A Slime's Lament

Before My Birth

Well, where to begin? Most autobiographies start before the author's birth, describing their family and how their parents met. I, sadly, can only recall tidbits about who my father was from my mother's stories. This isn't a story about him, but rather one about myself and who I became, a traveling alchemist made of slime only known as Nero Drava.

There won't be that much to talk about except the same story that my mother could never stop telling me. The story was about how she met my father—a simple love story about a mysterious man falling for the local village girl—a tale as old as time itself.

It started five years before I was born, my mother was working as a waitress at a local bar trying to make enough money to support herself. She was living all alone in a house that she had inherited from her grandmother. Her mother lived in a far-off city, from what she told me they didn't get along and that was the main reason she chose to move out to the remote village she now called home.

Every day my mother would constantly be flirted with by traveling adventurers who made a stop in the village. They would all try to win her over, promising to give her flowers, to give her vast amounts of riches, and all sorts of empty promises. But she turned them all down, these men were nothing more than wanderers and weren't looking to settle down in such a small village. They only wanted to make her theirs so they could drag her back to who knows where.

That all changed when a mysterious man appeared seemingly from nowhere. He was a traveler just like the rest but my mother said there was something about him that had caught her eye. He wasn't some adventurer like the rest. Instead, he was a melancholic man, seemingly trying to run away from something. My mother saw how lonely he looked.

So she made the first move, she approached that man with her signature heartwarming smile. The man, however, ignored her and kept his face buried in his drink. But my mother was extremely persistent and eventually got the man to speak to her, whether he wanted to or not. Their conversation went something like this.

She said, "So mister..." hoping for him to tell her his name but the man simply replied, "My name isn't important. Why must you pester me?" My mom smiled as she said, "You looked fun to talk to. Can't you answer a curious girl's questions?" The man sighed as he said, "I'd prefer not to but I don't think you'll leave me alone if I don't."

She asked, "So where do you hail from?" The man only said, "I forgot." She then asked him, "What brought you to this quaint village?" The man replied, "It's just where I ended up." My mother was slowly giving up but persisted, "So how are you?" The man just sighs and says, "I'm tired."

From that day forward, that man kept returning to the bar to drink his sorrows away and my mother would pester him about every little thing. He was cold, distant, and answered every question in short sentences but he never stopped going to the bar. Her coworkers told her that there was no point talking to such a sad man, but it didn't stop her. She wanted to at least see him smile once.

But eventually, she found something the man was willing to talk about, she asked him about his favorite drink and the man said it was tea. My mother casually brought up how she had a lot of different types of tea and the man asked his first-ever question. "Do you have ginseng?" From here their fate was cemented. They talked about all types of different teas and eventually, she brought him over to her house to drink together in peace.

It was around this time my mother finally got the man to answer the questions she asked before, he was still reserved but gave her his best answers. She asked, "So mister..." He said, "Drava, Okeanus Drava is my name, well it is now, I forsook my birth name." She continued, "So where do you hail from Mister Drava?" He looked down into his tea and said, "A far-off place, a place I vowed to never return to." She looked solemnly at him as he answered, she asked her next question, "What brought you to my quaint little village?"

The man took a sip and replied, "I wanted someplace quiet to escape to, this village seemed to best to take refuge for the time." She then asked, "So how are you doing?" The man chuckled, "I'm still tired"

It was around this time they both fell for one another. They were both deniers of a destiny forced upon them.  They wanted to have control over their own lives, ones where they could choose to be whoever they wanted to be. So, they choose to live a life of their own making together.

Their days together were normal. My mother continued to work at the tavern and my father joined a construction crew that were helping the village expand. The amount of flirting that my mother received at her work decreased thanks to his influence, something about him scared off any potential bachelors. Any man who did test their luck would mysteriously disappear. She told me that my father probably scared them out of the village but I found out much later the true location of these suitors.

A bit of an intermission but in my travels much later in the future, I made a return to my home and discovered a mass grave filled with nothing but ooze and dissolved flesh. Whoever, or whatever, my father was not a human like she had described to me. He was a monster masquerading as one, yet he never once hurt my mother. At least not intentionally.

The years would go by, and my mother would soon tell my father about the biggest surprise of his life. She made him stay home one day and had a date where they played board games. She rigged one of them to announce to my father that she was pregnant was me. He told her how excited he was but my mother could see the sheer amount of dread that filled his face at the time.

From this day going forward, an immeasurable distance formed between the two. He avoided her like the plague, purposely staying at work late. On his days off, he would make excuses for how he was invited to go hunting with his coworkers or other lame excuses. Eventually, this all culminated in him disappearing as mysteriously as he first arrived, but he still left her a note.

In this note, he explained his circumstances in a very vague sense. He talked about how he came from a powerful family that was actively searching for him since the day he ran away. That this family had one rule, a rule that could result in both him and my mother being killed if it was ever broken. That one rule was that he nor any of his other family could sire children unless permitted by the head of the family, who would never permit a child spawned by anyone of the lower class.  He became distant because he needed time to think about what to do.

He loved my mother dearly and didn't want what they had to ever be destroyed. So he made the only choice he could think of, to return to his family and prevent them from ever finding out about her or their child. In the last part of his note, he thanked her for the wonderful, no matter how short it was, life. He left only one request, if the child was a boy to name him Nero, and if the child was a girl to name her Aqua.

So my mother spent the rest of her pregnancy alone, but she wasn't depressed. She was happy to carry me regardless of whether he was there or not. She knew that if their situation had been better, he would have stayed. Luckily, she had good friends to help take care of her during those painful nine months... nine months of excruciating pain.

Something was wrong during her pregnancy with me. She had grown sickly, barely able to leave her bed to grab something like a glass of water. I was killing her and everyone knew. Her friends had urged her to abort, that if she continued to keep me she would lose her life. But she refused, she refused to destroy the last and most important thing he ever gave her. I was her only connection to the man she loved dearly.

The day finally came, my mother's water broke, her friends rushed her to the village doctor and together they spent the entire day helping my mother through labor. From what she told me, as I lay silently in her arms, I looked almost translucent like clear water and my eyes shined a brilliant green. But she thought of it as nothing more than her being tired and the light of the morning sun playing a trick as I had the same brown eyes she had. This was the day that the boy named Nero Okeanus Drava was born.