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[Xana]

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Xana sat before the vanity in the rented room, peering at herself in the mirror and wondering how it came to be that she found herself at the age of twenty-seven, alienated from her family, and with very few people she would be quick to label as friends. The gypsy looked at the array of silver charms waiting to be woven into her hair, and then back to the mirror. Looking at the circles forming beneath her eyes from the stress of recent months, and a lack of sleep partially induced by chronic nightmares, she forced herself to reflect back on the journey that so far had been her life.

Her mind presented her with a series of images, thrown at her in rapid succession and without mercy now that memories have been given a chance to surface. She saw her childhood, spent mostly at the gypsy camp in Minoc; there were memories of a grandmother who lived among her family, memories of her siblings. The memories paused on a particularly happy visit to relatives who lived on the lands of Ilshenar. Xana briefly relived the pain of her grandmother’s death, quickly followed by the images of herself packing up her few meager belongings and fleeing the camp rather than marry the man her parents arranged for her to wed. Xana’s eyes flashed angrily in the gloom of the single candle’s reflection in the mirror as she remembered the pain and sadness of leaving home just months shy of her sixteenth birthday.

It was in the days just after her flight from her home that Xana decided that she would do everything in her power to be everything that most gypsies were not. She resolved that she would not become what she called a ‘baby machine’, and give of herself easily to men who would have her and produce children she could not afford to give the good things in the world; she thought to herself, “If I ever have children, they will have a better life than I had at home.” Spirited drinks were out of the question: there were reasons so many of the ‘others’ as the gypsies called people not of their breeding had their negative stereotypes. Xana knew how the world tended to see gypsies. They were often seen as non-people, often below the sight of the law. Crimes against her people were never brought to justice, though the law was quick to look to the camps when certain types of crimes were reported. The girl resolved to be educated, no matter what type of effort it took. Thanks to the kindness of a traveling merchant her family had known, she had rudimentary reading and writing skills.

Thus began a long and arduous journey. Having been gifted by the gods with a talent for music, Xana would study with the known bards of the land every opportunity she had. During these years, Xana took all the jobs she could to raise gold so she could seek education. She scrubbed floors, washed laundry, herded livestock, mucked stalls; the manner of work did not matter to her so long as it was honest. Her goal of studying on Verity Isle was eventually met, after several years of struggling at small schools. By the time she was twenty years of age, her education was as complete as it could become without dedicating herself to the life of a scholar. Truly, it was music that held her heart. With a small bankroll to tide her over, she set about refining her musical talents and building her wealth as she learned. The day to day, week to week, and month to month struggles of her self-induced independence began to have an unfortunate side-effect that until recently, Xana herself was aware of: she had begun to develop anxiety disorders, often accompanied by bouts of serious emotional and physical tension.

Somehow the years between finishing her school and the present slipped by quietly and for the most part uneventfully. There were minor scuffles along the way, as all lives tend to have happen.

Not long after her twenty-sixth birthday, Xana found her self enamored of a paladin, a man she’d known for a while but never realized she had feelings for until seeing him at a festival in which many people made merry. She went away from the festival that long ago night enchanted. The next morning’s light quickly reminded her that ‘good’ men never marry gypsies. “Outsiders” used gypsy women, often to an ill end. They didn’t sweep her kind off their feet and provide that sought after fairy-tale ending. For over a year Xana kept her feelings secret, barely even admitting them to herself. Then there was a series of events that brought her the misfortune of becoming poisoned by an unknown assailant. In the weeks following, the person charged with protecting Xana mortally embarrassed her by confronting the gentleman of her fondness about his intent with her, when he had come to visit her during her recovery. Perhaps the protector didn’t know of the secrecy she surrounded her adoration with, perhaps it was an intended push--apparently, in the throes of incoherency while suffering at the work of the poison, Xana rambled about this love of hers. Regardless, her feelings were laid bare, exposed for all present that night to see.

In the months since that horrifying night, Xana has spent a good deal of time in the company of her paladin friend. However, her anxiety and poor self image often win the ongoing struggle of her emotions, and she finds herself doubting and often thinking that she was right all along: girls like her never get a fairy tale ending, even if their chastity and virtues have remained intact and she has proven that she is a viable and decent member of the Sosarian community. As time goes on, without realizing what is happening, Xana is sinking into a depression that is trapping her both physically and mentally.

With a sigh, Xana looked deeply into the mirror of the vanity where she sat, caught up in so much memory. Seeing the woman who was becoming a stranger to herself, she resolved to take the advice of her paladin friend, and do her best to repatriate herself with her gypsy kin. The sigh barely gone from her lips, she forced an anxious smile and affixed a charmed silver bracelet to her ankle.


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An artist is a creature driven by demons ~Faulkner