Under Your Thumb No Longer
A Dragon Age; Origins Story
City Elf.
Chapter 1
Dear Journal
Celeste's Journal, Day 1. (Although I doubt that this will be an everyday occurrence for me.)
As I promised Father, I will record my somewhat thinning thoughts into this journal so the gift he bought me is not wasted. Soris finds this hilarious; he never thought me to be the philosophical type. Shianni cares not, she just lies in wait until I leave this unattended so she can sneak a peek for herself. No matter. What will be recorded from here onwards is nothing that she does not already know. She hopes for gossip, slander, my darkest secrets. My life has been uneventful and so there are none.
Hear that, Shianni? THERE. ARE. NONE.
But I digress. Father told me to start from the beginning as if I were addressing a curious stranger so I shall. I must say, for my 16th birthday I had expected something with a bit more grandeur but this does me just fine. Any gift is better than none. So, with Shianni watching me with interest from the table, I shall begin here.
I was born in the Elven Alienage in the city of Denerim in the great nation of Ferelden. All of that sounds much more regal than it actually is. I am a City Elf and so I was under the thumb of the humans who lived in Denerim since the moment I was out of my mothers womb. She, bless her heart, was claimed by the Maker far too soon but not before she could watch my somewhat restricted childhood and pass her traits as a Rogue down to me. She was a fine woman. A beautiful woman. A powerful woman. I was her double, Father says. Hair as black as the night, skin as pale and delicate as petals of a white rose, eyes as bright a blue as a fork of fresh lightning cracking against the evening sky. Aye, he thought a great deal of my mother and thus he did the same of me. The man had -HAS- so much love in him that sometimes I fear that he may burst, but I could talk about him for hours. I was 6 when my mother passed if memory serves me correctly. I was not stupid, I knew what had happened and death was not an uncommon concept to me since the humans found hilarity in slaughtering my kin when they got too bored up in their castles and estates. How I loathed them, how I wanted to plunge mothers dagger into their spine and watch them suffer like she had to. I only knew the bad in humans then since that was all I had seen.
"Adaia was a great woman," I was told by a nameless elf the day of her funeral. "She wouldn't of liked to die any other way than in battle,"
Their consolation meant nothing. She died unnecessarily. She was taken from father and I for sport. I remember what I had said that day and that elf was quick to retreat in fear of some impossible feat; a human somehow being able to hear me and hunt me down. This was totally disregarding the fact that we were miles away from them here in the Alienage and we were alerted upon anybodies arrival.
"She would've liked to die in a fair battle, with fair terms and a grand final flourish," My 6 year old self had sniffled. "She hated the death she had received. A disrespectful beating, outnumbered and stripped of her dignity as well as her hope. Mark my words, I will avenge her. The humans will regret the day they laid a hand on my kin, most of all my mother,"
The Tabris household had lost its shining light and -without it- we were soon forced to succumb to the darkness. My father and I knew then that the humans abuse would intensify since Adaia, my wonderful mother, was a beacon for our community. Everybody said so. However, I never let it stop me for she had already taught me much. I continued to train and improve on my own under the watchful eye of my father and Valendrian who was a kindly man and one of great wisdom; a perfect Elder. I soon became adept with swords and daggers, my skills nothing short of honed for one so young. My revenge didn't come, however, for their targets always lay further away from me so I could never reach them in time. Instead, I had to get Soris out of sticky situations and ward off the occasional feral animal. Twas a boring existence for me. My quill makes indentations in the page as my frustration betrays me for I still have not HAD my chance for my revenge. Still I am Soris' caretaker, still I am the pest control.
No matter. I shall wait.
But yes, the rest of my childhood from that point onwards was dominated by the humans and my hatred for them and yet it did not show. I suppose my hatred was not enough to corrupt me as it did humans. According to my father, I was always well mannered and gentle, so much so that I managed to catch a butterfly and cradle it in my hands without crushing it. I was always something of a strange child I suppose. Soris would often call me his 'hero' and I would snort and tell him that heroes simply did not exist for if they did, one would come and save us. That is something that, to this day, I hold out and hope for. The Alienage has not changed in all this time and while that means we are all still connected to one another by strong bonds, it also means that we are still part of a cruel and unfulfilling existence.
Looking back on what I have written, everything seems so…Jumbled, messy, with no true rhyme or reason to why it is so. My mind must have been more cluttered and troubled than expected. There is so much more that I could write but it seems that my unease has been quelled for now. I am sure it will return again tomorrow. For now, the crackling fire and the promise of a meal -however small it may be- lures me from my bed to the table. I always look forward to mealtimes because they start and end the same way; We sit and pray firstly to the Maker and then recite another prayer for Andraste, His bride, to watch over my mothers spirit. At the end of our meal we rise and embrace one another as family before we all retire. Such small things keep me sane and give me hope for tomorrow.
Tomorrow may not be our day of freedom or my day of revenge but I will stand as a sentinel on the horizon, waiting for that day to come.
When it does…I will be ready and they will pay.
~END OF CHAPTER 1~