SPOILERS INSIDE.
Briar's the mostly-NPC character I am "playing" in the Elfquest game. She was Recognized in the last session. I knew a little of her background, but it wasn't until that hit that I realized the reason why she was going to fight this. Nevermind it's like refusing water, and it might kill her and her potential mate. She's got a story, and this is what is behind it.
It was small and did not survive.
It was not the first one, or the last, to die before taking breath. Some were worse, passing on only after you could hear the sounds of their hunger in the winter storm.
I don't like to remember it. If its father gave it a name, I never asked. What good are names against the elements? The names are not like wolves that howl and are heard against the wind. They are the prints before they are filled by the snow.
They speak in their dreams about Recognition, and they are wrong. I do not tell them that. They are allowed their dreams.
I tell the others again: it is only Timmain's children that live. That is why I love her. That is why I will follow them, in their strange, warm shapes, with the bright eyes that see in the dark. I will give up the sun and live in the night.
Only... I cannot sleep.
I invent lists in my head to help calm the thinking. Lists of the plants and their uses. Lists of the colours and knots of the things I weave. Lists of all the things I will forget so that I can learn them anew.
I try to forget how to walk, or how to sing, so that I can mimic the way the others, the children do it. They do some of it so lightly, despite the concentration and focus that must come with the predator blood. We learned to lose focus, to relax and let the shaping flow through us, like rivers, like belief. Like Dreamseeker's belief that there would be cool shade and sweet, cold water. Like his belief that his dreams were sendings from the forest beyond the burning cliffs.
The belief that burned hotter than the tiny rocks beneath our feet, that dragged wolves and elves united behind him with the strength of his vision alone.
I have lost my ability to do any of that. I follow. I follow because I do not know how to lead. I follow to death.
The chief has banished me. I think he would argue but silently agree. I cannot provide for the tribe. I have no end of bravery because fear requires imagination.
Only... I cannot sleep.
And I cannot dream.