I remember the warm and happy feelings of seeing my father come home after a trading trip. I remember the sweet cakes that he brought and how they were soaked in honey. I remember the toys from the far reaches of Creation that my father traded for, but mostly I remember his worm embrace and how prickly his face was after he came back. I remember crying when he left again. Most of all.
I don't remember, I can't remember the next time he came back. He was different and I ran from him. I remember the battle that took place outside in the streets and I remember the trial where my father was exiled. I remember how the other children in the school would not play with me anymore. I remember that there were no more sweet cakes soaked in honey. I remember learning what a pariah was and that after a hard Winter, my mother and I left Whitewall, the only place I ever knew. I remember that my mother did not have to go, that her family would take care of us, but that there were fights where people told her that she was too proud.
The trip south in the Spring was cold. It was called spring because it rained more often than it snowed. The Holy Road was warm, the blessings of the Age before had made a road that was never cold and had lights that glowed all night long. They created a road that no one could come to harm while on it, but one that would not protect you from what lay on the the side. First there were the pretty people that asked me to come and dance with them, play games with them. My mother told me that they are the people that killed my father. I did not know he was dead and I cried. I did not know what dead was then, but I knew it meant that I would never see him again.
Later in the trip it was worse. People lined the road on both sides and just stared. Mommy told me that they were dead people. I asked is daddy there? I was slapped, but I know mommy just was sad. The dead people were gone in the day, but the land was bleak and horrible. At night I remember daddy calling me gently in the breeze…
We made it to our new home, Wallport. It was a small city at the end of the Holy Road. People who wanted to go up the road had to stop here first and they arrived by boat and left by boat too. I remember looking out that first time at the Sea. The waves were tiny from the cliff top and there was an island far to the south almost hard to see. There was a tall mountain on that island. At night the island twinkled like he stars above, but only on a clear night. People told me that the island was as far away to the South as Whitewall was to the North. The island was called the Blessed Isle and the land was Owned by the Empress of the Realm, where the great Dragon Blooded came from. Mommy told me to never look at them and do what ever they told me to do.
I remember that my mother found a place that was not as nice as the place that we left. I told her I did not like it and I wanted the old place back. She said that this place was better it had 'opportunity', and that was better. When I asked again she slapped me and told me that we could never go back. My mother said that she needed me to go to school and to do well, school was not like it was in Whitewall, and it was expensive. Most of the other kids were stupid and did not know anything so I was bored and often went out to learn other things and see other things. There was a forest near by and there was the sea. There was a goat path down to the water, but there were no goats. There was a waterfall that fell down the cliff. The water was brown and smelled horrible, but it was warm and in the winter there was a fog all over the harbour that smelled of shit. Sailors called it Whiteshit fog.
I remember that a Dragon Blooded came to visit my mother. She told me to leave before he would arrive. One day after he came, I came back and my mother was dead. I never saw my father die. I saw the dead on the road, the ghosts and stuff, but I never saw someone dead like my mother. There was lots of blood and she never lifted her head when I called. Her hands were limp. There was a scattering of white coins on her body and on the floor sitting in the blood. I knew it was jade and I knew it was valuable, but it also felt that is was all that was left of my mom. I took one and hid it. I would look at it when I was alone.
They took me and put me in a house full of orphans. I was not an orphan though, I had parents; they were just dead. The others did not know who their parents were. I left that place the first night and they were happy to have me go. I wandered the streets and the forest and begged for food and stole when I could do neither. I slept on the road, the Holy Road, it provided warmth but nothing else. I learned quickly that you needed to sleep in the day, beg in the morning, steal in the night, avoid the city at night before the early mornings. The other times people would beat you. Beat you or worse.
When you break the rules bad things happen. The last I saw it, was when I was down by the docks, in the early morning just before sunrise. I was absorbed in my prize, the white jade obol that was crusted with the last dried blood of my mother. I was looking at it when the had reached over me and grabbed my hand, crushing it and prying it open. An older boy had me, he and his friends. The grabbed my prize and I bit them. They did not like that, the hot taste of salty blood went into my mouth followed by the sharp cut of a dagger in my gut. They tossed me on to the rocks bleeding and rent. The fall to the rocks broke something in me, but it was the taking of my prize that hurt the most. My mother was lost to me forever. The waves washed over me and my life departed, choking on the foam. .
A voice asked me what was in my heart. I said nothing. What do you want, I responded, to cause them pain. I woke and I was no longer in Wallport. I was not in the sea. I was with my Master and he had plans for me and it was all going to be better.
He told me that I was his Lady of Squalor and that was who I was from then on. He showed me that he had been watching me for a long time, sometimes he came to me as my father and sometimes as my mother. Sometimes he was the whore bitch Marama and sometimes he walk with Marama. Sometimes he was just a shadow with piercing eyes that filled people with dread, but to me he was my mentor. He always pushed me and told me that there were great things afoot and he had plans for me. There were others who I was paired with, but it was me who he had the most faith and held in most esteem. I was his prodigy. He showed us how it was to go, how we were the saviors of Creation. We were the ones that were going to remover the pain and the hurt and the suffering from the World. The suffering was everywhere. There was suffering in the brothels, suffering on the streets, I knew that. He said that there was a whole bunch of nations that were filled with people suffering day in and day out. The ground wept at the suffering—you just have to stop and listen and you would hear the constant weeping it made everywhere. Well not everywhere. In Shadowlands the land no longer wept, but slept, they way that it was supposed to.
I remember the way the world was before this age, it was happy and the poorest man was more wealthy than the richest person today. I remember that people flew everywhere and learned anything from books and I Am. I see the wonders that are gone and the crash that Creation has suffered and that it is unrepairable, that we must bring it back to a place of rest before it can be made better.
For the first few months we spent our time training and going out on forays into the surrounding lands, lands filled with drug addled slaves, wallowing in misery every second. I knew what had to be done. He showed us how we were to do his work. We ventured into the heinous nations nearby and hacked the overlords to death, wounding them so they paid for their crimes with a slow painful death and brought out the victims, the slaves to resettlement camps where they could prosper. After months of doing this we had freed thousands of slaves and had resettled them into those towns in the wild. The master was pleased. He told us that we had exceeded his expectations. But he asked us how our freed slaves were were doing.
We went and investigated. There were people that were spoiling the paradise we created for them, hurting and strong arming them. After the treatment they had suffered they just went about and did it to the ones that survived. A few took what they wanted from the weakest. It was enough. In despair she did what she had to do to keep the freed slaves safe. She hoped that they would understand that she did it for them. Any village that had a problem like this she remedied the situation. Soon the lands around the supplanted villages were calm and resting. Her master was pleased with what she had done and she was rewarded with his mark, that all might know his pleasure.
What he desired most from her was that she go out and recruit for the cause.and she excelled in this task too. She found a new Solar, who was uneducated in the ways of the world and thought that he had a tough go of things. But her master said it takes all sorts to help quiet the land and make it ready.
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