Unliving

"I had a far less open mind when I was younger, life at the time was still easy, and in many ways, I was depending on grandpa Aarin for many, many things. Nowadays I look back at how I once thought and acted, and can't help but cringe at my younger self.

 

Then again, who amongst us aren't guilty of a youthful folly or two?" - Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 120 FP.

Guest residences

Eastern section

Shadow Forest / Ævietønavæel

2nd day, 1st week, 5th month, year 80 VA.

 

It has been a month since the Ptolodeccan delegation had lived in the shadow forest. For the most part, their hosts were courteous enough, and they had been assigned their own individual residences. They still lived close to the grand hall where the patients were for practical purposes, but gained some privacy this way at least, although the elven concept of it differed from theirs.

 

At times some older elves might look at them askance, but they soon withdrew, and it never got any worse than that. On the other hand, Aideen herself found that she was the one having issues. While she was busy at work, healing people, reflex and experience had taken over and she had not thought much about it, but now that they had mostly helped handle the worst cases and had free time, she couldn't help but to think on the issue which troubled her mind.

 

It was a feeling that struck her when she saw the older elves, especially the warriors amongst them, who mostly went around wearing the flayed skin of an animal. It reminded her all too much of the elven raiders that had savaged her homeland many decades ago, the ones who had cost her the life of her elder brother.

 

Making things worse was that these elves are

the same elves from back then. Not the same individuals, of course - there had not been that many survivors from the raids back then - but the same tribe nonetheless. She couldn't help but feel some old hatred well up within her, and can't help but question if amongst those she healed were people who had been responsible for her misery and sorrow in the past. Even if most of them were likely uninvolved.

 

She realized now that she had been here for a month, just how easy it had been to think and divide people into "good" and "bad". Subconsciously she had thought of the elves she had known in Ptolodecca, that had become part of her family, in the former category, while the rest of their kind who still lived on the forest, she had thought less pleasantly about, owing to the history of shed blood between their people.

 

It had been a similar issue that she had felt long ago, when she had just recently risen into unlife. Having been raised on a more strict view of undead as bad in her youth, and only being told the truth about her mother and the rebellion after she turned fourteen, she had back then subconsciously thought that was as well.

 

The teachings of her youth had clashed with the truth the world had shoved to her face, and made worse by her own condition. She had whiled away her time with training back then, to help keep her focus away from the questions that troubled her.

 

The way grandpa Aarin had doted on her, and how idyllic life on Ptolodecca had been, had helped win her over back then, making her see that the undead weren't inherently bad. By extension, it had helped make her see herself in a better light as well.

 

Back then she had also subconsciously divided the necromancers into "good" and "bad" in her mind, and that thought had just begun to solidify when the Junoran campaign took place, and grandpa Aarin shattered those thoughts when he nonchalantly massacred every living thing in Danna before her eyes.

 

The talk she had back then with grandpa Aarin had straightened out her thoughts. She realized then that which side was "good" and which was "bad" were entirely subjective matters, depending on which side told the story.

 

Since then she had strived to judge people for their actions, for who they are, not what they are or where they came from, and had thought herself mostly freed from her old prejudices. Her stay in the shadow forest proved otherwise, as she couldn't help but overlay some of the older elves with those she had fought during the raid many decades ago.

 

Of course, in her mind she knew they were different people, as most of the ones from back then were long dead, yet at times she couldn't help but superimpose the image of the raider leader - with his head dress and cape made not from the skin of an animal as she first thought, but from the skin of a therian - with some of the older elves present.

 

She felt like a hypocrite when she thought further about it. While she had fought in the defense of her people, her hands were no less stained with the blood of many. Be it elven raiders, her own fellow countrymen from the rebellion, or the Antemeians from when they took back their homeland, her hands had the blood of many on them.

 

Who was she to judge them? It would just be like the pot calling the kettle black, for a murderer to cry foul of another. How many sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters of the people who lived in these forests had she taken from them with her own hands?

 

She knew at least a few, and while matriarch Fareesa had disagreed with her younger son on the path he had trodden, he was still her son even so. And that son of hers, who had killed her brother, she had killed with her own hands back then, wrenched his head off his neck and displayed it for the other raiders to witness, even.

 

Aideen honestly was at a loss on how she should feel, but she knew that she couldn't keep being bothered by these thoughts, that the task ahead would need her full concentration. She resolved herself then and there, to look for the elven matriarch, and to talk with her about the problem she had.

 

Whatever the outcome will be, she left in the hands of the deities, come what may.