Open Chronicles Beneath Her Hands

The dawn light filtered through woven awnings and sandstone arches, painting warm gold over the outer districts of Lazular. Grain carts rumbled past stone courtyards, the scent of dates and dust already thick in the air. Beneath the low call of morning traders, a single sharp cry cut through: a newborn’s first breath.

Monifa Oya knelt beside a woman soaked in sweat and triumph, inside a narrow home with prayer markings etched into its lintel. Calm and steady, Monifa cleaned her hands in silence, her dark fingers stained with blood, her eyes unreadable. A bronze medallion with spiral etchings hung at her chest, worn smooth by time, a quiet badge of her long service.

“Strong cry. She’ll live,” Monifa said simply, handing the child to her mother. “You did well.”

At her side, a younger apprentice fumbled with clean linens and murmured thanks. Monifa gave only a nod and stood, joints creaking faintly from years of kneeling. Her linen scarf had been tugged loose, revealing strands of silver in her tightly braided hair. The indigo sash tied at her waist marked her as a near-elder midwife, a rank earned only by decades of trusted service and survival.

Outside, she sat beneath the awning and unwrapped her tools one by one: carved bone instruments, a vial of umbilical ash, bundles of dried herbs bound in sinew. The routine was familiar, grounding. Necessary.

A few neighbors passed by, offering respectful nods. None lingered long.

Monifa said little. She never did. Those who worked with her knew her as capable, quiet, and deeply rooted in the rhythms of life and death. The kind of midwife who didn’t flinch from blood, who returned after a long day.

Zyndyrr K'yoshin said:

“Curious,” Zyndyrr said to her as he stood in her presence, gesturing toward her collections. “Ash and bone.” He tilted his head enough for his dark visage to be shown. “What are those instruments?”

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The hearth’s glow cast soft orange across the mud-brick walls, throwing lazy shadows onto bundles of dried herbs and hanging amulets. The scent of mugwort and woodsmoke hung heavily in the air, curling like memory around the edges of the small healing hut.

Monifa Oya stood tall in her flowing robe, her hands stained faintly with turmeric and lavender oils. She had just finished tending to a birth before the visitor arrived—a young man, armed and pale-eyed, though politely postured.

“The umbilical ash cleans,” she said. “The bones guide.” Her thumb brushed the spiral etched into her medallion. “They serve where life hangs between breaths.”

"Sit, child," she said with the calm warmth of desert dusk. Her voice carried the wisdom of years, yet had the cadence of a storyteller, slow and composed. "You’ve walked far in this sun. Let the wind do its work while you rest your bones."

At first, she didn’t look too closely—strangers came through Lazular daily, soldiers from Kherkhana, caravans from the Baal-Asha, and even Elbion scholars poking at bones and blood. His height, posture, and manner registered as surface-world. Only when she fetched water and knelt to pour it did her eyes catch the faint sheen of grey in his skin, the glint of red in his gaze.

A flicker of recognition struck her heart like a quiet bell—but her face betrayed none of it. She set the water down before him and rose slowly.

“Tea?” she offered. “Bitterleaf and mountain mint. For clarity. And courage.”

She handed him the cup, her smile calm, her posture easy. But her eyes, dark as river stone, watched him carefully.

“I am an elder midwife of Lazular,” she said, dipping her head. “Born under the sun, as my hands found work where the grain meets the sky.”

She shifted, eyes flitting again to his features—somewhat striking and disturbing. But she asked nothing of them. Instead, she asked something else.

"You seek something, soldier—not healing, I think. Not yet," she said with a soft smile.

She began busying herself with a mortar and pestle—not grinding anything in particular, just circling—trying to remain composed. Her speech slowed, eyes occasionally flicking toward the young man. There was something about the sharp line of his jaw, the cut of his ears…

“My door stays open to more than mothers and newborns. Even a soldier may need counsel—especially if newlywed, and still learning the rhythm of a woman’s body.”

She let the words sit for a breath. Not teasing. Not cruel. Testing.

“Is it her quiet in the mornings? Or the way sleep escapes her at night?” Her gaze flicked to him again. “You’re not the first man to lose his footing in such things.”

Her hand paused. A breath too long.

Silver caught the firelight. Red eyes. Unmistakable. Her grip on the pestle tightened before she resumed the motion—slower now.

“If you’ve come for a charm or protection for travel, I’ve herbs for the belly and spirit,” she said. “If it’s appetite,” she added, voice gentler, “I have a root that stirs warmth without shame.”

Her smile returned—still calm, still unshaken. But the watching never stopped.

Zyndyrr K'yoshin said:

“There is warmth in my veins, orc, and I have no shame in those who I take to bed or in my performance.” He tilted his head. “Their energy was better than this bitterleaf tea can ever be.” He drank deeply. Yet he could piss its clarity and courage into the wind. “Though it does the trick. I only hope it helps keep me awake.” Though sometimes the nightmares were what kept him sane. "What are you grinding, anyway?"

