Inheritance

Often, the first thing people notice about me is my ears. They mark me as different, not Hayllian, as my skin and hair might lead you to believe at first. Delicate and pointed, they are unique to my mother's people, the Dea al Mon. There are some who call them exotic, and they played a part in the games I learned to play young.

My eyes as well. Almost Hayllian gold, almost, but with a shot of emerald unlike anything you'd see on a pureblood Hayllian. Those are hers, too.

My skin, my hair are marks of him and something I've hated all my life.

But these are just the physical, and I doubt that's what you're asking.

I've a horn handled dagger, sharp and true, that my mother taught me to use when I was a child. It didn't save her from Greer's knife, but it's kept me safe more times than once.

I've a Jewel, set in silver in the crest of our family--her family. Two stags curve around the Jewel, their antlers interlock at the top to hide the ring where the chain is fastened. She told me that if I ever met her people, they would know me by that Jewel. It was hers, once, before Kartane broke her and she could no longer wear it. When I had mine set, I chose gold as she suggested, but the design is the same.

And then there is the hatred, the vengeance, both without a focus anymore. I thought when we killed him, when it was over, that it would go away. But that which flew her to her position as Queen of the Harpies, the vengeance and hatred that burned in her for all those centuries...it too was my inheritance, and seems to be something I can't fully let go of.

Her eyes, her ears, her Jewel, her dagger. These are all things I want to pass on to my daughter. The other I need to find a way to rid myself of, so I don't pass it on any further.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

That rather depends on your definition of strong, doesn't it? There's an argument to be made that what happened to me as a child made me strong. I survived it, at least and there's only one other I know who has managed to come through a rape on her Virgin Night still able to use her Craft. Most of them are at least broken, if not driven completely mad. So, one could say that was a strength. At 12, I managed to hold on to myself through the first rape, and the second, and the third. I survived and that has to mean something, yes?

Whether I survived intact...my inner web, yes. My use of Craft, yes. I held onto those, and yet part of me thinks that they managed to kill something else, and I was too young then to realize what I'd lost. Even now, I can't put a name to it.

I don't know. My instinct is to say, "Yes. If you come through the trials and you're still alive, then you will grow from what you learn and you will be stronger in the end." It makes such logical sense and it allows me to derive some pride in surviving what my life was. It allows me to say, "Look. I survived that. I can survive anything this damn world has to throw at me, because each trial just makes me stronger." There is peace in saying that. Pride. Defiance to throw back into the face of the world. I scream at the wind to do its worst, because it can't break me.

But the defiance, the fear, the darkness it bred...is it strength? Or is it another form of death. A death of self. Of gentleness. Of goodness. If I had come through it as Jaenelle did, wise and patient and kind and loving, perhaps I could claim it. But I didn't.

Oh, I'm strong. And you won't break me. And you won't bend me to your will. However, perhaps that's because the only strength I have left is my defiance, my determination to not be dragged down. Perhaps the rest of what I could have been is already dead.