MARK OF EXILE
She felt the rain on her head washing away the ochre used to brand her with the mark of exile. She touched a hand to her forehead. Her fingertips came away clean. The ochre was gone, but the mark would remain on her name, and her spirit, till the rekindling. She didn't know whether to anticipate or dread the rekindling.
It was the most important part of living, among those who had branded her. A chance to start over clean, a new life. They didn't have to remember what came before. Not clearly, anyways.
Lucky them.
The cry of a small bird in the trees, somewhere deep in the forest, pulled her back to the present. The rekindling was still a ways off. Right now she had more pressing concerns. There was shelter, water, and-she felt a dull ache in her belly-sooner or later she would need food. She noticed a plume of smoke working its way through the trees. The relief of shelter being near was quickly replaced with anxiety. Was this someone who would be sympathetic to her plight? Her current situation rendered those questions pointless. She had to press on. The smoke led her back to the path that had taken her this far. Branches scraped her from all sides, and the trees they belonged to hid almost everything but the smoke. She was lucky it led the same direction she'd been going before, for she could not go back the way she'd come.
She glanced up at the overcast sky. Sunset wasn't far off and she had to find shelter before the light faded.
Past a bend in the path, she came to a small clearing, with a narrow brook running through it. The source of the smoke, she saw, was a small cabin next to the stream. The cabin had seen better days. The walls looked to be built of old pine, rotted by the ages. The chimney, belching oily black smoke, sits stop a sagging roof covered in holes. She reluctantly stepped up to the door and knocked. "Hello! Is anyone home?"
A stillness. For but a moment. Then, voices? No. Something else; fleeting, distant, cold. “Hello?” She repeated stepping closer to the door. Her hand grasps the handle. Whispers in the distance. She freezes. Only two words rang clear: “Rekindled... Flames.”
The whispers grew in volume even as they grew more unintelligible -- and with this came the stench of ancient rot.
The woman spun around, certain there was something directly behind her. Nothing.
"Hello?" said a voice that wasn't hers -- and with it, the whispering stopped.
Invitation began. "You are branded beyond mortal sight, marked for him before your first blood, before your first mewling cry. Exiled among the living. Lower birth, given over to a darker calling, you must choose. Stand in the flame or partake of the body before you. Choose!"
Thoughts rushed through her exhausted mind: what is this all about, where am i? Strange, uncanny people demanding a horrible thing from her. Marked for HIM!? Oh no, please no, that can't, won't...She just wanted to survive, live, be free!
She knew instantly: the flame it will be!
It was a choice she couldn’t make.
It was a choice she had to make.
Smoke stung her eyes and throat. A stifled cough is all that blocked her voice from screaming. Suddenly, the door opened. The horror vanished.
“It is a brave soul to choose the flame. Enter, child”
. . .
He watched, silently, his breath caught in his throat. The smell stung his nose and burned his lungs but he knew he had to do something. Anything. He watched for a moment longer before he took a sharp breath, nocking the arrow, knowing he had to stop this.
Whatever...this was.
The arrow settled on the cobbles close to the well. There was a pause then the darkness from the well once more simmered with a thousand whispers.
‘Rekindled Flames.’
The girl walked silently towards the well without a glance at Edgan. In all his years as Ash Master no Marked had [...] reached a decision so quickly. The marked typically tortured themselves with guilt over their sins and transgressions. Most of the marked agonized over the loss of their past life.
This girl did not hesitate, Edgan noted. If she tortured herself, she did so silently.
With a rare twinge of empathy, he watched her walk to the well. Watched smoke rise from its depths. Watched heat sear away her form, and the new one that replaced it.
No. That was another place and time. Here, in this one, she removed the arrow, quieting the well. Returned to the cabin and stood in the doorway. Then she marched through the doorway and out of sight.
Edgan sighed with relief. If she had waited for too long he would have had to wait there too, staring at the cabin's painful angles and uncomfortable depths. It hurt just to look at the cabin. Edgan closed his eyes, retreating, if only for a little while, into the familiar refuge of his mind. He would need the next few days to make sense of what had happened, and perhaps the rest of his life to see its full effects, but for now he would have rest.
The early morning chorus of birds woke her, and she looked around, briefly disoriented. Somehow, she didn't recall how, she had fallen asleep against the trunk of a large tree, in the middle of a clearing.
Looking around, she could see no path -- and no sign of the cabin.
Her hands felt cold. The warmth stolen away as a rat with a crust of bread. Looking down at them, they seemed aged, cracked, and desolate. The birds above sang the chorus of a thousand-thousand Marked who had come before her.
Saphielle stood slowly and looked to the sky. The sky was a light, glowing azure around the clouds, a serenity that made the chaos of yesterday seem distant as a scarcely-remembered dream.
She tried to grasp at the image of a strange cabin that slipped through her memory like a fish through the fingers of a hopeful angler.
