Chapter One

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She sat woefully at her place in the Sacred Realm, her newborn baby sleeping in her arms. A tear fell from the corner of her eye, landing with a silent splash onto the child's cheek.

Of course, the Sages had told her it must happen. It had to happen, because a baby cannot grow up among such creatures, in such a place.

She had pleaded; she had resorted to kneeling on the ground, hands clamped together, tears pouring like rain from her eyes. The child has a destiny that she will need us for, she had said. Who will tell her who she is? What she will become?

And still they had said no. They had told her it was important that the child live a normal as possible life, until she was needed.

And so tonight would be the last night with her baby, and she would grow up another woman's child.

How foolish was she, to have gotten pregnant. She was a sage; sages could not act in such behavior. The others had been kinder to her than she was on herself; afterall, a child of such means was destined to be born sometime or another by the fates.

She pressed her lips onto the baby's forehead, letting them rest there for a while. She closed her eyes, cherising this moment, so that she would remember it forever.

"Tali," she whispered into the child's ear, and the child smiled in her sleep.

-

Hannah was a woman of simple pleasures.

She enjoyed warming her feet by the fire, sipping steaming tea and losing herself to her memories. She enjoyed going for walks along the river behind her hut. She enjoyed warming her face in the sun after a particulary long winter.

But although these little things made Hannah happy, there was one thing that she longed for, more than anything else in the world.

This dear dream of hers was to have a child.

Each night she would sit on the edge of her bed, closing her eyes and lifting her hands in prayer; Goddesses, bless me with a child of my own

And though her prayers were never answered, she continued to pray every night, even when her hair began to turn gray, and wrinkles formed around her eyes.

It was a night like any other that it happened; Hannah, tired and weary, stepped out of her house to catch some fresh air. A basket sat lonely on her walkway, and when peering inside, she found the child. A tiny baby girl, with raven black hair and emerald green eyes. There was no note, no markings of any sort of recognition.

It was hers; it was the child she had prayed for every night of her lonely life.

Without knowing why, she smiled at the child's face, and a wind called to her, whispering only one word.

She held the bundle close to her breast, and thanked the goddesses for the gift she had been given.

"Tali."