Szilvia's Journal

[Szilvia Virág]

7 IULIE 777.

    Why does the raven cry luck?

    They do not spread their wings for our fortune; they fly because they must, because it is what they were made to do. They do not see in us what we do of them, for superstition is a uniquely human thing, a catalyst through which we might begin to understand the world around us. We are born into belief, though so many of us protest otherwise. It is belief in luck that makes it real, much like it breathes life into the bogeyman, or the divine.

    Belief is a powerful thing. Through sheer force of will, we are able to alter the world around us. Those who draw from the heart release this energy in a burst of passion, restrained not by theory nor devotion, but only by the limits that exist within their own innateness; those who draw from the soul take a little piece of themselves in sacrifice, offering it up for the good and the bad of those around them, all in service of a god or an ideal they hold to be the barest truth there is; those who draw from the mind, like I do, hone what little knowledge they have already to a fine edge and set out in search of more, never quite fulfilled until they learn all there is to know.

    I have lived in Immol all my life. I have seen the arcane, the things it can do. It is useless to ponder its nature, for the truth of the matter is this: it is no less a tool than the broom in my closet, and no more a weapon than the swords raised against me. Through it, one may achieve great power, indeed, but even greater is the power of many. For as long as I have studied, I have bore witness to so many like me crushed between the rocks and the rapids of the Saniset River, killed in the name of superstition and hate.

    So too have I survived these things. There are memories—vague, formless imagery, accompanied by dull sounds and even duller sensations. I remember only the waking afterwards; the pain, the fear, the rage. It is akin to having one's mind shrunk down into that of animal's, knowing only what instinct reveals to us in the shadow of such wickedness.

    Anger burns in me still. The person I was before died that night, and I awoke then to the person I am now: a woman ravaged by grief both in body and mind, having lost something so dear to me, some unclear piece of myself which I shall never get back. There is a hole in my heart where that something was, and it reaches down into the darkest depths of who I am. There is no bottom. There is no end.

    The raven, I have taken apart. Through its eyes I glimpse what dangers lie before me, through its talons I learn to sharpen my wit, and through its feathers I channel force of mind into material change. It is the conduit through which I may reach out and touch the very fabric of the world around me; it is no longer an avatar of luck, but a tool like any other, no different from the knowledge I wield nor the cruelty done unto me by those who hate.

    I leave for Vallaki tomorrow. I cannot return to this place—this shadow of a home, this prison of memory. I must make for myself a new life, a new home, and I shall weave of it a tale of my own telling.

    My fate rests now in my hands and my hands alone. I will never allow it to be taken from me again.