Sansquah's page

The dark elves pray to their gods too, but their heads still crush under an earthbreaker like fruit. Leilani is barely a wisp of a creature. Certainly she is only still alive because Sarenrae favors her. And because we kill anything that tries to reach her. But who can say that we are not also the hand that Sarenrae holds between her and harm? When a dark elf falls under my greatsword, it is my blow that crushes her down, but who else's hand makes me harder to kill every day and more swift and mighty? The dream reshapes me. The gods move and protect us and abandon us to our fate by turns. Where in this is what used to be me? When Kaerishiel calls Alderan out over Eviana, will it become necessary to step in? How do elves do this kind of thing? Perhaps Razorhorn and the drow will make all these questions into so much noise.

Leilani changes everything. If I were to want her in the usual way I would be like The Minnow Who Fell In Love With The Sky, and we all know how that ends. So I haven't even really considered her in that way. Besides, Samaratha is in my heart. I wish it were not true but it is. But Leilani gives us life. Gives us the rising up in waves that change our natures. Without warning I learned to speak as she speaks, aided by dreams, and now I learn even the languages of my enemies as I used to in my youth. It pleases her, which pleases me more than makes sense. The wizards haggle and belittle each other mercilessly, thinking this will raise them up in her sight. Or perhaps that is simply their nature and her presence makes them kinder to each other and to us than they would be otherwise. After all, she calls them hounds as well. I do not think I know what dreams to consult in order to understand them. Waves and rocks, I don't even know what dream I am in since my casting out. Who am I to even suggest that I know something of the way the world works? Talek is a brother removed and finds himself through devotion to her. That I understand well enough, and we both grow more mighty with each battle, as is right. Elves from the dark are real, cruel, and still fall before us in the end despite their demons of shadow and ice. Who from the cliffs could have forseen this as my destiny? Carmen is more than fetching and has never betrayed us, but has known too many betrayals herself and will follow her own path as though her inner world were the only world, I have no doubt. I miss her already and never spoke of affection with her, but the triumph of death in battle will erase the pain I would surely have known at her hand, as they say when jesting under a raised cup. Even that old story seems poor when remembered beside the story I live in now, full of creatures from other worlds. Leilani changes everything. I scribbled my dreams on parchment with colors, and that made me seem to wear a cloak of mystery too fine for one such as me, but now I even write my thoughts down... What would my uncle think? He would frown and slowly break my tools before me to help cure my ignorant pride. At least, that is what People would approve of his doing. Being lost in the bigger world is not such a bad thing when it comes to doing as you like, I suppose. What have I become?

Not very long ago as these things are measured, when I was first Cast Out, I helped a bard down on his luck stay alive while in his cups. Over and over he sang a little ditty that sounded like a children's song. He did not know that it had its origin in the ritual chant Shadde Quah share to move wavecutters at speeds others cannot believe, and he made it end with the words "life is but a dream." Life is but a dream. Not knowledge shared by any but the old or wise among People. It stuck in my ear, as they say. It slept in me so that my mind was as a body outstretched on a bed of rock for many nights. Knowing this ending before hearing him put it into words, though wrapped in darkness and unreal visions rather than in power and battle, must be what sustained me when I survived the change during my rights of passage and became what I am. No longer Meh-lan'ek but Sansquah. Torn into pieces by a dream of Vonark Many Arms and cast into the world to crush whatever had destroyed the boy my parents knew and return, victorious, myself once again. Or not. And not.

Now I have been back among People, more powerful but still Sansquah, and their minds remain closed. I don't blame them. I am something they knew and now do not. But I must begin to tell the story, at least to myself, as though I will find myself. If I do not, I may end with my inside resembling my outside and without even my self for company. I have not told my story, even to myself, because I did not want to add weight to the truth of it in the telling. If dream is strong enough to teach me to speak dark languages I have heard in no other place, and also strong enough to aid me in learning the language of angels then, perhaps, it is both too powerful to resist and may bring me before the great door of my purpose. At least, if images are this strong and do not also have keys to open the door of a beautiful life, then I am lost and may as well go into the sea.

But Vonark covered me against the blast, and now he is over my heart, and he comes to those I used to call My People most often in dreams, so I will accept his protection, hoping that part of the dream holds true. As they say, you never know the nature of his grasp until it closes the water over your head or hurls you onto the beach and into the future. Either way, his embrace is irresistible at last. I still have the things I use to draw and carry images from the darkness before dawn. I suppose I will use them.

Now I have both my greatsword AND my hammer.

Leilani is very lovely. She has beautiful...wings. Slowly I am coming to understand that she is speaking a tongue of her own when she is excited. I thought she might be unhinged, but am glad this is less likely to be true. I'm learning to understand her, which is often much better than not understanding her.

I have a new hammer.