A good person

[Tahara]

She dipped her head beneath the waters.

Ever since she had gotten out of the pens, Tahara had found her peace in cleansing. It was a difficult thing to explain, the slow shift from feeling nothing, no pain, no sorrow, to the slow waking to truth.

Slaves did not feel pain, if they never knew its opposite. She had not felt broken until she had seen what whole looked like. And she had never recognized herself as filthy until she bathed in a clean stream for the first time in Blade’s Edge, watching years of abuse slide off her skin like so much dust.

There had been discomfort first, but now… now Tahara could not imagine anything that could bring her more peace than a simple bar of soap and clear waters beneath her.

As Tahara re-braided her hair at the water’s edge, droplets sliding down her bare skin, she realized that even that was not enough.

“What?”

She stared at Vraxxar, part anger, part frustration part… something she couldn’t put into words. Everything about this call to Feralas feels wrong. But she knew she had a duty to her clan, a duty to her family. She needed a good reason not to go. She knew the truth was risky, but she had been prepared - for his anger, for rejection, for the final stroke that would send her away from the clan and back into her lonely life in the Barrens.

The one thing she hadn’t been prepared for was acceptance.

Vraxxar sighed, shaking his head. “I cannot punish you for rules you broke when you weren’t bound by them.” A technicality. He has to know that, right? Why isn’t he angrier? He’s supposed to be a good person, he’s supposed to condemn what she’s done. What does it make him if he forgives her on the spot?

Tahara stands, dumbfounded and seething in anger beneath the tree atop Razor Hill.

She had killed a child.

He should care more.

Nabbers’ curious “Roo..” brings her back to the here and now, watching the tiny saurid poking his nose into a puddle and coming back up with a tiny crab stuck to him. She can’t suppress the laugh as Nabbers runs in circles trying to rid himself of the pest, until a helpful Chuckles dunks both into the stream with one too-large paw.

The spectacle itself was not enough to make her forget the tree or the roar of flames. It wasn’t enough to pluck the arrow from her mind that she never pulled out of the elven boy’s chest. It did not wash away what she has done and neither could Vraxxar’s forgiveness, unprompted and given without a moment’s hesitation. It wasn’t enough.

Tahara sighed and lowered her right arm. She traced the black veins with her fingers. When she showed Kyra, they had been slowly creeping down her wrist.

Now, they were halfway to her elbow. Tahara didn’t know enough math to take a guess of how much time she had left, but she hoped it was enough to see a final Kosh’harg. She’d make her piece with the rest. Somehow.

As Tahara watched the newest addition to her pack fish her breakfast with deft grace, she smiled. She would, at least, never end up as Vessalia had.

She did not have enough time for that, she mused, as she watched the black veins grow.

She could still die a good person.