Exhibit 16: "Shadow Touched"

Back in Lunaris, we saw a play called Light Line.

The fantastically bitchy Princess Kelkalyn Nightspirit played the principal role, as Harvest herself. Maybe "Life" really is a better way to refer to her this time, since the play was about the creation of the world, but it don't matter. I'm gettin' sick of the nicknames anyway.

This was right after we got our asses handed to us in a pit fight—another story—so I'd gotten all the heebie-jeebies out of my system through the adrenaline and was ready to settle in for a nice, relaxing, turn-your-brain-off sort of affair. That was not what we got; her performance was beautiful. Brought a damn tear to my super-tough eye.

I'll sum it up for ya.

Light and Dark rose from the ocean of nothingness. Light created Life, who wanted warmth for her world. Dark decidedly did not want this. Light and Dark fought, and are ultimately still fighting—that's why we have the continuous day and night cycle—and ultimately, Life got her wish.

But something happened a long time after that—only about thirteen hundred years ago, if we can believe the books. There was a group of people who hated the gods so much that they tore them from the heavens and shackled them into physical bodies.

A few of those bodies had children. Apparently, one of the ones who did had an amount of control over her descendant's body, because she popped back in and had another kid, 'bout fifty years ago by Mama June's guess at the look of her. When I showed her the picture later, she confirmed it. Then, that kid had me.

I'd… probably known what I was for a while. That play had told me—that mirror had told me. I didn't wanna think about it, but all I could do after the fight was over was think. Hell, Harvest herself confirmed it when we crushed those gems under our heels and went to her realm to give the damn Scythe back. She called me a "legacy." Those are all the words I'm allowing her here—this is my damn show, not hers.

Welp, that's what I painted. Purple lighting, a woman in a crow mask holdin' her grandbaby by the scruff of his neck. Felt like she'd visited me in dreams since I was that little, and only now I could see it wasn't Harvest.

Tell you what—it sure as hell wasn't Light.

GALLERY OF FORTUNE SIMPLECREEK—RECEIPT—9/18/1316

EXHIBIT #16: "SHADOW TOUCHED" SOLD TO TALAEDRA NIGHTSPIRIT (1,000 GP)