Reedsong

Reedsong enjoyed life. It was carefree and limitless. Life as a bard was always like that.

She hadn't come from some broken clan, oh no. In fact, her clan was thriving somewhere in the Windswept Plateau, thriving on the blustery winds that blew through the bamboo shoots that seemed to appear everywhere.

Reedsong had never liked the Plateau. While everyone else claimed that it felt nice running through their feathers, Reedsong would twitch and say that it was ruffling and ruining her feathers. While other's said that the bamboo stalks gave them shelter and shade, Reedsong would groan and say that it blocked out the warm, warm sun.

So she left. It was coming, of course. No one would say that Reedsong was particularly happy in the Plateau. No one would say that she found anything interesting or worthwhile there. She was far more interested in the songs that the winds carried, more interested in where they had come from.

So she left to follow them.

It had seemed a simple quest, then, to find the source of the songs. It wasn't.

She had traveled for what seemed like years with nothing but a melody and a wolf pelt to keep herself warm. She hummed the tune that seemed to drift along the wind. Overtime, she began to gain coin through her melodies and her songs, songs that she still did not really know.

Reedsong was beginning to tire, beginning to feel as though it was all for naught as she walked across the land, across the Sea of a Thousand Currents, where the songs were muffled by the crashing of waves; across the Tangled Forest, where the songs were strangely silent and swallowed up by the great trees; across Dragonhome, where the songs were overshadowed by the great mourning of the Earthshaker.

Finally, finally, she arrived at the Wasteland. Reedsong stared at the desolate landscape. There was no wind here, no lovely tune carried on the breeze. There was the stench of rot and death and despair. There was no sound of happy laughter, no sound of singing.

She was prepared to leave, prepared to find the end of the trail. She took an unsteady step backwards, away from the eerie quiet that seemed to blanket the realm when she heard it.

The tune she had been chasing was coming from somewhere in this dying land.

Reedsong frowned. How could a melody like that come from a land where the stench of rot overpowered everything and anything?

She walked forward, glancing at the rotting carcasses and overarching bones that doted the landscape. There was little breeze, little life. The roots that littered the landscape looked horrendously twisted, as if someone had jammed them into the cracks of the earth without a care.

The tune continued to get louder as she walked. It was then that she felt the breeze.

It was coming from the Wyrmwound, she realized. It was the cries of those that lived on the edge of some great abomination, the cries of those that were hanging onto life in a place that did not foster it.

And it was beautiful.

Reedsong would later look back on it and assume she should have been disgusted and repulsed. But she had made it her quest to find the source and she had found it. No matter how twisted the origin, by the time it reached her ears, it was glorious.

So she sang.

She walked the landscape, singing along with the tune that had been running through her head for days and days on end. A few creatures poked their heads up at the sound of some strange coatl singing to the tune of the cries.

Reedsong arrived at the clan in this way, singing in her old coatl tongue. Luckily, there were quite a few coatls, who all turned to stare at the foreigner as she approached.

A fae and spiral approached her, eyes hidden beneath hoods. She clamped her mouth shut, realizing she had accidentally intruded upon another's land.

She waited to be tossed out or killed.

Instead, they remarked upon her ability to turn something beautiful, something that was not meant to be. They remarked upon her voice, though grating to their ears, that seemed to flow with some kind of melody.

So they welcomed her in, as their bard, who sang to the tune of the dying.

-Bio by FloatingInSpace