Sakura Mlezziir
To start understanding my past, you must first know of those that bore me.
Many do not know, but not all Drow surround themselves with anger and murderous action. There are some who choose to worship not Lloth, but her daughter, Eilistraee, the Drow goddess of song, swordwork, hunting, the moon and beauty.
My mother was Ininidia Mlezziir, a worshipper of Eilistraee who lived beneath the earth in the caves of Olathche’el. She pretended to worship Lloth so as not to gain the suspicions of the priestess’s in her family, but she managed to slip away to worship her true goddess in the radiance of moonlight. Unfortunately, the grove in which she chose to worship was close to an Orcish settlement, and it did not take long for a group of young Orc males to discover her when they too were out prowling at night. The worship of Eilistraee requires a significant lack of clothing, and my mother was a ravishing in her own right with light ebony skin and white silken hair of a pure Drow; the Orcs saw a chance to relieve their more basic urges and then to rid the world of what they believed to be an evil Drow priestess conjuring some evil spell over the land.
The goddess Eilistraee, and perhaps the touch of fate, were on my mother’s side that night when the Orcs decided to try and take her by force. A knight, hailed by many for his brave actions over the years was passing through the area, and heard the commotion as he was on his way back to his manor house. His name was Galen Crestspire, a man over six feet and auburn features, and he quickly came to the aide of the female in need before he even had a chance to really see what she was. The Orcs were slain swiftly by the knight and the quickness of his blade before their bodies lay scattered about the grove, and Galen had turned to the woman he had helped.
A naked, unsettled, female Drow was most likely the last thing Sir Galen had been expected to see that night, I am certain; while I’m sure Ininidia did not expect a stout, handsome human knight to come to her rescue. My father, when I was very young, used to enjoy telling me that the quiet drug on some time as they both stared at each other like stunned deer, and he would just snicker when mother tapped his shoulder to scold him.
Ininidia was the first to break the quit, frankly announcing that she was not evil and meant no harm, and that he had best let her go on her way. Not so much as a pardon me or a thank you, and my father was snapped out of his bewildered quit. He moved to bar the way out of the grove, intending to question her further, but found himself enamored by her proud expression even as she stood unclothed and seemingly unafraid. He asked her instead why she had been in the grove when the Orcs interrupted her, which surprised my mother, and she answered him honestly with a smile that she had been at worship to her goddess. She was quick to explain which goddess, however, when my father’s face darkened with disgust, thinking she meant Lloth.
It is very likely that had my mother not explained completely, things would have ended badly then and there. But my father was very inquizitive and began to ask more questions, and before they knew it, the night was slipping further away as dawn crept upon the night. My mother took her leave and bade him goodnight. She was gone in a flash of ebony skin and white hair, and my father told me that he had never felt so enraptured. Whatever this feeling was, he was sure he didn’t want it to go away, and so every night he rode back out to the grove in the hopes of seeing the beautiful Drow again. And he did many times, and their feelings eventually grew into love for each other.
My mother was alarmed when, several months after their meeting, she began to show signs of pregnancy. The efforts of hiding it from her family, from my father, wasn’t meant to be, and her family revealed her secret with all the malice and hatred that Drow elves are renowned for. My mother was forced to take flight and depart the city for fear that both she and I would be slaughtered, and she was too terrified to tell my father what had happened, so frightened that he too would reject us both. She traveled hidden paths to the only place she could think would shelter her, which was Shadowfair, a home for followers of Eilistraee, various races made of this haven in the mountains. Upon hearing her tale, and hearing of the man my father was, the leader of Shadowfair immediately sent a messenger to him without my mother’s knowledge, explaining in detail the situation and asking him to come and speak with her.
From the stories I have been told, my father rode hard for many days and nights, nearly killing his trusted warhorse in the process, to get to us to make sure we were truly safe. When my mother saw him, she was humbled, but my father didn’t pause as he sprang from his horse and took my mother in his arms, refusing to let her go until she revealed to him the entire story. It was at that point, before all of the followers of Eilistraee, that my father fell to one knee and brazenly professed his love for my mother, begging her with all his heart to marry her. She said ….. yes.
