Legends of Belariath
Flidais
Birth...a fitting place to start I think.
A squalling babe brought into this world by two loving parents. Named Flidais after her grandmother she grew enjoying life with her family and childhood friends. Her mother was a teacher to the young nobles and rich families of the area and her father, leader of the towns’ guard. A talent for healing was born in the child also, to the delight of her mother when her own mother told her of it. She herself was not born with the talent to heal and had turned to her teaching instead to help others in a different way. Flidais received the teaching of her mother along with her grandmother. She started at six and learned quickly picking up reading and writing. Her young mind seemed to soak up anything put in front of her as if her mind a book be written that she could open the pages and look to see what was there.
Many days did she spend with her grandmother, as her time studying with her mother grew shorter as she learned what she needed to know. Again she set to soaking up all the knowledge that was givin to her. Her grandmother had seen the spark in her granddaughter blooming at an early age and knew she would need to be taught and taught well or there was the chance her gift would turn in on her and kill her.
A few years go by like this she now nine when the knock comes to her grandmothers’ door. A messenger quickly informing her of an attack to her daughter and son in law on their way home from a trip to another town. Flidais`s father is dead and mother barely clings to life as her grandmother flies out the door leaving the messenger to look after Flid as she heads to try and save her daughters life. Many hours pass when another knock sounds causing Flid to start and back away seeming to have a feeling the news will not be good. It is not as the young man who stayed with her trying in his still young way to keep the child calm moves and opens it to see the mayors wife standing there.
Her life was never to be the same after that day as she stood numbly there listening as the woman coldly explained that her grandmother spent hours trying to save her mother and only killed herself as well. She seemed to be blaming Flid for this loss of the only healer in town seeming to forget or perhaps she never knew that the child in front of her was learning from her grandmother and could do a small amount of what she did.
Swiftly the days passed then she attended the burials of her family taken from her all in a day. She moved in a daze where she was told never crying, never smiling, her face an expressionless mask as she tried to deal with the pain of her loss and seeming to grow older in spirit before the eyes of those who looked after her. A week went by and things for the town were back to normal, talks had started of what they would do with the girl. It was finally decided that she would be given into the care of a couple in town who were childless.
Bakers they were, the wife more wishing the Childs presence then her husband. He agreed though to make his wife happy though for he might have been a man of sour mood and sometimes-dark temperament he loved his wife more then all else and was ashamed that they could not have a child together.
Into this home she now came still deep in her loss she did not respond to the wife's attempts to befriend her. This hurt the woman greatly as she saw her only hope of having a child slipping away. Her husband from this started to hate Flid and his treatment of her slowly grew worse as the months went past. Life should have been well and kind to her at this time, she should have started to grow past the loss she had suffered and begin to live again. This did not happen though and as the husbands secret treatment of her grew worse and the wife tried in vain to get past the walls Flidais put up to hide behind the wife was also slowly growing weaker and took ill more easily.
Flidais knew something was wrong but her efforts to offer her help were rebuffed by the husband and hidden from his wife as he didn't think the girl could be of any use and did not want his wife to find out and want her to try. He was sure Flid would only make things worse. Slowly his wife slipped further and further away as the months past until when there was only a shell of the woman she used to be left she spoke her goodbyes to her husband and let herself slip into the never ending sleep of death.
Through all this time another two years had past Flidais now eleven was fast approaching the time she would become a woman in name but not deed. The husband now her only guardian in his grief turned on her as the source of it, suddenly blaming her for not using her training from her grandmother to try and help his wife. Her words to him as she tried to explain that she had offered to help were not heard and he stormed out the house to seek out his brother-in-law.
This brother-in-law was a powerful mage and though he never could forgive his sister for marrying a lowly baker out of love he would never turn his back on her or her family. He was morning as much as his sister’s husband for he with his power had no healing abilities to his name and had to stand by also and watch her waste away. When the husband came to his door with his tale the brother believed that this little uppity child had done such a thing out of spite for her not wanting to be there (at least that is how they saw it in their minds).
The husband convinced him that they needed to teach her a lesson for her behavior of ignoring and turning her nose up at others. They came up with what they called her punishment for as they now had convinced each other that she had killed the wife. Through long days of research they found a scroll that would place a curse on a person to make them unable to touch without their skin being burned from it. There was a way to break the curse though they laughed over it knowing it would kill her if she ever tried.
The plans were set the preparations made and late one night in the brothers’ workroom the cruse was set and bound to her. At the beginning of her bleeding she would know of day filled with pain, her skin would feel like it was burning from her body. The two bided their time after this waiting for the day to come when her punishment would begin. They did not have long to wait though for the day she awoke screaming in pain. The husband rushed into the room grinning as he quickly gagged the Flidais and bound her arms behind her then locked her in her room leaving her with her torment alone.
This is where her torment begins as she is made to endure years of living under the collar of the man still called her guardian by those of the town. Made to use her healing even as it burned and tortured her with every touch, to not do so would mean beatings and other punishments that the brother and husband would think of.