The words always come with the rain, for that is my curse. To have the opportunity to speak so rarely and wait for the whim of chance that there might be an audience to hear them.
Why do I speak now? Because the rains have come, blessing these barren mountains and giving me to chance to break the bonds laid upon me – if only I speak the truth. If I tell the tale as it was, not how my pride and your folklore wish it to be. For stories change with the telling, whether spoken aloud or not. And while my voice is only granted to me when the heavens cry, I have recounted her story again and again in my mind. And my part in it.
You who come in pilgrimage for the chance that the rains might fall when you visit, seek only the wisdom of an oracle; for was that not my role in her court? Was I not a seer and advisor? Was I not a liar and traitor? Ah, you do not know. But then you do not know who she was either. Hero or tyrant, virgin or whore, mother or daughter, queen or peasant, villain or fool? She was all these things, and none of them. She was a gift of the gods, the last female of my kind.
For centuries I have stood upon these broken hills in my eternal vigil, the ruins of a once mighty empire crumbling behind me. My only company the winds. And her voice within them. Her words torment me and entice me, for they are just an echo, and a key.
“When the immortality you prize weighs too heavy upon your shoulders, elder brother, tell the world what you did to steal the Dragonthrone. Tell them true and you will find your freedom.”
But what will happen when I do? Will this stone fall from this vile human form I have been trapped in? Will I spread my wings once more? Do my kin who survived the Doom still prosper? Would they accept me? Do I want them to?
Yes, damn her. I want to go home…
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Thank you.