Hieren Snippets

   Settling down to rest for the night, just short of arriving at Namarast, Hieren contemplates. Alektô's words... they'd shaken something loose, or perhaps nudged a lense into alignment. Some aspects of Hieren's past hadn't made as much sense as they seemed to, little pigments and brush strokes that convinced on a surface level but failed to make up the right picture, or perhaps made up a different picture when viewed at an angle.

   Hieren had heard, years ago, of a kind of painting made up of little spots that was also a trick. It looked like nothing but pretty colors close up, but from across the room it suddenly became a pond, or a forest. This feels like such a painting, the spots that said oh, I'm just healthier than average or I must have just gotten lucky or even I'm being careful so of course I'll be okay.... all combining into a picture of its own.

   Hieren knew, or should have known, that health and luck and caution can only carry you so far. They'd seen Fortune strike regardless of any of these. So why, exactly, did they think they could be the exception? They didn't get sick, sickness passed over them, perhaps they even couldn't get sick beyond the most minor colds? And yet, the momentum of perceived normalcy carried them onward. Carried them right into a situation that couldn't be normal.

   What if it were all a mistake?

   What if it wasn't a mistake at all?

   In the distance, Namarast looms.