The Story

Her cheek is cool to the touch, just as it was the last time I spoke to her. My fingers run across the smoothness of it. Where my index should hitch slightly on a dense scar left from an unlucky training day, it slides unhindered.

Disappointing.

She would have preferred they captured all her truths in the stone. It’s some sort of marble or quartz, I imagine, based on the regal flashes of white and sparkling gray shooting through her unseeing eyes. Though the unruly sea of her hazels are lost, they did manage to capture the feeling that she was always looking beyond the here. I silently commend the artists for this ability. Even now I’m tempted to turn to see what has caught her attention. To catch a glimpse of the world through her eyes.

I resist and quickly walk away before the urge to throw my weight against the object overtakes- before realizing the satisfying crash of precious artwork turned scattered rock across the pathway.

Her cheek should not be smooth.

It should be worn over by sun and wind. Cracked open again and again, scarred over with a larger map of her adventures. It should be wrinkled, crumpled into so many laugh lines as children and grandchildren illuminate her with pride. It should be warm and smiling, paling as her explosive youth fades into relaxed retirement. Not smooth. Not cold. Not gone.

They never mention this part in the prophesies. I suppose it would give too many would-be heroes pause. My first captain had warned us long ago: “The old write, and the young die for the words written.”

And now, the old mourn.

“Why did it have to be you?” I whisper to the garden and then again to the stars. I ask not for the first time, not for the last.

My cheek is wrinkled. Damp now with a few tears I’ll claim are just these old eyes if someone spots me. My name is in history books. History it’s called, already. Though one would not find me in the archives nearly as often as her. For many of the reports and legends, I am just “and her companions.“ No drinking songs tell of those beside her, exult us like the popular “Fair her, our champion, gaze upon her waves! We fight for her, we love for her, she who bears no knaves!” Which no one would believe, but it was I that wrote most of those verses; on a night of deep sorrow and even deeper drinks, and I had just wanted to make her laugh with a rhyme. Like I had when we were children.

There is a painting in one of Levliants’ Great Halls, of our entire company where I am beside her. A carving somewhere in the Alden Library as well, I have been told, with she and I at the front.

Thankfully, most people do not recognize me anymore. For just like her, that version of me has remained unchanged. The song still shouts of a crew strong and sure. The etchings boost of a people with bright eyes and steady souls. Yet I have had the great privilege and punishment to survive beyond such things.

I knew she was The Chosen One from the moment she opened her eyes. She was crying, our mother was crying, hell the nurse was crying from how many hours we had been stuck in that hot room together trying to wrestle my sister into this world.

I swaddled her as the nurse tended my mother, counted her fingers and toes and odd freckles. That baby felt heavy in a strange way. Not in that she was a large one, though she was and my mother never let her forget it. But that I felt I was holding both my baby sister and the weight of the whole world. I feared if I set her down, she would have to carry it all herself. In the months to come, my mother accused me of not letting her learn to walk for saddling her on my hip! So from the moment I set her down, I barely left her side. If the fate of the world was her burden to carry, then she would be mine.

Our people were made from the very first dust. Our stories some of the first spoken. In all of the many tales, there was always a Chosen One, a Special Champion, a Someone that came and saved us all from evil doing. I never imagined I would know one, let alone love one. Never dreamed I would lose one.

The great battles came. The war cries were called. The charges charged. And all happened as it was meant to, according to the lines covered in dust. Even though I stepped in front of her. Even though I watched every move, tried to guard every angle. Still, she stood before everything, and bled.

There will come one, born into a great wailing. Marked with the second moon and evening stars. Only to impart peace upon the grounds with the rain of their very life.

Saving our world, and plunging mine into darkness.

When she last closed her eyes and they took her from my arms to the pyre, it was the lightest she’d ever been.

I follow now the path of the garden to a stand of trees, ducking beneath cobwebs and owls’ nests. Through the darkness, my feet know the way. To the solid stone, cool and dead as she. I pull the vines from its crevasses, my fingers lingering across the rough granite. This is where her memorial should be- where she truly last stood, and from her very self closed the door against the evil that tried to overtake us all.

I press against it, as if it might give way. I swear on the moon I can hear their voices. The voices of the rest of our company, calling and mourning her as they did that first night.

But I am alone. And have to remain.

The Word

Mislaid (noun, past tense): Unintentionally put (an object) where it cannot readily be found and so lose it temporarily.

After a YouTube spiral into cleaning grave markers, I kept coming back to the statues of those lost, and the effect that must have had on those who survived them. What part of a person’s likeness do you honor? The best moment, their most recent, their bravest? And once we’ve chosen- how do we know we are honoring the dead instead of placating the living?

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So… who remembers The Called?

***spoiler warning!***

While it remains my constant effort to make each story stand on its own, I do also try to make them part of a whole; I want them to fit together less like puzzle pieces, and more like the rounding hedges of a maze. And if you’ve been here a while, you know the members of The Called pop up in many, MANY of my stories, sometimes obviously, sometimes not so much. I’ve decided to go back and give their solo tales the much needed attention that such dedicated warriors deserve, bringing their stories up to par and ensuring their effects on the series as a whole. But for so long, I have wanted to tell their start. Where did the Door come from? Who locked it, and why? Now we get a glimpse from the other side of the mysterious Door, and a little hint for why it was sealed.

I promise to mark any updated story with some sort of signal, and leave an original somewhere on this blog (for we must honor our mistakes originals).

Happy reading!

P.S. Liked this story? There’s now a Companion Story!