Reincarnation

[Tialena]

Falling. She couldn’t remember a time before, nor could she comprehend a time after it. There was only this suspension, and there was only the wind rushing up from beneath her as she traveled through it.

She didn’t recall a landing, either, though the pain in her bones and muscles told her that there was some kind of impact, either she upon it or it upon she…but she couldn’t recall that, either. Not this cloak, not these robes, not the crescent-shaped dagger in her hand… although that held some significance once, did it not? She saw her reflection in its steel, the iridescent skin, the violet eyes, the slightly pointed ears, and hair, dark as jet… and the blue crescent, older than she believed she had ever been, upon her brow. A beautiful face, but one she no longer recognized. As the tear she cried slid down the reflection’s cheek, she realized that all she might have known was lost to her now, and that she may never fully understand all that she would learn.

She put her hand down, relinquishing the steel and put her hand to the grassy knoll on which she sat. The wind came from in front of her now, pushing away the tears as if to speak its comfort and sing its hope. The forest lies to her back, and a great city rises before her, its lights blinking as if to beckon her. Was there something…or someone she lost there? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember, but she had no choice but to find out.

Her muscles sang with the pain of the fall, but ignored, they quieted as she rose to her feet, still majestic in her bearing, despite the unsteadiness of her climb. She sheathed the crescent blade in the belt at her hip, the bells at her ankles and the grass rustling beneath bare feet as she made her way towards a place she hoped would remember her.

[Tialena]

Twice she has been to this place called the Outback, and twice she has seen him. She is drawn there somehow, some long-forgotten link she had to the place refusing to die quietly. Twice she has seen the Panther, and twice has she been drawn to him as well, but modern sensibilities hold her back. She couldn’t expect him to remember her if she didn’t remember herself.

But that was changing. The barbarism of the Outback’s sport awoke something in her, a feeling, a knowledge that this had once been a kind of home to her, despite her vows to the Goddess to never partake in gratuitous violence. As she stood there just inside the door, looking around, she found pieces of memory she is still struggling to piece together.

And there he was. The largest missing piece of all. She stands on her balcony at the Red Dragon Inn looking out over the city and thinks of him. She longs to say something, but what would she say—she doesn’t even know her own name. She doesn’t know his. Her clouded mind tells her she was close to him once--perhaps they were great friends, or great lovers. It would be more than she could hope for him to look at her and utter a name, take her in his arms and give her back all she’d lost, but even now, deeply wounded, she was no fool. RhyDin rarely treated its fallen with dignity, a lesson her heart would never let her forget. It was more likely that he would remember her from battle, and in her weakened state, take his revenge.

She almost wished for that. To live in this limbo, forced to give penitent smiles for the trespass of not remembering anything of one’s self, was as close to Hell as she imagined was there for children of the Goddess. She wished to either remember everything, or remember nothing, not these fleeting glances of feelings, thoughts that perhaps, there was something of her here. She wanted to either be herself, or create herself completely, but these half-memories stood in her way. And, although she hated the thought, he was the key. Whether he brought her life or death, he was the key to her salvation.