Larkspur

Both forearms broken, the crimson water rushing over my face and filling my lungs, I was supposed to die. This was how it was supposed to end. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate.

But fate would not have me. She shook me by the shoulders and whispered in my ear that it was not my time to die. My time to live, in fact, was only just beginning.

“Get up,” she said. A disembodied voice that I was certain did not belong to a mortal. Was it a god?

I somehow mustered the strength to push my face out of the water, choking and sputtering as I did. Mercifully, my legs were unbroken, the muscles working the bones until my feet found the bottom of the blood-soaked river. My body, acting in its own self-interest, dragged itself to the shore. The sentient part of me that had been betrayed by my closest friends and by my love wanted to drown. They left me for dead and dead I ought to be. But like I said, death would not have me.

It felt like no one wanted me.

But that was not true. There was one who did come to my rescue. There was one who wanted me.

The night sky, blue-black and freckled with stars, blinked at me from above as I collapsed on the sandy shore of the river. The wind whistled through the evergreen trees and crickets sang their songs. A lone raven flew down and landed on my chest. It pressed the tip of its beak to my collarbone and suddenly it was easy to breathe again.

“You will start anew,” the bird said. The same voice that pulled me from the river. “You cannot be the same as you were before. But you will be better.”

I coughed up more river water, jostling the bird. The raven fluttered up and then appeared beside me again, but this time in the form of a person. Not a person. A god. The Matron of Ravens. The goddess of death herself.

I wanted to push my soaking hair from my eyes, but with both forearms broken, I was unable. Instead I just lay back against the riverside. “I don’t understand,” I murmured.

She knelt beside me and began wrapping my arms with golden ribbons, slotting the broken pieces of bone back into place within the skin. “You want to die and I will not let you,” she said. The pain in my arms began to ebb. I glanced down as she worked to heal my limbs.

“My skin,” I gasped. The once lovely shade of light blue tiefling skin I’d inherited from my mother was a different shade in the pale moonlight. Had the blood in the river somehow dyed it?

The Matron took my hand and ran her fingers over my new lavender-hued exterior. “You cannot be the same as you were before,” she repeated, then returned to wrapping my arms with gold ribbons she seemed to be materializing straight from thin air. “I may have spared you from death, but that does not mean your life will pick up where you left off.”

She sat me up and twisted a lock of my hair in her palm. My hair was black, black as night, black as her eyes, black as a raven. “Those touched by death and sent back bear the marks,” she said softly. “But the gold of your old hair is not lost.” She twisted more golden ribbons around my horns.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. What were these golden ribbons for? Why was she dressing me up like some kind of birthday present?

“Your golden thread of fate is tangled and wrapped up in quite a mess,” she said with a casual shrug. My lack of understanding and list of questions only grew. “It cannot be cut until it is your time. And it is not your time yet. Though, you have challenges yet to face in your new life. It is a new beginning, but you bear the same thread. You must untangle the mess others have caused.”

It felt as if she was talking in riddles. I couldn’t make sense of this nonsense. But before I could ask her any more questions, she stood from my side, took a deep breath, and transformed back into a raven. In a flutter of wings, she was gone.

My skin had changed. My hair had changed. My arms were somehow healed, the bones set right again within the golden ribbon wraps. I was still a tiefling, a half-devil, much to my relief. But when I went to cast the usual druid spells I was accustomed to performing, nothing happened. I tried desperately to conjure an animal companion like I’d done a million times before, but I was unable. Whatever connection and magic I’d had to the natural world no longer existed in this new form.

But there was some kind of magic in my body. Something new. Something from the Matron. I waved my left hand over my right forearm where she’d healed the broken bones, attempting to cast another healing spell to somehow remove the scar I knew I’d bear there. Channeling divine magic through the god of death, flowers began to bloom up from my skin between the golden ribbons. I was no longer a druid. I was a cleric.

But despite the miraculous healing I’d experienced that night, an ache still lingered in my chest. It was not a physical pain, not anything from nearly drowning. It was the dull thrum of heartbreak. Betrayed by my one true love and the rest of our shared adventuring party. I couldn’t make sense of it. I didn’t know why. I held onto my love so tightly that she had to break my arms in order to pull away. Then she shoved me under the water and held me there, like an offering upon a bloody platter.

The golden threads of fate were tangled. That’s what the Matron told me. My story was far from over. It was only just beginning. I’d been betrayed and left for dead, yet it was not my time. My love wouldn’t have me, but the god of death would.

And though the heartbreak made me wish the river had swallowed me, I accepted my new fate. I looked along the riverbank and noticed a field of purple larkspur dancing in the breeze. They reminded me of my new lavender-toned skin.

“Larkspur,” I whispered, giving myself a new name.

I could not be the same as I was before.

I was determined to be better.