The midnight moon shined its pearly light onto the disc without caring about the woes of the mortals.

It had just unveiled itself, heralding the howls of a million eager creatures all throughout the lands. The smell of the fresh grass and leaves seemed to etch deeper, and the even blackest shadows receded, permitting room to only the calm dark of a starlit night.

Yet, the zeal of life didn’t reach everyone.

Eluned Earthloch Siaglas rested her cheeks on her palms, sitting quietly on a tree stump at the very edge of the noble stage.

She had at first declined the Grand Elder’s invitation for a closer seat in favour of getting to know her clan sisters. She would chat and make merry with fellow noble ladies under the giant sheet of water in the sky. The same magical device reflected the two children on the temple stairs.

At first, she was delighted. She would not miss any of their little antics and the tiny steps they took. It was as if she was there to adventure with them.

But then the spirits appeared, offering their orbs to only her daughter, and her clan sisters’ conduct drastically reversed.

It had broken her heart.

“… lowborn… not one gift….”

“Heh… even spirits….”

“My son… two hundred specks….”

She picked up the whispers of the ladies around, not that they tried particularly hard to hide them.

The thorn laden voices pained her with more flame than the poison of a rot flower. Her fists slowly curled as her breath did hasten. But they never stayed clenched for long.

Eluned could not feel angry. She had somewhat expected this manner of treatment after the journey to Lochuir earlier that day. But there was a faint flicker of hope she didn’t wish to so quickly snuff, a yearning for friendship and fruitful bonds.

Reality did not care.

‘Just because they have prettier rocks, smoother pelt, more colourful feathers,’ Eluned lamented, ‘and higher cultivation, they can mock….’

The ladies with fancier garbs mocked the robes she bled heart and soul hard to make for her son and daughter. They ridiculed her husband for thievery. That he who was merely in his 2nd circle of manna, far lower in prowess than low oceanic, which was held as the minimum threshold required to be a Reanakt, had plundered the achievements of others.

One antlered woman even asserted with expert poise, citing her brother and sons, that a mere low-blood like Dofnald would never arrive at the 5th circle, the first of oceanic realms.

Those who didn’t insult their heritage derided her son for being looked down upon by even the spirits. A lady with four arms even spat at her feet, calling her and her son unworthy to ever be Dofnald’s scion, blaming her for ruining her husband’s future.

That she must have surely sired a ‘waste’ like Elrhain with another unnamed servant in an unspoken affair.

Even with Eluned’s taller frame, the dainty four-armed maiden loomed over her with the rage of a beast, enough so that Eluned could not even speak back.

So, she escaped the haughty dames and prideful noble huntresses, brooding alone in the corner on a splintered stump in shame.

The ground here was not pressed flat, and the view of the water sheet was blurry and distant.

Nevertheless, it was enough for her. She still saw little Gwyn take in blessing after blessing.

A part of her felt heavy, but a darker part she wished to bury under the lakes, felt spite.

One mighty being moved aside as another took its place to shower Agwyn with acknowledgement and prestige. At the same time, they delegated her Rhain to the sidelines.

Both babes were birthed on the same day! What did Agwyn have that Elrhain didn’t? They both grew up on her milk, on Cyra’s milk, on the same crib bathing in the same wind, water and sunshine.

Yet while Agwyn hugged the giant jar up the stairs with ease, Elrhain struggled to even lift the staff.

‘Why shouldn’t he! He is barely three. Gwyn has always been active. She even crawled more than Rhain when they were but a season old! Normal boys his age can’t carry the weight of the ancestor’s artefact… normal boys….’

Eluned lost her rage to words. She thought hard and searched deep inside for more excuses that her son didn’t need, for more things she could say to herself to feel better.

She only found tears.

‘It’s not his fault!’

Eluned was now a noble only because of a whimsical joke that fate performed, binding her son to the princess as the consort. Yet, for once, she thought fate was fair!

She could swear on her life and her love for Dofnald that the disc had made Gwyn and Rhain for each other.

They hugged and snuggled and never fought like other children so often did. They brought nothing but joy and fulfilment to both her family and Cyra’s.

Moreover, Eluned’s worldly life had improved tremendously because of the two kids’ betrothal.

She never had to toil in the gardens, burning her hands to the poisons of painweeds.

She passed the time lacing gheist hide, leaves, and vines into robes and kilts, or carving shells of clams, bugs and nuts to sculpt memoirs for the clan’s new heir and heiress; an amateur hobby she had developed after seeing one of Crya’s maids so proficient in the craft.

Eluned and her Siaglas homestead had their very own courtyard of magic! The clan showered them with more resources than they could ever possibly dream of. Training and elixirs for her husband, and the same for herself, which she was sure she didn’t need. Finally, the cutest daughter she never knew she needed.

