Surabhi/Introduction

"Times may be tough, but the heaviest rains make for the healthiest crops."

I was born into the Strongheart House, though not as a...Gifted, I believe they prefer to be called. We may be a Noble house, but we are also a house of farmers and laborers, brewers and cooks, stewards of the land and of our fellow Beings; nobility or not, we all need our food and drink,

By outward appearance, Father was the head of the household. He would swagger about the fields, horns held high, bellowing out orders and commandeering tools from laggard workers to show them how it's supposed to be done--plenty of farmhands stormed off at this treatment, but those who remained viewed him as a harsh-but-fair taskmaster who would get his hands just as dirty as theirs.

But for all his bluster and brawn, I knew the true power of the household lay with Mother. Many an employee dispute was discussed over a dinner, and when I shadowed him in the fields the next day, he would put her words into action. The workers would wave to my father on his rounds, but when Mother came to inspect, they would fight to shower her with attention, and she seemed to have an infinite well of patience, indulging their attentions . Despite

Her kindness was not to be mistook for weakness, however.

It wasn't to last forever--though nothing does, does it?

Mother was known to all the local populace as something of a medicine-woman, and our guest rooms probably held more convalescents than they ever did visitors. So it was no surprise when a strange *-Being came calling, save that he looked in far worse condition than the normal patient, with lesions and sores all over his arms, and the stench of putrescence clung to him like a blanket. She laboured hard to try to revive him, spending hours making and applying poultices, and brewing every remedy she could think of, but it only seemed to accelerate the disease. Desperate, she even performed a crude amputation with a meat cleaver and clothes iron; I swear the stench of singed fur and burnt flesh haunts me still. It was all for naught, though;

She had not held much hope for the poor soul, but she still seemed shattered by her failure, and never quite seemed to recover. We worked around her, t ; as the eldest daughter, I became something of a substitute mother, helping to raise my siblings, tend to the wounds of families and workers, consult with Father on matters of