9.22

The cloth. Mine.
I was not born of the cloth, nor in a cloth. My mother was of the fey flock, and she gave birth in a glen far off in some warmer wood. She licked me clean because she didn't know what else to do. She gave birth alone--that is, if you do not count the constant companions of bird and tree, wind and stone. My mother had seduced a man for his saddlebags and left him insouciant in the woods. He may have died, but she can't say. She knows only that he went away with empty hands and a head full of pleasant memories.
She tried to raise me as one of my people, but even to her I was a monster. Even born with horns that grew and curved to meet my snapping smile, I still had worthless legs; my knees bent wrong for running with her through broken shale and gnarled rootwebs. As soon as I was old enough, she set me on my own. For years, I shadowed her through the woods, enchanted with her, in love with mystery. I longed for a mother and, reaching, found none. One day, I woke in a crush of rain and thunder and fell from my hiding place into a dead run to where I last saw her. She Lost me that day. I believe she meant to.
I came naked into this earth and cloth means nothing to me.

I met Sarenrae under strange circumstances. Depressed and numb, I fled what I knew and came upon a fragile man working a slight magic on a fox. The fox had been struck so its jaw was split and her teeth broken. Her hot blood was dyeing the man's robes a terrible sanguine red, but he continued patiently chanting and stitching as she twitched. He held her tightly upside down, her head between his legs and her feet wrapped and sticking straight up, so she would not drown. I watched him, quietly. He did not cease his chant, and it droned on.
I had no fear, and I stood in the open, curious and staring. The flesh of the fox knit itself as he stitched and the floss itself disappeared in a dull light, strip after strip falling away into the layers of muscle, fat, and skin. When a soft layer of hair reappeared on her throat, he pulled away the cloth on the fox's feet and released her.
Without looking up, he said in a voice like worn river rocks "Hello, wildling. What is your need?" I mouthed his words, feeling the strange shapes on my tongue. He stood and looked me straight in the eyes. One eye was a dull color and utterly nondescript, but the other: gold. From corner to corner, a dull metallic shine. I spooked.

I ran from him. I ran, but my curiosity kept me close. Using the skills I developed with my mother, I kept him in my sight. I wish I could say I was kind to him, but I harried him through the woods. I invaded his privacy and woke him in the night. I punished him for losing his watchfulness in exhaustion. I abused my knowledge of the woods to make his survival a test. In it all, he was patient. Expectant. Quiet. Finally, he found the heart of the woods--a spring of deep blue that burst from a rock. He sat at the spring, drinking his fill and, day by day, quickly running through his food. I watched. I watched for the flash of his eye. He began to starve, and yet he sat. He sank into the ground, his life force waning, his bones scraping against each other. Finally, he couldn't move even to get a drink. His horrible eye finally closed. That day, I approached. I crouched next to him and listened to him breathe, listened to the rattle and scrape of his old lungs against his dry, sandpaper ribcage. The eye opened--the unnatural foreignness of it dulled by desiccation, I did not jump back. I reached out my hand and cupped his cheek gently. How odd, the impulse of maternity that struck me then. I pulled out my bark bag and crushed a sweet leaf for him to suck on. I took his waterskin and filled it from the spring. I fed him the flesh of bitter nuts and did not fear to look at his eye. I carried him to the spring, washed the filth from him, and laid out reeds for him to lay on. I could not say I was kind or that I cared for him, because I did not know those feelings. Instead, the feeling I had was unspeakable, unknowable, primal and raw. We did not speak. For days, he ate what I broke up and pushed between his teeth. For days, he sat utterly still while I left to forage. Finally, when he had enough strength to stand, he turned to me and looked me straight in the face. Now, I could not meet his gaze, could not chance the gold.
His voice was a thin whisper. He said "I have saved you."
Disgust flared in me and I yelled "I saved you! You were the one who sat to wait for death!" The forest stillness crashed back down on the hole I had ripped with my shout, and in the ringing silence I heard him whisper again.
"I did not wait for death. I waited for you."

That man showed me the redemption I did not need to earn: the light already in me. He is long dead now, but his lessons are still with me. Sometimes, the only way to see if there is redemption in someone is to push him to watch a spectacle: a man waiting for his death. I thought again of my first meeting with Sarenrae as I stripped my armor off and strode away only in my tunic. The cloth was no longer the spotless white it had been days ago on the shore of another land. It was caked with salt spray and spotted with the bile of a city on its deathbed. The filth would wash out and I would wear the tunic again, because the cloth was mine. It made me an icon, more than my horns and beard, more than my skill and speed. The cloth was me, but I didn't care for it.
I sat there, waiting. I learned the patience I needed from my old man in the forest. I knew that with time I would stall out this man, and I was right. Without warning, he shoved a blade deep into my side and lost his grimacing smile mid-cackle. As my own blood stained the tunic a deep carmine red, I stood up, looked him deep in the eyes, and knew the words that redeemed me would not work on him. I edited them.
"I did not wait for death. It waited for you."