North Cadentia
Sometimes, Glenn felt like he had spent his entire life at work. It wasn't just that he had been a workaholic for most of his life, turning wood in sawdust-filled workshops, planting seeds in carefully tilled gardens, or thumbing through thick magic tomes on the whims of his Evocation Studies professor. It was that so many of the places he had lived in had been work spaces in previous lives. The barn he had rented for so long, close to when he had first moved to RhyDin. The stores he had owned, where the back rooms had served as both impromptu napping centers and makeshift hotels when he worked too late into the night. His dorm room at Sygil, where he was constantly surrounded by the books and scrolls he was studying. Even now, he was living in a fixer-upper farmhouse south of RhyDin, and what was a farm if not a job that the farmer could never escape" Neither rain, nor snow, nor baking sun, nor holidays or sickness or tragedy, could stop the farmer. There were always crops to be watered, animals to be fed, tractors and combines to maintain. The work was always waiting, even when sleeping or eating or visiting friends in town. It never really went away. It was the perfect life for him.
It was hard for him to the trace the threads of his life that led him to this moment. What had he been doing" What had he been trying to do' As a child, his goal had been to grow up, without revealing the secret he held that would put him at odds with his community. As a young adult, he sought to move away from his repressive home and succeeded, only to find the behaviors he had learned to hide himself hard to shake. He had set goals for himself, met them, and then watched them drift away from him in a haze of accidents and ill fortune. He had met the Angel of his childhood, and discovered she was no divine agent, but a person, one with dreams and goals and flaws all her own. He had fallen in love, again and again and again, and each time the relationships ended. Sometimes he had broken things off, sometimes she had. Sometimes he couldn't remember who was to blame. Sometimes he could. It was hard to say which was more painful to live with.
He had wanted to believe there was a bigger meaning to his life, a deeper purpose than driving nails through wood on others" behalf, than scratching through the dirt to feed himself. The answer hadn't come from learning magic, or from traveling through time and space with his Angel. It hadn't come from falling in love, and having his heart broken. If the answer hadn't come from everything he had tried up to this point in his life, was it ever going to come"
Maybe there was no answer. Maybe that was why he was doing something he had already done before: farming out in the country, experimenting with geomancy and other natural magics. Only this time, the magic that nature used to turn seeds, soil, and water into edible fruits, vegetables, and grains, was going to need more than the usual farmer's helping hand. Some disaster, some apocalypse long since past, had desertified Cadentia, left it a barren wasteland where precious little grew, and none of it easily edible to humanoids. The only people left in the heart of Cadentia were nomads, scavengers, and scrappers, searching and fighting in the ruins of a lost civilization. Even in the northern reaches of Cadentia, where the desertification had not yet taken full root, the soil had been barren and fruitless for years — maybe even decades. This was where Glenn came in.
He had returned to RhyDin in the spring, right as planting season began, and he had vigorously prepped the land with fertilizers, tilling, and heaping helpings of magic — introducing nutrients to the dirt that had been stripped out and couldn't be chemically replaced, coaxing seeds to germinate, pulling precious water out of the air to irrigate sprouting crops. It wasn't quite the farmers" "Knee-high by the 4th of July,? but his fields of soybeans and corn were looking healthy, if a little shorter than their counterparts closer to the city. He wasn't going to get rich off of his small patch of dirt, and the amount of work and magical know-how needed to pull off his project was unlikely to scale up across the rest of North Cadentia. And who knew if it would even work farther south' Still, Gaia rewarded anyone who did his or her best to make the world a better place, even if the efforts seemed small and meager. Perhaps that was the best he could hope for these days — a future reward when he went to become one with the Sun, or crumbled into dust in the ground.
Or maybe the reward was that he had been given another opportunity to reinvent himself. After everything he had been through, after everywhere he had been and everything he had seen and everything that had been done to him, he was still alive. After all the mistakes he had made, all the things he had promised to do and hadn't done, he was still alive. He had been giving another chance and now, finally, he felt like he could take full advantage of it.
