From the archives: Fionnuala

This is a character background I wrote for AllianceLARP SF.

Fionnuala

Mystic Wood Elf Scholar

I guess I was born in a typical family (at least for my folk). Lots of moms and dads and brothers and sisters and cousins and such, so there was always someone around. Plenty of squabbles, but plenty of hugs and people to play with, too, so the balance was for the good, I think. I’d say we were all pretty close, but my best friend growing up was my nearest age sister, Briana, born a day before me – we used to say we were twins from separate wombs. We loved to go “adventuring” together, and volunteered for any tasks that took us out into the woods. We would imagine grand tales, pretending we were famous thieves or swordsmen (er, swordswomen, hehe) or mages or something like that, renowned throughout the land for our many exploits (and the trail of broken hearts behind us). While I enjoyed these games a lot, I think Briana was by far the more fanciful of the two of us, and most of the tales sprang from her head. Sometimes I would wonder where she got the things she imagined – they seemed so real and so strange, too much so to be completely made up.

            When I got to be a certain age, one of the moms decided that I had an aptitude for earth magic, so she sent me off to study with an aunt, a respectably talented earth caster herself. At first I would come home for holidays and such, but I started to feel like an outsider, like I didn’t know my own family any more, and they didn’t know me (they accused me of putting on airs, just because I liked to tell them about the interesting things I’d learned and seen). Except for Briana; with her it was always like I’d never left, and we’d pick up our fancies and games just as before. But I got real busy with my apprenticeship at one point and it was almost a year before I came home again.

            I was shocked to find that Briana had left, and no one seemed to know where. They all said she’d been taken by wanderlust, wanting “adventure” or something like it, and just upped and left one day, with just a short cryptic note left for me. “Dearest Fionnuala,” it read, in her tiny, squirrelly handwriting, “I’m off. There are reasons. I’ll tell you when you find me. Briana.”

            Once I read that, well, I packed up everything I had, which wasn’t much (when you come from a large family like mine, you don’t end up with much you can really call your own) and set out immediately to find her. They were all real vague about which way Briana had gone, but they were at least able to give me a general direction. After several months of checking with different wood folk settlements, asking about her, my search eventually led me out of Bleakwood Forest and into many other lands, all strange and new to me. I’ve learned a bit of caution along the way – it seems that others don’t regard the world quite the way our folk do, sadly. But it’s been interesting, to say the least, and I’ve kept practicing what my aunt taught me, using it occasionally to aid myself or another traveler met upon the way.

Eventually, my search brought me here, to Stonehaven, where I heard some other wood folk might be, and I thought I’d see if Briana was among them. While I’ve gotten hints of her presence here and there, I’m still no closer to finding the reason for her leaving so suddenly, with only a short note and no explanation. I’m worried about her, though nothing leads me to believe yet that she’s gone for good. With as close as we were growing up, I’m sure she does want me to find her, and perhaps we can enjoy our journeys together. I don’t mind the wandering and seeing new things; it’s quite grand, actually. But I wish I weren’t doing it alone.