Part II: Beginnings
Prologue
An unquenchable flame
She was bleeding. The blood covered my hands as I desperately tried to press the makeshift bandages onto the wound. Her muscles were tense, and my heart pounding as the fear pounded inside of my head: she was going to die, and it was going to be my fault.
She was young, couldn't have been more than thirteen. A Dalish girl with vibrant facial tattoos, and hair the color of autumn leaves. She tried to form words, bits of elvish I couldn't understand. Abelas she had said to me, her eyes welling with tears. Ir Abelas, ha'hren. I could tell by her glassy eyes that she wasn't talking to me, but something she saw beyond.
I tried to move faster, realizing that I was quickly losing her. Her life was fading as quickly as her blood was leaking. My hands were old, they had long lost the strength they held in their younger days. I was a never good medic. These hands have always been better at taking life than preserving it.
Somehow I got the bleeding to stop. I had refused to allow another elf die by hand. It was a relief to know that I hadn't broken my promise. She was delirious for a few days afterward, while her body recovered. She kept mumbling broken elvish through her dreams. I couldn't understand any of it. She kept repeating Idys salgara.She kept repeating it over, and over, and over.
On the fourth day she finally slept soundly. I left the old cabin then. She had been through enough. Didn't need to see my grizzled old mug when she awoke. I watched from the woods as she returned to her clan, looking back upon the cabin with a mixture of relief and confusion as she left. And then I left.
I still have miles to go. Weeks of traveling. Hope these old bones can take it. In a week's time I should reach the deep woods near Serault. Then my journey begins in earnest. They say nobody has ever reached the Tirashan. We shall see.