Hello and welcome or welcome back to The Obsidian Forest and if you’re new here this is a place where the lines between reality and fantasy blur where bedtime stories and memories mesh together creating masterpieces. I haven’t posted a story directly to the Forest in a while. Though I have a a few series’ that have a home here. However I love forests and my faviorte stone is obsidian so it only makes since that my faviorte forest is here… in Stormy Ville. So without further delay, walk with me into the story, the mind palace, the forest of obsidian grace, and blur the lines? Learn of The Menders and their powers and who their child really was?
Once upon a time, there were a couple who were known as the Menders. And while they weren’t royal, they were held in high regard in their village. If you had a broken heart, they could heal it – if you had a need they could fulfil it. This was all the couple had known, a life of healing others and fixing their things. Pouring into their souls and well, mending what others couldn’t mend for themselves.
They weren’t seers, nor tellers, had no crystal ball or magical lace to show them the outcomes of the paths they’d take. Of the darkness that was soon to take hold. See they had a family, two sons and a daughter. The menders’ children were used to souls wandering in and out of their home. It was nothing new to them, they’d known nothing different. The children were much like their parents. Menders themselves even as younglings. They wanted nothing more than to heal the broken hearted, fix the wounded and save the drowning. Naive as they were the children believed in fairytale endings, loving from the most pure state and that was deadly. No one taught the children when to pull back, when loving them wasn’t enough, when pain didn’t mean you had to stay. The Menders modeled a fateful cycle, one that would lead to the family’s demise.
One day a soul wandered in. Much like any other, though this one was a child. Weary and broken, he needed a home, and a family. The Menders allowed him to stay. Took him in as one of their own. Loved him and cared for him just as they did their own sons. Actually, even better than their sons. Little by little and day by day, the menders’ children began to feel replaced, alone and rejected. As the new soul, yet again took precedence over them.
The storm was a slow brew and with lethal consequences. As over the years the oldest of the three children would leave home, joining the guard in the kingdom. Then the youngest boy was drafted to a war that wasn’t his to fight, soon leaving the girl on her own. She had lost her will to fight after her brothers left, leaving her with a drunken father, and a broken mother. The broken soul was like a mirror. And the girl knew that. She absorbed everything…
Every beating, every cruel word, she took it. The girl had grown up believing that she wasn’t going to escape. She was wilting away. Sadness eating away at her day and night. Believing she was the cause of everything wrong in their lives. She was the cause of her brothers leaving, she was the reason the darkness came, she was the cause of the storm? Was she? She believed that. For a while she didn’t think she deserved anything good… she stopped eating. She stopped taking care of herself. She wanted to stop breathing too. And one night it all got too much, the darkness, the lost soul, he had come to her again. But this time? This time the girl wasn’t there.
The girl had run. As far and as fast as she could. Deep into the forest. She’d always been afraid of the dark and the woods especially but it called to her, it had felt almost welcoming. With every breath she took in the crisp air, it felt so freeing. She was aching, cold and tired but she couldn’t stop. Her heart thumping in her chest, like a war drum. She’d made it out. But what was she to do now? Where to go? She didn’t stop. Not when her arm caught on a branch and definitely not when her feet began to bleed. She wasn’t done yet. She was free. The moon was high and full and she felt the most at home she’d ever felt.
She collapsed, she ran until she couldn’t run anymore. She was surprised that the fall hadn’t hurt as bad as she expected it to. Falling into the most comfortable nights sleep the girl had had in ages. Only awakening when she heard a voice that wasn’t her own.
“Stupid humans.” The voice muttered annoyed and slightly confused awakening with someone on top of him.
“Who said that?” The girl says still sleepy…though only for a moment as she begins to panic realizing she was sleeping on an animal. “Oh my god, oh no, oh no, wolf…wolf, I’m sleeping on a wolf?!? How is that possible?” The girl says so panicked as she freezes in place and she and the wolf locked eyes for the first time.
“You…” He says.
“Me? Please don’t kill me?” She says. “I’m so sorry.” She whispered.
“You can hear me?” He asked her as he raised up, gently pushing her to the ground as he did.
“I can…” The girl said. “Or I’m dead, or crazy. Or both.” She smiled a bit as the wolf laughed gruffly.
She wasn’t crazy. The girl wasn’t crazy… or dead. The girl had met a shapeshifter. Half man half wolf. The Menders daughter was destined to darkness all along. Though the darkness she chose was that of her own kind, the dark that stars shine in. A dark that was a mirror for everything she wished to suppress and hide about her past. A darkness that she grew up in fear of but the wolf gave her a path to control.
By bringing her back to the pack, he guided her through her own darkness and gave her tools to protect herself from the things that she feared most. Though it took time, the girl was reunited with her brothers. Crowned queen now, brought out of the ashes… though darkness tried to claim her and her little prince, she would never allow it. Learning that it wasn’t the dark she was afraid of but rather what was in the dark. Or who. And the soul the menders brought home, she still lights a lantern in his name, though the fear never left, it slowly turned to hurt and anger. The menders daughter sought vengeance not on the soul her harmed her most but on her parents for allowing it.
She was a queen. She had all the power in the realms and most importantly? Seeing her beautiful son? She couldn’t wrap her head around how the menders allowed such horrible things to happen to she and her brothers. Though it had been years and the menders were elderly and the queen hadn’t been back to her home village since she’d left, one day she returned. Finding the soul was still with the family and all the memories flooded back.
As she remembered these things she grew angry. Or rather angrier. Her heart racing and her head spinning with thoughts of how she was failed. How she didn’t understand how a mother couldn’t see? How a father could do these things? How anyone could let their child suffer? As she would do anything for her son. Protect him at all costs. Even by never telling him how he really came to be.
As she sought out these answers, becoming more and more frustrated as the conversation circled and felt hopeless. She felt she was never going to get anywhere. She’d rather have them thrown in the dungeon to rot! But even that wasn’t enough maybe burnt at the stake? Too simple? She wasn’t sure… she stepped outside needing a breath of fresh air. Her world crumbling. She felt like she couldn’t catch her breath! This is pointless!
But then something occurred to her. Be it deja vu or a vision she wasn’t sure. She felt an overwhelming sense of calm. Though her heart was still broken at the thought, as she watched through the window seeing the menders and the soul for who they really were. Lost souls who were once broken and scared little children like her. It made her sad. It didn’t erase what had happened, but for a split moment her anger dissipated. She remembered what she had promised her twin – “it ends with us”. The cycle of broken promises, of bloody knuckles, of lies and deceit, of cheating and drinking themselves to sleep at night, of screaming and fighting, of putting others above themselves all of it. They had to stop it. It had to be them. A promise she had made to her son as well.
So, with that she calmly walked away. No goodbye, no note, nothing but air of relief and anguish together, knowing that to be the Menders daughter it meant she had to break the menders curse. And she did so with tears in her eyes and a crown on her head, for the mender’s daughter was a force to be reckoned with all along.
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