Bitter Is The Wine Of My Sorrow
Or an answer to those blasted cretins who will try to cheer me up.

Centuries have passed, along with them countless hours, minutes and seconds. I have long ceased keeping track for I find each coming day dreary and unwanted. It is but more time for me to remember my sorrows and regrets before I can pass into that brief escape of dreamless sleep, hoping that maybe tomorrow I will not wake. That is, I know, just wishful thinking.

Mara, they call me, the meaning of my name encapsulating that very feeling that pervades me: bitter. I care not what others may say of me, accusing me of being wrapped up in myself, wallowing in my sorrows. They are my sorrows to wallow in and if I do not choose to be a cheerful optimist, that is my right and those self-righteous idiots who try to stuff what they think is needed advice down my throat would do well to leave me alone.

I like my anger, I revel in my cynicism for it is easier than dealing with the pain of past memories. My tears have all fallen a long, long time ago and I have none left to shed. What reason would I have to cry, you ask? Recounting all that has happened in my life would probably bring you to think that martyrdom was my destiny for all the suffering in it. Someone will inevitably start expounding on the ultimate truths: everyone suffers, pain is a given as are occasional sorrows and little glimpses of happiness. There are those who have felt less or feel more so why, Mara, can’t you just let go, they tell me and just embrace those glimpses and allow yourself to be happy? Call me contrary but I am not going to, so there.

Before you accuse me for being sorry for myself and boring everyone in the process, let me but remind you that I do not say I have suffered more than anyone, nor do I wish my dark past should be your preoccupation and when the time has come for me to heal from my wounds, it shall come to pass and no amount of your insufferable prodding will make it happen faster.

Every story has a beginning as does mine. On a plane far away from here, I was born to an elven mother and a human father. My mother made quite a show of it, giving up her immortality and kindred to wed my father, a human and atypical anti-social mage. She had quite made up her mind that she was in love with him. It was a good thing that he did love her, though he wasn’t much for declarations of passion and whatnot.

My childhood was for the most part, quiet and uneventful. Being an only child, my parents did dote on me and were pleased enough when I started showing signs of magic at an early age. My father trained me as a mage, actually pleased to have me surpass him in skills while my mother taught me the arts of healing and of divination, so you could say I had a well-rounded education.

Family bliss wasn’t meant to be long-lived. At seventeen years of age, I was too late to stop a demon from claiming my father’s life. I killed it but not before it had killed Father. What he never knew was that the demon was my mother’s lover before him. She had fled from him years before and Father had taken her in. She had never told him of that fiend, not wanting Father to leave her out of revulsion. He never would have, I knew, for father loved her, loved her without reservation and would have forgiven her anything. The only other thing he loved as much was me but that was little consolation now that he was dead and my mother broken, in heart, mind and spirit.

What seemed the best thing to do was to seek refuge with Mother’s kin. Understandably, they weren’t as keen to accept her or me, for that matter. Needing reassurance that I wasn’t actually a child of the monster my mother had run off with in the first place, they made me undergo painful and humiliating rituals and tests. I will not speak of them but to say they had left in me little love for the elves. When they were certain I hadn’t a drop of demon blood in me, they still shunned me. I was after all, the daughter of she who consorted with demons and a mage of whose character they had no knowledge, no redeeming traits they could attribute to me.

Mercifully, Mother died not six months after her husband. Somehow, news of my father’s death had reached the ears of his family, people who I had no knowledge of. It seemed Father was of a powerful line of mages, the Halderean Magi, respected, feared and with an inconvenient hatred of elves. I now understood why Father had never told us of his family or had us meet with them. My parents both rebelled against familiaral traditions and left me to deal with the consequences of their actions.

My father’s kin insisted that I was to be released to their care while though the elves did not want me, they weren’t about to give me up so easily, either. Although it was rather flattering to be fought over, I made the decision not to take sides and went into seclusion, far away from the madness of what regrettably was supposed to be my family.

Love had been the cause of the mess that was my life and I foolishly made the vow that would bring that sickness to me, by promising to myself that I would not be ensnared by Cupid’s vile arrows.

“Demon lover’s daughter?”

He had said it with a sneer, as way of greeting when he had come to my part of the wood. O, what is that tendency in the female psyche to yearn for what is bad for them? Eldar, I knew, was probably the worst choice of mate I could have chosen, if not the most beautiful. I could not call him handsome because that term could not have done him justice. He made me feel misgivings over my own looks with his long flaxen hair and skin as translucent and soft as moonlight. He was my only lover but never had he ever been anything near a friend.

Pursuing me was a game for him and it pleased him to find that I was as adept at playing as he was, wielding the wiles of women, harnessing the attraction of my own charms, made myself enticing to his desires while also keeping his mind intrigued. It was exhilirating and exhausting but in the end, I lost. Stupidly I had fallen for him and he knew it as well. He did love me but nowhere near as much as I loved him. I would have walked on the tips of flaming spears to be with him but he would not stay with me when fierce and bloody war broke out between his kin and those of my father’s.

A child was born from our union and here is where the tale reaches its lowest point. Being caught in the middle, they had both resolved that if they could not get me on their side they would slay me before I would join the other. I could not guarantee my babe’s safety, I could not bear the thought of her also being caught in this madness and so, my child was slain by my own hand. I have regretted my rashness ever since.

Eldar knows not of his daughter and of her fate. I have told no one of what I have done, sure they would not have the heart to forgive me when I have never been able to forgive myself. I have wandered the planes to seek redemption for my soul and to piece the broken edges of my soul together. Centuries have come and gone, still I have not found the solace I yearn for while I remain, forever, Mara, the bitter and the barren.

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