#athaeda

Miss Athaeda Hartfell

A friendly hello to you in return, new friend! I hope we do too. We got lucky this year that we haven’t much for forest fires.

Long speculated, it has been, amongst my newfound kin: The nature of our affliction with regards to its physical manifestations. The variety of visible alterations to the body is greater than that of every other magical suffusion we as a civilization have yet encountered. Which isn't to say that sufficient magical enrichment of other kinds cannot produce physiological changes, only that I have not observed such. Barring, of course, the Lightforged; whose metallic augmentation does not, by my mind, equate to the flesh and blood changes the Ren'dorei display.

So I must question, what is it the makes the void different? How does it interact with the body and mind that creates such violently differential results in those who have been made to harbor it? The answer, insofar as I can see it, must be madness. But madness is not an affliction of magic. Madness isn't something that can be corrected with humble potions, a healers stitch, or even the touch of a priest. Madness is emotional inherently and the void's connection to it, I speculate from observation of myself and my brothers and sisters, suggests that perhaps the nothing that creeps at the edges of reality is not nothing. It is feeling.

Consider, if you will, the stoic nature of the light. The forced peace maintained by the naaru, shattered after millennia in a void born transition of chaos and rage. Does this not reflect the emotional outbursts experienced by many when finally allowed to feel something they have previously been made to swallow? Consider the ways in which genuine emotion is often punished. Silence yourself. Patience, prudence, politeness. Don't be rash, we are often told.

What if the magic in your blood is inherently rash? What if it demands you make manifest the things you run from?

I have observed, in the years since the expedition, a multitude of mutations. In that observation I have begun to draw parallels and now put forward that the void does not, truly, change us. It simply makes us more of whatever we already were. It forces outward that which we kept within. The madness that lives in each of us. Our most extreme natures twisted into something we must contend with bodily.

A man who was enthralled with promiscuity, consumed by his lack of impulse control and failures in loyalty, developed additional eyes as a result of the blessing. There's a phrase I've heard spoken, "I only have eyes for you." The truth of his nature, the metaphorical parallel to his peril, made visible to all.

A woman who found her talent as a gossip. Unable to keep a single word of confidence before the affliction. She now possesses many more mouths. Across her limbs and core. They mutter without end. She's had to stitch them closed to keep them quiet. No one tells her secrets anymore.

Another, a social climber. A greed driven hanger-on. Desperate for wealth and renown, now sports more literal suckers across the palms and fingers. Left to much more literally cling to anything so unlucky as to be placed in their hands.

Someone with too much pride baring a musculature so swollen and overblown that no one draws near enough to feed their ego anymore.

Athaeda had come back to Ashenvale. This forest was a bittersweet place. She was born here, under the darkened canopy, in the back of a wagon and spent much of her early life among these trees. A strange, mostly high elven, girl with wild strawberry curls stood out against all the deeper shades of lavender. She had to laugh a little, her lips curling upwards into a sad smile at the thought, after the change she didn’t stand out in the same way. She carried a basket and a bottle of wine and had taken the bells out of her hair, something that almost never happened. “Grandmother...” She spoke in a soft tone as she approached the moonwell. “Grandmother, I need you.” Aeda knew that wisps didn’t have to stay in one place. She knew her grandmother’s ghost could be anywhere but she held hope close to her heart.