But something had to change — something he had never bothered to alter in all his years in the city. He had control of his magic now — had been in control for years — yet still he kept up the glamour and illusion of being human. The old prejudices stuck in his mind, and kept him stuck in an identity that wasn't quite true. Now that he was older, those opinions didn't seem to matter anymore. It was finally time to live in his own skin. It was finally time for him to live as an elf.
Living as an elf wasn't going to be enough, though. In order to fully live — in order for the change to find roots — he knew there was one more thing that had to happen.
Glenn Kristophe Woodwright had to die.
It was hard for him to the trace the threads of his life that led him to this moment. What had he been doing" What had he been trying to do' As a child, his goal had been to grow up, without revealing the secret he held that would put him at odds with his community. As a young adult, he sought to move away from his repressive home and succeeded, only to find the behaviors he had learned to hide himself hard to shake. He had set goals for himself, met them, and then watched them drift away from him in a haze of accidents and ill fortune. He had met the Angel of his childhood, and discovered she was no divine agent, but a person, one with dreams and goals and flaws all her own. He had fallen in love, again and again and again, and each time the relationships ended. Sometimes he had broken things off, sometimes she had. Sometimes he couldn't remember who was to blame. Sometimes he could. It was hard to say which was more painful to live with.
He had wanted to believe there was a bigger meaning to his life, a deeper purpose than driving nails through wood on others" behalf, than scratching through the dirt to feed himself. The answer hadn't come from learning magic, or from traveling through time and space with his Angel. It hadn't come from falling in love, and having his heart broken. If the answer hadn't come from everything he had tried up to this point in his life, was it ever going to come"
Maybe there was no answer. Maybe that was why he was doing something he had already done before: farming out in the country, experimenting with geomancy and other natural magics. Only this time, the magic that nature used to turn seeds, soil, and water into edible fruits, vegetables, and grains, was going to need more than the usual farmer's helping hand. Some disaster, some apocalypse long since past, had desertified Cadentia, left it a barren wasteland where precious little grew, and none of it easily edible to humanoids. The only people left in the heart of Cadentia were nomads, scavengers, and scrappers, searching and fighting in the ruins of a lost civilization. Even in the northern reaches of Cadentia, where the desertification had not yet taken full root, the soil had been barren and fruitless for years — maybe even decades. This was where Glenn came in.
He had returned to RhyDin in the spring, right as planting season began, and he had vigorously prepped the land with fertilizers, tilling, and heaping helpings of magic — introducing nutrients to the dirt that had been stripped out and couldn't be chemically replaced, coaxing seeds to germinate, pulling precious water out of the air to irrigate sprouting crops. It wasn't quite the farmers" "Knee-high by the 4th of July,? but his fields of soybeans and corn were looking healthy, if a little shorter than their counterparts closer to the city. He wasn't going to get rich off of his small patch of dirt, and the amount of work and magical know-how needed to pull off his project was unlikely to scale up across the rest of North Cadentia. And who knew if it would even work farther south' Still, Gaia rewarded anyone who did his or her best to make the world a better place, even if the efforts seemed small and meager. Perhaps that was the best he could hope for these days — a future reward when he went to become one with the Sun, or crumbled into dust in the ground.
Or maybe the reward was that he had been given another opportunity to reinvent himself. After everything he had been through, after everywhere he had been and everything he had seen and everything that had been done to him, he was still alive. After all the mistakes he had made, all the things he had promised to do and hadn't done, he was still alive. He had been giving another chance and now, finally, he felt like he could take full advantage of it.
But something had to change — something he had never bothered to alter in all his years in the city. He had control of his magic now — had been in control for years — yet still he kept up the glamour and illusion of being human. The old prejudices stuck in his mind, and kept him stuck in an identity that wasn't quite true. Now that he was older, those opinions didn't seem to matter anymore. It was finally time to live in his own skin. It was finally time for him to live as an elf.
Living as an elf wasn't going to be enough, though. In order to fully live — in order for the change to find roots — he knew there was one more thing that had to happen.
Glenn Kristophe Woodwright had to die.