Jezerai's Tale

[Jezerai]

((As Jezerai))



Jezerai Silvermoon sat in her room, a small wooden box opened and sitting in her lap, idly turning over an ornate gold ring her mother had gifted her with.  The ring was a man's ring, with what appeared to be a crest and a large red stone in its center.  Her mother told her the ring was a gift from her father, who she claimed had been a high elf of some standing.  Jez had never really questioned her mother's account before.  After all, she had not been there when her mother met her father and had never known him.  But she had seen the polite skepticism in the eyes of her new high elf friend when recounting her mother's tale and, for the first time, heard it herself with a keener ear.  The tale did ring false, she mused thoughtfully.  She had to admit it was more likely her mother had been a silly slut who got herself in the family way with a wood elf, rather than swept off her feet by a noble high elf.  The only ones who likely knew the truth of it were her mother and father.  With the former being dead and the latter unnamed, Jez was fairly certain she'd never know for sure.  Not that it mattered.  Jez had made her own way for nearly half her life.

Jez avoided thoughts of her childhood, growing up as she did a street brat in the city of Tanvu.  Her mother, a rag seller, had told her tales of the wealthy part of the city and dreams of elaborate banquets had comforted Jez on many nights when she'd gone to bed hungry.  Jez's mother told Jez that she had served as a maid to one of the noble ladies at the Imperial Court when she was young.  Jez, her pale golden head resting on her mother's knee, would listen spellbound as her mother wove stories of her life there.  She said that Jez's father came to the Imperial Palace with a small diplomatic party, where he had met her mother and seduced her.  Her mother told Jez that her father gave her the ring when he left.  Jez' mother told her daughter that she lost her position when it was discovered that she was pregnant.  Having lost her position, her family refused to take her in and she was forced onto the streets.

Jezerai's mother died when Jezerai was twelve years of age of consumption.  The last Jez saw of her mother was her thin wasted body being carted off to a pauper's grave.  Over the course of the following sixteen months Jezerai survived as best as she could.  A half elf was not well tolerated by humans and Jez' face often sported colorful bruises when she was not fast enough to evade the local bullies.  But she was naturally strong and was soon able to hold her own in fights with the roaming street gangs who turned their attention to easier marks.  Jez managed to survive on the small coins she found or begged or earned doing odd jobs.  When she was unable to buy food, she sold the tiny store of possessions left by her mother,  excepting only the ring and a few small mementos she kept in her box.  One night, just a few months past her thirteenth birthday, Jezerai sat down and seriously considered her options.  Always a realist, she weighed her options. Jez decided that there were three paths available to her.  First, she could join the work force and put in long hours earning barely more than the few coins she had gained from the sale of her mother's meager belongings.  Jezerai discarded that option with little further thought.  She wanted more from life than that.  Her second option was to sell her body on the street to men who would pay well for such things.  Looking at herself critically in the broken piece of glass that served as a mirror, she decided such a life was not for her.  Or she could join the military.  Jezerai chose the military and signed on with the Imperial Army. 

[Jezerai]

It was not that Jezerai held any rosy dreams of what her life in the army would be.  Life had not taught Jezerai to have such expectations.  But Jezerai's army career continued to haunt her long after she managed to escape the Imperial clutches.

She started routinely enough, running errands for regular fighters.  Army regulations required a person to be at least 16 years of age before fighting, but plenty of recruits were years younger than that and employed in the most menial of jobs.  Jezerai didn't care.  She was regularly provided with food to shovel into her stomach.  Her thin frame, while not exactly growing plump, at least took on a less haggard appearance.  As she developed from a child and into a young woman, she was finally able to rest assured that the next day she would eat.  And for Jezerai, that was all she asked of life.  Her superiors began her training in military arts and she soon grew proficient in dealing out death.  Her prowess with weapons earned her an early spot in the fighting ranks, a dubious honor at best.  With training and receiving her first blooding on the field of battle, Jezerai turned from an eating machine to a killing machine.

