More than anything else, I remember the smell of death. The battlefield - if you could call it that - was strewn with bodies, mostly ours. The light shone wearily through the haze - a gray mess of fog and smoke - a suitably wretched end to a night of terror. I remember sitting there, amidst the cold, glazed stares, holding my mother's hand in mine, staring up at the cowardly sun hiding behind the haze. I remember that the loss, the rage had not yet touched me, I wasn't really there, it wasn't really happening. I turned my head to look around me, purely out of habit; my eyes registered nothing, my mind recoiled from the visions. There had been screaming, then fire. Now there were only ashes... ashes and the grisly dawn. The first tremor rippled across the surface of my numbness - I realized that the pressure across my throat was the urge to cry and I my thoughts caught upon this feeling, this now-alien feeling in this strange body that surely was too distant, too numb to be mine. The sob ebbed from my chest unspent as I continued to gaze unseeingly upon my mother's face... such a kind, gentle face, even in death...

I must have kneeled there, there beside her, for hours. The miserable morning mist had boiled off into the forests before I became aware of myself again. I looked up, and was startled to find someone looking back at me. A man, a grown man, looking down at me. I remember the eyes only, the remarkable, gentle, comforting eyes, framed in the golden halo of his hair. His eyes promised compassion and hope and peace from the pain I had not yet even accepted. I sat there, beside my mother's cold, stiffening form, transfixed by this man with the gentle eyes, feeling the peace flow from him in waves...

The spear stuck out of my chest before I could cry out, before I even felt it break my skin. I never noticed the assailant behind me. In that brief unreal moment, my focus blurred from the terrifying spear point protruding from my chest to the quiet stranger that still smiled his gentle smile, unmoving, in front of me. I don't remember any pain, only a fading, like a pleasant dream... then suddenly the light... a warm light.

I remember crying out Mother! Father! I am coming! Wait for me I am coming! and the words were there, with me (!), though I felt no passage of breath (!!) ...

The warm, caressing light held me in its cocoon (as I imagined). I remembered neither motion nor passage of time, but as the light faded, I was elsewhere. When I came to... I was whole! I was alive, clothed in new flesh! (and admittedly not much else) I gazed in wonder at my hands, flexing and kneading the skin, daring myself to awaken from this miraculous, inexplicable dream! Disbelieving, I looked down at my chest, unbroken once more... except... there... I brushed my fingertips across the skin where the spear had impaled me. A tiny puckered scar... a tiny, strangely shaped scar. Twisting my elbow, I felt behind me, on my back... strange... no scar... nothing.

About this time, someone (feminine?) cleared a throat behind me. Believing this still a dream, I slowly turned around, noticing for the first time the rough, sawn planks of the floor and walls. I beheld a vision of beauty that my youth had no words for, and I gaped. My addled brain chose this time to realize my nakedness acutely, the blush settling brightly across my cheeks. The vision before me chuckled and handed me some green fabric with which to cover myself...

The Lady Aeife took me under her wing, teaching me what I was and what I had become, showing me the ways of this world that had so suddenly changed. Though I quickly wandered away, searching for the strange man with the hypnotic eyes, searching for answers, whenever I found trouble, my benefactor found me.

The months passed. I grew stronger in my vague quest, more comfortable with my newfound existence. Then one day, my mentor approached me again. She spoke of her Way, her Path. She spoke of the Darkness and the Light, and the thin sinuous line of Man between. She spoke and a great fire kindled in my soul. That day I became a Monk, follower of the Path.

The days flew by. By day she would teach me things, she and the Others who were to me only "Brother" or "Sister." Strange things, new and exciting things I eagerly absorbed.

And then the time came when they could teach me no more. My Mentor again approached me, now as my friend. She imparted the last of what she could teach and bade me to discover my own way on the Path.

I leave today.