invaderaldi

Born a twin in winter to Gaeleath Valfären, a strong, benevolent Mali’ame, and Haciathra Valfären, an absentee wife with a deep reverence for the Wolf God Morea, Niamh lived a relatively quiet upbringing sequestered in a small area located in the outskirts of Irrinor. Her twin, Neremyn, was born weak—“cursed by the season,” Haciathra would mutter when Neremyn fell sick again, and again. 
 

Gaeleath acted both as a paternal figure and the breadwinner, foraging until the sun slipped past the forestline, only to come home and teach Niamh archery until darkness fell in completion. With an audience of one, Neremyn, too frail to participate, watched from the porch while Gaeleath gave gentle guidance to Niamh, who quickly grew proficient enough to act alone. By the time she bled, Niamh accompanied her father every full moon to kill a hare in offering to the Wolf God (a practice enforced primarily by Haciathra). As recognition of her independence, her father told her to venture alone—ame nae evareh, he said to her before she left, her feet already sinking in the snow.

That night, after Niamh killed the monthly hare without struggle and stood less than the length of a young tree from the climb to her home, she stopped dead. Beyond the base of the grand oak, a pair of narrow, wolven eyes interrupted the deepest oil-black of darkness. The color of yoke, she dared not move, aware of how, in that moment, she was just as much prey as the rodent hidden in her satchel. The next morning, Haciathra was gone.

Nemeryn took notice of her absence first, waking Niamh from a fitful sleep in their shared bed. She couldn’t help but believe Morea might have heeded the offerings. 

In the coming years, neither Gaeleath or Niamh left their home on the full moon. 

During the warmer seasons, when Gaeleath exploited the longer light, Niamh and Nemeryn spent afternoons with the Kellen’s malii’lari, a waife three moons older than the twins. Ecaeris was tall and pale for a Wood Elf, though Niamh privately thought her beautiful. She wondered if Ecaeris looked like the Blessed Elves, the ones her mother used to whisper of in bedtime tales. The few summers she wasted eating dripping fruit in the branches high enough to be kissed by sun, Ecaeris’s red hair falling above her, was the pinnacle of her childhood. As with most good things, the summers came to an end, the Kellen family migrating to the Principality of Aegrothond, where they sought a richer, more diverse life. 

Nemeryn fell too ill to function shortly after, and the silent killer who curdled his blood caught up to Niamh’s naivety all too suddenly. She spent the latter half of her pubescence helping her father forage in the surrounding lush, attempting to teach herself literacy from the prayerbooks her mother left behind, and barely touched her bow—though a deep unease settled in her gut by the time she reached eighteen.

“Homesickness,” Gaeleath diagnosed, mortar and pestle in hand.

“Homesickness?” Niamh repeated, aghast. “But this is my home. I—I don’t understand.” 
 

“Sometimes,” Niamh’s father began, a kind tilt to his brow, “young Mali’ame must search for what they believe they already have. When the rot in the gut becomes putrid, only a catharsis, of a sort, can expel the blight.” Gaeleath placed a large, rough hand on Niamh’s thin shoulder, and tightened his grip in comfort. “Homesickness,” he said again, “is that blight, malii’lari.” 
 

Not a month later, Niamh left on the full moon, her bow and satchel strapped to her bag and a hare at the foot of the grand oak tree, no longer her home.