Jezerai didn't take much time to wonder if her orders were just or not.  She killed where the military leaders told her to kill.  Her skills brought her to the attention of those leaders and earned her a place among the elite killing squads employed by the Imperial army to root out dissension wherever it could be found.  She was sent on dozens of missions, and never once missed her target.  She took for herself the surname Moon, because she worked under cover of darkness.  It was a morbid joke, but she was given to such jesting.  Since she knew nothing of her father or family, she was free to pick whatever name suited her.  Moon suited her.  Jezerai's superiors began to rely on her skills for more and more delicate missions.  Eventually, she became an assassin sent out as a keenly sharp and honed weapon to take out those deemed by the Emporer to be enemies and to demoralize opponents by the loss of their families.

One day Jezerai's superiors sent her out to assassinate the leader of the local Jin monks.  As always, Jezerai set out determined to fulfill her assignment without thinking of the morality of her actions.  Yet standing before her intended victim, Jezerai hesitated.  Never before had she done such a thing.  Never before had emotion stayed her hand.  But this time, as she stood before the wizened old man, Jezerai felt a flow of power reach into her inner, most guarded heart.  She felt a gentle twist and the Jin within her was freed from its corrupt cage.  For the first time, Jezerai could see clearly how she had wronged others and herself.  Guilt for all that she had done in the service of the Empire flooded her soul and she wept, the first tears that she had shed since childhood.  Jezerai was shown a path that was opened for her at that moment, to lead her from the person she had become to a new Jezerai.  Without looking back at her old life, Jezerai stepped onto that path and was whisked away from the Imperial Army. 

[Jezerai]

Jezerai sat on her horse, her leather armor polished to a mahogany sheen, whistling to herself.  The dusty road lay beneath her horse's feet and stretched out into the distance, ready to take her places she'd never seen as soon as she decided she was ready to go there.  A small pouch hung at her belt, jingling with the satisfying sound of coins earned selling her martial skills.  Jezerai was well pleased with herself.  She tipped the pouch into her hand and smiled at the gleam of silver among the copper coins.  "Moon,"she decided, really didn't fit her anymore.  Chuckling as she poured the coins back in her purse she decided there an then that her surname would be "Silvermoon" instead, to mark her new life and profession.

The monks' teachings and calm acceptance of life was not something that Jezerai was able to tolerate for long.  Try as she might, and she had tried, if for nothing more than the desire to please those that had saved her from the monster she had been becoming, she was unable to view the world as they tried to teach.  While she abhorred the evil that she had found in herself as well as in the Imperial Army, Jezerai was not ready to embrace what she viewed as the childishly simplistic outlook she saw as "good" either.  Jezerai was determined not to continue along the path the military had set for her.  She would not be evil.  But her pragmatic nature would not let her blindly set forth down the path of "good."

Jezerai shrugged and stretched, her pale blonde hair pulled off her face with a leather thong and left hanging down her back.  Well, the monks had been nearly as glad to see her go as she had been to leave and the world beckoned her on.  Jezerai set out to see what fortune the road might bring her and what future she might make for herself there.

[Jezerai]

Jezerai stood on the streets of her childhood home, memories rushing over her, cursing herself for being a fool to return here on the word of the shamaness, Boudeccai Boru.  The woman talked to shrunken heads, after all, and so Jezerai suspected that she was a touch crazy as it was.  But in the end she had not been able to resist the lure of learning more of her family.  And so she had come.  But the times she had spent here were not happy ones.  Jezerai felt herself transported back to childhood.  Her knees trembled and her heart raced with adrenaline as she walked the streets looking over her shoulder for the roving gangs of children who had beaten and tormented her when she had been growing up here. 

Boudeccai had told her to start her search for her mother in a basket.  Although the clue was a cryptic one, she knew there were many basket sellers in the streets of Tanvu.  She suspected one of these people knew her mother or knew something of her mother.  And so she started combing the streets, questioning the blank-faced people, handing out silvers to buy tidbits of information, most of it undoubtedly false.  After several hours of unproductive searching, it occurred to her that these basket sellers may not have lived here when her mother was alive.  Doubtless these people knew nothing and certainly none looked familiar.  Hot, sweaty, close to tears and more shaken than she could have imagined by the surge of memories being here had brought back, Jezerai was close to quitting what was doubtless a wild goose chase.

