Kaira?
The hero of our story, Kaira, was born in…
...hmm, the fact is – nobody knows where she was born, and who her parents were.
Though maybe somebody knows, but they just don't want to tell her?
When Kaira asks about her past, her older brother Sainar falls silent and frowns, and her uncle Nasuto changes the subject of the conversation.
And when she asks aunt Mirza, her guardian, the aunt tells Kaira to put such stupid questions out of her head, and to get busy with the housework.
What Kaira knows for certain, though, is that she was just a baby when uncle Nasuto brought her to Green Shallows, this remote village in the marshes. Here, uncle Nasuto entrusted Kaira to the care of his old acquaintance, the village herbalist Mirza.
Ever since, her uncle has been regularly sending money to Mirza, so that Kaira’s needs are covered.
A controlling guardian
Kaira can hardly stand her guardian Mirza, who is always grumpy and picky.
Since her childhood, Kaira took care of the dozens – hundreds! – of chores, from weeding out the flowerbeds to sorting the petals of the medicinal flowers into sachets for sale at the market.
Once Kaira grew up enough, Mirza also assigned her the concoction of simple healing tinctures. Kaira passionately hates doing all of that, which leads to regular quarrels between the child and her guardian.
These days, Kaira tries to catch her guardian's eye as little as possible; she even ran away from home on a couple of occasions, for several days at a time.
A caring uncle
On the other hand, Kaira loves her uncle Nasuto very much.
Even though he rarely visits her, she doesn't blame him: he is an important person in the Empire, one of the heads of the powerful Guild. Because of his busy schedule, it is only rarely that Nasuto has the luxury of taking a day off.
At least he writes to Kaira regularly, and often sends his niece small gifts together with such letters.
A busy brother
Kaira's older brother, the ever-absent Sainar, works for the Guild as well.
Recently, Kaira is worried about him: it seems that something gnaws at Sainar.
Lately, he has withdrawn into himself, and he has visited Kaira only a couple of times in the last year. He explained that by saying that the Guild sends him on very long expeditions into the Wild Lands, and these expeditions come one right after another.
He even missed Kaira’s birthday – which upset, and even offended, her.
The best friend
Fortunately, there’re plenty of teenagers in the village, and Kaira made good friends with many of them.
Together, they fish in local ponds, hunt small animals, sing songs around the campfire, dance to the sounds of reed pipes – and make out in the bushes, when nobody’s watching. Along with her friends, Kaira explored almost all of the Northern Marshes (except for the few places that the villagers consider cursed and off-limits, such as the cemeteries of non-humans).
However, Kaira’s best friend is not among this crowd of youngsters.
Her best friend is Becky – and she’s the person who is the closest to Kaira in the whole of the village.
Becky is a mutant, her parents have abandoned her soon after she was born.
Not only that, but she became an outcast even in this village, which is a place that’s mostly inhabited by the outcasts anyway… The local mutants reject Becky because of her kind and gentle nature, and the rest of the villagers dislike her because of the stripes on her face – the stripes that clearly mark Becky as a mutant. And, let’s be honest, nobody likes mutants.
Some years ago, Kaira helped Becky fend off the local bullies – this is how they’ve met.
For Becky, Kaira is the only friend in the whole world.
And for Kaira, Becky is someone who always has the time to listen to her ideas, and who – unlike Mirza – fully understands her. Together, they dream of the day when both of them will finally leave this boring village, and move into a big town to live their big lives.
Kaira never suspected that soon, her friendship with Becky would lead to a terrible tragedy…
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In the next issue of lore stories, we will talk about the two dimensions of Rund: the Free Realm and the Phantom Realm.