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Here is my history, as best I can recall it.

The earilest memories I have are happy ones. I was born under the midsummer moon to adoring parents who made my life as enjoyble as it could be. We lived in a small village, our homes made in the trees of the forest. Our home held generations of my family, I had cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and more to keep me entertained. Wanting for nothing, it was idyllic existence.

When I was no more than four, in the middle of winter my mother gave birth to my sister, Naltia, and everyone rejoice. For an elvish woman to give birth to two healthy babes in such a short time was a blessing indeed. When the ground thawed from its winter slumber we planted a yew for Naltia, and many enchantments were woven about the tree and my sister, guarding them from strife.

In the summer of that year the bad started. I was only five, and had no other word for it at the time, I did not understand it, and so it was ‘the bad’. The river that turned the mill wheel dwindled til it was more than a muddy track almost overnight. Gathering up their bows, our rangers ventured upstream, to try and determine the cause. We waited for weeks with no news, not a one had returned.

While we had been waiting our small plants and animals began to sicken. The ground water had become poisoned and while there were clouds, they were of smoke and haze, not the kind that brought rain. Naltia’s tree began to loose its foliage.

Those in the village who could weave the powers of the world did so; trying to see what had befallen our rangers, and our river. What they were able to divine disturbed us all. Following the riverbed in spirit form they came to a blasted waste. The trees were all cut down or burnt, ash floated through the air, choking the lungs of any creature who ventured near. Still, they pressed on, for the cause of this catastrophe was unclear. They eventually came up against a wall they could not pass. A roiling force of evil blocked them from moving further afield in their spirit form.

We were aghast. Our rangers were lost to us it seemed, and the lands to the west laid to waste. Our
most powerful spell weavers could not penetrate the evil miasma that lay over what used to be the western forest of pines and firs. The village council sent a runner to the city, and we all waited.

Two days after the runner was sent the bad got worse. It was night and we were having a meager dinner. There was no meat to be had, and even the stores of grain had started to spoil. The normal animal sounds were not to be heard, it was a somber time. My mother sat down in her favorite chair and began to feed my sister, rocking back and forth. That was when the screaming started.

It was a silent scream, not issued from the mouths of animals, but from the very land itself. I do not remember much of what happened in the next hours, but I do remember that initial scream. I covered my head with my hands and added my voice to that of the trees, the earth, the very rocks. Our lands were being invaded by the most foul of apparitions.

I could not begin to comprehend what was happening at the time. There was darkness and pain and fire and death. My young cousins and I, along with my sister and mother, were cloistered in the root cellar. My father, aunts, uncles and grandparents stood against the invading forces but were overrun, slaughtered to a single soul. Orcish raiders looted everything of value in our house, and set fire to what they couldn’t carry. It did not take them long to find the cellar; they killed my mother in a single blow, putting a spear through her breast.

Naltia and I were bundled in a rough, hempen sack. Deathly afraid, we clung to each other as we were roughly passed about. I assume we were carried far to the west, although I do not know how far, when we were tumbled from the sack Naltia was half starved and I could not breath for the ash and smoke in the air.

We were fed mashed and boiled grain. Our captors were orcs of the foulest sort, commanded by an undead master. Too frightened to do anything but follow their grunted commands we simply followed orders.

We were put aboard a ship. Not much of a ship either; the hull leaked, the bilge pump didn’t work and the hold was filled with starving elvish children. Among our midst were rats the size of small dogs that seemed to thrive in the filth. Several of the children died in the rotten bowels of the ship. I kept Naltia close at all times, for she was little more than a babe in arms.

It seemed like we were years upon the sea, although to a child’s mind time does not flow the same as it does to an adult’s. At the end of our voyage those of us able to walk were shackled together, and marched off the ship into the night. I carried Naltia for the most part.

For the better part of a year we were shacked together transported by ship and cart, always moving further west. When we reached the western coast we were put into pens, like I had seen humans do with goats or pigs. Then we were sold, like goats or pigs.

Auctioned off to the highest bidder we did not bring much. We were too young to appeal to those who bough pleasure slaves, and too small to be considered able to work hard enough to be of any real use. We were eventually purchased by a human woman.

The woman put us to work in her kitchens. Never were we out from under the watchful eye of the vindictive head cook. The pots we scrubbed were inspected, the potatoes we peeled evaluated, and were we ever found wanting the cook was none to kind with her wooden spoon. We never saw the woman again; working from wake til sleep Naltia and I were still in shock and could think of little but where the next wallop might come from.

