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When you were a child, barely tall enough to reach the doorknob of your interior front door, and when you should have certainly lacked the grip strength to turn the knob at all, you slipped out of your house when your parents weren’t looking.
It wasn’t because they weren’t paying attention, it wasn’t for any sort of horrible reason. From what you can recall, you just really wanted to see the flowers in the field next to your house and they wouldn’t take you.
Hill Home was never a particularly unsafe place, with its homes nestled into the sides of hills and the general and genuine friendly attitude of every person who lived there. The monsters that could be found in the harshest corners of Bahumia never tried to breach the town at all. So, there was never really anything to worry about over you running away.
You can’t imagine that particular fact did anything to reassure your parents in the moments between them realizing you were gone and when they finally found you, relaxed as could be, lying on your stomach in the field of flowers, watching them dance in the wind.
You don’t remember much about that day, but you were always drawn to that particular field of flowers afterwards.
You just became better about telling people it was where you were headed.
You loved living in Hill Home, with your wonderful parents and your incredible friends. Everyone there was so kind. You never really wished to be anywhere else. Bahumia seemed vast and incredible, but it was never somewhere you felt a calling to explore.
As time passes, you gain a better grasp on the world. Eventually, when you understand the threats that loom in the Whisperwood and that things are not always simple in Asmodea, you start to feel an itch under your skin, just out of reach.
But also just enough to overwhelm you.
For years, the place you would run when you felt scared or bothered or unsettled was that same field of flowers. As a touchstone of sorts, a place you would always feel safe.
When the itch becomes unbearable, you find yourself there. Wishing. Hoping. Begging that something in the weeds and flowers, in the bees and crickets, in the petals and pollen and the breeze would lift you out of whatever this terrifying feeling is.
If nothing else, the flowers themselves calm you down a little. And you feel a bit more at peace. Less like something is trying to unmake you from the inside.
The wind picks up as you close your eyes to breathe it all in. And a flash of warm lights burns through your closed eyelids, too close and too bright.
You open your eyes quickly, terrified. In front of you is a halfling man, a little bit taller than your father, with impressively ornate armor and antlers covered in flowers sprouting from his head.
At once you realize that this person, this entity in front of you, is the thing that kept you safe the first time you came out to the field on your own. He’s what’s been keeping you safe every time you come here.
You meet his eyes cautiously, ready to begin some sort of half-thought, barely coherent thanks, when he speaks.
“How’s it going, kid?” His tone is soft, but there’s an unfathomable amount of power pouring out of his skin. Something in the back of your mind tells you that you should be terrified.
“Good?” You say it like it’s a question, and the fact that it’s a lie feels bitter on your tongue.
“Something’s eating at you, right? You’re worried about not doing enough?”
You just nod, overwhelmed by the completely accurate read of your thoughts.
“But you’re also safe here. Comfortable,” He continues, stating facts, not asking questions anymore. “I get that. I promise you I get that. But it’s when you embrace the discomfort that you learn the most you can about yourself, I think.”
“I just - “ You stutter, uncertain. “I don’t want to fail at this. It’s all too important.”
You don’t quite know how to articulate what you mean. What, exactly, is too important. Why you don’t want to fail. He hums in agreement anyway.
“Failure is how you learn to grow. A flower that dies because of the wind learns to grow a stronger stem to survive. You take what happens and you learn from it, kid. That’s just how life goes.” He says, with an absolute confidence that settles something deep within you. “And I can help you with that.”
“You can?” You’re used to feeling small, it’s a natural thing given your stature. This conversation makes you feel, for once, small for something other than your build. Your presence feels small compared to whomever this is in front of you.
“I can. Let’s make a deal, kid. You help the world, you go out there and you see what’s wrong, and you do your best to fix it, even if you fail,” At your slight nod, he continues, “And I’ll give you some power to help with that.”
“Okay. What do you - “ Your follow up is cut off by a flash of green light and a warmth washing over you. You blink and he’s gone.
It takes you a second to realize he must have been some sort of god. And that you have absolutely no idea what you just agreed to.
Two days later, when, for the first time in your life and without you trying, magical fire flies from your fingertips when the matchbook is being particularly stubborn, it all starts to make a little more sense.
You make the hardest decision of your life when you finally, finally, leave home to do something with this new magic you feel like you somehow lucked into. The itch beneath your skin settles for the first time in months when you finally breach the boundaries of what is officially considered Hill Home.
You enroll in school, in the Gladeholm University of Magic. Your application has to sound strange, because you really aren’t sure how your magic manifested at all. The small smile you get from the headmaster, a blond elf with a hint of mischief in his eyes, as you tell the story makes you think he’s heard this one before, somehow.
He escorts you to the Warlock dorms, with the other people whose magic is closest to yours in its source.
Those other students are, largely, terrifying. However they got their magic feels scary somehow, like they were used in order to end up with the power they have.
You eventually, and when you’re looking for it, find people who have experiences closer to yours. The magic offered as more of a gift. Something to help the world continue to exist and function.
Occasionally, and without your knowledge as to how, you’ll be able to hear the heartbeats of some of them. With those people, their magic isn’t exactly like yours, one of them is fierce and full of righteous anger, the other has such compassion and a need to spread an unfettered amount of love. But you know the moment you meet them that, somehow, they’re yours.
That whomever that was in the flowers knows the entities they got their magic from. There’s a reassurance in that knowledge. And a calming presence to their heartbeats in your ears.
When the three of you leave school, together, you finally have the chance to see exactly what Bahumia has to offer.
It takes a bit, but eventually, you stop being scared. You stop feeling like leaving home might have been the wrong choice. You start to feel free. And like you’re helping people.
There are plenty of people who need your help.
Because you weren’t exactly wrong about the world outside of Hill Home being a scary place. You just were wrong about not having a role in fixing that.
You develop an affinity for the smaller villages, the ones people seem to tend to neglect. You help them raise their voices, become heard. Make sure people in the bigger cities know to listen when you are there, too.
It seems like children seem to flock to you. Somehow, you always have a silly song to teach them within reach, some of which you swear you’ve never heard in your life. It makes your friends laugh, every time, but they know the words, too.
A lot of your life now seems surreal. Like you have instincts for things, for the world itself, that you never quite learned, but know inside and out.
The strangest occurrence is when you find the Crick. You know that they moved it to a demiplane years ago, that it’s nearly impossible to find if you don’t know where to look. But one day, you’re traveling through the Living Wood after wrapping up a small quest for one of the dragon elf factions, when there’s a light buzzing in your ears and something like a magnet pulling you in a direction you hadn’t planned to walk.
It’s pulling at your friends, too. Which helps reassure you, but is still slightly terrifying.
A sense of ease you never knew you could feel washes over you the second you step through the portal that appears seconds later.
The Crick is beautiful. There are simply so many flowers and plants and critters there, you nearly get lost cataloguing them all and attempting to press as many as you can into your notebook.
You’re at home here, somehow. Your friends even moreso. It’s confusing, certainly, and you almost want to ask someone about it.
Before you can even finish having the thought, the MeeMaw walks up to you and grins. You’re confused, scared she’s going to kick you out, worried that taking the small floral clippings has violated some sort of law. Instead she gathers the three of you and finally, finally, explains where your magic is from.
And that the Titans of Bahumia, those people who saved the world and then kept saving it enough to become gods themselves, had always considered the Crick to be their home. So of course you, as someone who got magic from one of them, would, too.
It’s easier to explore the world after that. To help people. Because you finally know why you’re doing it. And what, exactly, you agreed to in that field.
You know now what you have to do. Or, more specifically, why you have to keep doing what you already have been doing.