Breeder
an excerpt

I am a breeder. I come from a long line of breeders, from Lithaine of North Glen, who is my name sake, to the Great Mother herself, a woman of inconsequential means who gave birth to the new world.

Do not mistake this gift as anything more than a miscalculation of birth, a genetic roll of the die, if you will. Had I but the choice I would not bequest this curse upon any living soul least of all myself. But as it were, my birth was heralded as a godsend, for God sent I was.

It is said that when my father, the great lord Aston of Norfork, returned wizened and bedraggled from the battlefield, he looked upon the remains of his once splendid clan and sighed with the heartfelt sorrow of remembrance.

The village of his childhood was cobbled and dank. Signs hung haphazardly from shop windows, roofs dangled chipped shingles from their trellises, and the people of his lineage walked slumped and disheartened through the streets, a sure sign of the final irrevocable effect of disrepair. He turned his tired eyes away from the ruin of his home to stare at the remains of his army.

The battle had been fierce. It was said that my father admired the fledgling king that had fought so tirelessly for three solid months against the onslaught of a superior force. But the young lordling finally fell; fatigue and hunger most sever contributors to his demise. The battle left Aston’s forces severely dwindled though and as he looked upon his men he came to a realization.

The clan would not survive another season, another battle, another day. Not without hope, not without some thing to hold onto. Julianna had once provided that hope.

She was my mother, Aston’s wife and sole breeder for hundreds of miles and many a day’s journey. In her prime she had lain heavy with child for many a season. Not a year would pass without the newfound cries of the just born or the promise of one to come. This, the continuation of our people, the furtherance of our lineage, was the hope the building block of our clan and it would surely die with her, for Aston knew, as many of others did, that my mother would not live for more than a few seasons more, that she would soon pass into the Nether where the souls of the blessed reside and take with her any chance of survival.

And so, armed with this surety and fearful for the future of his people, my father left, not even taking the time to wash the dirt of battle from his body, and went in search of salvation.

Not much is know about what happened then, where my father went or what he laid witness to. When he finally returned many seasons later he would only say that he had been blessed, that the Great Father and Mother had lain there hands upon him and bestowed him the gift of renewal and life.

The skeptics say that he had searched and wandered for months and had in truth found nothing more than a shaman of questionable abilities who was willing to sell him a potion of questionable content that would hopefully solve the problem.

Most others contend that he traveled to the Blessed Isles of Kalandash and prayed to the gods for many moons, asking for salvation, that when the gods finally appeared to him and bestowed their gift he wept from their beauty and the bountiful present they had given him.

This story I heard as a child from my father himself, sitting around the fire with the other younglings at Solstice. I think it amused him to hear the speculation the excited questions and murmurings of the children.

I once asked him for the truth and he answered as I knew he would. “Why dear girl,” he would say, “that is between the gods and myself. Would that you never have a reason to know it.” The last he said with a strange expression on his face. It was the first time I had ever seen my father truly and anxiously frightened.

What ever transpired within that lost time, my father spoke truth. The gods had blessed him with life and renewal for I was born not but 9 months later. The effort, unfortunately, killed my mother, snuffing her life out, as many had speculated, swiftly and decisively. She did not linger, a fact that I take comfort in when I am inclined to think of her as I was during my younger years.

My father raised me and I was treated as a princess, for I would one day take my place as the origin of life, as a new beginning for my people.