My father's people were unique. I suppose my mother wasn't prepared for that when she lingered for a while with a man and his mother as they traveled. My father's mother was a Hogi, priestess to the wandering peoples. It was a gift that passed through the blood, my blood. My infant mind, aware in my mother's womb, sought for understanding. It was that awareness that made my mother aware of me.

She didn't want me.

I understood my mother's magic. It was like a thick quilt of power, so many colors... so many backgrounds attached to that pattern. My understanding extended, there had been some magic in place to keep her from making a child. Her magic had failed... and continued to fail as she could not expel me from her body.

"Accursed creature." She would hiss at me, a fist tight against her own body.

The woman railed at my father, but her threats got her nowhere. He was just a man, not a magic worker. Wasn't that why she picked him in the first place?

Grandmother came and spoke to us. It was a warning to my mother, a blessing to me. She would have to carry me to term or sacrifice her own life. Mother was not pleased.

I spent the first months of my life constantly aware of my mother's dislike for me. She refused my grandmother and father to talk to me in the womb, taking me away from them. The light in my world died.

My birth came. Mother found untrained hands to assist her. Perhaps it was her desire to lose me there... but grandmother came to me in my hour of need. My mother spoke harsh words, but grandmother's voice was kind. She brought me to the world of life and took me from my mother.

"Peace now, child, all will be well."

Though I could tell it was not. Darkness befell grandmother and by the time we reached my father she was beyond help. Without my grandmother to teach me, my magic went dormant. And I was but a girl with only a father.