ETANNA

Etanna is from here and there.

She dwells in a sea of music and lovemaking,...

...riding the winds as mirthful laughter
and the flapping of ribbons.

Once as she rode
a golden toned crest of delight
she lost her balance and fell.

Even as she fell she laughed,
and playfully she allowed herself
to be born into a kingdom of shadows.

In the kingdom of shadows,
clothed in an inescapable shadow body,
she was the daughter of
The Baron and Baroness.

Even disguised as she was, too much light escaped through her eyes.

The Baron and Baroness felt that she was too delicate and strange.

Fearing that the world would crush her
they locked her away in a tower
and began a series of experiments
designed to alter her.

After years of imprisonment and torture
the delicate and beautiful creature
forgot her origins.

The cruel experiments caused her
to grow hard and hideous,
better suited to dwell in a kingdom of shadows.

Encased in this armor, her heart grew heavy.

She forgot mirth and music.

They at least released her from the tower
when her own character had become
a sufficient fortress.

She met another monster and together they tried to forget their mutations and behave as if they had never known radiance.

The wound
was fatal.

They made their home in a tangled forest. Eventually the other monster collapsed inward on the shards of his own fragmented self.

She left him to meet his death
and tucked their offspring
in a hollowed out tree
in the murky place
between the forest’s end
and the city’s beginning.

One day a strange traveler entered the kingdom of shadows.
By chance he encountered the Baron's malformed daughter in the market place.

He was a collector off rarities and oddities
and recognized her as such.

Etanna joined the stranger and became a member of his traveling carnival. She begged, told fortunes, or helped run other cons by day and shared a bed with the bearded lady at night.

They toured throughout the kingdom of shadows and beyond, through dimensional doorways, bringing their act to new arenas.

Etanna began to remember something of her primordial self as they journeyed.

Her armor softened little by little.

An extradimensional carpenter, he tried to help the carnival by conjuring a new door for them.

The stranger had a brother who employed himself strictly
with lesser work.

The passage was dangerous however, and only Etanna emerged on the other side with the carpenter.

Even her shadow armor had been trapped on the other side of the portal
so that she emerged unraveled,
a delicate naked thing.

The carpenter took her under his wing and began to teach her his art.

Together one day, they may open a final door composed only of sound.

Then the only way to track their passage will be
to listen for traces of the flapping of ribbons
and the laughter of the sea.