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The pestle slowed, then stopped. She set it aside with a practiced touch and turned toward him fully, the firelight painting her cheekbones gold.

“Sorrel seed,” she said softly, “and pink ginger. One cools the blood. The other brings heat back where sorrow makes the chest go hollow.”

She looked to the cup in his hands—not at the boldness in his words, but the quiet between them.

“I’ve ground it for fighters before. And for widows.” Her hands worked a piece of linen over her palms. “Same medicine. Different ache.”

She moved slowly, as if not to startle a wary beast.

“I helped a woman deliver her third daughter just before dawn,” she said, voice hushed but steady. “She came tangled in her cord—silent as dust. Her mother wouldn’t stop singing. Not for a moment. And then…” Monifa tapped her own sternum lightly, once. “Breath. As if something unseen had heard her and took mercy.”

Her gaze drifted to Zyn—not sharply, but searching, as if listening to the shape of his silence.

“You strike me as someone who’s been pulled back from quiet places,” she said. “Maybe more than once.”

A pause, long enough to let the words settle without pressure.

“My papa…” her voice softened, eyes glinting. “He said the hardest part of growing up wasn’t the pain—it was the carrying. The way grief curls into the bones if no one helps you name it. He was seven when his father left. A quiet boy, but stubborn. I think he learned to hold his pain so tightly it became a language.”

No race. No house. Just a boy with too much silence.

“I drink this tea to remind myself what’s bitter can still be useful,” she added, raising her cup. “And that not all medicine is meant to taste sweet.”

She took a sip, then fixed her gaze on him again—not challenging, not coddling.

“You speak of women like a man used to control,” she said gently. “And yet I hear longing behind your bravado—like someone who’s been left alone in too many beds.” Her smile was faint but knowing. “Even fire leaves a shadow.”

Then, quieter:
“Whatever shaped you did not finish the carving. You still have the chisel in your hand.”

The fire popped, and the hut breathed again.

“If sleep comes with teeth, I have herbs for that. If waking feels worse, there’s balm for the morning. But more than that…” She reached to adjust a crooked charm above the hearth, her fingers brushing it like a prayer.
“…you’ll need to treat your soul like something you want to keep.”

She turned her back again, busying herself with a fresh steep of tea.

“There’s a second cup if you want it. Stronger. For men who lie awake with full hearts and empty hands.”
Zyndyrr K'yoshin

Zyndyrr K'yoshin said:

“Tell me…” Zyn grinned. “What tea do orcish midwives drink when they have no man to dine with or to kiss?”

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The pestle sat quiet in the bowl, and Monifa’s hands stilled with it.

She turned her head, not sharply, but with the slow gravity of a woman who had lived through enough full moons to know when a boy was testing his voice instead of his strength.

“That depends,” she murmured, voice like dusk rain, “on the kind of hunger you’re trying to feed.”

Her eyes met his—calm, unwavering, with a weight that neither blushed nor flinched.

“When I’ve no man to dine with,” she continued, “I take goat’s rue and golden bark. Keeps the blood strong. Eases the knees. Reminds me that the table does not mourn an empty chair—it waits. With patience. With dignity.” A pause. “And when there’s no kiss waiting on my mouth…” she smiled faintly, “I brew fennel, smokeleaf, and wild orange peel. Bit sharp. But it makes the lungs sing.”

She glanced down at the steaming cup, then back up with a slow nod.

“You called your soul bittersweet.”
She nodded toward the steaming cup. “This one’s like mine. Bitter, yes—but it sings when it’s warmed. Not for company. Just for remembering how breath feels when it’s not held tight.”

She turned toward the fire and stirred the kettle gently, watching the steam rise.

“There was a time,” she said, quieter now, “when I lived in a place that called itself kind. A city of high minds and low whispers.” Her hand rested briefly over her chest, where the cord-knot necklace lay beneath her robes. “I made one mistake. Something in me slipped. I didn’t understand it, couldn’t stop it. And in the end… someone was hurt. Badly enough that others paid the price too. Even my parents.”

The fire cracked.

“After that, my friends—what few I had—drifted like smoke. The streets I knew turned strange. Cold, not with frost, but with forgetting.”

She didn’t blink. Her voice flowed low, like a river beneath ice.

“My papa said he knew that silence. Said it echoed from his own childhood. His mother and her husbands called him Filth, some spat. Even in his mother’s hearth-circle, he had to earn each bite like a thief.”

Her fingers traced the rim of her cup.

“He said the worst part wasn’t the hunger or the blows. It was the way they watched him. Like he was a curse waiting to unfold. Like all he could ever grow into was the fear they’d planted in him.”

She sipped her tea—dark as loam, sharp with roots.

“So we left. Not in shame. In search.”

Her gaze turned toward the window, where dusk had begun its slow descent.

“People don’t shed their shapes easily. But soil? Soil can heal what stone cannot. A new sky teaches different names for mercy. And his journey…” she exhaled, the breath like incense, “it let my papa soften. The bark loosened from his spirit. The sharpness dulled. He began to laugh more. And I—” her voice warmed— “I learned how to breathe again. Like moss underfoot. Like morning after a storm.”

