The raven sat on the shoulder of the Speaker of the Dead, its dark eyes looking at me. A fox appeared from behind the Speaker of the Living and on the Speaker of the Unborn's hand a falcon was perched.
There was a presence next to me. It looked somewhat like Aflie and Rozalia and yet not. It was leaner and slighter in build, with thick grey fur. It was the Coywolf. I remember I felt safe.
There was nothingness around us. I tried to -look- but I couldn't find it, so I turned to the Coywolf. I remember then that fear began to grow. What if something had happened to it? It had been a while since I saw it, after all. What if what had been done to me, had somehow killed it?
The Coywolf sniffed the nothingness.
Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. His nose down, paw scratching at something.
The small, dark mole made it's appearance known by biting the Coywolf's paw. He jumped and yelped but held no ill will, his eyes bearing amusement.
I wanted to hold the mole, to have a moment... but it isn't what moles do and I had somewhere to be. It had dug a hole for me. The raven sat on the edge of the hole and the Speaker of the Dead spoke through it,
"Inside are the dead. I know not what you will see, and I will not see it with you, for I keep your spirits safe."I had to crawl to be able to follow the mole. We reached a clearing in some woods, the morning sun shining brightly from above. It was hot - we were in Tethyr, the land of my father.
A woman stood in that clearing, with short almost completely grey hair. She was dressed in the grey robes of Ilmater with a red cord wrapped around one wrist. Her skin was tanned and weathered from a lifetime in the sun and she was lean yet there was no weakness in her. Her calloused hands and sinewy muscles were born not only of the use of the rake and hoe. I remember best her warm brown eyes, like a hearth, yet full with wit.
I didn't recognize her, I had never met her. Yet, she knew me. She told me how alike my mother I was, at least in looks. I was often told this. Her voice was foreign, certainly not Tethyrian but instead Sembian. The Ilmateri woman mused on why she was there. I had an urge to look at what I was wearing. It was a fine tunic of royal blue with gold lining - the colours of the Santraegers.
"You were named for me."I knew then who she was. From all the stories I had heard. This was the woman who had given her life in Tethyr so that my parents could live. A woman of such great, impossible deeds that I never felt I could live up to the name that had been granted to me at birth. I felt I was a constant disappointment in my father's eyes. Everyone else had taken to calling me 'Liss', yet he still addressed me by
her name. For I didn't see it as my own.
I didn't know what to say. She filled the silence and spoke of how this was the clearing my father had often come to after his legs had healed, after he had sent away my grandfather's men - the men sent to convince him to return.
"He'd fight legions of ghost warriors, like he could cut away his doubts. Such fire, such anger. He had such doubts about his path, and he loathed himself for it; then he loathed himself for embracing those doubts and choosing the Broken God."She spoke of never having had the chance to properly thank my mother in helping him find a place where he belonged. I offered to pass on the word.
She spoke of her past. Of how she had sold her blade for coin across Sembia and the Dales. That not everyone who met her blade deserved it and with time, doubt grew within her and she struggled until she found peace in the faith of Ilmater. That it was how she knew there was good in my father. This side of her was not one my father had really ever spoken of.
"Don't worry about carrying my name. You don't need to be a copy of me to make me happy you ever came to be. There's some of your father's fears; living for others expectations, yet defying them. It's a paradox in both of you."She stepped closer and cupped my cheek. I was rather lost for words still. Hers had struck somewhere deep and I knew something changed within me, perhaps not immediately but it was a change. We embraced and she bid me to remember what she had said and that it was time for us to part.
~*~
Later on, when I read his old journal I found some entries which mentioned her. I understood better than what he had meant to her. She was the mother he never really had and he was a son in all but name.
I poured over those pages and in my mind's eye, she became more alive to me. As if even if we had never truly met, that I knew her.
I find myself wondering now if the wise priestess my father had once written of was her, the one who said,
"There are often no good choices, just least bad ones."[A warercolour painting is inserted between the pages depicting Dethliss the Martyr of Ilmater, with her warm brown eyes.][Another watercolour painting is that of a very cute, digging mole.]