A pang of guilt prickled Eluned’s heart when she came to the realization that she was utterly smitten with the comfortable life right now.

It had blinded her, and before today, she didn’t even recognize the fact.

Eluned was but a servant before her son was born. She never learnt the knowledge to even ruminate about things such as social intricacies or prejudice.

The clan had sheltered her for three cycles from the judging gazes of the fellow nobles, whom she had thought of as sisters in her heart. Because Cyra, the noblest of them all, had set too good of precedence.

But after passing through so many dhionne homesteads in the span of just one afternoon, experiencing the high and mighty peacocks jeer at her person and family without provocation and returning her greetings of goodwill with pointed fingers and slanders?

She felt unsure if she was truly suitable to live such a life. If she could even protect it from the malice outside.

Her husband could shrug the glares off like they were the pecks of fruit flies, but Eluned couldn’t.

She was meek.

‘Why!’ Eluned’s sobbed, anguish painting her muffled up voice, ‘Why can I not? Why, does this happen every time my life becomes better?’

She hoped more than once that this time, finally, her bliss would last forever. Her hardships before were but tests the disc had made her suffer to earn her present life.

Today, she found out fate had cursed her yet again, replaying its evil omens as assuredly as the dark winter visits the disc each cycle.

Every time her situation turned for the better, every time she thought she had escaped the pit of darkness, something would happen that would make her doubt.

Then her doubt would invariably turn into reality.

It happened once before because she tried to change and once because she didn’t. Because the world didn’t like either of those choices. So it would send down an auspice to tell her that the beautiful life she knew was but a lie.

And now that she knew the truth, she had to pay back the world with ten times the misery.

Eluned eyed at her pelted robe with newfound hatred. Muddy green, and not one single feather. She could lace a more beautiful set, but she didn’t. She didn’t even try.

‘Why hadn’t I?’

Because trying to be prettier was a change that caused her blood sister to wish for her cruel death.

What about when she didn’t try to better her fate?

The world would step in to do where her sister failed.

She was afraid to go forward and afraid to step back. She was afraid too to just stand still and let time flow.

Most of all, she was afraid that her new family would learn of her unsightly fears.

What would her husband think if she were to be so weak? What would the Chieftain, Cyra, and Father Thundham think?

Eluned’s hands rested feebly on her knees. She sighed a foul breath, hoping that her demons would leave with the wind.

Yet, they did not.

Because after ruminating her lot in fate the entire night, watching the two tiny children tread their way up the thousand stairs, she realized that these nobles were not the problem.

Neither was her husband, the chieftain’s family, her son, or the prosperous life she led right now.

She was.

If anything destroyed her family again, it would be her own actions, her own inactions. After all, when the nobles mocked, she only stood in place and squirmed with a fearful smile. She could blame her past as a servant for all she was worth, but would the nobles stop insulting her because of that?

No, that wasn’t the solution. It was but an excuse Eluned gave herself to escape the burden of a noble’s responsibility.

Eluned was lost on how to fix herself.

What might such a weakling even do to safeguard her current happiness till death tore it apart, when she was even blind to tell right from wrong?

‘I…’,

Eluned’s spiral of negative thoughts hit her nerves again and again, like the tornado in the sky, uncaring at how it blotted out the celestial lights. The grinder of a hundred thousand worries told her that she, was, bland.

She had no ambitions, no dreams, and no honour to repay the clan.

And her love for her children?

Well, they, too, had long outgrown her milk.

She had nothing left to contribute. No redeeming qualities. Only a beacon of rotten luck.

Her parents had thrown her aside when she refused the court of her childless blood sister’s husband.

Her first noble master when she could be nothing but a maid, the scion of a mighty Onthoakt whom she loved and offered her body day and night, whom she thought had loved her back, left her to die in the mouth of a bloodthirsty gheist at the first signs of trouble. For she was merely loved as a toy in bed and a bait outside.

Her saviour, the new heart of her love, the crude but steadfast Dofnald had surrendered his chance to advance to middle earthen once before, when he made her his bride. He had thrown away the right of a noble marriage, for she was his resolve. Which was precisely why…

…she was as worthless as these ladies mocked.

All she had were excuses, excuses, and more buckets full of excuses.

‘Blame her luck, blame the world, blame the nobles but not yourself.’

She was but a victim of fate’s forbidden plays.

‘Right?’

After she had wailed in this simple fact for the last thirty cycles, today for the first time in her life, she glimpsed the tail of a different answer in the sea of despair.

As elusive as a lake spirit in water, the answer was still shrouded in dark reefs and murky swirls, but it was certainly there. She heard its fins cut through the currents, smelled its delicate scent of flesh, and almost reached it with her mind’s extended hands.

All she had to do was look past the dread of the deep and fear of the unknown to…

‘Would the clan, Cyra and my husband also forsake me one day?’

