Legends of Belariath
Medoly
To be born a dark-winged of the Torian is to have a childhood of tragedy, this is a fact known across the empire and beyond. The golden wings, those are the revered, the lucky perhaps. The Blessed, they are often called. Most are born with wings of a simple white or grey, beautiful to many, few is the Torian that is not fit from the athletic lifestyle they lead. But to be born with wings of midnight's black, there is the curse of the beautiful peoples, the dark stain upon a tribe as sure as if their Gods reached out and slapped the parents across the face.
Wife and husband weeped into the night that they had given birth to one who turned to have budding wings of dark black feather; 'what have we done,' they asked, 'to deserve this fate?' It is tradition amongst the Skylarks to withhold a name of the child until the first feathers form; before that day usually four years after birth one is simply called 'child' by all, and it is accepted. Until that day the first color shows, and for this child is was doom that called her: the black wings meant death after a year, as was the will of the Goddess Who Lived Above, whom they called Chyl. Few ever questioned the Divine, and this tribe was led by no fools.
For most, the story ends there: a darkwing born -- be it curse from the Gods or Goddess or simply the whims of fate -- to the Skylarks is killed before they ever feel the rush of wind on their face and through their feathers. For this darkwing, whose hair was as black as a raven's hue, with wings of pitch and tar to match, it did not. end there. To think that there is no mercy or kindness in the world is to think wrong. The Skylark tribe had an enemy, you see: a band of elves bound by blood as well; the ba'Maal, the Dead Servants. A family cursed to leave the forests of their home for their crimes against their Gods to give as penance for their actions vengeance against those they called unjust.
I will leave it to your own intelligence to know what happened then: the children were spared, the parents were not. Not that there was more than one called 'child' by that tribe, that time. She was taken in, and how it gave them reason to call it justice that the baby was one who had been condemned to die simply by birthright. They took her into their tribe and named her Lye'lindar, the first name the young girl had ever known. She was six that year, and even at that young age the elves spoke of how clearly this child was a blessed of Elania the Harpist, so sweet was her tender voice. Little songbird, they called her, a Lark of the Sky.
They were elves, they were happy, they were spirited, they were content to dance beneath the trees and to sing. They were arrogant; so arrogant to think that their small band of slain avians was all of the Skylark tribe. In the end their arrogance was their demise, as it so often is, and the details will be spared from this story to focus on what is really important: the elves were killed or scattered, broken. The child was broken, left for dead, discarded. One elf found her and fled for the safety that could be found beyond the grip of the Northern Shieldwall.
That elf was not 'really' an elf. His name, or the name that he gave to the young girl -- she was fourteen by this time -- was Quill. Just quill, and never was there any other to call him by other than "Teacher." He named her Medoly, calling her a broken song of pleasantry, and he swore to fix her. He never did, or if he did he never claimed so before he died of illness more than ten years later. But in those ten years young Torian, a miracle even to be alive, grew into a woman far from this troubled past and gave the small black-wing a purpose: the Song.
More of this story I simply cannot say; it is tasked to me to watch these mountains and those who run through it, as I can. She was a star, though, Medoly Lye`lindar, the Songbird. I feel as if that young child's time in the Shieldwall is not finished, though I do not know why I have that suspicion. The Skylarks continue their existance, continue the worship of their all-too-living 'Goddess', and the singer leaves for the wonders of Civilization. Perhaps it will suit her well, in the end, or perhaps Quill will shape her to that lifestyle. He knows it, after all, better than most. I wonder if she will ever truly come to grasp that?
- Ruste Ladel. Watcher of the Wall.