Il Gabbia Uccello Canoro

by Ice Jazz Elleth

Throughout history, many never get to tell their stories. The stories that record the lives of the poor and women. But while Ezio was off saving Italy, Claudia lived her own life too, filled with challenges, some greater than others. Caring for her ill mother, finance, marriage, childbirth and her own transition from child to assassin.

1. Chapter 1

Il Gabbia Uccello Canoro

'Iron rusts from disuse; water loses it's purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.'

Leonardo Da Vinci

My story will be untold, no doubt. I'm just like many other women, I will go down unheard and unrecorded. Hidden behind the deeds of men. No one will come and listen to our stories, buried as they are in the background of life and death. Even if in some strange world, heroes who travel the great seas are willing to stop and give blood to the shades of women so that they may have form and speak, it is not mine. The heroes I see, the men, they are too focused on getting somewhere rather than the journey. A fault that I too was once guilty of although I will not be considered a hero.

Even now when all the others have gone. My father, mother and brothers. Friends too have passed on and have long since entered the pearly gates. Or so I pray. They deserve that life. All I have left are children and grandchildren. Nephews and nieces. It is not the same.

I write these words now, as I feel the cold of the night begin to seep into my bones, heralding the approach of that skeletal figure, Morte, in the hopes that I will not be lost in the glow of my brother's life.

No doubt you who read these words know of him. Why else would you be here? And if the assassins have won this endless conflict, his story will be well told across the world. I pray for that day. For all our grievances, I love him and he deserves to have his work done not in vain.

My name is Claudia Auditore Da Firenze and this is mia storia.