Bodua

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"To understand me now, you have to understand me then." She said as she sat down next to the fire she had lit with a carefree wave of her hand. "My father was a merchant, my mother was a priest, and they were both beautiful. When I was born, my father was ecstatic. He had a little girl... another family had a little boy... to cement us together would have made us one of the most wealthy and influential families in the great city of Daggerfall." She leaned forward as I scribbled in my notebook.

Her name, as simple as it was, was my chapter heading: Bodua. The subheading: A Game of Death.

You see, I was sitting here, listening as the woman spoke candidly about her life... as a necromancer. It was a rare and beautiful opportunity, one that I could not resist. I had risked much to get here, and though I was still in danger, Bodua had a way of being... comfortable.

"As I grew older," She continued, "My parents became, concerned. I was not a pretty child. My face was square, my hair stringy, my eyes were pale. While I was born with brown hair, by the time I was nine, it had turned gray and lifeless, rough and haggard. I was not growing up, I was growing old." She leaned back, fidgeting with a pendant of a skull around her neck before she went on, "They were concerned. What would the family say when I was presented to their son?" Bodua sighed, "They were not afraid of my condition, not at first, no, merely... embarrassed." She chuckled, though, I'm not sure that's the correct word for the sound she made. It was laughter, but without amusement. Instead, it was raw and harsh.

"They shuffled me off to school, left me there to board. I didn't see them for several years at a time sometimes. Then the day came that they feared... me." She stressed the pronoun slightly, "They found me cradling none other than a rather obviously dead cat. I felt sad for the thing. Wishing it would be my friend. It would have been my only friend. I was thirteen." My scribbling in my notebook was, for a moment, the only sound in the small cavern, "Father tried to take it from me. I bit him. Deep and hard enough to draw blood. I hated him. It was mine.

"Mother was horrified, especially when his wounds began to fester. She tried to heal them, but they kept seeping. He felt no agony, no pain, no weakness. He went about his business though his wrist was always bandaged tightly.

"Two weeks later... he died. Just like that. With no explanation. He sat down in his favorite chair before supper and wouldn't come when he was called. He just sat down there and died." Bodua seemed oddly unconcerned, merely reciting it as though it had happened to another person in another life.

Perhaps, in a way, I noted in my book, it had.

"My mother had no idea what to do, but she blamed me, cursed me. Called me every name you can think of... she even struck me for the first time in a rage." Bodua looked directly at me for the first time, and there was an edge to her gaze. I suddenly felt my danger renewed with a very poignant stab to my heart. Insanity, I think it was. "I wanted to kill her. I wanted to pull her body apart, find out what was inside, where it was that I came from. I wanted to hold her heart and breath through her lungs."

Definitely insanity. My quill paused long enough for a drop of the ink to spatter the page as I sucked in a terrified breath.

"I didn't though. I remembered she was my mother an instant after the anger left, and I felt terrible for thinking that. I loved her. Always. Just as I loved Father, even if they didn't love me." She picked up a white cup, that at closer inspection, looked rather like bone. I kept my eyes from focusing on it until she set it back down, out of my sight. I really didn't want to know.

"After that, I tossed myself into my studies and became obsessed with healing Mother's heart, even if it meant bringing Father back. There had to be a way, to make him more than the dead constructs I had read about. Daedra and Aedra had the power over life and death... it existed. I knew it. I would find it."

She laced her fingers together, "I'm still looking... over a hundred years later... I'm still looking."

The tip of my quill broke as I jerked in surprise, making the last few lines completely illegible. "A... a century?" I looked at her again, her face was smooth save for the great scar on her face, "How is that possible?"

"From death, there is life." She lifted a hand to point upward, and my gaze followed. There, that I hadn't noticed, deep in shadow were darker spaces. After a moment of squinting, they all took shape.

Skulls. Hundreds of skulls. "Every one of them," Bodua swept her arm, including them all, "Died to let me continue. Those that had families treated them badly. Those that did not were never missed."

"I... I..." I was at a loss for words, quite obviously. Bodua found it rather amusing.

"Fear not. This fate is not meant for you. You will walk from here on your own two legs, with your own soul, and your own breath. I have no designs on you."

While I appreciated the sentiment, it really didn't help. So I switched gears, "Your... your scar... may I ask about it--?" I spoke, almost afraid to find out, but it was as much a part of the story as any other.

"Ah yes. Another gift. This time from the man who taught me most of what I know. You see, in most cults, apprentices take over a masters position. Usually forcefully. He was paranoid and thought I was preparing to move against him, rather than find another coven. He struck me first in the face with a fireball, I struck him second in the belly with a knife." She gave a satisfied nod, "He died rather slowly, and his body taught me a few new things that he'd held from me."

Bodua smiled again and picked up her cup and took a sip before rolling it in her fingers. It was delicately carved, but unmistakably and definitely bone, "And I discovered that he offers a rather delicate flavor to the wine."