37th of Ymiden 721
Ashan 34th 735
There was more to the story her Nana told her than she knew, and today Eponia resolved to begin finding those missing pieces. It was her fifteenth birthday. In Almund and more broadly Scalvoris, the day ended in drinking to the point of inebriation. She'd heard from a few of her older friends who'd been through it. She of course hadn't been invited to those occasions, not yet having been of age, yet she heard of the wild drinking and dancing that went on well into the night. If Nana showed, which she should - Friends and family, right? - Eponia would get her drunk past the point where her inhibitions walled off that portion of her own story. And while Nana had told her that she would share the story of her mother when she was ready, Eponia enjoyed having that extra layer of insurance on top of it. When would she be more ready when she was becoming an adult, and at the peak vitality of youth?
For now, Eponia sat dutifully at the table, as their live-in servant cooked their breakfast. Her grandmother hadn't always lived in relative luxury. Nana and her mother had spent the better part of the first few decades of the century in relative squalor. Living near the docks, where the tide came in, and was a regular visitor to the lower levels of their cabin. They'd made do with it, it was a place to stay anyway, but there was no comparison to the conditions she said her mother had grown up in, to what Eponia enjoyed.
Yet for all that information she had of her mother, she had nothing but a name to know her by. Emelia. Eponia had tried, but nobody knew who Emelia Lonish was. The thought occurred to Eponia that perhaps they'd gone under a different last name in those days. Whether that was true or not, she was left with only a first name and no clue how to find out more before the allotted time, when her Nana decided she was ready to learn more.
At any rate, she was patient, and spent the better part of the morning after breakfast, stitching together a tear that had formed on the hood of her woven cloak. Her needles and thread made quick work of the breach, and she even made it less visible from the exterior of the cloth. Her Nana had taught her well how to sew and crochet. She even had a cottage industry of stitching together flowers of expensive cloth, for the purposes of funerals that occasionally happened to neighbors. She didn't expect payment necessarily, but they gave what they could all the same. Still, that alone wasn't enough to support them, so they'd hire out their services cleaning local houses until they had enough of a nest egg that they could branch out into other services to keep themselves afloat.
Finally, the breakfast of fried potatoes and glowing chicken cuts was finished, along with a pair of eggs. Eponia quickly shoveled the food down, with little interest in savoring it. She just wanted to get underway with the plans.
Nana stared at her adoringly, as she did. The woman's tawny hair draped around her face, as she cradled her chin in both hands watching her granddaughter eat. When Eponia looked up to notice her staring, she suddenly felt self-conscious. "Something wrong Nana?"
Her grandmother shook her head, and smiled, "No, I'm just enjoying this last meal with you as a child." Nana smiled sadly then, getting a faraway look in her eyes. "Now, your plan was to worship at the Witchwood Cemetary? At your mother's grave?"
Eponia finished chewing her eggs, swallowed, and wiped her mouth. "Yes, Nana. You'll let them know where they can..."
"Hush child. We'll take care of the rest. Just... go do your meditations now."
Eponia nodded, and ventured to smile at her grandmother, before getting up. Then she circled the table to give her Nana a hug, one last time as a child. "Thank you, Nana."
"Hurry back after tonight. I've your gifts to open." Eponia had already began making her way to the exit, when she froze on hearing that. Would Nana not be among those getting drunk at the Buckle and Chain?
It was just her luck. "Yes, Nana." Thus, she left the house of her grandmother, and made her lone way toward the Witchwood graveyard.
As she walked the streets, making her way to the outskirts of Almund, Eponia reflected that she had never felt strongly about the gods growing up. They, if they existed, appeared to leave her and her folk well enough alone. Eponia wasn't one to dismiss the possibilities based on a lack of evidence, however, and held out for the possibility of divine intervention, one way or another. It didn't hurt that Scalvoris society was indeed quite religious and adhered to the gods strongly. There were no temples that she frequented enough to care to do so now. Only one place felt right to spend her meditation, a refuge that she often defaulted to when she felt alone and isolated. Which compounded upon itself because the graveyard itself was so isolated.
Still, the girl could think of no better place to spend her first meditation in adulthood, than the Witchwood Graveyard, at her mother Emelia's resting place. She was told, by her nana, that her mother had fought to cling to life, but ultimately gave it in order to bring her into the world. She knew little else other than that, and so it stood to reason that she felt certain gratitude toward the parent she'd never known.
She knelt by the grave, contemplating her life up to that point. A life lived in a quality shelter even if suffering under the supervision of her grandmother Anna. Some family friends explained that Anna had spoiled Emelia, and thus sought to correct the mistakes in Eponia that she'd lived through raising Emelia.
The frustration of it, was that she had few details besides that. Was her mother one to fall in with criminals, was she a drug-addict, or a harlot? They weren't forthcoming with details, which'd always maddened Eponia. She wished they would tell her, so she could get over it and move on. But always she suspected that there was more to the story than she knew.
So as she sat by the grave, she pled with Famula to allow her to converse with her mother, to get the answers straight from her shade's mouth. Of course, the goddess of souls didn't hear her, and thus she was left alone in that graveyard. Kneeling by the grave, with a pair of tulips in her hand.
A shadow fell over the graveyard as she laid the tulips down on the simple plaque, bearing her mother's name and little besides. She didn't have it in her to cry, really. She wished she'd known her, but it was more a longing than a sorrowful sense. Eponia simply couldn't bring herself to cry over someone she knew so little about, apart from the alleged sacrifice made to bring her into the world.
So she sat for a break or two in front fo the grave, diligently thinking over her childhood, the successes and failures, the progress she'd made going into adulthood.
Then, she heard hooting from the outside the perimeter of the graveyard. Then a rustling, and a howl of a wolf. Something was off about the sounds she was hearing, as if they didn't match the cadence and din of the surroundings of the Wytchwood.
She realized, only too late, that she was surrounded by a gang of masked miscreants. She shot up to her feet, and cast her eyes this way and then that, brandishing her small dagger that she hid within the folds of her cloak.
Yet, it all happened too fast. One of them danced before her, juking this way and that in an attempt to block her exit. She nearly tried to stab the intruder, but was grabbed by the elbows from behind, and spun around and around. They danced with her then, and were far too quick for her to react to. Before long, she was blindfolded, and their cruel laughter echoed across the timbers of the Witchwood. Finally, they stopped after a few bits of this treatment, and having disarmed her dagger. One of them leaned up against her shoulder, and whispered, "Guess who?"
"Kalick?" She said, breathing a sigh of relief as she recognized his voice, finally. A peal of laughter erupted from the would-be 'kidnappers' as they spun her around once more and began leading her back into town.
"C'mon, let's get her to O'rourkes for some drinking." So saying, her heart lightened by the knowledge that they were indeed her friends and not a bunch of savage necromancers out for a corpse. They made their way to O'rourke's, she blindfolded, as Scalveen tradition dictated.
