❧
Of Cloverfen
In the green hush of Cloverfen was Liora born, where song and sorcery were woven through common life as ivy through old stone. There were songs for harvest, songs for mending, songs for the road, and songs simply because the evening had grown too quiet.
From a tender age, the child possessed a gift beyond a fair voice. When she sang, quarrels softened. The weary stood a little straighter. Frightened hearts remembered, somehow, that they had strength for one more mile.
At first she thought little of it. To Liora, music had always been meant for sharing. What use was a song if none were there to hear it?
I
❧
Of the Road Beyond
In time, she took to the road beside a young company of adventurers and became their bard. She bore no great blade, nor was she the strongest among them. Her place was elsewhere. When fear crept into the party, she eased it. When tempers rose, she drew them back together. When the road grew cruel, Liora gave them a reason to take the next step.
Then came a day when the air itself was torn asunder. Some mighty disturbance of magic opened a rift before the party, wild and unstable. Liora did what she had always done. She played.
But her Resonant Chorus caught upon the strange magic rather than calming it. Song and rift answered one another, each feeding the other, until the world gave way beneath her.
II
❧
Of the Wayward Bard
Before Liora could cry warning, the rift took her. Her companions vanished from sight, Cloverfen vanished after them, and when next she knew the earth beneath her feet, she stood beneath a sky she did not know.
Whether her party remained behind, were cast into worlds of their own, or were lost somewhere between, she cannot say. She knows only that they are gone from her side, and that she has yet to find the road that leads home.
So she wanders still. She plays wherever folk will listen, takes supper or shelter where it is kindly offered, and lends her music when someone has need of it. Every strange road may yet lead back to Cloverfen. Every new face may know something she does not.
III
❧
Of Parties Old and New
Yet there is one trouble she cannot sing away so easily. Liora longs for company. She calls new groups parties almost without thought and is happiest when she has some role to fill among them.
Still, a small and frightened part of her wonders what it means to belong somewhere new. Would a new party be merely another road toward the old one, or would it mean admitting that those she lost may never return?
For now, she refuses to choose. She shall keep looking for home, and she shall keep reaching for people along the way. If there be room beside the fire and a place for one more song, Liora will call that hope enough for tonight.
Thus wandereth Liora, the Wayward Bard.
IV
