I do not remember going before a goddess to discuss my reincarnation into this universe, nor stepping through some mystical door into another world, nor some cosmic entity making a deal with me in return for more life. Not to say that such events did not transpire, but such dealings are not where my memory of this life began. I do remember a carriage traveling along a dirt road towards a quiet little town on the edge of nowhere, my little head nestled into Mother’s side as we bounced along the shabby dirt road. She held me close out of duty as we arrived at our new home. Bear in mind, my body at that time was that of a human child, not a dragon.
We had arrived at a quaint dwelling on the edge of town, high upon a hill. The house appeared absent the labors of a caretaker for some time. A short stone fence hemmed in an unkempt garden overgrown with an abundance of life and weeds. The thatch roof contained worrisome spots that suggested the next rainfall would not leave us so snug in our new abode. Worn patches of color on the walls hinted at fantasies where paint once adorned it in unparalleled livery. Floorboards groaned in protest as the coachman deposited our belongings upon the dusty floor inside. Vermin scurried to secret lairs, seemingly in protest as sunlight unabated poured into the room, the effect amplified dramatically by opening the storm windows.
Mother wasted no time in setting about the daunting chore required to make our new abode presentable. She worked tirelessly to improve our house and transform it into a home. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, she never hit the mark for that goal. The house itself became pristine. She cleaned, cooked, tended the garden, repaired the house, managed the shopping, provided me with an education (for what little I needed), and generally did her duty to care for me. But the place was so sterile, so lifeless. There were few decorations, trinkets, or objects to show character, to tell the world that a family lived there. There was no laughter, no conversation outside of what was needed to instruct me, no games played together. We existed there together, but yet there could be found no closeness and affection from us being family.
Perhaps fortune blessed me in that I did not need the nurturing love that normal children require. I retained scattered memories and wisdom from my past life. I knew of technology, mathematics, psychology, and other general forms of knowledge that savvy adults would possess, albeit devoid of the context of personal memories and experiences. I only needed to learn history, culture, geography, and other specific details of this world and life. I would hazard a guess that such seemingly supernatural intellect, when compared to my peers and combined with the oddness of Mother, contributed greatly to my complete lack of friends. I was not bullied, but neither was I invited to any event or gathering. People simply tolerated Mother and me and what coin we had to spend.
I buried myself in books to distract myself and to learn all I could of this new world. I cannot say for sure that my past lives were devoid of magic, but in this world, magic is absolutely real. Every person of all races has some degree of supernatural power which comes in the form of a Blessing, as most cultures call it. Each Blessing contains a range of Skills, and once awakened, most people experience a change of personality to follow the path their Blessing requires.
I remember asking Mother about my Blessing. She told me to keep it secret, that no one would have heard of it before, that people would fear me or try to capture and control me for their own ends. I heeded her words spoken with the same enthusiasm and demeanor as one talking about the weather despite their disturbing implications, and so I kept to myself and maintained a low profile. I studied, practiced the Skills of my Blessing, and prepared myself for the life ahead of me, one of adventure and danger.
Mother had convinced two local Adventurers to train me in the techniques of combat. I know not what deals were struck, but the Bradberrys, a young union of two humans, trained me. The husband taught me in the way of the sword and shield, sparing me little in the ways of war or the bite of his waster. The wife favored the spear, and she made her husband appear to be a saint, such was the brutality in how she pressed me with her onslaught. I knew not why they were so cold to me, never once gracing me with anything more than lukewarm demeanors. I lurked in hiding at times to watch the lessons with their other students, each of whom did not go home with nearly as many bruises as I did. Perhaps they sensed some sort of “wrongness” in me, that unnatural spark of an innocence already lost for one my age. I cannot say that I found their lessons to be to my disadvantage, for they impressed upon me the realities of combat and the harshness of the world when one takes up the sword. Such lessons had saved my life on more than one occasion.
The children of the town largely ignored me, which bewildered me, for I completely expected an outcast such as myself to have more than a few stones hurled my way. Few ever approached me willingly, and I found them to be dull and naïve. I wrestled with the strange duality within me, the youthful urge to occasionally play in the simple games that children desired, coupled with my advanced understanding of the world and what appetites that engendered. I craved adventure beyond tossing a ball to one another, but I could not accurately pinpoint what that entailed.
The adults interested me far more. Their lives and concerns proved to be more complex than those of the children. Laurndel, the wife of the butcher, was having an affair with the thatcher, Dorrel, a pretty boy elf who consorted with more than just her. He always visited her just after her husband left for work in the morning, usually two to three times a week. If the town had a clocktower, you could set it by the predictable punctuality of his visits. And once again at night, with Thuma, the wife of the town guard on night patrol, so too could such a clock be set by the same elf. Turnabout being fair play, Dorrel’s wife would always meet up with said night patrol guard behind the granary. He always stopped her there because she was “suspicious and required thorough inspection.” Apparently that was their routine of how they wanted it to play out.
