Original Sin

Lamneve gave her family name to Kedaleam the day she joined the Temple of Water. Not that she'd wished to keep it. Not after the scandal that rocked the usually sleepy village of Storm Hill, its chief magistrate--Lamneve's mother--disgraced, caught cheating on her mate--and with a jotun! Such interspecies mingling occurred rarely among the storm giants, or so Lamneve's tutors told her. This was years ago, after all: after Lamneve's mother took her own life and after her father fled his reputation to parts unknown, leaving a large baby that glittered like ice on the steps of the temple. Her childhood passed this way, the other orphans in the temple's care mocking Lamneve for her strangeness. Her otherness. The giants did not like how her skin refracted the light; the humans did not like how she loomed so silently, mistaking her quietude for ignorance; not even the half-elves, with their own identity issues with which to contend, welcomed her to sit with them at First Bell. But she was smart, as far as giants go, perhaps owing to her mingled heritage. She worked diligently at prayers and chores alike, earning at last the affection of the constant priestesses who ran the temple. At the onset of puberty, Lamneve surprised them all, displaying a keen affinity for Kedaleam's chosen element of water and curative spellcraft alike. So it was that Lamneve wrote her name in the temple's book. She eschewed the bonds of her past (as if she had any) and pledged herself to a life of service, heart and soul. The priestesses even planned to send her to Seringale to train with the famed healer Korvoduin and nurture her nascent talent. Perhaps finally, she thought to herself as she packed for the long journey--storing herbs, tinctures, and ointments in her healer's pouch; writing a long note in a cramped script to the temple's High Priestess, thanking her for her kindness; dousing the hearth in her austere bedchamber for the last time--perhaps finally she would atone for the sin of her birth. Perhaps finally she would come home.