Topic: A Haunting We Will Go

Sarita Delmar

Date: 2008-05-25 11:30 EST
Spirits have such a unique perspective on things. Either we have had time to dwell on our last moments in silence and contemplation, and determine where we went wrong. Or, being truly stubborn about our situation, we become angry that we no longer have true impact upon the lives of mortals, immortals, gods, nor demons.

Sometimes, though, we simply watch. Waiting for an event that we had hoped in life would not occur, yet now looked likely to do so.

I have just such a problem at hand. My life wasn't so much taken as given. My time, though short, was well spent. But let me not get ahead of myself, nor my story.

You see, my name, in life, was Sarita, though there was a time when I went by another, that was the name given to me by my parents. It was also the name my master had decided to leave me with when he had taken me.

I had hoped that I could truly avoid coming back to this realm. It's not that I did not enjoy my life here. I had even reveled in my unlife. However, being a slave, I had made the mistake of getting with child, and as we all know, the child of a slave is a slave. When my master had gone into battle, and not returned, I knew that my situation and that of my child had become precarious.

Though he had granted me a privilege of making a request of him, and even promised that he would fulfill it, I now found myself realizing he would not be able to do so. He would not train her, nor would he find a master to purchase her who would be compassionate towards her. Her fate would be left to other whims who never would care for me nor her.

So it was that I fled. So it was that I found a woman who was a stranger to me, yet was willing to take another in. So it was that I gave birth to twins. One a boy. One a girl. So it was that I told her my story, and begged her to care for my children as if they were her own, before I fled into the night. And so it was that I was found, turned, and made new, and Daria came to be.

Yet fate has a way of bringing all things together in the end.

Alaemnah

Date: 2008-06-07 16:01 EST
There had only ever been one she named mother. That was the woman who had bent over her crib to pick her up since she was an infant. Yet now she has another to seek, a name only, a city to search, and years of time for this person to have vanished completely as if she never were.

She had been given the information on the day that the woman she had called mother all her life revealed, upon her deathbed, that she was not indeed her mother.

"Aleamnah, come here," her voice had been barely above a whisper and was followed close behind by a fit of coughing as blood was spat into a handkerchief. Of course, the girl, who was always close by and very attentive of her mother had come quickly enough and held the woman's head to steady her.

Once the coughing had died down, the woman continued, "I've something to tell you. Please, sit down." It was the tone in the woman's voice which had her obeying quickly, and then the story unfolded. For the next few hours she listened as her own mother's history, or what was known of it was revealed.

She was told how a young woman had come in the middle of a stormy night, heavy with child and about to give birth. A baby boy born, and then a girl quickly followed. And after that the young mother gave a most unusual story and begged her to care for the children. Yet, considering the story the woman had woven, separating the two had seemed best. And so the boy had been placed in an orphanage.

The girl had grown up never knowing that the woman she called mother wasn't, nor that her brother was. Not until that day when she had turned 18. Then she had been told the story.

Thus it came to be, that this young woman, like all young men and women do, decided to make her way into the world in search of a mother and brother she had never known she had. Bags packed, and the house shut up, she made her way towards Rhy?Din, the only place given to her where she hoped to still find them. A determination was also set in the girl's demeanor, for she had decided that if her mother had once more fallen into the hands of a slaver, she would purchase her and free her.

The reunion wouldn't be so bad. At least, so says the optimism of youth.

Alaemnah

Date: 2008-06-11 22:46 EST
Images flowed together in her mind, shimmering and floating until she finally drifted off to sleep. There were times she knew she was dreaming and watched it to see where she could go. Whether floating above her bed in the far corner of the room, or walking through walls, or swimming to depths that would overcome her were she to try it when awake.

At other times she hoped she was dreaming when the fog was so thick she couldn't see what was behind her though she could clearly see for miles in front of her. When she heard footsteps chasing her until she was breathless and falling in a hole so deep she thought she would never find bottom.

This night though, she couldn't be sure it was a dream, except that features of the woman standing there watching her was impossible to discern. "Alaemnah."

And though she couldn't see the woman's face, she knew deep in her that the woman was her mother. "Alaemnah."

She couldn't help but respond, though she wasn't sure if she spoke or only thought the words, "Yes momma?"

And as she waited breathless there, lightning struck a nearby tree, "Beware Alaemnah."

Then it was not her mother in front of her but a man standing there with his shirt off and she could see what looked like a lightning shaped scar on his left shoulder blade. Her feet, however, would not move, and her voice was suddenly stopped.

Trembling, she woke, and she thought she still heard a voice as it whispered, "Alaemnah, beware."