Jezerai stood at the basket seller's stand, examining the merchandise, wracking her brain for an answer to the riddle.  Large baskets with woven lids lined the front of the stall, small enough for a child to hide in.  Idly, she lifted the lid off the basket and peered inside.  The mark of the maker was scorched into the fibers at the bottom of the basket.  Abruptly, her exhaustion and fear fell away, to be replaced by growing excitement.  She recognized that mark!  Her mother had had one close friend that Jezerai could barely remember from her childhood.  The woman had woven baskets for sale.  Jezerai had been young the last time they saw the woman, and had forgotten her, but the mark brought the memory back.  The stall owner was quick to tell her the name and residence of the maker when Jezerai offered several silver pieces. 

Chintzee, a small, shrunken woman with few teeth left, appeared so fragile that a gust of wind would knock her over.  She did remember Jezerai's mother, who she said had been beautiful and clearly of a higher quality than her neighbors.  Jezerai tried to reconcile this image of her mother, young and healthy, with her memory of a sad and sick woman.  She could not imagine her mother being the creature described and she mourned the loss of her anew, in a way she had not been able to do when she was young and barely able to keep herself fed.  Chintzee said that her mother had told her a bit of her life before.  The account Chintzee gave was very close to what Jezerai's mother had told her.  She also added two additional facts.  The first was that Jezerai's mother had said she had come from the area now known as the Blighted Lands.  The second was a name.  A precious name, that Jezerai had never been given before.  Chintzee could not clearly recall, but believed that the name had been Kamurchen, or something similar to that.  Jezerai gently embraced the woman before leaving and, when Chintzee would not accept payment for the information she had given, Jezerai tucked two gold pieces in the woman's basket of fibers.  Jezerai had a name and a place.  Her search for her past had begun.

[Jezerai]

The old man standing before her was so angry his body shook.  Jezerai felt curiously encapsulated, separate and apart from what was happening as though she were some uninvolved third party watching from a distance.  At the same time, however, she could feel her heart ache with the close likeness her grandmother bore to her memories of her mother and the taste of ashes was in her mouth.  The two old people lived in faded gentility, in a humble abode furnished with things of far higher quality.  The old man, her grandfather, was still strong and upright standing before her shouting words that she could not, would not hear.  Her grandmother stood slightly behind her husband, wringing her hands but unable or unwilling to intercede.  Jezerai both pitied and despised the woman for her weakness.

Jezerai had traveled for many nights through the Blighted Lands searching for some trace of the family she had been told had once lived there.  Most of the area was overrun with bandits and the Ulvari.  While she tried to avoid these as much as possible, many battles were unavoidable and she was ambushed twice.  But the trip was not without success.  She had been able to locate information kept in a registry by the local monks about a family that had once lived there, before the troubles with the Ulvari, by the name of Kam'achin.  The Kam'achin family had been driven out by the blight several years prior and had fled to one of several Thestran refugee camps.  At the third of the refugee camps she had visited, Jezerai had been able to locate information about the family by pouring through the records maintained by the Thestran Relocation Bureau.  Once again she had blessed the silly primers that she had studied, teaching herself to read.  Her mission would have been impossible but for that.  Her last stop in her search had brought her to the Northern Border, where she now stood.  Ironic that she had fought here not so long ago, within spitting distance of the people she now faced.

With a snap, Jezerai found herself thrust back into the present.  "Why have you come to bother us?"  The old man yelled at her, flecks of spittle hit her face and she absentmindedly wiped it away with the back of her hand.  "I have come to tell you that I exist and to see if you exist.  I have come to tell you of the fate of your daughter, my mother."  The old man hesitated, and Jezerai dared to hope that there was a chink in the armor, but then his expression hardened and Jezerai's heart sank.  "I have but one daughter.  Your mother has been dead to me since she chose to bring a mixed race child into the world, shaming this family.  You are little better than a Vulmani."  Jezerai steeled herself to look her grandfather square in the eye.  "I thank you, sir.  I have had the privilege of knowing several Vulmani and a proud and noble people they are."  The old man shook with rage and backhanded Jezerai, sending her stumbling back a half-step.  A dangerous glint lit her eye, but she stayed her hand poised on the verge of violence.  The old man, with no idea of how close to death he walked, continued on.  "You are nothing but an animal," he shook with rage, "half-breed bastard child.  You should of never been born.  An abomination, a curse, get gone from my home.  Leave now and never come back!"  With great effort Jezerai controlled her own rage, bowed her head and backed out of the room, reluctant to turn her back to this enemy. 

