MERA =. Origin // Legacy // Grief // Acceptance

CHAPTER ZERO - I'm from Nowhere, really.

(Forgive me, I tell the magic parts a little foggy)

That's the sentence she first uses, whenever someone gives the first polite ask -

"I'm uh, I'm...from nowhere, really."

If pressed, she has to give a more thorough answer.

There's no ignoring how vaguely terrifying it is to not be from anywhere at all -

so wait, you don't have a hometown?

Where did you grow up?

Where did you go to school?

Where did you learn stuff?

Where the fuck did you get all those tattoos??

The real answers, in order, without any further details, are again -
no,
nowhere,
nowhere,
around,
and that's funny you think you see a lot of ink, because the truth is, no one is privy to the REAL amount under her skin.

Or how they weave in between the matted webs of healed scars on scarring -the benefit to her pale Tiefling skin was that everything appeared much further along in its healing than it should.

Sometimes extra foolish people get really nosey, and she's learned how to embellish enough specifics collected from other wayfarers and vagabonds, both the musicians she meets on the crowded streets trying to make a quick buck;
and, when she really has to, she can throw in details from the nights in the woods where she steals away and sneaks behind the real witches and studies their magic and memorizes the nuances in the patterns in their shared, secret exhalations.

She hasn't been invited yet, but she would admit to beginning to practice the Deep that swirls around in her mind - at least it shuts up the constant barrage of emotion she's tortured with as an empath in a burned slum town.

Another detail she doesn't want to admit - there is a coven she's been following and sneaking behind, for a few seasons now ; and only on some moons does she feel the glow of two gray eyes in the firelight on the area of the branches where she casts a nearly imperceptible shadow.

Two gray eyes she sometimes also sees in the crowd when she ties a bandanna around her nose and mouth so she can sing on the streets with no one knowing that Deep, entrancing sound of her harsh, Smokey voice over a simple street band.

The little bastard has had her pegged for months, she knows it, but there's fear in those gray eyes too, and she's content to let the mouse currently think she's the cat winning the chase.

They talk sometimes, but never as who they are - but after a few continued weeks of noticing, of intention, she followed the follower and found her on the north end of the canal, where gray eyes works as a bartender some nights.

Some nights she imagined going in and robbing her blind, leaving her bandana as the calling card, just to PROVE she's the real tiger here - but instead she finds herself most late nights walking through the double doors like a regular patron, giving a small smile to the girl with HER bandana on as she Hums to herself as she fills tankards.

Another hidden truth - she has had a problem with her booze, but the opium dens are the real vice - that too is one of the only things that shuts the Emotions up, but at the cost of nearly all else - an unintended benefit to these visits is she can avoid the lure of the smoky hazy rooms where nights turn to days turn to nights again - when the little mouse is pouring a lesser sin into her cup.

And sometimes? She catches little glances out of those big eyes - and maybe that little mouse is not as little or incapable as she wants her to think.