[attr="class","lvappbody2"]

[attr="class","lvappbody3"]

In a gilded cage

With a broken wing

Born Laelia Tyche Finch to a minor merchant family as a middle daughter with many brothers beyond her sisters. Her family was part of a religious sect that believed the use of magic cheapens the deeds of man. As a child she was brought up in this belief. [break][break]

As she grew up her elder sisters were slowly married off one by one, always to other merchant families. Then one day she was asked to meet with a merchant she had known most of her life. An old business partner of her father. The man's wife had died the year before. It seemed he and her father had come to a deal now. Her father needed new trade contracts and he needed a new wife.[break][break]

Laelia had been taken by surprise by this. While her sisters had their marriages arranged in this manor they had been to the first or second sons in all but one case, and even if that case the different had only been a few years after this newly made merchant head when his father and two elder brothers had been killed by disease. [break][break]

For Laelia though the age difference was nearly 40 years, and three of his sons that she would be step-mother to were her elders by a handful of years.[break][break]

Threads of fate

Woven into rope

Unable to escape from her family and home Laelia started to become sick with fright at the next phase of her life. She hated it, everything about this wedding felt wrong to her. Being betrothed was something just weeks before she would have dreams about, now though it had been changed into a waking nightmare, even as those in her life, those she would have trusted with her life days before, told her she should be ecstatic for this. [break][break]

As the days passed she was showed in gifts from her groom. He had a particular fondness for sending necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. No matter how fine the craftsman ship, and delicate the metal was made each felt like a new manacle binding her to a fate that she did not want. [break][break]

No matter how she pleaded or fought with her family the day of her marriage come step by step closer. Fitted for her dress, a venue in a temple that her groom had payed to have built in honour of his dead wife as confirmed, and fitted for a dress.[break][break]

In the days leading up to it, her family went out as for runners to deal with any last details of the wedding and of the coming business dealings that were certain to make her father massive amounts of money.[break][break]

Finally Laelia set out alone from her home. While there were others, handmaidens as the her family called these women, jailers and wardens as she saw them. She made small talk with one named Agatha, an endlessly pleasant woman who was new to her Family's employment, and a recent favourite of Laelia's mother which told Laelia all she needed to know about her. The men and women that Laelia's mother favoured were endlessly loyal to her mother alone and ruthless in the fulfillment of their duties.[break][break]

It was to be a trip that would take three days for her to arrive. The first day was pleasant and much to Laelia's horror they made much more ground than was expected, leading to talk that they might arrive earlier than had been expected. This knowledge threw Laelia into fits of tears which Agatha gleefully reported to the others in the caravan as tears of joy.[break][break]

The next day started normally as Laelia felt her doom coming closer. Then her rolling cage came to a stop upon an old stone bridge that crossed a ravine that had been carved by a once great river that had slowly split and dried up. She cold hear shouting from the people of her caravan and bandits that had taken up extorting a tax from those who would use this bridge.[break][break]

Laelia wanted to stick her head out of the carriage and see what was happening but Agatha objected attempting to physically restrain the girl, saying that the bandits would spot her jewellery and demand ever more from them, if not slitting all of their throats. [break][break]

As they struggled there was an explosion from outside the carriage.[break][break]

Speak of the truth

Your shackles will bind you.

Her mind was a fog as Laelia looked around the carriage. She was wet from head to toe. From her head a gash let blood flow over her face, while water flowed past her ankles. Surprised she tried to hurry to her feet, only to fall into water a cry of pain and fear coming out of her mouth. Her leg had been broken in the fall, and when she tried to catch herself she found that her arm had suffered the same fate. She lay there crying her face only just out of the water. [break][break]

Once the pain finally subsided and with so many careful and small movements Laelia once again looked around the interior of the carriage. There she spotted Agatha, laying there unmoving, her throat having been collapsed by a lose box. This moment was the most alone that Laelia could remember being possibly in her entire life. [break][break]

It took what felt like a lifetime of agony for Laelia to crawl out of the carriage. When she finally did she was surrounded by bodies that had fallen to their death, while others had been crushed under rubble that had fallen with them.[break][break]

With so much death around her Laelia simply wanted to laugh. She'd be wishing for her own death instead what ever gods ruled over this world killed all those around her and left her to carry on.[break][break]

As she lay there wondering how she could even survive this a shadow came over her, blotting out the sun. A bird so large that Laelia thought it to be the mythical roc. While a simple eagle it came with a witch that had been passing by when she notice the bridge had collapsed. [break][break]

Floating over Laelia was a witch now, a being she had been taught foreshore the divinity of honest work for the lazy results of magic. The witch asked her a simple question, just who was Laelia. With that question the last few years came back to Laelia. [break][break]

And so she lied.[break][break]

Endless fields of golden grain

Planted in salted earth

Laelia told the witch that she was a slave who was to be a gift from one merchant to another, how that merchant had sold off her elder sisters for similar favour with yet more merchants and had killed her parents one night as they slept. [break][break]

As Laelia spoke ever more words kept spilling out, the story of her past growing and twisting bits of her life merged with stories she had read and been told melding into one. Her parents becoming the barbarians of ancient times, willing to stop at nothing for a handful of gold coins to be added to their pile. [break][break]

Once more Laelia’s mouth open’s once more to continue telling her story when the witch stops her and asks a simple question. “But just what are you called?” Is what she asks Laelia. [break][break]