Outside she called Salome and mounted, grateful for the steadying and accepting presence of her unicorn.  As she turned to leave, her grandmother hurried outside to detain her.  She wondered where the woman had found the courage to do so.  Her grandmother pressed a small locket in her hand, still warm from where it had rested around her neck until moments before.  Jezerai opened the locket and found it contained two miniature portraits of young blonde-headed girls.  The woman laid a gentle hand on Jezerai's leg, looking up at her with tears in her eyes.  "The child on the left is your mother," she said "the other is your aunt, Raychal."  The old woman patted Jezerai's leg, as though consoling her.  "I am so sorry child," she said.  "I loved your mother and wish that I could love you too."  Jezerai dismounted in one smooth motion and gathered the older woman in a warm embrace.  "I wish that I could love you too," she whispered then kissed the woman gently on the cheek before mounting Salome once again.  She fastened the locket around her neck, placing a hand gently on the ornament and whispering a silent thank-you for the precious memento.  Without looking back, she turned Salome and rode off, back to the world and friends she knew.

[Jezerai]

Jezerai frowned, a single tear sliding down her cheek, as she took out her box of mementoes and fingered the familiar pieces.  Cairbre had casually asked her if she ever thought about one day settling down in one home and having a family.  He couldn't know how much that question, and the scenario it conjured up, terrified her. She had passed him off with a glib answer and let him believe that she was no more than the hard-bitten mercenary that everyone, including herself, believed. 

Jezerai's thoughts afterward had continued to dwell on this question throughout the evening and she knew she had not been very good company, but she could not voice what she was feeling.  Jezerai was afraid that if she had tried to answer Cairbre's questions, the dam might burst.  If the dam burst, it could sweep away everyone and everything before it.  Jezerai was afraid of her own longings and fears and so denied that they even existed.  But now, alone in the dark, Jezerai reflected on the question and her own response.

Growing up in the streets of Tanvu, she had never known a childhood, such as he described.  Her childhood had been one long struggle for survival.  She had never played, at least in her living memory.  She believed that her mother had loved her and she could even remember kindnesses as a young child.  But the streets are no kinder to women than they are to children. When Jez' mother grew sick there was no money for medicine and no luxury for coddling illness.  Consumption is a wasting illness and she had grown sicker and sicker over the years before her death.  For several years before her death, she had had no energy left for kindnesses.

Cairbre's questioning about whether there was anyone or anything other than money that she would die for had cut her to the quick.  Surely he must know that she would willingly die for any of her friends or guildmates.  Was there anything or anyone else that she would die for?  Although she doubted there were, she did not believe that she was focused on money.  The money she received for a task was simply how she weighed her own value.  Perhaps her estimation was too low.  Jezerai shrugged.  She fully expected that one day she would not live to collect the reward for her job.  Sometimes she wondered if there was anyone in the whole world who would know or care that that day had come.  Her meeting with her grandparents had taught her that likely her passing would go as unnoticed as a drop of rain in the ocean.  What was family and what was love?  Jezerai hadn't a clue. 

"Bah!" Jezerai muttered, thinking that her thoughts were taking a melancholy turn this night.  Jezerai carefully replaced her mementoes in her wooden box and tucked it in the bottom of her saddlebags.  She lay on her back and looked up at the vast multitude of stars above her head.  As she mentally traced the familiar patterns, she could feel her confusion and pain drain away.  As always she was lulled by the vast ocean of sky above her head.

Resettling herself, Jezerai continued with her ruminations, turning her thoughts to the news of Cairbre's marriage.  The note telling her of it had come at a bad time, when she was working on her own quest to discover her mother's people's whereabouts.  She could not deny that at first it had felt as though she had been punched.  But it was not as though she had had any expectations of a  relationship beyond that of battlemates and friends.  Although perhaps she had had vague dreams, they had never broken into the light of day.  Certainly no promises had been made or sought ... and yet ... 

