adventures of a Young Messenger - The Black Sheep (Part 1)

Part 1 - The Black Sheep
(or is it "red fox"?)
(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)



A narrative telling of the events that occurred in August 689CC

I don't often talk about my family and there's a good reason for that: I'm the black sheep. That idiom is oddly appropriate as it is animal-related, but I'll get to that later.

You would think that in a prestigious, aristocratic family, it would be a given that the youngest son would enter some sort of priesthood. In my family that was not so. Well, I suppose that it did work out to be the case, but it wasn't what my father intended, which was for all of his sons to follow in his footsteps and become warriors of some sort. His plan seemed to be working fine as my eldest brother, Osric, happily went off to serve as a page and just as enthusiastically became a knight when he reached the appropriate age, then slid gracefully into the position of landholder when our father passed the estate on to him. Next was Kendric, who, while not quite as enthusiastic as Os, managed to find his niche in the army and is now currently serving as a lieutenant at the castle town. Even our sister Bryn fit into the scheme by marrying an officer.

And then there was me. I never had any interest whatsoever in learning how to fight, which caused no end of trouble. Ken is only a year older, so we had most of our lessons at the same time, and of all my siblings he's the one I'm closest to. He didn't understand why I wanted to sneak off, but he was always up for causing some sort of distraction (okay, trouble) so I could get away from the kinds of lessons that I hated. Eventually our tutors in those subjects stopped bothering to look for me, figuring that since I was the youngest son, I would probably just end up doing something scholarly anyway. That is what I excelled at; by nine I could read anything in the (rather sparse) library and was much further advanced than either of my brothers when it came to logic, reading, and numbers.

Although not pleased by my aversion to what he deemed important, my father would likely have let this slide (my having two more important brothers to occupy his time) if it wasn't for the fact that my family eventually realized why it was that I was sneaking off from the strategic and weapons-training lessons: to spend time in the wooded areas around our land, talking to the animals. Even then, when I couldn't speak with them in words yet, they were still better company than most of the humans around me. I suppose that I was fortunate to be so ignored that no one noticed this until I was ten, which was when the second shoe subsequently dropped. After my father loudly exclaimed things along the lines of "no son of mine will be one of them druids!", I was pretty much exiled from the outdoors. Life would have been entirely boring had I obeyed, but I found a way to sneak out almost every night (with Ken's help again, of course- I could have been found talking to a tree stump or a rock, and he wouldn't have thought any less of me). After a while a large, vibrantly colored fox began joining me on my evening walks and then... well, that's a story in and of itself, so I'll tell that later. Suffice it to say that just after my eleventh birthday I was Called by Hermes.

The next day during breakfast I proudly walked up to my parents and informed them that I was now under Hermes' jurisdiction and would be entering His nearest mosque in Woodland. The looks on their faces were priceless! There was some mumbling (mostly along the lines of "Hermes? Couldn't you have picked a more stately god?" by my mother and "What's this 'jurisdiction' thing?" by my father) of course, but my parents were at least smart enough to know that getting on the wrong side of any deity (even one they deemed "working class") would be a Bad Idea and so sent me on my way.

Over the years, I've largely patched up the relationship with my family, but I doubt I'll ever be particularly close to any of them besides my one brother; Os and Bryn are nice enough people, in their own ways, but they were too much older than me to really be anything more than distant acquaintances. As an adult, the main problem is that I'm still far too different from my kin; I have no interest in the small things that they consider important and they don't understand how I can be happy with the path I took. I do have to say, however, that I appreciate the fact that Ken enjoys a good practical joke. I suppose there is always one bright part to every family, no matter how unpleasant the rest may be.

(Part 2 can be found here.)

((Meri here. I'm going to be writing up these stories about Cyneric every so often, so look for more soon. I miss writing and this'll be good practice for the creative/fictional kind. :) ))