Childhood
Have you ever noticed that the people who are supposed to have everything are the ones who are most miserable? Everyone has obligations of course, but they increase with rank and wealth. I was not born to a very high house, my parents had no titles, and their power had only reached the point of being noticed by the nobility in the last few generations. Being noticed is not always a good thing. Eventually the time came that my cousins and myself, being half grown (old enough for handfastings,) were invited to all the important social functions, to be looked over. May you never be discussed as though you were livestock.
One noble took interest in my father's work in elemental control, and felt that our inherited gift (we have a flair for illusions) would complement his family's skill at the magic of alteration. The court was consulted, the histories checked, and a Royal Order given that the Heir to the Count of Wyndhavyn would marry the daughter of Kaenweth Forrest, the researcher. The Count and Countess are nice enough people, but have a large blind-spot, their son. The Count's heir was one of those children that acted angelic around the adults, but would torture small animals, misuse his magic, spy on others ... a not-very-nice boy, destined to grow up into a not-nice-at-all man.
I'll never know if concern over an arranged marriage changed my mental state, or if my developing psi ability caused me to be more concerned, scared shitless even, of the prospect of marriage to that power freak. All I know was, everything was different. Scared, I mentioned the empathic events that were occurring to my younger cousin who had once gone through some similar happenings. Her face paled as she described the "counseling" an elfling receives to make their mind develop barriers that effectively halt psi activity. To put it flatly, I had to leave.
It was easy enough for one who had the blood-gift of illusion to sneak past the city guard and leave a pack in the forest, in readiness for a riding party a few days later, giving me a chance to slip away with a good horse. I stopped long enough to change into the coarser clothes I'd had the stable-boy buy for me, tucked my hair under a hat, and was gone. Whenever I gave my name from that time on, I gave it as "Forrestwalker," the addition meaning that I left, for a reason, and would never go back.
At this point, you should know that it would take me 100 years to be a full adult. I was 50 when I ran away, no taller than a large dwarf, ears only as pointed as a halfling's. Avoiding the ones who searched for me, as well as those other denizens of every woods, proved easy enough ... after all, I felt them coming. Travel can be pleasant when you need time to think, and I had decisions to make.
I lived by hunting, a skill no elven family would neglect, and I learned to listen to the trees. I might have stayed in the woods forever, become a wilderone, but the trees I respected counseled otherwise and told me of far cities they heard of, and felt that I should see. So I moved on, weeks of travel that I didn't bother to count, meeting more trees, and learning to feel more and more of the magic around me. Having the strong magic of an old family, it was easy enough for me to join a troop of street-corner performers and make a living among other elves. My empathy stood forgotten for a time, as nothing threatened me during my years there ... but I knew it wasn't the end of my travels.
In that city, the independent city-state of Ballisae, I began to learn healing. Whenever a performer was ill or injured another of us would go with them to the healer's guild-house and watch, learning what we could of binding wounds, using splints, and the basic herbs for fevers or stomachache, we saved our coppers by remembering what we could. The only one who found it fascinating was me, soon I was having lessons at the guild-house in the mornings, and performing after noonmeal, and eventually I was performing only in the evenings. This, the woods, and the time before the marriage decree, are what I have of idyllic childhood memories. I passed the healer-journeyman exams, and was required to work as traveling healer to earn my Master rank. And then things got interesting.
Travels
My first journeyman's assignment was to attend the needs of a trader's caravan. I packed up my things, hugged my performer friends good bye, and tried desperately to look like an adult worthy of the job. I was given travel-space to keep my bedroll, work tools and personal items in the corner of one young couple's wagon, and two horses to use besides the one I had run away on, the horses were a partial prepayment. I would be given fifty gold coins and my contract marked "completed" when the caravan next returned to Ballisae, in about two years time. Setting off in the company of 300 strangers (a medium size caravan, large enough for safety, but not too large to overwhelm most farming communities) was quite a shock for me, but the use of my healer's skills was almost daily, so it was a good internship. There was an herb-woman among the traders who taught me about plants that even the guild-house teachers weren't familiar with, and my time was profitably spent. On my rare free days, I kept up what I knew of illusion, and practiced the magic my parents had taught me. One of the trader children juggled, and was willing to teach me how in the evenings. My time with the caravan passed quickly, and I was set up in a proper curtained booth at each stop so that farm folk, herders, and villagers would know there was a healer with the traders. Business was good because those who wouldn't have come just to trade often brought their children for professional medical care, and then saw things they wanted among the trader's wares. Even among the healthiest villages, there was always some work for me, and if I finished up early I would make illusions for the local children.
