Totora

The 11th September, 690

Rebecca…

It seems odd to me that I find myself wanting to write you after all these years. For sure I cannot even send you this letter, because you are lost to me. So much has happened since I last saw you. The man I once was is now dead, but you still haunt me. So many days I wondered what would have happened if I had just managed to meet you... but no, the past is still the past...

How long ago is the past though? I have forgotten how many years it has been. For my part I am almost sure that I am 28 years of age, but sometimes I feel so much older. At night I feel stiff and tired and can barely move, and then I close my eyes and your face comes to haunt me... I do not know why I continue to live. I think that maybe I will not live much longer, because the future seems so much more cloudy.

When I was still a child the future had no boundaries. I sometimes thought that I could see through all the ages, though it always ended with death. I could never see past someone's death, and barely ever could see my own future. Of course back then everything was different, and I had my mother and father and I had you.

We met so long ago and yet I still remember the exact moment that I first saw you. I was only 10 at the time, you were 8… and still as beautiful as ever. You and your father had just moved there…You were the first girl I had ever seen with red hair, and it shone like fire in the sun. I can remember staring at you in absolute wonderment and thinking for the first time that the present was the only thing worth considering.

My mother liked telling me about you two.'They from South,' she would say in her thick accent. 'As close to South you can be without being Southlander.' My mother… it has been a while since I have thought of her. Half Irarian and raised there, when she found someone who did not quite belong she connected with them readily. And that is how we met; she almost forced me to play with you.

It was nice to finally have a friend who did not fear me, of course your father never approved.

If there is one thing I never truly understood about your father is his extreme hatred towards me. I sometimes find myself thinking about all the reasons he had to hate me. I was a quarter Irarian. I could tell fortunes. We were betrothed. I once broke a few of his corn stacks as we played… However did all these really add up to what he did to me? What he did to us?

Sometimes I pass around the possibility that there was more to his hatred than I could ever fathom, but I try to forget that because there's no possible way that I can ever discover it now. My past will remain my past and these questions will remain unanswered until the end of my days.

I almost wish I had died as well as… well, as well.

Perhaps I should not be thinking such horrid things, it is just that sometimes I do not know why I bother to go on living. I have no one and nothing. My mother used to tell me that my ancestors were meant to help. That they had even saved the world once, long before there were countries and wars and differences… and now I find myself killing for a living and I just do not understand why I bother.

When I killed a man for the first time, I did it out of necessity - as you might recall. My mind told me that there was simply no way out of it... but after a while when I would just kill for the kill, I admitted to myself what I was really doing. Why I do not stop is beyond me. Sometimes I rather like killing a man or a woman. Their screams, their flesh, their blood… I love the idea that I can actually control what I see... That the future is mine to control. I am not a spectator, but an actor.

Oh there are indeed times like these that I am glad you are not with me. Jonathon is dead.

I have not used that name since we last saw each other. In fact, I think it was you who last called me that, and of course it was you who first called me Totora.

'Totora.' You called me. 'Fly Tiger.'

'Fly.'

Did you mean to say 'Great'? 'Tatora'?

I never did remember to ask you, although I remembered to tease you about it for a month. I suppose this was another reason your father had to hate me for.

'Why are you teaching her Irarien? Are you insane?' He came to our door and began to yell at my mother. He is very lucky my mother was in a good mood the day he said that to her. Instead she just stopped teaching you, and me. She wanted me to fit in terribly.

After that things did get better for a while, did they not? I remember your father would still watch us like a hawk, but he stayed away. He let us be together. Those days were good, when we used to run through the fields and climb the trees and not a thing in the world could bother us.

You never asked me to tell you your future, you must have been the only person who did not. I never thanked you for that. If I had known, or if you had known, what was in store for us... well, I often wonder if you would not have left me then. You could have had a life for yourself indeed, maybe you could have married and had children but instead... No, you might have suffered more.

Oh there is no use talking about all this to a piece of paper, but there is no one I can speak with.

When I was around 13 years-old things changed too fast for us. After ten years of my predictions I suppose people became infatuated with the thought of learning their fortunes and misfortunes and I suddenly knew that life would never be in my control. There were so many days then when we sat together and I would try and see my future and when I could not and the whole world would seem to float away from me, you could always bring me back with your smile.

I knew then that I must have been in love with you.

Then my father died and my poor mother was left all alone. I do not think we were ever truly close. For many years I had known their fates, and maybe that's why I avoided getting too close to them. My mother's heart withered away until she was nothing but an empty shell. Her only solace was when you would come by and give her flowers.

Not even you could keep her in this world although, and when she died several months later like I knew she would, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was alone. It is odd when I think about it, after all, I knew what would happen, and yet when it did I was still not ready for it.

Living by myself with the hordes knocking on my door began to tear at my mind. I think I might have died along with parents if it were not for you. Every day you would sneak me out of my house and we would spend hours walking and holding hands. We did not need to speak, you and I, we just needed to be together.

There were so many nights that I would cry to myself. I felt so useless. I could not save anyone, and I could not see how my path would turn out. Those people outside, I knew were doomed. Their fate was sealed, because once you know your future, you cannot escape it. I knowingly doomed them because they were the only people whom I could take my frustrations out on.

Half way through my life and already my mind was becoming a rotten thing, and yet still you stayed and brought me flowers and told me jokes and brought me to life with your own. Through all those long days though I could never bring myself to thank you as much as you deserved, maybe you knew. Maybe you knew me better than myself, and when you kissed me for the first time... Oh I tell myself never to question that, because it was a moment in time that I relive so often.

The way our hearts beat as one and time seemed to slow down, knowing that we had so little left. There was no longer a Rebecca Pierce and a Jonathon. We had become one... but even that moment had to end. Your beautiful pale blue eyes had to pull back and then you smiled and I smiled back and it seemed like the world would become better from then on.

In the end... it only got worse.

-Totora

(Ok Jirale fans! Let me explain this a little bit. Last year I started writing a whole bunch of short stories around my great and dear WebComic 'Jirale' and started writing this little story. The reason why I'm writing a back story for Totora and none of the others *well, Nina/Ursula's back story is in the comic* is because when writing character bios for everyone I got to Totora and asked myself, well what do I know about him? He can't speak and he uses an (J)Irarien weapon and has a power that only decedents of Jirale should have. Almost instantly I had his back story and it really interested me and also bugged me that nobody would know it and think of Totora as a very boring and nearly pointless character. So I sat down and wrote some and now a year later I've returned to it determined to finish it and well, it is for all you fans! Now maybe you guys'll love Totora as much as I do *LOVE HIM!!! LOVE HIM!!!*. Oh, and there should be six chapters - letters - in total, all should be the same length)