Soul Searching – Sheryl, The Fae-Touched – 6.10.2019

My Lady,

I hope Summer’s light blesses you as you grace the Lands you walk. Like last time, I am writing down my most recent, extraordinary adventure I've had yet in these lands. It is a far cry better than what I have been caught up in as of late and if I am being honest, something in me feels healed.

But first, a little history to understand where it is I went to.

There is a settlement of elves here in Kantas called the Galavir. Until recently, they had been enslaved by a Marid – a genie from the Plane of Water. They had no history of how the Marid came to own them as it were, nor how long they had lived in their valley, just that it had been that way for as long as they could remember. Their souls were bound to the lake they lived by, a mana pool that also served as their way of getting sustenance that could last them for a day or more. Being bound to this lake was the Marid’s way of taking the stories of their lives from their very souls, where they were sold to the highest bidder. If this Marid wanted stories all they had to do was go out and live, experience life themselves – adventure! But I guess some people are cruel and would rather take what is not theirs to have. The elves are free now but they had their first birth since the Marid was banished and they realised the soul was someone new, one they did not recognise.

The Galavir had reached out to one of the heroes who helped defeat the Marid: A gnome lady named Zeenah. She in turn reached out to two dwarves – siblings, Bodar & Themyra Kragflame from Vorsthold – to join her to help her elven friends. I just happened to be in the Ettin at the time they were gathering doing my own solo performance for a rather small crowd, when I asked if I could come along. The Galavir sounded like an interesting people and I wanted to learn more about the folk native to these lands.

The adventure itself did not disappoint.

Have you ever seen the secret lives of a single soul? We got to see not just one life, but three. That’s how many I got to walk through. I had no idea elves could recall their previous lives, let alone that they are reincarnated thanks to their god Corellon. To experience so much of the Realms, to live and walk different sides of life… all that time. It feels so vast.

That is why the sorrow, the longing that threaded through each life they lived was so overwhelming at times. They were a poet, a master assassin, and a merchant, but in each life there could be felt a loneliness.

You see, they had gone away on business in their first life, but when they returned to where the village was supposed to be it was no longer there. Their people, the Gala, the whole settlement had been whisked away… by some sort of magic.

The type of magic the Marid had used to bind and prey upon the Galavir.

That loss, the loneliness… it stayed with their spirit for over two millennia. Though there was nothing I could do to help them in their previous lives, I did what I do best and used the power of my music to give their soul hope…

Using a poem they had written in their most recent life, I sang to their oldest self, telling them to listen for the song when we left – when they heard it they would know they were home again. When I sang the poem I saw the poet, the assassin and the merchant all look at me through the child’s eyes. The spirit knew, they recognised it.