I liked my time with the traders, and grew close to them and enjoyed the wandering lifestyle, I think that set the pattern for my next thirty years. I met my first human sometime in there, a plane-hopping male named "Medrin" ... there had been a family of mountain trolls in the city to get medicine for one of their young, I thought they'd left him behind (being the only round-eared sentients I had seen up til then.) Trolls are shy, quiet people, never coming into the cities in less than family-sized groups ... since Medrin was alone there were some who thought he was just a small rogue, looking for trouble. He was dressed too well and was too small to be a proper troll, and wasn't causing any trouble no matter how odd he looked. But there were simpleminded folks wanting him burnt regardless. I finally used an illusion for something useful that day, sending the farmers on a wild griffin chase deeper into the market, and covering Medrin's escape ... I asked him what he was before he left, I must have looked as startled as a unicorn with a halter around it's neck when he said "human" and then disappeared.
That was the first time I saw someone move between the planes, and I liked the look of it. There had to be so much more to see than Elven cities and farming towns! I began to spend my nights reading by candlelight, trying to learn as much as I could about travel from plane to plane. Little enough there was to read, I searched through mountains of books and scrolls to find it. Most of the people of the High Elves aren't inclined toward travel or adventure, if you see one at all it's probably a bladesinger hunting down a criminal. The ones that do want to travel mostly become traders, using any magic they have to ward off danger from their roads and camps, and they stay on the one plane. I wanted so much more, and I set about to get it. I spent a decade preparing.
For my first attempt at inter planar travel, I settled all my affairs, sold the horses, and gathered travel clothes and dried rations into a pack, grabbed my medical kit, and walked out of town to try it in privacy. Stepping into the umbra was scary for me, the landscape was surreal and I had no idea where to go first. So ... I went for a walk. My first day as an umbral explorer I walked til I was tired, and stepped back out to see where I was. It looked kind of like home, the sky was a little less green-tinged, the trees were mostly under fifty feet tall and the sun was not as bright. I camped there for a few days, talked to the trees, and found out that trolls were the dominant life form there. I replaced my rations from what seeds and fruits were ripe there and then, filled my water bottle, and went on my way, farther and farther from my beginning. There were a few places where I would stay for weeks, or even months, healing in places that wouldn't see healers for years at a stretch, and would make do on their own between times with no education in the matter. In this way, I spent another ten years, traveling, exploring, and learning to accept all manner of sentients, and to treat their medical needs. I saw planes where illusion kept my form hidden until I moved on, and others where elvenkind mixed with dwarves, halflings, trolls, sometimes even humans ... more or less peacefully. There was plenty of work for healers in the less peaceful places, and the more peaceful places were restful. I passed a decade traveling the planes, sometimes going back to favorite ones, often finding places that I'd never seen before.
Eventually I came to a place where I thought it would be pleasant to stay, but there was a problem. There's always a problem, and it's always up to the wandering adventurer to find out what it is, and try to solve it ... or at least distract it from the peaceful village. Yeah .... right. I asked around and found out about a powerful mage who was warping the dreams of anyone who tried to sleep. Since I was new in the area, my sleep was undisturbed for a few nights, until a minion reported back about me. After I experienced the nightmares caused by the mind trying to subjugate that realm, I made a point of being seen to be cheerful in public, going about my business as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Word passed that I didn't seem affected, and people began to invite me to their homes to ask in hushed voices if I knew something they didn't. I started making jokes about the mage being a pervert who only got his kicks by messing with sleeping people, and compared the dream-forcer to a necrophiliac. People laughed, and some were able to laugh in their dreams again ... children saw parents be less worried, and they were too, like a healing wave, the laughter spread. I think I made my point, quite possibly made it too well ... one night I awakened to rough hands binding my wrists and ankles, gagging my mouth ... I was carried away to be judged for my words, and banished into the void between the planes as a punishment. Knowing my mind and life rhythms, both as a healer and an elf from an old and magic family, I was able to track my subjective time spent there. I would do anything to keep thinking, counting the beats of my heart, reviewing old lessons, and mentally rehearsing juggling tricks. From the void I felt a familiar mind, it was Medrin, joined with others to battle the dream-forcer. The void was supposed to make me insane .... sometimes I'm almost convinced it worked.
Would I choose to be living in a dangerous, human dominated plane or build a care center/healer guild-house in a ruined city? Would I fall in love with a bastet, take an orphaned garou girl-child into my home or use juggling tricks to fight?
Some days I almost worry, but it's hard to do that when you serve the light.
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