Reynira's Background
Cloaked by the darkness and the canopy of trees, Reynira observes the group of men surrounding the hovel she had called home until just this eve. As they surrounded it with their flickering torches, she looked down at her companion.
"Bastards... just because I'm a witch." She snorts, her breath frosting before her.
"I may have a touch of evil in my bones... but I'd never kill a child." Firelight reflected in the ghostly gray of her eyes as the flames grew taller amidst the shouting of the townsfolk.
"Ahhh... let it burn. I have all I need."
The witch pulled her cloak up further over her silvery hair. No sense taking any chances in being spotted. She'd gone to too much trouble to fake her demise to be seen watching her own death.
"Hush now," she says to the little one beside her. "They'll hear us."
Her thin lips twist into a grin as she regards him. "You're just lucky I found you when I did. Why, your skin would have been as black as Elsulv's soul!"
Cackling quietly, she ran her finger over the top of his head.
"Thirty odd years I've lived in that hovel. Oh yes! That long. Can't say I'm sad to see it go. I was ready to move on."
She looked back at the flames dancing within the hut's interior. "Wasn't mine anyway."
Pulling a piece of dried beef from her pack, she offers her new friend a bit before biting off a piece for herself, chewing as she spoke.
"Belonged to a merciless harridan of a human.. purveyor of the black arts, she was. Took possession of me fresh from my mother's womb."
She nods to the one beside her. "Oh yes! Most unwanted I was, from the tales that hellhag would fill my head with. 'A shame and disgrace,' she said. 'I should be grateful for her kindness,' she said. Kindness! I've known greater kindness in the groping hands of that fat slob of an innkeeper. At least he paid me well."
Reynira scoffed, looking up to the moon through the treeline.
"She chained me up, you know," she remarked, looking down at her companion. "Oh yes! Chained me to my bed at night, and to the table when she'd leave me there alone. Tried to escape, I did, on one of her such outings. She caught me. I was but 7 autumns."
The half-elf reflected on that for a moment. It seemed so long ago, yet she could remember it as if it had only been this morn. She'd been beaten within an inch of her life that day.
"That's why she chained me up," she continued. "Didn't want her little slave escaping."
She rubbed the groves permanently etched in her ankle - a souvenir of her shackles - and smiled evilly.
"That chain went to her grave with her. That, and that despicable cat o' nine tails she flogged me with at will."
She looked down at the small one. "I must show you the scars," she remarked offhandedly.
"I killed her. Killed her with her own poisonous brew. She thought me stupid, you see. Oh - I let her think it, yes."
She circled her finger in the air as if stirring an imaginary pot.
"But I watched - oh I watched. And I learned. And when she'd leave, I'd practice. Couldn't do much of course, else she'd know," she explained. "And then... well you can just imagine. But I learned."
Her glassy orbs twinkled in twisted mirth. "You should have seen the look on her face when I asked her how her soup tasted."
Reynira laughed deviously. "First words she'd ever heard me say, you see. Thought I was dumb." She snorts. "I just had nothing to say to the old crow."
She looks down to her comrade with a crooked smile. "'Cept those three words."
"'How's your soup?'"
Relaxing back against the rock facing, she crosses her legs. "Yeah, she knew she was done for."
"Maybe this bunch will find her bones." She gestures in the direction of the firestarters. "Or *my* bones, as they'll think."
"How stupid am I now, you old hag?" She snorts out a short laugh.
"I didn't kill the boy, though. Honest I didn't. I could never do something so horrid. Slept with his father, though. Now there's a man who could...." She looks over into a pair of small black eyes. "Ah, you don't need to know that."
Seeing the number of avengers dwindling, she stands silently and dusts herself off.
"Looks like they've nearly finished their dirty work. We should take our leave, eh pet?" Lifting him up, she looks at him as if for his opinion.
"Mayhaps we should drop by the Broken Bow on our way.. one last dance before we leave Lurkwood. Hmm? That fat bastard owes me money."
She snorts at her own attempt at humor. "That's coin I'll never see."
Gingerly, she places the newt into the pocket of her crimson robes. "I'm not stupid, remember?"