The warm winds had come again to the small harbor town. News buzzed in ears, each trade ship and merchant wagon bringing new and different rumors. Mail carriers came piled high with letters come from the North, and from the East. Too many couldn't have been delivered over the long winter.
The two youngest of the Aeterna household rose at dawn every morning to greet the new ships, and sometimes, if the traders had enough time, they would sit on the shoreline and tell stories to the girls. They were not sisters, but most thought they were. The elder would sit forward eagerly, waiting to hear about all the excitement she was missing being stuck in the town. The younger would smile politely and listen just as intently, but her eyes drifted out to the ocean, and back to the forest, or up to the sky as often as not. She was just that sort of child.
The elder would bother her caretaker, the younger girl's father, to take her hunting or fishing somewhere where the town wasn't in sight, somewhere dangerous. She used to be allowed those freedoms before her brother left. She was allowed them because he didn't know. Now, her caretaker was an expert huntsman, a retired soldier, and he could track her movements as surely as anything.
The younger girl would sit beside the ocean with her toes in the water and meditate. She was not interested in watching things die, or causing an animal to suffer so. She would often bring sick deer to the house and nurse them back to health. Sometimes drinking the water in the northern streams could make animals sick, but she knew how to calm the poison. No one ever taught her. She was just that sort of child.
When they would walk in the woods together, the elder would point out plants that could be used to give a person strength or make them sleep better at night. She would talk about her brother and what she remembered of her parents. She talked about the man she would marry whens she was old enough to. She would talk about her mother specifically and sometimes her eyes would water, but it was always something she tried to hide.
Out of courtesy the younger girl pretended not to notice when the older was sad, but she felt it in her chest light a tight knot that made it hard to breathe. She couldn't imagine losing her father, and her mother had never really been part of her life aside from in stories. And they were someone elses memories, not her own, so it never really bothered. Except when it made her father sad. One of her talents was empathy, and it made her a mirror of the emotions of others. By age twelve her eyes were always at least a little sad, but she was just that sort of child.
Over time she came to think of the elder girl as her sister, but was never jealous, even when she was called 'pretty' and her sister turned out 'beautiful.' In fact, she even hoped quite often that the man her near-sister loved would get to see her and maybe fall in love too. It would have been nice to see her happy. She wished happiness for others, and never worried over her own love life, even as tens grew into twenties. She was just that sort of girl.
She never quite grew into using herbs and plants and roots in the way her mother supposedly had, but she never learned to be one with the animal spirits either. She became a healer, drawing upon natural energies and directing them to regrow and rejuvinate those who wished it. She learned to listen to the wind and predict the weather, heal poisons with little more than a touch and a wish, and keep wild things from attacking. She left home and went east, where new forests and lands called her. She followed her heart and dreams because she was just that sort of girl.
In the heart of a forest gripped at the heart by death and fear she found a sort of redemption. A being larger than the body it held in ways her mind couldn't quite grasp spoke with the voice of a woman long dead, long lost. The being cried the tears of a ghost, held her hand and smiled like her mother. It gave her an egg and asked that she care for it. She couldn't cry then, couldn't laugh at the oddity of the request, couldn't comprehend the reality of it, but she cried later that evening when the first stars she'd seen since arriving shone so brightly in the grove. She felt the moonlight and the starsong and gave in to the sadness she'd held back for so long. The next morning people had come to kill the being, and it said she must stay and watch but not defend it. She did as it asked and did not cry, though her hands shook. She was just that kind of girl.
Once in the dead of winter on a frozen landscape she curled up in a heavy cloak and sang to the moon to bring in a new year come to carry her further from her birthplace. She was thankful and scared at the same time, cold and smiling when she met him. And when she saw him she knew why her near-sister had been so insistent on marrying the man she hadn't seen in years. Because when she lay eyes on this man she knew. And she fell in love, there in the snow, because she was just that kind of girl.
This is just... a vague, short bit of what I want to do with one of my characters. I had to get it down before I forgot, and before it drove me crazy.
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