ISOLA: The Isle of the Dead, by Brenden Fletcher and Karl Kerschl, is copyright & trademarked 2018 Image Comics or its respective owners, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect of the copyright holders of ISOLA is intended by this fanfiction.
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Willed by the World, and Yet Unseen
by Silverr
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Rook is living an adventure, and she knows it, although most of the time she is too busy just surviving to think about it much.
On the nights when a fire is too dangerous, and only propriety keeps her from offering her warmth to her queen, or during the day hours, when the constant assault from the light and the heat and the fear that every sound is a hidden enemy ready to emerge reduces her to a skittish creature who barely has the strength to keep putting one foot in front of another… at such times, now and again, her exhaustion is so complete that she floats away, above herself, and imagines telling the tale to great-great-grandnieces and grandnephews.
Should she begin the story in childhood? When she and Olwyn tumbled and ran in the fields like cubs? Or tell how their paths diverged, one called to the palace, the other to the Circle Guard? Should she explain how she roamed the plains, keeping the clans in line and protecting the borders of Maar from those who would take its most precious treasures?
No, she will leave those parts out: children are easily bored.
She will start instead with how, one day, she was tossed in the air by an aggie, and caught in a Moro snare of song and prophecy; how she then ran, all unawares, to the palace, through silks and perfumes and whispers to report the attack, and of of how a lowly junior Circle officer suddenly found herself Captain of the Queen's Guard. She will tell them of the curse that descended, and how she fled the palace with a tiger, and of everything that happened after that.
Well… perhaps she will not tell them everything…
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Written for the 2018 Be The First! challenge.
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posted 3 April 2018; revised 22 April 2018