I told Mother about such proclivities of the locals. She simply told me not to talk to people about it and to not get caught, offering no reprimand for sneaking out at night. When I asked her if she herself wanted such a man, she paused briefly from her work, only to say that such things were beyond what she could have. If I tried to press her on the topic, she found work for me to do, which quickly deterred any future conversations in that vein. I feel like she was more than beautiful enough to charm a man, so I could only wonder as to what stopped her.
Mother worked tirelessly, seemingly literally so, for I never saw her stop to rest, not even to sleep. She earned coin by her craft as a tailor and a leatherworker. Mostly, she took commissions for garments of the higher class. She processed work orders for nobility from across the land, with orders arriving by courier in detailed letters. Customers never came to our house directly, so either they had their own tailors for a final fitting or Mother was just that good. I tend to believe the latter, for I never once saw her make a mistake. Her movements were mechanically efficient, unadorned with flourishes or whimsical gesticulations. Her posture was always perfect and rigid, and she neither idled nor hustled for anything.
She taught me her craft, although my own handiwork, while perhaps suitable for everyday clothing, never passed muster to merit it being employed to assist her in her own commissions. The spacings of my threadwork were too uneven, although I suspected such detail would elude all eyes but her own. Her critique was flat, neither harsh when I failed, nor praising when I succeeded, for she dealt in nothing but facts. She never forced me to correct mistakes, but she also never failed to point them out. At best, she would say that “all of us have our own way of doing things”, and leave it at that if I continued to err. With no rhyme or reason, I would either redouble my efforts or give up and accept my imperfections, to which she expressed no approval or vexations one way or the other.
She showed me how to manage the flower garden. All flowers were placed in a neat grid, with the color and species of flower changing for each row. I remember telling her that the yellow ones were my favorite, specifically the one that resembled a lotus, to which she nodded and continued working. The following year, the garden had three rows of different yellow flowers instead of one, so I knew she did not completely dismiss everything I said. My books only got me so far, for she showed me the finer details that eluded the academics when it came to such things, such as how to properly adjust the fertilizer at different times of the year to manipulate different aspects of plant growth. We never entered the annual flower contest held by the village, but that did not stop the envious stares directed at Mother when the winners would pass by and see the two of us at work in the garden. Seeing as how Mother and I lived on the edge of town, such people went well out of their way to happen by.
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Despite her craft, Mother only wore a few different outfits. She did not adorn her hair with a flower, which was all the rage at that time amongst unmarried women and adolescent girls alike. By chance, I caught a peek from behind during one of the rare times Mother changed outfits when the door to her room remained ajar. Her skin was flawless, unblemished save for a tattoo between her shoulder blades, a black triangle with a clockwise twist of repeating edges drawn too long, creating a pattern of triangles spiraling outward until the outermost one was upside down. I dared not ask her about it, for such would admit my illicit observation. It seemed eerily familiar, and the thought of it nagged at me. Days later, I scoured my books for some clue. Mysteriously, my book on alchemy had disappeared from my collection, and the slot on the shelf where it had been remained barren of dust.
Such musings were soon replaced by a new marvel. During the middle of my adolescence, the first newcomers to town since my own arrival had graced the next hill over. A family of elves, and, by their dress and accompaniment of servants, seemingly rich ones. What possessed them to move here, I could not fathom, but rumors abounded that they were displaced nobles who had lost land and title and in some war or scandal. Not that I cared much about the family as a whole, but they had a daughter my age or a little older. Beautiful as all elves are, at least by human standards, she stood apart from the rest by virtue of her carmine hair that hung to the lower end of her shoulder blades. She kept it long and straight, sans a single small braid just to the right of her face.
She didn’t talk to me, but she would look my way and smile when I passed by. Chaperones accompanied her everywhere, so I can understand if she would not be permitted to familiarize herself with me, but perhaps she found my sleek build, handsome yet boyish features, and finger-length black hair to be to her liking. She behaved prim and proper just like a young lady of her breeding should, much to the constant approval and buzzing of her keepers.
I caught her out at night while I myself had been prowling about, and she was dressed not in the frilly attire of her station, but rather she was garbed in trousers, boots, and a shirt that eerily resembled what I had seen on one of the manservants. She hastened to a meadow outside of town, just down the hill from our homes where one lone and large tree stood among the grasses. She found herself a stick and set about slaying an army that only she could see. She lacked the polish of training, but the moonlight revealed a grace bordering on dance as she bobbed and weaved between her foes, striking slyly before withdrawing from such figments. She stayed perhaps an hour to frolic and spar before she returned home.