Jezerai suddenly realized that she had never loved another human being except her mother, and that was a child's love.  She was not even sure that she had that capacity, but at the back of her mind a small hope was planted.  The hope was that despite her scarred soul and obvious limitations, she could one day find a person on whom she could bestow her love and who could love her in return.  She did not know when that person would enter her life, but for whatever pain and confusion it had brought, Jezerai sent a little thought of gratitude for these events that had shown her that she did indeed have a heart.  And perhaps, when she did find this mystery mate, she would even be brave enough to dream of a small house to call home.  With these thoughts, Jezerai drifted off to sleep, a small smile playing on her mouth and the track of a single tear shining in the moonlight.

[Jezerai]

((By way of lead in, this has been part of Jezerai's backstory for quite a while, though I hadn't found the right setting to write it yet.  It is alluded to in Trevian's quest journal, though he declined to give the details.  Tsol's related story is at the Telon Coalition forums if you care to read it.  When he returned he was ... not quite himself.  He was primarily focused on Qlaria but grabbed and "savagely kissed," to use his emote language, Jezerai.  This seemed to be a good time to post the story and so here it is.))



A girl child growing up on the streets is either ignored or, when she starts to develop into a young woman, a commodity. Jezerai's thin frame did not start to blossom into a woman's form until she was nearly fifteen years of age, when she was enrolled in the military. The problem was that the options in the military were not quite as rosy as Jezerai had believed.

Young people like her, penniless and of no importance, formed the bulk of the army and served as basic infantry. Provided with only the most rudimentary armor and weapon, the infantry was expected to die, and did so with distressing regularity. The guard was a different matter. The guard, the elite of the infantry, wore sturdy armor and carried weapons that were able to hold an edge. More importantly, members of the guard were noticed by superiors and had much greater chance for advancement.

Jezerai, like every other infantry grunt, desperately wanted to be a member of the guard. Her chances of living would increase twofold if she was able to enter their ranks. Her chances of succeeding and making a name for herself would likewise be enhanced. The only problem was how to get there. The military required that applicants to the guard purchase their own uniform armor. This simply measure prevented most of the destitute infantry grunts from ever aspiring so high. The uniforms were created by the guard. A complete set was required and cost one gold piece. A gold piece was a fortune to a child like Jezerai. She bit her lip, worrying over the problem of raising a gold, until she hit on a solution. She would sell the only commodity she had to sell, herself.

Jezerai knew who to approach with her proposition. She went to the market and spent her last silver piece to buy a thin slice of lavender scented soap. She bathed in the nearby river, soaping her hair until the water ran clean and she smelled like a field of flowers. Her silver-blonde hair fell in shining waves down her back and framed her delicate, exotic features. She presented herself at the man's door for inspection, all fear buried deep beneath the child's determination to succeed.

Jezerai stood before her purchaser, who licked his thick lips with a reptilian tongue, her eyes cast down to the floor. He grabbed her chin in an ungentle pinch and tilted her head back to study her. Jezerai's pale blue eyes met his unflinching, while he gazed on her near ethereal beauty with the avid gaze of a glutton at a laden dinner table. "What do you want?" he licked his lips again and Jezerai stared, mesmerized by the flicking tongue. "One gold" she replied. He chuckled and slid a hand through his greasy hair. "As much as that, eh?" He snorted and ran his hand over her as a man might a horse he was considering purchasing. "A lot of money, for a girl" Jezerai held his gaze and waited. "You would have to stay a week," he said and grinned unpleasantly when she nodded.

For a week, Jezerai did not own herself. For a week she was the body servant of a man as vicious as he was repulsive. Jezerai learned what degradation was and when the week was up and she had the gold piece to show for it, she had the scars on her body and soul to show for it as well. She had never looked back or second guessed her decision. It had likely saved her life and she had always considered it a necessary evil.

Jezerai had grown into a strong and self-sufficient woman. But that exterior was wrapped around a frightened child wailing for comfort. Tsol's demeanor, after reappearing from his long absence, shook her at her core. A dear friend, who she had always admired and liked, in a guise that reminded her forcibly of her ravisher. Jezerai shuddered and blinked back tears as she remembered his savage kiss, a kiss that had destroyed all the strength she had labored so hard to acquire, leaving only the frightened child behind.