To this question Laelia finds her gaze falling from the witch’s before she has an answer. “I have none.” She says before explaining that she doesn’t know what her parents had called her, she’d been so young when she’d been taken as a slave and that her sisters had been strictly prohibited from telling her, and severely punished so she never knew what it was, and now all her sisters were gone, sold off in lands she didn’t know. [break][break]

To this the witch laughed with glee, the story having been such an amusement to her. Even as the laughter rang out in the valley’s walls Laelia spoke again. “Please give me a name!” She cried out, trying to move, to hold herself up proudly but the pain in her leg causing her strength to give out. [break][break]

This stops the witch’s laughter as she stares down at Laelia’s broken form. “And what preytell would you do with a name I have given you.” The witch asks Laelia even as the girl’s broken body slowly writhes in pain before her. Laelia manages to bark out an answer between waves of pain. “I’ll be you... apprentice or I’ll...” She has to swallow hard at that moment to keep from crying out once more. “Die in the woods knowing my true name.” She says her head swimming in pain. [break][break]

This answer causes the witch to laugh with glee at the wonderful show that Laelia is putting on for her. Before Laelia could comprehend what was happening the witch had grabbed the wrist of her broken arm and lifted Laelia into the air so that the tips of her toes could just barely scrape the stones she’d been laying on before. [break][break]

Laelia screamed and writhed, as her body twists in place unleashing new agony to fill her. The witch studied her form like her father would have examined a goose for their first meal of the year. In desperation with her good arm Laelia grabbed the witch’s wrist and tried with what might she could muster to lift her body up and release forces on her broken arm. [break][break]

The witch grabbed Laelia’s face then and examined it. “Such a noble face and clothes for a slave.” She muses, all the while Laelia is attempting to pull herself closer to the witch’s wrist so she can bite into the other woman’s flesh to free herself. [break][break]

Before Laelia can enact her plan for freedom she’s thrown to the ground. Her body crumples against the ground as she gasps trying to fill her emptied lungs, only now realizing she hadn’t been able to breath while she was being held up. [break][break]

The witch is floating around Laelia’s crumpled body, an upside down smile on her lips, but a smile all the same. Laelia moves once more and winces before the pain can come, she knows it will. Even as she lays there tense, ready for the shot of pain to fill her mind, it never does. Slowly looking up she meets eyes with the witch who has her upside down smile still on her lips before she speaks with a laugh. “Oh come now what is that look for Ada Pénélope?” She asks. [break][break]

Laelia is confused at first not understanding who the witch was addressing, looking around for this girl, but finding no one, only then does the answer start to dawn on her, but that only brings one more question that her foolish lips let slip. “But what about the final part of my name?” She asks. [break][break]

The witch chuckles again. “My my, such a greedy apprentice we have here.” She says in a tone that says she is speaking to herself or some unseen familiar rather than to Laelia, no Ada now, the girl has to tell herself. [break][break]

“Ap-” She can’t even get the word out before the witch cuts her off. “You will get the rest of what you have asked for once you have earned it.” She scolds Ada.

The light of talent

From the might of good fortune

The following days were a true shock to the newly minted Ada Penelopé's system, she'd never worked so hard in her life, and after a few weeks she suspected she'd now done more work as a maid for the witch than she had ever done where she'd grown up. [break][break]

Still though Ada bit her tongue and pushed through, fearing that a misplaced complaint could send the witch into some yet unseen fit of rage that could end her life, or worse send her back to the previous life she had known. [break][break]

It was months before the witch even taught Ada Penelopé the smallest thing about magic. Crumb by crumb the witch slowly started to school Ada Penelopé in her ways, the process was slow, and more then once Ada Penelopé got too haughty and ended up with out eyebrows or some other type of minor inconvenience would befall her.[break][break]

The days started to pass faster and faster as she developed more and more skills as a witch. There were times where she would joke to herself and even some of the other pupils of her master that this witch must truly be a vampire with how she would consume all of their time. [break][break]

Then one morning as suddenly as she'd come into Ada Penelopé's life the witch was gone.[break][break]

October skies

Draw a red dawn

For two weeks Ada lived in an otherwise empty house. The witch had gone, and though in the past her comings and goings had been like summer storms, this time it was different, no signs that she would leave, and no clue as to when she might reappear. [break][break]

With a stomach empty Ada finally ventured into the witch's chambers to be greeted by a frozen wind contained by the simple wooden door. It caused her to gasp with surprise before her senses returned to her. Venturing into the room she found a letter on the witch's night stand. This letter froze Ada in a way the cold never could.[break][break]

The addressee on the letter was clear 'Laelia Tyche Finch' a name that Ada had thought several years dead, the penmen was to Ada's mind certainly the witch. Afraid she tore the letter open wanting answers, to know just how long it would be until her family came to cart her away, sell her off as a defective piece of merchandise.[break][break]

But inside the letter only said 'Until our paths cross again Ms. Ada Penelopé Lovecraft.' [break][break]

Her knees buckled as her head swam in all of this, not knowing when the witch had found out who she was. How long had she known. A crash in the house was all that brought her out of her reflection on the past. Again and again there were more crashes ringing throughout the house. Ada ran out to see the cause.[break][break]

The sounds were coming from the very house. Beams of wood were rotting or exploding on their own, timbers that had stood unmoving since she'd first come to this home were aging hundreds of years in moments, the ravages of fire and water taking their tolls in seconds. Ada had nothing to do now but run.[break][break]

The rot of stagnation

Breaks the present

Now Ada could only rely on what she'd be given by her parents and the witch. The world was so much smaller and so much larger than she'd ever known living in those two houses, reading about places far away, and long ago.