Fssh

In a dimly lit, raggedy orphanage, moonlight shone through one of its many dusty window panes with it’s curtains parted, now spotted with things of frost. A small little bundle of joy with rosy cheeks and eyes of soft violet sat on the lap of her elder sister, snorting happily at the sight of her first snow. She was hushed, not to cause a ruckus while the other children slept..

A man stood on the cobble, a simple observer on the streets. He knew why he had paused. Tall in stature, he held a small oil lamp in his left. Bundled up so warm, he could hardly peer at the two children in the moonlit pane without some fabric jostling around. The morrow would do, he decided, before continuing about his business on the streets.

The next day and the next after that, the orphanage received a strange visitor. A hardy man, wearing a mage’s robes, visibly wizened- he made a stop from his errands to look over the children the on first. He asked the pair who he observed in the pane a few questions, before he left. On the second day, they awakened to a carriage- and though it was not quite the stuff fairy tales were made out of, it was more than the two had ever witnessed. Suffice to say, they were overjoyed.

Though he was not considered their father, and rather their master- they were not slaves, and much more like daughters to him, who received his last name for lack thereof. They received a rich education and were his apprentices; and while Elizabeth’s sister Emily did not have the magical potential that she did, it did not matter that much in his eyes, as she flourished in other fields of study.

While always the reckless wild child, Emily was always there to care for Elizabeth when their master could not, when she got hurt, or when her magical experiments went awry. Because they were four years apart in age, they had many pointless arguments as children (much to their master’s displeasure), but no petty bump in the road could break their bond. When Emily fell ill at the age of fifteen with an odd and deadly “plague”, there was no spell nor medicine that could fix that damage it caused to her dear sister, nor that could recover her lost memory. In the end, she was put down for the better.

Ten-year old Elizabeth mourned, but grew as a better person in the end. While packing the responsibilities her late sister once did upon herself along with the ones she always had was not the healthiest thing for young Elizabeth, and stunted her once rambunctious personality; in a way she grew up thereafter taking her role as an apprentice much more seriously than before.

She left the lonely cottage in the middle of nowhere when she was about twenty-one, having nothing left to learn from her master and adoptive father. Elizabeth learned on the streets how to make profit out of being a traveling mage and scholar; and yet with no plans for the future, Elizabeth was hopeful. 

The woman with the soft violet eyes worked day from night, head to toe; she was no stranger to the grind for every copper to make her name known in the streets. Over the next four years of her life she did so. She made a habit to journal constantly, whether it be ideas on magic, or on human anatomy (her second favorite study), and her studies and theory in both magic and human anatomy have made a dent.

However, on the fourth year as Elizabeth noticed her memory had began to crumble- she fell ill with a plague very, very similar to Emily’s. When she was visited by her master, he was devastated. She was tossed between many healers and doctors far and few, but none had seen a disease quite like hers. 

When her disease rotted her memory so bad that she could not recall a thing the very next morning; her master read to her every journal she owned, every morning. Just in hopes she would begin to retain…

But nothing stuck. After months, Elizabeth made a decision for herself. Though the “disease” rendered her weak, unable to perform any sort of magic, walk too far a distance- she decided she could still write. Therefore, she could still function. 

The fifth year, present day. Elizabeth knows herself; she knows to fear the night, the moon- when her memories crumble, sapped by her own mind into oblivion. She awakens at dawn, to begin a few hours worth of reading, before she begins every day. Not like herself like the day before, nor the one after- but she has made a name for herself, and will continue to live under her masters’ legacy.