Skytouch

Releasing the bundle of brittle bones from talons that quaked slightly, Skytouch thrust her head upward. Her eyes closed in a half trance as she inhaled the smoke twining its way from the altar. How would she know? How had her mother known? Sides quivering, Skytouch continued to look into the night as several pairs of glowing eyes trained on her.

From the moment she hatched, Skytouch was made aware of her destiny. The product of an unlikely union between the shaman of Tva'Kadith and a wandering dragon, her fate was proclaimed as she tumbled from her egg. Born with two sisters, the first memory she shaped her pearl with was their leaving. One was chosen by the Plague Mother, the other found her wings and the succor of another clan. Skytouch, however, was different. She had a seer's eyes and the protection of the Plague Mother writ across her body.

She learned the ways of magic at her mother's side, holding bowls and gathering herbs as best as she was able. All the time she worried. She'd never heard the Mother's voice, or felt Her presence. The only mother that ever spoke to her was Khafeera, the one whose eyes had met hers when she'd hatched. The light of the Wandering Contagion began to burn and sting her eyes, so she donned a hood. Now when she walked among the faithful of Tva'Kadith, they murmured and turned to look at her. She would gaze back at them, her fractured and shadowed regard filling even the most devout with a strange sense of ill defined dread.

Still her own power did not come. Now she was able to make small infusions and concoctions for members of the clan. She knew the words to say before igniting an offering before the shrines, knew the blessings to speak before and after a hunt. There was something that eluded her, however. A current she was not able to swim, but which her mother dwelt inside. She did not seek her mother's wisdom, nor was she offered it. None in Tva'Kadith seemed the wiser, though Cadelus, the clan's leader, watched her thoughtfully from time to time.

Then came the Dream Night. Skytouch had always had vivid dreams, though she could seldom remember their contents upon waking. This night was different. She strode a shifting landscape that was somehow warm underfoot. It heaved as she struggled for purchase, climbing up and up into a forest of bones that tore at her wings and bloodied her feet. A great bright circle came alight before her, the largest bonfire ever struck, and its regard swiveled until it found her.

"You." The voice filled her bones and she could feel it burst her heart. She came awake, every line of energy, every whisper of the world around her pouring into her skull. Breathing raggedly, she got to her feet to await the audience with Cadelus that she knew was coming. Khafeera had gone to serve the Plague Mother. She knew because she felt her mother's absence in a way she would not have been able to before the sun had gone down the day before.

She knew a great many more things, now. She knew what the Plague Mother sounded like, for instance. The Mother whispered to her as a fellow dragon might, telling her things that she would not have known otherwise. She knew that her mother, in leaving, had transferred all of the shaman's magic to her and that as long as she lived it was hers to keep. Should she bear children of her own that were marked as she was, they would take the magic with her passing. If they were not marked and she passed it, it would kill them.

One evening (day? night?), she found herself pulled into a sort of dreamy netherworld that she didn't quite comprehend. However, she felt that she had been drawn there for a purpose. She found herself ensnared in an encounter with a creature that she knew in her heart of hearts it was better not to meddle with. Against every judgement, her desire for more power won out over her caution and she has pledged herself to a cause and a being that she does not truly understand in any way at all. For better or worse in her case and in the case of all the faithful of Tva'Kadith, she has struck a new path. She has declined to mention this to any of the other members of the clan, of course. It is her vain hope that she can keep this dragon at bay, and keep him from the lives of the dragons she is bound to protect.

Skytouch remains the shaman for Tva'Kadith. To the clan's supplicants and even to Cadelus and Hel, she is erstaz and strange by virtue of her place and magic. However, she is somewhat more approachable than her mother had been, having a serene nature and friendliness that has a hesitant quality. While she is very in tune with a plane of being that most around her can't feel, some of her rather unearthly nature is purposeful affectation that she cultivates to seem more mysterious. It is also a facade she dons in situations where she is not entirely confident in her skills. She is, foremost, an empath and able to pick up and manipulate the currents of emotion around her. With the prisoners of Tva'Kadith she is implacable and shows no mercy, channeling the fear and hatred they emanate into her own magic to give it a feel that most non-Plague dragons would consider sinister.