Tayntrix (AoC)

[Jezerai]

((Some of Tayntrix' story was whispered to me yesterday, and so I set it down here.))



The goat was dead.  It was not an old goat either and had promised many years of milk for the family.  But it must have eaten something poisonous along the way and now it lay, stiff and cold on the hot sand.  The baby was okay, still at the breast and taking every bit of nourishment from his mother.  But the baby was a boy and that justified the theft. 

The head of the family, an old and withered man of forty, looked at the corpse at his feet and shook his head.  The family lived hand to mouth as it was and the loss of the goat was crushing.  There was nothing to be done for it.  He sighed and knelt to skin the creature so that it could give it's last bit of sustenance to the small group of people who depended on it for life.

After tanning the hide for sale, and cutting the stringy meat into thin strips for drying in the hot desert air, the father gathered his family and set off for the south.  Two small girls trudged in the dust behind him, their mother carrying the baby in a shawl draped across her hip from her shoulder.  They did not complain, being used to such exertions from years of traveling from oasis to oasis.

The trip was a longer than they usually ventured, but the goat was no longer there to tie them with its need for water and more or less fresh vegetation.  They existed on the thin, dried strips of meat and sips of water from the canteens each carried.  The scorpions provided a change in their diet but the snakes, which were abundant in this part of the desert, they left alone.  Snakes were sacred to Set and their father did not want to tempt the god with yet more bad luck to follow the death of the goat by eating them. 

At last they arrived at a small oasis, far from the centers of civilization.  Followers of Xotli, the demon-god, had permanent dwellings here built of the same sand that covered the ground.  Tayntrix, being no more than five years of age and tired from the long trek, did not understand much of the exchange between her father and the old priest who shook his head repeatedly as the father gestured to the girls.  Finally an agreement was reached and Tayntrix was handed over.  Looking back as she was led into the adobe building, the faces of her father and mother were seared into the child's memory.  Her father, desperate and proud, his expression unyielding.  Her mother's tear-streaked sorrowful eyes watching the small form of her middle daughter disappear into the building.

[Jezerai]

Even as a young child, the copper-haired child interested the priest.  Possessed of a lively intelligence, Tayntrix shown far brighter than would be suggested by her humble beginnings.  And so the priest began to teach her to read.  Perhaps even then she was marked to host a spark of the demon-god, Xotli.  It is hard to say.  But the child applied herself to the teachings with a will that approached the fanatic zeal displayed by heralds.  And so she was watched.

When she had exhausted the reading materials in the settlement, Tayntrix pestered traveling salesmen for new books.  When she was twelve, the Xotli priests pricked a pattern in her skin with cactus needles and ink made from the blood of beetles that were common in the area.  They shaved off the copper curls that danced down Tayntrix back, leaving a stiff straight ridge of hair down the middle of the girl's skull, tattooing her skull with a continuation of the pattern.  Through all of this Tayntrix sat motionless and uncomplaining though her blood ran in rivulets down her face.  The priest, observing this, took note of her stoicism and nodded to himself.

When she was fifteen years of age, Tayntrix was informed that she had been chosen as a vessel for the demon-god.  Groomed over the years to view this as a honor, she met this announcement with pride and readily agreed.  With a calm determination, Tayntrix set herself the task of becoming a Herald of Xotli.