The Mother’s Story My mother is a Tuchuk, my father a scribe of Caithris. Often as a child I fell asleep listening to the tales of how they had come together, how they had loved.
She had been a free woman of the love wars, lost in battle to a Turian warrior, forced to kneel in slavery at his feet. But unbeknownst to my mother, this warrior was the object of another Tuchuk woman obsession, one she wanted for herself, this second woman my mother’s own sister who was also offered up to the love wars and lost to the Turian’s best friend.
Tuchuks are as superstitious lot, perhaps more so then any other people. My aunt in her jealousy had cursed my mother, her first born to be enslaved and fated, or perhaps gifted, in reading the cards of their bloodline. Even then my aunt could see that my mother would eventually be freed, but she had assumed it would be by the man that had owned her at the time.
Though this Turian warrior was kind to her, she did not love him, and soon the warrior found himself in hard times. Warriors without wars seem to be a never ending battle.
They traveled across the lands, living from hand to mouth, the warrior occasionally finding work as a guard, while my mother was lent out for various tasks. For five en’var they moved from one place to another, the warrior never quite finding what it was he sought, always expecting to find it in the next city or town.
It was on the island of Caithris that he at last found, or lost what he had been so valiantly seeking.
He hadn’t found a war, but he had found a cause.
Men were commissioned to protect the outlying boundaries of the island against what might be invading forces. He had been the first to join.
He had been the first to die.
Destiny has a way of working us to her needs and desires. When one door closes, another always seems to open. There was a scribe in the company of warriors, one that was to account for and write down every action as it happened so that it would not to be lost.
It was this man that took her for his own, later freeing her to bear his children. It was this man my mother loved. The scribe, my father.
The Daughter’s Tale
My story is less tragic, less lovely and far less interesting.
I was born the first of five, all of us girls. While my younger siblings grew up knowing one day they would be companions and mothers, I knew that on my nineteenth turning I would be sold into slavery. The cards had been gifted to me when I was eight and even before I knew what they meant, I would stare at their faded pictures for ahns, fascinated. By the time I was eleven, I was well versed in their meanings and trickeries. At the age of twelve, I was entertaining the village with the cause and effect of picking a card and divining their meaning, careful to always impress upon them it was only for the sake of fun, that each of those I read for were indeed bearers of their own futures, even if I believed otherwise.
I often asked my mother when I was younger, why I was to be sold and not live the life of my sisters. She believed that if I was not enslaved, that I would not live to see my twentieth turning. Tuchuks are superstitious that way and she was taking no chances. She would rather see me enslaved then the alternative.
My young days were spent in blissful abandon on the beach, in the waves and with my family, these moments more precious because I knew that I would soon be taken away from them, probably to never see them again.
On the morning of my nineteenth birthday, I bid my sisters and mother a tearful farewell, and my father delivered me to the slaver’s, the amount I was sold for undisclosed.
It was only as I heard him speak that I realized the full effect of the curse.
I was to remain belted and untouched, and if possible, sold for the entertaining skills of my cards, not the use of my body. If I were to loose my purity, then I would loose the gift of reading the cards with any accuracy.
The slaver agreed, so far as he could see it done. I would be unique in my ability, a link left to innocence, which might appeal to a collector of some kind.
It was only when my father stepped forward to hug me one last time that he whispered to me of how the curse could be broken.
I wonder if I can.
Apparently with the death of the en’slaver, I had been forgotten.