The darkness fought back, attempting to raise a stronger storm of torment to hide the answer to all her pleas.

It tried to creep out of her mind and into her body as her face started twisting into a pale mask of terror, as if she was suffocating under the weight of a million tons of water, stuck on a bed of quicksand on the seafloor.

‘No!’ Eluned pushed it down and swam up to the light, more out of shame than in purpose. The devils of despair chased after her the like leeches out for blood.

But Eluned didn’t look back. She did not want to show that face now, of all places, with the noble lords and ladies watching her every move, judging her to spot new a weakness they could latch onto.

That face when her brother-in-law had broken into her lonely hut with his overwhelming lust, to force on her a putrid pot of ripening brew, to sire his child in her sister’s steed.

That face when she stared death on the bloodstained fangs of a Racadger from but a few inches away…and understood, the same lust was the only reason her former master had deigned to keep her as more than a servant.

‘But… why does my face matter?’

Eluned lifted her head slowly and examined the various groups of nobles, lords and ladies, gathering the stage. As if they too might point her to her answer.

No matter how unsightly their current state was.

Some nobles were fuming red in embarrassment or rage; some were dead intoxicated with their heads nose deep in pots of aged fruit pulp. One lady’s face morphed into a beastly scowl as her flat eyes reflected the hands of a man and woman clasped together, while another had a depraved smirk as she frothed droplets of lust in a certain wedded lord’s direction, a pink tipsy light in her eyes.

A few other nobles stared up towards the thousands of fireflies in the sky with unhidden dread washing their face. Others looked so ecstatic they had to stop themselves from jumping up into the skies to catch a few specks of light for their own.

Eluned’s eyes caught it all, and the world seemed to clear up.

She tilted her head in confusion, the darkness behind her practically retreating like a kicked puppy.

‘Why, can they show the faces I always tried so desperately to hide away?’

Eluned pondered some more.

Now, she really wasn’t a servant.

With that thought finally sunk deep into her psyche, possibilities she was utterly oblivious to opened their doors.

Eluned had both material and spiritual opportunities that were unimaginable to her ten cycles ago. A lover she knew who sought not her body but her heart, a son and daughter she could play with day and night, and in-laws who cared for her far more than her own siblings and parents did.

‘But!’ Eluned placed her palms above her heart. The constant throb had sped up like a raging, heated Kaloxen’s.

She sensed it.

The answer to all her woes and misery was closer than ever before. Her spine shivered with a kind of euphoria as she involuntarily glanced up at the sky. The lacerated firmament told her to look deep within one more time.

‘What do I need to protect us?’

She didn’t sense it in her mind’s sea anymore. It had escaped!

So, she hunted for it in the beam of light that had just flickered to darkness, in the panicking lords and ladies who all stood up, acting as if their fate was no longer in their hands.

She searched in the choir of prayers that resulted, where the voices of servants, nobles and freemen all blended together.

‘Just because they have prettier rocks, smoother pelt, more colourful feathers….’

“There!”

Eluned grabbed hold of one tiny fibre of the answer. Just a little more, and she would have it!

Her face turned crimson, and the sights and buzzes around her faded to a bleak grey so that solely the most important part of the world would reflect on her senses.

Finally, some things began to colour themselves again in the monotone world.

When the wind turned radiant as the flood of manna lead by a hundred thousand spirits tided upon the lands.

When the clamour of the mighty nobles died down as if they too had turned as meek as a servant, surrendering their life to a master they could not name.

When she saw Father Thundham soar into the sky towards the temple like a dragon, with the other nobles following him on the ground like little birdlings who knew not how to fly.

When she heard Bromwyn shout like a primordial lion, and everyone around bent down to cater to his every single demand.

And when she saw her reluctant son and lively daughter stare down from above the clouds, their eyes brimming with confidence, as if the world was in their hands.

Thus, she found her answer. The one true principle of this savage land without a heart to praise love. The only way she could protect her own love was one of the few things she never felt a need to try before.

She never believed she was capable; she appraised herself unworthy.

But now, she re-evaluated her chances. The window to magnificence she had for the last three cycles just like her husband, which she had neglected because of so many laughable excuses.

The answer was so simple, always in plain sight. It was everywhere around her. In the arrogance of the nobles, the clan’s love, and the vastness of the skies, the earths and the hundred thousand lakes.

It was what could have saved her when that creep broke into her hut, when that promiscuous liar ran, leaving her alone in a hostile forest. It was the sole reason these nobles could mock her humble roots today. It was just because,

‘They have a higher cultivation….’

The maelstrom of thoughts vanished, and only one vow remained.

‘A kick to their groins and a sword to their backs. For all the cheats and all the beasts,’ Eluned narrowed her eyes, her fists at last remaining clenched.

‘I need to become stronger. I need to cultivate!’