I found myself enamored with her charm and beauty. A delicate flower by day, and an errant thorn by night, she repeated her outings with regular frequency. I busied myself with tailoring and leatherworking, fashioning clothes more suitable to her ventures. The boots were the hardest, for those would be the most sensitive items, the measurements of which I could only guess by the impressions left by her own footprints. When all was finished, I had made boots of black leather, trousers of a blue similar to woad, a white shirt with bishop sleeves, and a carmine-colored vest to match her hair. I bundled it all up along with an old wooden shield and waster that I no longer needed. I left the package under the tree in the meadow along with my favorite species of yellow flower from the garden placed on top.
I made a point the next day to pass by her several times, with myself wearing a yellow flower at my breast pocket, an adornment to my person the likes of which had not yet been witnessed around town. She did finally notice me, and I think her smile shone brighter than ever before at that exact moment when realization struck her. She locked her gaze with mine, and for a moment when her entourage looked away, she drew a yellow flower of her own from her sleeve and placed it in her hair, the very lotus I had left for her. For the first time in this life, my heart pounded unabated by virtue of the affection of a crush returned in kind.
Such merriment was cut short though. That same day, Mother informed me that she did not have long to live, perhaps a year more at most, all in the same matter-of-fact tone that everything was said. I did not understand it then, and many years would pass before I would, but I know now that she did the best she could. I remember her sitting in her chair by the table sometime around my sixteenth or seventeenth year. I knew not my exact age, I still do not, and if Mother knew, she never mentioned it. She smiled at me, the first time I ever remembered seeing such a thing. At that moment, I realized that she loved me in her own way. Memories flashed through my mind, ones from reading my missing book on alchemy, with flickering images of the strange triangle symbol on her back. I knew then that she loved me as much as she could, as much as a [Homunculus] could, as much as an artificial life devoid of a soul or humanity could. I remember her final words still to this day, spoken thus before the light faded from her eyes and she moved no more:
“I love you. Go now into the world and make your way.”
No funeral was held, not that anyone would attend other than out of a sense of social obligation. Not that she needed one, for her body faded away to dust and ash in very short order. I held her hand as it happened. She never stopped smiling the whole time, despite life, or perhaps animation, being no more. And then she was gone, and so was I, for I left town that very day. She had told me before she died that the house was never truly hers, and that with her death, I would not be able to stay there any longer. I took what I would need to start my new life of adventure, leaving the rest for whoever would live here next. I had searched Mother’s remains and her room for some sort of clue, and all I had discovered was a dull black orb in her ashes, one about as wide as my thumb is long, which I took with me.
I thought about burning it all down. I do not know why rage welled up inside of me so intensely at that moment as I walked down the hill and into town. It was unfair, that she lived such a short life, that she was incapable of expressing herself, that the powers that be cursed her to a cruel fate devoid of love and adventure. I ultimately refrained from exercising pyromantic inclinations. A certain general in a certain war did not, the names of which have mysteriously been forgotten, most likely due to all records of them being scoured from the annals of history, sans a cenotaph to them that I keep within my most secret of lairs. To this day, the capital city of said general is still devoid of life. It yet bears the scars from the cataclysm brought forth from my wrath, and not even the passing of centuries have alleviated its desolate condition.
My journey out of town was bizarre to say the least. People waved or called out to me as I passed by, as if we were all good friends. The Bradberrys gave me hearty goodbyes, as if my departure were both foretold and bittersweet. Mrs. Bradberry gave me a warm hug, the first one I can remember having, which both shocked me and reminded me of how starved I had been for any sort of affection. Even the daytime guard gave me a clap on the back as I left and told me to come back and visit the town sometime.
I had hoped to see my elven crush, but such fortune eluded me. I did not know her first name, for we had never spoken. We had communicated through gifts along with cryptic and poetic notes that we left at the tree, each careful that neither of us could be identified should a note be found. We had known each other for only eight months, and I wondered if a surprise courtship had now wilted before romance could bloom. I did leave her a final note, one that detailed where she could find me if she missed me as much as I would miss her.
And so I did go into the world and make my way. I would like to think that I have done rather well for myself, but success is subjective to the system by which it is measured. I was weak then in so many ways, especially compared to others my age. My Blessing did not start out as strong as others, and I would come to learn that the mechanisms through which I would advance and gain power deviated greatly from all others that I would eventually study. I made my way alone to the nearest city to seek work worthy of sustaining me. Perhaps this is where my story truly began. Alone, but undaunted, I took my first steps towards godhood.