Post by amarillan on Oct 2, 2021 19:01:28 GMT -7
"How your father and I met? Oh, that was so long ago... I'd just finished a long, long journey, a few years in fact. I never told you I wasn't born on the Coast? Oh, that's a story for another time, you were asking about your father. We met by chance --" She blushes, clearly thinking it a bit more a fateful encounter, "-- when we were called to investigate why a little town wasn't paying its taxes. Just to help out the city of Daggerford, simple as that."
"But when we got there the place was strange. People claimed to be happy, which of course wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but would not listen to reason about their taxes. And there were... other things. They hurt someone, thinking healing them would make me happy." The tiefling shudders a little as she remembers it: a child's hand cut off at the wrist. The screaming. The crying. The blood. Charity forces back the calm at the expectant eyes of her child.
"I THINK it was a little after that we met the mayor? And his friend, the devil. He was rather up front about it all. See, that town put a lot of faith in their mayor. Enough to trust him to take legal affairs for the whole town in his hands." There's a little more roughness than usual to her weeding. "He was not the man they thought he was, though. He was afraid of dying. So he sold the town's souls in return for the immortal life of a devil."
"We were flabberghasted. We put everything we had into researching how to save those people." She sighs, stops, takes a break. Perhaps she shouldn't have "And we came upon a solution. An inelegant one, but a solution. Devils are very particular, you see, about their contracts. If we could break the contract their claim to the people's souls would be void."
It's unpleasant business, killing a man. And in such a convoluted way: one of the claws of the devil's imps. He'd volunteered, but... it didn't make any difference with how BAD it made her feel.
"Of course, when we broke the contract, the Devil had been enraged. He'd summoned a swarm of imps to try overwhelming us, but..." She gives her baby the best smile she can despite the memories. "Well, you're here, aren't you?" That actually makes her laugh a bit, and she feels better in the here and now. "Your daddy's the one who landed the killing blow on that devil, you know. He doesn't ever talk about it but he did. Oh!" She laughs. "You know, he didn't ask for payment... well, not from Daggerford. He just wanted a date with me." Her blush returns in full force. "And the rest is history, I suppose. We settled down in that little town -- yes, here -- and had you!"