"The Twisted Path: Prologue" by Melissa ´TigerCat´ Jones

“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink 

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd 

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when 

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades 

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; 

For always roaming with a hungry heart 

Much have I seen and known; cities of men 

And manners, climates, councils, governments, 

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; 

And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”

-Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Prologue: From an Ink-Spattered Page

I have traveled farther across the reaches of the world than I used to dream was possible. When I was younger, I never thought to see past the walls of the southern human territories, or beyond the deep forests of the sparsely occupied north. These were the only things I knew, the trees and the flatlands. The sea was a thing unheard of, only fit to take up space on maps. A placeholder that I would never see in person. I had not even known of its true nature, its existence, until I was old enough to feel ashamed of my ignorance. Other landscapes stalked me, pouncing upon my person and demanding that I acknowledge their reality. Marshes and rock fields and deep caverns did not enter into my consciousness until I was forced into them. They would not be denied, and I had no choice but to learn their nature.

I know enough now to realize that there is more in the world than what I have seen. There is more to the world than the continent of Caesia, with its southern flats and the wild northern hinterlands. I have seen the Alke Isles, an archipelago that stretches miles upon miles into the southwest oceans. The creatures that live there are extraordinary, and the landscape is nothing like the ones that I have known from childhood. I prefer it that way. A clean slate, some would call it. For me, it was simply a chance for a new beginning.

That was why I started my wanderings, after all. To escape from the nightmares that haunted me, to try to leave everything behind. I tried to flee from myself, but it is a more difficult task than one might imagine. The shadow will always follow the form. However, the shape can be changed, and the shadow along with it.

I like to believe that I am not the same person that escaped from Benthol and the Crystal Vale. In some aspects, that is true. But there is a part of me that will always hide in that shadow. I cannot deny its presence any longer, but I have changed it subtly. No longer does it haunt me, for I think I have learned to control it. This brisk sea air, the saltwater, the sand between my toes – they ground me in reality. My mind has other, more immediate concerns to dwell upon these days and most of them are simple matters of life, and not the darker dealings of death. That in itself is strange enough. I still marvel at how this new life came to be mine. I am grateful for it. In my youth, I thought that every day might be my last, and I feared everything. I cannot live like that any longer.

I will not.