It was in the spring the next year I started to experience a strange buzzing in my head. I cannot accurately describe the sensation, but it was quite similar to that before you sneeze. I constantly felt like something was going to explode out of my head and it was not under my control. One night as we slept infront of the hearth a spark leapt from the banked coals and lit my shift afire. It was then that the ‘sneeze’ came. Uncoiling with whip-like intensity power unfurled itself in my mind. Instead of patting the ember out with the calloused heel of my hand, my shift was suddenly soaking wet, the fire out, and puddles were forming on the floor.

I had no control, and things only got worse for quite a time. We were in a human city. The humans did not have much grasp on magic themselves, so a slave who could do such things as I was dangerous. It did not take long for the cook to bundle us off to the market where she traded us for a suckling pig and a brace of pigeons.

The farmer who took us was neither kind or smart. His animals were sick and his crop poor. He set us to hoeing his fields and chained us in his barn at night. This, I’m sure he did not realize was a blessing to us. I had gained enough control over my power to stop it at least, and my sister and I were able to communicate with the animals to a degree. It was summer and the work outside was better than the work in the kitchens had been, so we were not so unhappy.

Many ask, why did you not flee? Why did you stay? I was a child of nine summers, Naltia only four, to where would we have fled in this land so far from our home? We knew nothing of humans, but what we learned as slaves - that they were mean and spiteful, quick to anger, and knew nothing of beauty or grace. And poor Naltia! Stolen from her mother’s arms before she could walk, remembering little of her real home. She didn’t speak at all, but communicated purely by sending out her feelings, a most basic form of empathy.

I do not know if it was her mournful, silent cry, but while we were pulling weeds from the farmer’s garden an eagle started to visit us. At first it flew high overhead, just a speck against the noonday sun. When the farmer left for his dinner the bird came closer, and we were able to speak to it in a way. The eagle landed in the turned earth beside us and blinked his great golden eyes as he looked at us. We did not share words, but the creature understood our plight, we were trapped, and could do nothing to help ourselves. With a screech it took to the sky, heading north.

As the days grew shorter and the barn colder we began to despair. Our shelter was inadequate, and the farmer would not let us inside his house. The leaves had started to fall from the trees and frost touched the grass in the mornings. Naltia and I curled up with the animals in the barn, but still woke shaking and shivering in the night.

It was in the night that we were saved. I awoke to a wet tongue on my face and a feeling of compassion and sympathy in my mind. Upon opening my eyes I saw the largest cat I hat ever seen. Black as the moonless sky she was and wise beyond anything I knew. With most animals I could share feelings, but with this huge cat I could share whole thoughts. She led us out of the barn into the woods beyond the farmer’s fields.

Unshod we raced through the night, over gorse and bracken, for ahead we could feel something we had never felt before. There were others, others who could share whole thoughts from mind to mind, people and animals, and some who were strangely both. In the woods we found them, the great cat nudging us forward in our sudden shyness. In the trees above was the eagle, his golden eyes flashing in the starlight. Other animals moved in the wood, and one of the people crouch low, to look us in the eye.

In my head I heard, and he spoke in my language at the same time, “Welcome children, come be safe.” I had never known such joy! I was instantly free, and speechless with wonder. Tears streamed down Naltia’s cheeks and the man swept her up into his arms. The other people swept forward then, a woman stripped off my torn, filthy shift and bundled me in softness like I had forgotten even existed.

They were a group of elven druids, come to the human lands for a great gathering of all the groves. It seemed that the force that had destroyed my home was lead by a powerful undead creature, and it had been gathering power for the part of a decade. The druids were gathering to stop this force, and by chance stumbled upon my sister and I. They took us in and taught us our heritage and helped us learn master our powers.

While the majority of the druids went to fight the undead horde many remained behind. We lived among their traveling bands for another decade while we grew into our own. Once we had been taught all our young minds could learn they set us free to do as we would. It did not take us long to decide where our paths would lead. Both Naltia and I knew of the world now and could think of nothing we would rather do than join with the grove, and learn more from the masters if we could.

Over a century and a half has passed since then. Naltia is still quiet and reserved, and her progression through the circles has taken her to become a shifter. I approach the eleventh circle in our grove, and wander the world, striving to restore the balance where it becomes upset.

Perhaps I will write more on this later, but that is my history, the events that shaped me and put me on the path I travel.