[attr="class","stappbody2"]

[attr="class","stappbody3"]

sleep, my heart

come to a rest, the world is freezing over

You don't talk about your past; there's nothing to gain from it. You save your breath and spare yourself from strained sympathetic looks. All anyone needs to know is that you're from north, far north, where the cold is a permanent feature in both the air and the people. You skip the part where you're the remnant of an old clan that vouched for the protection of an alpine hamlet from aberrant threats; an old clan that ultimately failed in their task.[break][break]

Your mother - may in the hereafter she find rest - would sing of the days when their blood was stronger and how the village folk would revere the clan. It was hard to miss the melancholic glimmer in her eye as she'd end her stories by averting her gaze to a fire kindling in the hearth. There's no point dwelling on the past, she'd declare suddenly, her words forced as if they were pried reluctantly from her, saying what her growing son would expect to hear from a mother.[break][break]


The darkness, like the cold, was also a permanent feature. A lingering threat that skulked through the bordering forest with the stealth of a wolf. Age old wards kept them at bay, the last gift from your predecessors. Your mother could sense them, whereas you could not. You liked to try though; following your mother's gaze whenever she'd stare between the wooden sentinels that encircled the village in the hopes of spotting whatever loomed. One day, she promised, although she hoped not one day too soon, until then she'd keep them at bay by herself. They didn't scare you, you'd insist with the stubborness and naiveté of the child you were, but she would only answer with a wan smile; that's nice, Artemi, but they will.[break][break]

You naturally kept away from the other children of the village, finding better company in books, tomes, your mother's teachings and your gardens, but that's not to say you didn't try to approach them. You were a child with a boy's curiosity and desire for mischief, after all. It seemed you just... weren't wanted though. Half-heartedly, they'd entertain you for a short while, but never for too long, and after a while though, you began to notice their poorly hidden sneers and snickers were at your expense. The witch's bastard, you heard them call you, both the children and their parents as they urged their brood inside. Inside and away from you. Eventually, you gave up. You stopped making an effort with the other kids. You began regarding them as brats. You hoped they'd choke on their pride born from stagnant prejudice.[break][break]


Your father was a topic rarely touched; merely because there was no story behind it. He was travelling witch, according to your mother, a merchant that sold trinkets and talismans to the superstituous and foolish; a willing volunteer to the task of helping the clan's bloodline perdure over a balmy summer. It's slightly ludicrous that you look more like him than your mother; you have his inky hair and carmine eyes, his slender build and willowy limbs. Almost everyone this far north is fair-haired and pastel-eyed, making you stick out like a sore thumb. It was fine though, by now you were used to being different, you were learning not to care. It didn't matter if you couldn't play rough and tumble with the other kids and who cared if they called you a bastard? There was no lie in that. You turned a deaf ear to the rumours that your mother was a ghoul's concubine, that you were the product of her cavorting with the shadows. That much was a lie but would there be any point in proving them otherwise? [break][break]


By the time you reached adolescence, you should have learned to care a little more.[break][break]


The children you grew up with were teenagers too, in the flower of their arrogance. You'd spotted them vandalising the waist-high sentinels dotted on the borders of the hamlet a handful of times; you even watched them one time carve their names crudely into the wood of one of them, overwriting the ancient runes that covered the weathered bark. Looking back, you know now you should have done something, it would have been the right thing to do... but not because they didn't deserve the incident that followed, but because the price of your indifference cost you very dearly. It cost you your only family; your mother. [break][break]

With the barrier weakened, it didn't take long for the scourge to seep in. [break][break]

You still couldn't sense it though, your powers weren't quite awakened. Ignorant, apathetic, brooding in your early adolescence, you paid little mind to how drained your mother was of late. It was selfish, you know now, but by then you were a dour young man that wordlessly blamed all around you for your dull, humdrum life. It was your mother's fault you felt ostracized, it was her bloodline's fault you were trapped in this village, it was the village's fault for being such a mundane place to live, et cetera. Woe was you, poor boy, you were as arrogant as the children you disliked and claimed to be so different from.[break][break]


As soon as the first suggestion of your powers surfaced, you were sent away, sent south to a school in the capital where an old friend of hers could stand as your guardian. Too eager to get away from the village, to pursue proper studies, you didn't question the hidden motive your mother had. She wanted you to study, to get strong, so when you returned you could aide her. But you never did; you never returned. She never planned for you to return anyway; south, in the capital, you were safe. [break][break]


Whenever you tell anyone about your history, from here is where you begin. [break][break]


You studied, you grew up into a detached young man. You ward a secret repugnance towards humans, their weakness and fear of the unknown. You embrace your decadent impulses because you're weak yourself; you seek comfort in other people, but in only their body and not their arms. You joined a coven as morally ambiguous as you are because it seemed fitting. You lack ambition yet you see others as stepping stones. You're a hypocrite, a soft touch, a deviant, but never someone to dwell on the past.