Half-breed

[baka]

This is a little intro to a story I wrote a while ago, and keep meaning to expand on. Any opinions, advice on a way to move it on? The problem I found was moving from this almost historical standpoint to an actual plot smoothly, without it seeming jarring.

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Half-breed.

No matter where I go, the words are always there. Just hanging in the air, whether spoken or not. Truth to tell, there is little about me to betray it, physically. A slight tapering of the ears, a paleness of the skin, being just that little bit more slender than the average man of my years. But the greatest sign is intangible. Is it the way I walk? Speak? Or does a palpable aura just surround my breed? Perhaps some portent betrays me before I am even glimpsed, for the subtle signs of distaste are evident. An innkeeper charges me more coin than other travellers for my board. My ale is served in an unwashed mug. Even the town's drunkards and beggars avoid me, beseeching others for the coin they need to buy one more drink, or feed themselves for a night.

I never even knew my father. Perhaps, if I had, I would have learnt about the raging tempest within me somehow other than the haphazard trial and error methods I was forced to. Or maybe he never felt what I do, this punishment for simply being the way my parents' coupling made me, maybe it is the curse of half-breeds alone. Never having met another of my kind, I have never been able to enquire.

But I ramble. I have not yet told you my name, nor the nature of my tale. Do I even know that myself? Certainly I am not sure where to begin, so perhaps I shall start at the simplest point, though it is long before the events which truly shaped myself and my world.

I was born in a small hamlet just outside the keep of Forgedale, so called for the smithing industry that flourished there due to its proximity to the mines of coal on one side and iron on the other. It was a nexus for the coal and iron coming in from those mines and the supplies for them, brought by caravan from the fertile south. The keep had been built in the days before the lands further north belonged to the Kingdom, but during my childhood few soldiers inhabited the dreary place of grey stone. In fact, the clash that pushed the Kingdom's borders far beyond Forgedale took place shortly after that I was conceived. That's a story in itself. There used to be a small village a little north of Forgedale, but one day the enemy overran it. My mother was raped and left for dead, and her husband killed. Fortunately for me, the force sent to defend the village found her in the wreckage and returned her to the keep.

My mother was the daughter of a well-known smith, and my birth must have shamed her family. Ofttimes I heard my grandfather complain to my mother of how business was better "before you fell with him". Yet, bless her, she kept me and loved me and raised me well. Sometimes I thought if not for her patience I might have done something rash when I was old enough to be a nuisance and cause damage. As it was I was merely a wilful and reckless child, taxing to look after but not beyond adults shaking their heads and muttering that boys would be boys at my escapades.  Certainly by the time I was old enough to speak I did not hear the comments of "demon child" that I know were muttered at my birth, and a few of the villagers gave me a gruff respect for being well-behaved and well-mannered, if not the same acceptance that a normal man might gain.

Still, friends, I have not told you my name, nor that of my dear mother. She was called Aspazia, a derivation of the ancient speech for an embrace, and she named me Damon, a name so close to daemon that it could not be coincidence. More than once I heard her curse my hell-spawned father for forcing himself upon her. I could not help but wince at that, despite my mother never taking out her anger on me. She was as kind and loving as any son could hope for. Would that I had discovered before she died that which saved so many others.

I am getting ahead of myself however. I must tell you of the times that made me what I am today, that tempered me and reforged the world on the same anvil. Before I was born, the Kingdom managed to push the enemy back far beyond Forgedale, which used to be almost on the frontier. However, by the time I reached manhood, they began to push on our borders once more. Raids became more frequent, garrisons had to be stretched thinner, and slowly territory was retaken. Slowly but surely, the Kingdom fell back, with no sign of a break in the onslaught.

[Dracos]

Original fiction?  A bit weak opener.  The main character comes off as whiny and not much sense of where we are is ever made.  I don't know.

I wouldn't choose a personal narration for introducing a half-breed simply as it is cliche and it really tends to be more tedious to read than fun.

And that's how long my random thoughts last.

Dracos

[baka]

Aye, the whininess was one of the problems I stopped because of. The best thing to do might be to keep the concept, but rewrite the opening.

[Ragnar]

I have to admit that for a while, I thought that this was some sort of Inu-yahsa fic. A bit whiny, but overall, it's decent.