sorcha backstory

"Back and forth, ebb and flow. We came from the sun; to the sun we return!"

They stole a child, naked and squalling, and its life was cut short to bring forth Sorcha's own. She was meant to be so bright. They bathed it in blood, they said the words --

And oh, she came into the world bright, but she was not nearly bright enough. She was not a Lord - only Orgone.

Sorcha's energy only served to agitate the disappointment in the circle. The Mystics left -- and only one stayed behind.

Olwen, the dog-faced Cryptid, would serve as Sorcha's mentor as she grew into a woman. She did not shield the child from her disappointment -- but neither did she make a fuss about it. Sorcha was meant to be different; but here she was, shining just the same.

As a child, it bothered her. /Gnawed/ at her, this failing of her birth which had to be, must have been her own failing. She was a dramatic and tumultuous child, always causing disturbances, always trying to stand out.

So one day, when Sorcha is only a girl of twenty two, Olwen hands her a pack and tells her to leave until she's proven herself.

(It was the best way to get rid of a girl like her, looking back on it.)

Of course Sorcha left -- and got into trouble almost as soon as she'd left Musicant. Bandits on the road robbed her of her galeros and her sword, and left her with little more than the rations she'd packed.

She could have turned around and gone home, of course, but her pride simply wouldn't allow it. So instead, she pressed on, venturing into the woodlands to try and avoid further robberies.

She would not be robbed again.

Instead, her clumsy footfalls startled a moose, some great, terrifying wall of muscle and flesh and fur. She looked to it, it looked at her. But perhaps she would have escaped, had she not turned to try and run.

It charged, and a moment later, all she knew was horrific, blinding pain. It knocked her to the ground, and when she tried to curl in on herself, it kicked her for good measure.

Desperate for some way to make the pain stop, Sorcha stopped. And through one eye which was not blocked by the mud of the ground, she watched the moose as it assessed her, as it decided she was dead.

Distantly, some part of her remarked at how terribly amusing it was. Her self-preservation had only gotten her more hurt -- and it was only in letting go that she found some measure of safety.

Eventually, the moose moved away. The next evening, Sorcha tried to move herself. And oh, it hurt -- it hurt! -- but eventually, she managed to claw her way back to one of the roads.

She wouldn't even mind if a bandit found her, she thought. They could have her things. What she wanted was to live, and if she had to let go of everything else to get what she wanted...

It wasn't bandits who found her, but a family of Delkans travelling back home to their northern mountains. Strange as she was, she was badly hurt, and so they picked her up and brought her into their caravan. She didn't understand the language they spoke amongst themselves, but she learned something from them nonetheless, as they invaded her space with the same ease they did each others'. Comfort and personal boundaries, too, were something which could be selected or sacrificed.

She was willing to sacrifice it, given the circumstances.

They delivered her to a Tulgian town with a healer, who further restored her. It took a while for her to heal -- but as she did, she observed the humans she shared space with. They did not see her as a failure. They saw power in her, and danger; she heard the children gossiping about what terrible beast might have brought her low, worrying about whether it might also come for them.

She never did tell them it was just a moose.

Once she had healed, she went back to Musicant, into the house of flowers, to her mentor.

"Are you ready to stop disappointing me?"

"I was never a disappointment."

And it was true, and Sorcha knew it. She was whole and good. She would not erode herself to try and win the favour of others again.

Olwen smiled and inclined her head. She noted her student's injuries -- and the tale of being disarmed led her to suggest the monastery.

Sorcha accepted the invitation, and became a monk. She stayed there for many years, reflecting on what she had learned, considering the possibilities.

And then, one day, she left again. Of her own will, she stepped outside to go into the world again. She visited Genkai, with its thousand tunnels and its rigid expectations of families; she tried and failed to find the people who had helped her, but it didn't bother her terribly much. (Things come and go. So do people!)

It was an interesting place. They were interesting people. She wanted to go there and spend time with them, so she did.

A few decades later, she'd do the same thing again. And again, and again -- never anything too dramatic, always simply motivated by a desire to go and see something, to meet someone, to experience some holiday or another. In the decades between, she meditated on her experiences, and on the flowers.

To the outside world, she was a Mystic -- a strange, unusual creature, fey of visage and mind, alien to them. The Delkan warrens did not trust her; human towns didn't sometimes, either. The longer-lived races understood her better -- but even then, sometimes, she unsettled them. She was so bright, after all -- so very, very bright.

And the flowers grew where they were planted, and spread, and spread, and spread, until they choked everything with their beauty.

Over time -- she couldn't tell you when it started -- Sorcha became known in the towns she visited as the Flower Monk. She embraced it and owned it, and so it spread like the roots of those plants she contemplated so often.

She came to hone her philosophy. That tiny seed of amusement, so long ago, bloomed into a field of hedonistic thought. It was only natural that she take up Morg's symbol; after all, it was his holy texts which helped to cultivate her individualistic garden.

A garden, of course, cannot flourish if every plant is partitioned. As Sorcha came to accept herself and grow confident in her philosophy, she spent less and less time in the monastery, and more and more time in the rest of the realm. She became known as someone who could be relied on in what passed for the floral realm's 'rural' -- in the orchards and gardens and places where food grew.

And, eventually, Lord Tadleigh sent for her and asked her to just wear his sigil while she did his work. Sorcha was happy to comply. After all, she was quite easy-going. Down for anything, really.

Now the time has come, again, for her to venture out and experience a little of the wider worlds' culture, to get in a little trouble, to learn some interesting lessons.