• Identity is such a fickle word.

    At once you are in the mist of a crowd, being watched, loved, your identity being shouted to you a thousand times, over and over, and in a flash it lays wasted and torn, a mere wraith, a memory, quickly fleeting into the unknown.
    My given name is Zora Aurora Skyheart, wife of Johnathan, daughter of Lycoris and Xiao Chen. But it took many almost my whole life to become so.
    It is not exactly clear how humans first came to the land of Aether. The Nuria and the Teranika believe man was created by the gods ages ago. The Kaliko believe that before recorded time, we sailed across from different lands across a vast ocean. Finally the Nen simply believe that mankind sprang from the very element. That dust in the wind fell into the sea, and man crawled out. But each, and every nation, tribe, and clan believes that man is a completed, full, ultimate form, a fact that I prove, with my very existence.
    After nineteen painful hours, my mother finally ended her painful ordeal and bringing my life into the world, ended her own. My father was grief stricken and he wailed like a thousand waves upon the sand. But taking my tiny body in his arms he withdrew from the town and drew up one of the many forbidden circles, and placing me inside began the long, painful chant that signaled the end of his life. For many long hours he wove his precious life into the circle, slowly pushing open the fresh door of death and holding it to. Then, with his last dying breaths, he pulled out a tiny bit of my humanity and implanted the key to the spirit world, his life-force, to act as the sentinel, his spirit never to rest, until it escorts mine to the afterlife. So was I, stripped from nature’s blessing of protection, my emotions left bare and raw to the harsh world. In return, the spirit world lay ajar, like a distant aura on an everlasting sunset, spirits and omens forever to haunt my mind’s horizon.
    When my adoptive parents, good friends of my family, came I was silent, and unusually attentive. I believe I was hearing my mother’s voice, as I have in times since.
    They wrapped me in a blanket and the wife took my tiny body and tried to stroke my face. I wailed like a demon and she recoiled her hand in fear. The moment her skin left mine, my howling ceased, and I lay teary-eyed in my blanket. Thus was my second infirmity discovered. I could not bear to be touched by humans.
    My father’s withered frame was buried five days later, as is custom, his spirit still silently holding open the door.
    And for many years nothing changed. I matured into a little girl and my new parents raised me as their own, for they could have no children of their own. I think my mother always wanted to hold me, and I did embrace her many years later although the pain was agonizing.
    By the time I was six I liked to wander through the streets of the upper village, in the peaceful hamlet of Kento, always carrying my beloved doll. Yes, even I was a girl once. It was a brisk, chilly winter’s morning when some older bullies decided to steal the “freak’s” doll. Even at a young age I was feared and hated. That was when John and Alex, only seven at the time, came at the bullies with sticks, and fought for my doll back. They did fight them off, though both of them were covered in mud and John had a busted lip. But Alex helped him stand, and as he whipped off his lip he handed back my doll, and said gently, “Here is your dolly.”
    Briefly our fingers touched and I shuddered and gasped in sudden pain.
    “Are you ok?” he cried.
    “I’m fine… thank you.”
    “I’m John,” he said softly. “Your Zora right?”
    I nodded embarrassed, suddenly.
    “You can follow us, come with me.”
    And so from that day on I followed John and Alex, and they became my friends, and my protectors.
    More years past and John and Alex both grew into men, Alex finding a growing interest in fighting, and John and I finding a common interest in book. Alex remained innocent however, like a child, despite a burning inferno of passion and anger. But John was able to take in the sins and woes of the world full-blown and yet still remain calm and composed. It was a trait that made him sometimes painfully self-righteous, but it allowed all those around him see his valiance.
    Upon my sixteenth birthday my sence of self was once again thrown into disarray. I had grown tall, lean, pale, and so I was told, quite beautiful, and men began to hound me incessantly. All my life I had been called, “freak”, “witch”, “snow-skin”, so fear and misunderstanding were concepts quite common to me. But never before had I been desired in such a way. It was if my reputation created some extra excitement or added an extra sense of animalistic lust into the men. It frightened me greatly. Not without reason.
    Upon my seventeenth birthday I was walking down a back street of our hamlet alone, when a boy, stupid and crude, blocked my path. I put my head down and kept walking but he pushed me back. Then grabbing my wrist he pushed me against the wall, burning pain, searing my mind as his sick curiosity, longing, and hatred filled my head.
    I cried out in my anguish, scratching his face, and jerking my knee into his chest. Stars filled my head as he busted my face with a closed fist and time slowed as he grinned at me evilly, pushing me to the ground. Inside myself I cried, not in fear, or anguish, but of pity. This was a boy I had grown my entire life with, even if he had been horrible to me, such animals the human body can create from the mind.
    I struggled, the blazing in my mind almost unbearable, as his hands reached greedily.
    Then in a moment, the blaze was lifted by a sudden scramble of noise, and John rolled with him struggling upon the ground. The brute was stronger, but John was clearly he better fighter, and in moment he had him upon the ground, slamming his fist into him until blood splattered onto his fists. Only then did John slowly, pull himself off, breathing heavily. But I had not yet had my revenge.
    I did not know what to do, but with sudden dreamlike power, I could feel the water around me in my rage. I swung my hands at him, screaming in rage as water like a fist slapped him left and right.
    The boy groaned in pain and John even looked upon me with horror in his eyes.
    The rage poured out of me as I looked into John’s fear stricken eyes. I began to run, wanting only to be free of that dark, awful alley.
    I ran past the houses, past the fields, run hardly looking until exhausted collapsed into the forest.
    The sun was beginning to fade, and I huddled into a rock, finally letting my eyes weep for the wave of emotions. The moon began to rise, and I huddled alone in the night.
    Then there was a scuffling in the brush. I scrambled for a rock or stick as green bright eyes glowed in the night. Then into the moonlight, stalked a cougar. It growled and I looked into its eyes without fear. It might kill me, but it at least could not defile me like the boy had tried. I balled my fists prepared to fight, but as it leapt, I was pushed down as a body covered mine. A howl erupted above my head as claws and flesh combined. I looked up, into the eyes of John, who pushed my farther under his protective cover with his knees. He looked down onto me with pity, and with a look I had not seen except in my most secret dreams. Love.
    The fierce anger took me again. I was tired of being helpless, afraid while others fought for me. Without knowing why, my hands grabbed onto his face and my spirit awoke with the pain it brought.
    Magic or alchemy is simply the art of finding the elements around you and using them as an extension of your body. In that moment they all danced in front of me like a dazzling morning sun. I reached out and brought fire onto the cat’s back. I pulled rocks from the ground stabbing and breaking its bones. I felt the cat die and pulled my hands from John’s face drained. John couldn’t move, so I pulled myself from under him, gasping as his back lay tore open before me.
    “Zora,” he gasped weakly, “happy birthday.”
    Alex found us soon after, and with the help of gia water we were able to seal the wounds in Johns back. He still bears the scars however, deep, purple, white gashes that you can see whenever his shirt is off.
    We of the Nen have a legend. It says the souls of the dead return the ocean and watch over us to protect us, to make us who we are to be. And when the need is dire, they will send those worthy to protect us, with the tears of the sea.
    Twice in one night John saved me. Many times after he and Alex have saved my life. But the truth is John saved me a long time ago, he made me who I am, one rainy day, thirteen years ago, when the rain had the smell of the sea, and when he said, “You can follow us.”
    “Come with me.”