MeiLin

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Mate: --- Family: --- Occupation: Healer in Training

Artwork: ---

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The very circumstances of Mei-Lin's birth were a disappointment. He was small and frail as a hatchling, easily prone to sickness, especially in the Scarred Wasteland into which he was born. His mother was nothing if not determined to ensure his survival, however, and in his early yearns Mei-Lin was convinced this was kindness. She gave him a name and watched over him day and night, and he clung to these things as "love". His name was not Mei-Lin, then.

As he grew his mother told him that she wanted him to be strong. Not healthy or well, but strong, and for this reason she herself had cast a vile enchantment over her nest. He alone had survived it, and she was convinced this meant that only he could bear to inherit her magic. He didn't understand, not really, not until he saw the rotten shells of the eggs that may have once been his siblings.

His mother's teachings were harsh, though not in a sense that left him with physical wounds. At the end of the day his hands were littered with burns and scuff marks, but the worst he endured was entirely within his own mind. The enchantment his mother had laid had gifted him with a strange and unfortunate ability which only excited her tutelage. Despite his otherwise unimpressive form, Mei-Lin could survive any poison or potion, brewed curse or digestible concoction. He could physically taste magic, the intent behind it and the will of the caster, and beside his mother his mouth was always filled with the taste of something nauseating.

Mei-Lin did his best to fulfill his mother's wishes, for she was all he had and the cavern she made her home all he knew. The Wasteland outside was ominous, but in its own ways inviting, and in the little time he had to himself he would often sit outside the cave and watch the horizon. His mother taught him all she knew, her potions and her spells, and he learned as best he could. When he failed she would lecture him and when he succeeded she showered him in praise. Mei-Lin never questioned her, for he was too afraid of what she might be like if she were ever angry with him.

Unlike his mother though, he was a gentle child. He didn't understand the need for curses and hexes or to learn to boil plagues in a cauldron. The blood sucking butterflies would gather around him when he collected his mother's herbs, and he made friends with the small scavengers near their home. Once, he brought home an injured rabbit, and his mother praised him for his thoughtfulness. Then she snapped its neck and told him he would begin his lessons on necromancy.

Mei-Lin began to realize his mother's "kindness" was merely self-interest, and her "love" was all in the name of fulfilling her own ideals. The punishments for not living up to her standards became harsher as time went on, and the rewards became bleaker. Much as she tried, while she could beat the spells themselves into him, the mindset to be a user of such cruel magic was just not something Mei-Lin possessed. She sent him out to collect supplies for her one evening, and he simply never returned.

He had nowhere in mind when he began to wander, but the feeling of freedom was nice and he didn't mind journeying on his own. His mouth stopped tasting like sickness, and he followed the taste of magic until he strayed from the borders of his homeland. A nomad clan took him across the Sea of a Thousand Currents, and in exchange he brewed small remedies for their sickly until he set foot on the shore. Mei-Lin wasn't sure where he was, but he was low on supplies and without them, his sickness began to return.

Still, if he was meant to die he supposed that a forest was a good a place as any. Here the magic tasted of something foreign, not wholly palatable but not unpleasant either. As days drew on he grew sicker, and with no knowledge of the fauna in this new place, there was no way for him to brew himself any sort of cure. His mother had never disclosed all her methods for keeping him well, one of many ways she kept him close to her, and so here he was at the mercy of his illness. Mei-Lin didn't mind.

He can't remember falling asleep, but he remembers waking in a warm bed surrounded by the smell of flowers. Another Pearlcatcher was there, he couldn't see who, and for a moment he feared it was his mother until she stepped into the light. She was a beautiful woman, all soft features and kind smile, nothing like his mother at all. Her voice was calming and the magic around her tasted like sweet pollen and rose petals.

Ming-Ku, the healer of the clan he lay in, told him that their Greenskeep had found him close to death in their lands. Before he could apologize, she went on to tell him that he was in no trouble, and was tasked only with getting better for now. Then, she asked him for a name, and for the first time he hesitated. He bowed his head in shame when he gave it, for the name his mother had given him was one that would be known by all to belong to a descendant of a necromancer. It tasted bitter in his mouth-- nauseating.

The healer only smiled at him, as if it meant nothing at all, and went on administering his medicine. A day turned into many, and soon his incurable illness was gone, for it had never been incurable to begin with. Another lie his mother had told him. Now he was well though, the question became where he would go and what he would do, and as if she could sense his hesitation, Ming-Ku asked just this of him. Where did he wish to take himself, and what were his goals?

He admitted he didn't know. With a name like his, where could he go? With talents like his, where could he be accepted? His knowledge of healing was so very limited, all he knew how to do was hurt, and he hated to do so. It was laughable, in his mind, that an ominous little thing like him could ever learn to help others, but he'd like to dream of it.

"You'd like to be a healer then?" Ming-Ku asked him. He told her yes, if he could. "It's difficult work, a very long apprenticeship. You'll have to start almost completely over as if you never learned anything to begin with." And that didn't sound so bad, because all his mother had taught him was how to animate skeletons and cook death in a pot, and he hated those things. He wanted to help, he wanted to be kind, it was all he ever wanted.

"Then to start, from today on, you'll be my apprentice, Mei-Lin."

And so he was. Mei-Lin would not realize it until much later, but it had never been a question in his teacher's mind whether he'd become her apprentice or not. Nocte, the clan he would come to call home, collected secrets like children collected fireflies. They had heard the murmurs from the nomadic clan of how he'd cooked up little treatments for them during their journey, had heard whispers from the Wood of how he tasted magic on his tongue. By the time he had been found, he had already been one of them.

Ming-Ku had two other apprentices besides himself, Eliana and Winter, neither of whom seemed to be anything less than delighted by his addition to their group. Their welcoming attitude was a little overbearing at times, and how well the two already got along became daunting for Mei-Lin, who had never had friends. He tried his best though, in his studies and to get along with his fellow apprentices and new teacher. He was always trying, and little by little, he was relearning.

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