She paused, hand resting briefly over the corded knot beneath her robe—the talisman tied in the old ways.

“The shadow never left him. His heart—it remembers. But in leaving, he shaped it. Wove it into something steadier. Like a root learning to hold both dark and light.”

Her eyes drifted to Zyn’s face—not searching now, but soft. Offering something like understanding.

“Your father sounds like a man who mistook fear for strength. A man who carved his name into others because he didn’t know how to bless his own son.”

Coward, she thought. May the gods forgive him. You deserved better.

And still—her shoulders eased. Zyn had not drawn steel. Had not dragged her to the Underrealm like the last one. She offered a silent thanks to the hidden One who watched over wandering daughters.

“You don’t strike me as cruel,” she added, more to the moment than the man. “Just… shaped by hands that didn’t know how to hold.”

A beat.

“There’s strength in pulling yourself out of that mold, you know.”

She turned again to the hearth, then nodded to the second cup steeping nearby.

“This tea’s for when the bed is cold but your mind won’t quiet. I won’t ask your story. But if you drink it, drink it slow.”

Her voice dropped low, like a hymn.

“Some wounds only speak when the room is silent.”


Zyndyrr K'yoshin

Monifa’s lip twitched—more irritation than amusement—as Zyn slid beside her. She didn’t shy away. No, she let him feel the heat radiating from her side like a hearth warned not to touch. Her gaze stayed forward, fixed on the darkening horizon out the window, but her hand remained steady near the kettle.

“You taste tea and speak of blood,” she murmured, the cadence of her voice low, smoke-smooth, “and yet you say I mistake you.”

She finally turned to face him. Her eyes didn’t flash. They glowed with a slow, steady glower—like coals that had been burning all night.

“Let me ask, Drow—if I had poisoned you, would you thank me for the clarity it forced on your tongue? Or curse me for the taste?”

A pause. She let the words hang as she poured his second cup. The steam drifted like ghosts between them.

“You wonder if I recognized you.” A dry smile pulled at the edge of her mouth. “I did not. Not until you sat your pretty bones so close to mine, smelling of spite and secrets. Now? Now I see too much.”

She handed him the tea, her fingers brushing his just barely—a warning, not an invitation. Then she sat back, shoulders drawing high like a tide preparing to crash.

Her thoughts turned inward, her tongue sharpening not for Zyn, but for the divinity in her mind.

Vaene.
Mother of biting skies and blind justice.
Was this one yours? Would your children stir for him? Or would they sleep still and let me choose?

And in the hollow behind her ribs, Monifa felt the faintest flutter. A bat’s wing brushing shadow—not yet flight.

“Not yet,” she thought. “But close.”

Back aloud, she softened—but it wasn’t comfort. It was a blade sheathed in silk.

“You speak of wounds that scream and skins that peel.” She leaned in, just slightly. “Do you think I have not heard worse in a birthing tent? Watched worse done by those who wore cloaks and crowns, not knives?”

A slow breath. Then: “If your father carved his name into others, mine tried to smother mine out before I could say it. You think we are alike because we are bruised in places no one sees? That does not make us kin.”

Her hand found her hip, thumb brushing against the charm wrapped in bat-leather.

“But I won’t call you a goblin in mold. That would be rude. You smell more like…” She sniffed, teasingly thoughtful. “Regret, boiled in old wine. With a splash of lonely.”

And then, a tilt of the head. A final pivot—a subversion.

“Oh. And for your concern—” Her smile was calm, cruel, sweet. “I am kissed. Just not by those who think it a weapon.”

She stood, letting her absence weigh heavier than her presence ever had. One hand ghosted over the hearth.

“The cup you wonder about?” she said, not looking back. “I brewed it for you. The poison, if it exists, is only what you bring to the taste.”

A heartbeat passed.

“If you still believe that my hand carries poison,” she added, voice low and sure, “then let the silence of my leaving settle your spirit, like dust after a storm. May my absence taste sweeter than my presence ever could.”

Then, slowly and deliberately, Monifa turned from the hearth. Her shawl caught the lamplight like dusk on water, casting no shadow, only silence. She didn’t rush. She didn’t explain. Her steps were soft but unyielding, the kind of quiet that made even old floorboards hold their breath.

She crossed the threshold with the same care she brought to a birthing tent—measured, alert, braced for blood or blessing.

Let them follow me, she thought. Better me than him. Better me than the girl in the next room, the stable boy outside, the woman lighting lanterns two doors down. Let them think I walk alone. Let them try.

I will be their path. I will be their wrong turn.

Behind her, in the places only shadow knew, something stirred. Not Zyn. Not the city.
Others. Drows who bore no sigil, but carried silence like knives.

They had not come for tea. The door clicked shut behind her like the end of a sentence. And the night swallowed her silhouette in the alley— where Monifa had warned her not to tread years ago.

Zyndyrr K'yoshin