Ashia Cuésil's page

About Ashia Cuésil

[spoiler=background]Ashia Cuésil has nearly always led a life of isolation, at least to some extent. She never saw herself or her upbringing as being different, because it's all she ever knew — but the fact is that she is different, as was her upbringing. The story begins with a gnarled old yew staff.

Ashia remembers seeing the staff from her earliest days; oft times her grandmother would set it by the hearth as she slept in a nearby rocking chair, or leave it by her bedside at night. Other times it would be in places where it ought not to have, at times when it should have been elsewhere. Walking through the woods of the River Kingdoms by herself, in the corner of her eye Ashia would see something unusual, and when she looked, there was her grandmother's staff leaning against a tree.

"How peculiar," she would think, "Grandmother goes nowhere without it!"

Yet there it was.

Always she would return it to her grandmother, who would feign some story about having carelessly left the bough when she had been out walking herself, and always Ashia would see through this ruse; grandmother had not been out of the house for years, not since Ashia's mother had left to live closer to Kyonin, where she understood her father to live (not that she had ever met him). Many were the times that Ashia wondered why her mother had left. Had Ashia displeased her? Had she disagreed with grandmother? As she thought on the problem, Ashia remembered she couldn't even remember her mother's face; couldn't, in fact, remember a time when she had been able to remember it. Silently Ashia waited, and pondered.

Strangers would visit her home to see Grandmother; They would generally leave with some parcel tucked under their coat, and grandmother would have something new in return, be it food for that week or a new fur or sometimes even a shiny piece of gold. As Ashia grew older, she caught bits and pieces of Grandmother's conversations with these folk; mostly they involved love and warts and herbs. These things mattered naught to Ashia; she was content to play with her dolls and help Grandmother run her home. But still, time passed, and she grew still older.

Grandmother began to teach her about the world, about the land, about the people that lived on the land. She spoke mainly of time, and how it worked on all these things. She showed Ashia many secrets. One day she awoke and grandmother looked young again, almost as young as Ashia! The next day, the old crone had returned, albeit with a twinkle in her eye. Ashia learned from this that age can be deceptive. Had she truly thought about it, she might have realized more, but that was ahead of her.

One day when she awoke, Grandmother was nowhere to be found. Her staff, though, was propped against her bed, which had not been slept in. After searching about for Grandmother for an hour or so, Ashia reached worriedly for the staff, wanting to feel something to reassure her. Instead, her eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped to the floor, unconscious.

She remembers nothing else of that day, nor the next, nor the next. When she awoke, the fire was out — not burning low as it sometimes did, but out — and she was ravenously hungry and still clutching Grandmother's staff. She went to put it down and found that she really didn't want to. In fact, she carried it with her for the next year straight.