From the Sanitarium: Fly Away

By Gallus Sarano

Lillet was one of my first patients, a Spinner from Valenwood - a priestess of the Wood Elves. For nearly a century before she came into my care, she traveled across her people’s homeland, tending to their wounds, their needs, and telling their stories that they might find strength from their past.

For the last few years of that time however, she was tending to the obligations of family. But where others might return to a town they had once abandoned to care for an elder, the one Lillet had was Finch.

Finch had risen to some prominence after the Tiber Wars as a bandit, harrying Imperial forces that wandered south of Arenthia. Appearing for all the world to be a child of less than a decade, she was agile, quick, and charismatic - uniting local outlaws and outcasts under the pretense of refusing to bend “the least of the man-beasts.”

It was Finch’s insistence that she was fighting against an “The Oppressor” - our dear Septim - that brought Lillet home to her. Finch and her bandits needed a capable healer - someone who could tend to their wounds that they might strike again. Someone that could inspire the group to greatness.

Lillet’s greatest contribution to the group however was most certainly to Finch, and there was not a day that went by where she did not question her devotion to her niece. Emboldened by the presence of family, Finch’s ferocity in the skirmishes with the Imperials only grew. Months became years, and soon enough more and more troops were sent to bring her to justice.

Finch reveled in the fear she was able to cause in the Imperial soldiers - she swore up and down to Lillet that it made them taste even better. The Imperials were still unfamiliar with the Meat Mandate, and every survivor that got away or that she let live was yet another story to tell of how the waif of an elf was seen cackling with glee, ripping flesh from bone with her teeth.

For Lillet, the Meat Mandate was a solemn affair, and a religious obligation - but Finch knew how it drove the rumors of her further and further afield. The soldiers began to enter the woods afraid not just of the beasts, but of her. Every ambush was a feast, and Finch became a glutton.

One night, word of an approaching battalion reached Finch and her camp from one of their allies in Arenthia, but Lillet suspected that there was more to the Imperial approach, and offered to take first watch - but Finch merely laughed.

“I am the might of Reaper’s March! They will not reach us until the morning, and when they do, we will devour them as we have all others before us! Rest, aunt. Tomorrow we will meet them and then press our advantage to take the city for Valenwood once again!”

But Lillet would not know the size of the battalion that would arrive the next day. The ambush that lit up the camp that night would see to that, one way or another. It was the sound of Finch’s laughter that woke Lillet - then there was the shouting of the Imperials and the rest of Finch’s band. Above all the rest was the laughter.

Finch could not contain her sheer, exuberant joy at the murders, and soon her blades were turned on her allies as she lost herself to her bloodlust. All turned on her in the end, seeing her for what she was and naming her as such; a monster.

Her only response to the accusation against her nature? Acceptance. With a bellowing cackle, Finch began to shift - her last words a simple response to the panicked cries of “she’s a monster.”

“I. AM.”

Overwhelmed with revulsion and sorrow, Lillet could not watch as Finch turned to Ooze. She ran, and escaped with her life. Several weeks later she heard that the Imperial battalion, allied with the people of Arenthia, had slain a wingless dragon covered in feathers that could swallow men whole.

Lillet never ate meat again.