I am Overcome

CW: prejudice, bad thing happening to children, abuse, slavery
 
 
Soundtrack: "I am Overcome" by Live
 
Nel had never thought she would ever see another ursan from her homeland ever again until one of them threw a femur through a portal into her kitchen. And now, here were 500. A sea of white fur, all speaking her first language, all looking like her.
 
And all suffering trauma after trauma after trauma. Some had been enslaved in that gods forsaken wasteland even longer than Nel had been in Novandria.
 
She should have known. Part of her knew that thought was irrational–that she was just a child when she was separated from them. That she had no way of knowing what was happening to them. But the louder part said that she should have known it was nothing good.
 
***
 
She remembered the uprising in Senovgorad, during a particularly rough winter. The price of rye had gone too high for nearly half the city to feed themselves and their families. The peasants in the town attacked the granary, torches and crowbars in hand. The soldiers had streamed in and put down the revolt with a brutality that had edged on public sadism. They were making a point. Everyone in the town who was not set for execution was made to come and watch. No part of it was quick or merciful. As they were being escorted out from the orphanage a soldier spotted her – the only ursan in the town since losing her parents. Drawn his sword and tried to arrest her as part of the revolt. She had been eleven and too terrified to speak, even though she had spent the revolt hidden in a broom closet with Khemma. She’d told her little sister stories and sung songs with her to distract her from the breaking glass, the shots of rifles, the screams.
 
Sister Galina had hated her, but this time she had stood between the soldier and Nel like a guardian angel as she scolded him that none of her charges had been out during the revolt. She said that sullying the orphanage’s reputation by saying a traitor had been found there would cost them business with the town’s nobles, and that if that happened, she would take the lost income from jobs the orphans were sent on out of the guards’ cut.
 
The soldier relented under Sister Galina’s fierce hawkish gaze, saying, by way of apology, that Nel was an ursan and everyone knew the ursans had no love for Ruskovich and worshiped forbidden gods. She had felt a jolt of panic, wondering how the soldier had known about her silent prayers to Eosphorous.
 
But Nel thought Sister Galina was going to breathe fire on the soldier, the way her nostrils had flared when she asked him if he really thought she would allow worship of forbidden gods or disloyalty to the Czar to grow under her nose. The soldier shrunk, even from above Sister Galina on his horse, and hurried away.
 
Nel had stared at Sister Galina in grateful disbelief, still shaking and crying in terror, amazed that the nun she’d lived in fear of had just saved her life. Sister Galina had responded with a sharp kick and a barked command to stop sniveling and keep up with the group.
 
***
How could she have ever imagined the other ursans had fared better? It had been a child’s fantasy that she had irresponsibly held onto for too long into adulthood.
 
And all the time Nel had told herself comforting fairy tales about their lives, the bones of her murdered kin had fed the tower. How hard had it been for Aaboli to wrench that femur out of its grasp? What had it cost her to hide it, to carve a message into it, when the tower pulled it to itself incessantly?
 
How many more had died while she had studied and prepared and planned?
 
Her heart had broken more times than she thought it could with each new thing she learned from Aaboli about how they’d all come to the tower in the center of the Wastelands. And it crumbled into smaller still crumbs when she’d seen the children, too afraid to even cry, whom they all had taken first to the safety of Symraphy’s cave.
 
Now, beyond all hope, all 500 were freed and safe in the cave of the dragon lich who protected living creatures in the Wastelands despite being a prisoner there herself.
 
Nel wandered around the camp, checking to make sure everyone had enough water, had something to eat, had medicine if they needed it. A part of her wanted so badly to just bury herself in that sea of white, see if any of them were the beloved aunts, uncles, cousins, and elders she remembered from the first six years of her life or if they knew what had happened to them. But another part of her kept her hanging back. They had been through so much together. They had suffered so much loss. They had helped each other survive. And no matter how much she might look like them, she had not been there. For all the hardships in her life – the orphanage, the Syndicate, prison – she had still been able to build a life. She raised children and for all her fears for them, that an evil tower would claim their bones had never had to cross her mind.
 
She felt torn between two worlds, and not fully a part of either. Her friends who had risked their lives to help her save her kin – who had followed her despite every last one of them being more of a leader than she could ever be – they were every bit as much family as the ursans -- as were her family back home -- Bodgan, Mia, the children, Cardinal, and others.. They knew the version of her that lived in Novandria. But few of them could understand what it was like to leave the Northern Isles, the dancing lights, the gentle community, and find themselves in a strange, harsh, noisy world where people in a hurry shouted at them in languages they did not understand. Just as the ursans would not understand Marlene and the horrible things Nel had done for her, the school, the dragons raining acid down on people and buildings, dissolving them like a sandcastle in the rain.
 
She knew these thoughts were selfish and self indulgent, but she could not shake them.
 
And the guilt that she had left them was overwhelming. At first, at the orphanage in Senovgorad, she had spoken to her kin every night. Told the stars her messages of love for them, her hopes of someday seeing them again. But, year after year the longing grew blunted and the hopes brittle as each day required all of her energy, wits, and strength to just survive. She lost hope that they would come for her. But she had never imagined that they had needed her to come for them. And when she was fifteen and Khemma was twelve, she gave up on seeing any of them again. Ruskovich was so big and her world had shrunk to be exactly as big as her adopted changeling sister. All that mattered was that she could not let the powers that be take away her only family left by sending them off to separate places. So she left Ruskovich and told herself comforting stories about what her kin must be up to as she and Khemma hid in the darkness of the cargo bay on the ship they were smuggled onto.
 
But now they were all here – the ones who had survived long enough to be rescued. Now they would have good lives in Lady Orlov’s lands. And none of them were angry with her for taking so long. On the contrary, most seemed to regard her as a savior. Many were just as strangely shy of her as she was of them. It was a strange feeling – they kept thanking her while she kept wanting to throw herself at their feet and beg their forgiveness for not knowing sooner, not coming sooner. So instead she hung back, said little that wasn’t about getting them to safety. There would be time enough to process once they had their homes and farms and did not have to be afraid anymore–
 
–Until Aaboli had told a group of sleepy children bedtime stories. Until she had come and sat down a little behind them. Until a tiny ursan toddler had climbed into her lap and fallen asleep. Then the longing she had felt for her people returned freshly sharpened, and as she hurriedly wiped away bloody tears before they could scare the children, she could feel the part of her that had been six years old and listening spellbound to the stories while the woodsmoke made its comforting perfume. The defenses she had carefully built in the 30 years since then came undone and her heart felt at once broken and healing, lonely and loved, grieving and hopeful.
 
There was so much and so many to grieve. But there was so much hope. The wounds of her community were deep. But tonight they began to heal.