SIOBHAN BADELL
This is wanting something,
This is praying for it,
This is holding breath,
And keeping fingers crossed!
Siobhan grew up under the shade of flourishing fruit trees and the scrutiny of candlelit lamps. Her early mornings were marked with the incense of burnt roses, memorizing prayers etched onto outstretched hands, praising the shrouded statuette of the Mother on her bedside table. In the dimming afternoons of her adolescence, she spent hours poring over tomes of Azari wisdom and knowledge in her dormitory, all while working to retain generations of medical knowledge to mind.
And as night approached adulthood, the adept healer buried herself in the stories of the world beyond her family’s cloisters, dreams drifting from the blighted Dar Azur to the marvelous wares exchanged in Ceril’s Keep. Those dreams remained tucked at the bottom of her chest as she grew of age to return to that quiet and quaint temple, where her life had begun.
Under the Mother’s stoic and watchful gaze, Siobhan became content with the routine she had been blessed with since she was a young girl. Lavender scented offerings, blessing those reaching their last breath of life, and bandaging the bruised arms of errant Temple children. However, as night fell and the last prayer was murmured by the scinari, she comforted herself with thoughts of the outside world once more.
With the passing of each Daughter’s Day, Siobhan felt that contentment dissipate into yearning as she stood aside during the festivities, watching militant women and temple maidens dance in the embrace of the Mother, wondering if it was simply her fate to be resigned to shadows of columns.
What awaited her outside those Temple walls was the silent expectation to return to Luminion’s halls of knowledge, to pore over invocations and magical incantations, in hope of embracing the destiny denied to the imperfect daughters before her, whether it was scinari or magoi.
But how does Siobhan’s destiny start? At the foot of those high Luminion gates, with a determined grip around a leather hilt. Longing to forge her own path, she chooses to enter the militia patrol close to her home Temple following the end of her spiritual service. With six years past, the acolyte finds herself ready to explore the world before her, desperate to find the path the Mother deemed her to serve.
