The winds of the Skatay are biting and unforgiving. As cold as the wastes of Ilsebard, if not moreso. Suffice to say, I have always felt most at home in the cold. In those days, however, I knew warmth in other forms.
My memory of those days is foggy. One too many battles, I think. Two too many blows to the head. Or perhaps, simply, far too many winters.
Back then, in my childhood, I had a friend, I think. When it became apparent that I would be a woman, and he a man, we spent much of what little time we had carving our names into the trees of our home, the peaks of Vesu Vijette, deep within the Skatay Range. We ran through the shelter of the trees and among the rich muscalmoi, making our mark on the wood, the mountain, and the world; and though those names have faded from my mind’s eye as snow once did atop those peaks, our promise never did.
“You’d better not come after me when you do. I’m not interested in you that way.”
“As if! You probably won’t recognise me when I come back, and everyone’s eyes will be on me.”
“Sure thing, short stuff.”
And so, winters passed as I waited. I grew taller, stronger. Even moreso than my sisters. At times I wondered why someone as scrawny as my friend would be sent to fight invaders and keep them off of our mountain. I suppose being small and strong is better for hiding than the opposite of either. At least, that’s what I told myself.
Every few summers, the men begrudgingly came back to the village. Setting aside their reasons and… uses, I never saw my old friend among them. Again and again I would ask of him.
Again and again, I would not even hear if he was still alive.
…Until one summer, where instead of the men we knew, men and women of metal and smoke came upon our mountain.
The wood burned in defiance of the wind and cold. Smoke filled the skies and choked our lungs. When we fought back, however valiantly, we were cut down by blade, and though I knew it not at the time, mowed down by bullets.
What survivors withstood the slaughter were bound by chains. Myself included. I spat at the ground, and cursed whatever gods I knew. I do not remember their names.
And then I saw him. My heart filled with bile and rancour, more toxic than the smoke. Burning brighter than the flames. He pleaded with the men and women of iron and ash.
My grasp of the Garlean tongue was nonexistent back then, but it did not take a polyglot to know what was said.
Through panicked words in two tongues, he begged.
Village, no burn. Blue sea to take, yes. But family, let live. Talk-trade, not this.
He bargained for our lives. And in return? He was cut down for his defiance.
It was later that I was taken in to be broken. To be “educated”. They did not permit me use the name given to me, nor would I dare use it outwith the wood. They called me as we once called our home. The once proud mountain of Versu Vijette. Or as they spoke it, Sviette.