07-28-2013, 09:46 AM
Aeva was born around 2015 to a drunkard mother and a Druid father. Her mother was swift to abandon her daughter and three sons to their father's care by dying during an earthquake when Aeva was 5. Their father was a lifelong Druid - influential in the small neo-Druid movement when it was at its height in around 2012-17, and had a fabulous archive of knowledge of both ancient and modern Druidic technique, which he offered freely over the internet. He never stopped adding to his sacred library. His three children were enthusiastic followers, but having had a few minor brushes with religious persecution at school, Aeva was rather quiet and dedicated more than exuberant, and didn't draw attention to her beliefs.
The global disasters of 2020, Anthony (Aeva's father) and other prominent members of the Druid community effectively pushed the entire movement into charity work in the poorer North of Britain and teaching people skills of survival as the UK population took a sharp drop when vast areas of the land were shaken by earthquakes and flooded by unprecedented tsunamis and torrential rain. Scotland was almost blown apart by the long-extinct (or thought extinct) volcano beneath Edinburgh Castle. A very long winter was created by the ash and debris in the atmosphere, making it impossible for aircraft and hazardous for any long travel. With the dust clouds, it seemed almost as though the rest of the world forgot North Britain existed. Crops failed and food sources dwindled.
By 2025, it seemed as though the Druids and other neo-Pagan groups were ready to take charge as they were the ones who had harboured old knowledge and ancient skills and were teaching them to the ragged remnants of the British. However, pagan organisation is a contradiction in terms and people settled into communities with people like the Morgans offering their services around the areas in which they could easily travel. Aeva's oldest brother even became something of a guru - not a very stable one, in ruined Scotland. Her second brother was one of those who died screaming in 2035.
Aeva herself effectively took charge of her father's archive, carefully preserving the knowledge digitally as paper became more expensive, while her younger brother, Taren, began searching for any more that could be found.
When the world finally remembered the UK had once existed and travelled to the region where it once stood, the CCD and Atharim moved in first. Nobody knows which group was responsible for the deaths of Anthony Morgan and his cohorts, though most favour the Atharim as the culprits. There were few protests when Anthony's eldest son was openly assassinated while trying to 'rally the mob'. The turning point came for Aeva when her youngest brother, Taren, went missing and CCD soldiers broke into her home and searched every square inch of it, allegedly searching for clues as to his disappearance. It is more likely they wanted evidence that Aeva had followed in her father and brothers' footsteps, but everything of even minute value had been sold by that time and nothing was left to say what she might believe.
For a long time, Aeva stood over the shattered vase of fake flowers which had sat atop natural stones that had been fashionable almost 40 years ago, shaking and forcing herself to breath quietly. Then she bent down and selected a rough stone of pale cream - the smallest of the half-dozen within the rest of the scattered mass of mixed rocks on the living-room floor where a soldier had wanted to search within the stones for evidence of... who knew what.
She put a hard asbestos tile on newspaper on the kitchen floor, then another sheet of paper, then the rock.
Without giving herself time to think of what she was doing, Aeva brought a large hammer down on the stone and the weak air-dry clay shattered across the paper. She removed the wax-and-cling-film wrapped SD card from the wreckage and carefully gathered up the fragments of air-clay and paper. It went into a plastic bag between layers of the waste from the cat's litter tray before being flung out with the general rubbish. Her old, ruined computer, the fake flowers and fragments of the vase joined it an hour or so later; she would take it to the tip on her regular weekly run - breaking routine would only arouse suspicion. The stones, she tipped into another jar, including the other phony stones made of air clay... just in case.
Were there other Druids in Europe? Her father had told her that many of their communities had once had international membership, and told her the names of places which no longer existed, although a few still did. If Taren were dead, then she was the last of her kind - perhaps the guardian of the only Druid literature still in existence, and Aeva shuddered at the mere thought. Taking out the moonstone, she turned it by the light of her poor lantern and a symbol flashed before her eye for an instant, deep in the blue iridescence of the stone.
Leave, it said. Leave.
[Note: It is believed by some that Merlin was a title amongst Druids, rather than an actual individual. There was only one Merlin at a time, but the role was fulfilled by many different people as it was handed down. He became a single deity as the Arthurian legends developed, but the title of 'Merlin' may have been held by women as well as men, and therefore the Merlin can be reborn as female.]
Edited by Aeva, Jul 28 2013, 09:53 AM.
The global disasters of 2020, Anthony (Aeva's father) and other prominent members of the Druid community effectively pushed the entire movement into charity work in the poorer North of Britain and teaching people skills of survival as the UK population took a sharp drop when vast areas of the land were shaken by earthquakes and flooded by unprecedented tsunamis and torrential rain. Scotland was almost blown apart by the long-extinct (or thought extinct) volcano beneath Edinburgh Castle. A very long winter was created by the ash and debris in the atmosphere, making it impossible for aircraft and hazardous for any long travel. With the dust clouds, it seemed almost as though the rest of the world forgot North Britain existed. Crops failed and food sources dwindled.
By 2025, it seemed as though the Druids and other neo-Pagan groups were ready to take charge as they were the ones who had harboured old knowledge and ancient skills and were teaching them to the ragged remnants of the British. However, pagan organisation is a contradiction in terms and people settled into communities with people like the Morgans offering their services around the areas in which they could easily travel. Aeva's oldest brother even became something of a guru - not a very stable one, in ruined Scotland. Her second brother was one of those who died screaming in 2035.
Aeva herself effectively took charge of her father's archive, carefully preserving the knowledge digitally as paper became more expensive, while her younger brother, Taren, began searching for any more that could be found.
When the world finally remembered the UK had once existed and travelled to the region where it once stood, the CCD and Atharim moved in first. Nobody knows which group was responsible for the deaths of Anthony Morgan and his cohorts, though most favour the Atharim as the culprits. There were few protests when Anthony's eldest son was openly assassinated while trying to 'rally the mob'. The turning point came for Aeva when her youngest brother, Taren, went missing and CCD soldiers broke into her home and searched every square inch of it, allegedly searching for clues as to his disappearance. It is more likely they wanted evidence that Aeva had followed in her father and brothers' footsteps, but everything of even minute value had been sold by that time and nothing was left to say what she might believe.
For a long time, Aeva stood over the shattered vase of fake flowers which had sat atop natural stones that had been fashionable almost 40 years ago, shaking and forcing herself to breath quietly. Then she bent down and selected a rough stone of pale cream - the smallest of the half-dozen within the rest of the scattered mass of mixed rocks on the living-room floor where a soldier had wanted to search within the stones for evidence of... who knew what.
She put a hard asbestos tile on newspaper on the kitchen floor, then another sheet of paper, then the rock.
Without giving herself time to think of what she was doing, Aeva brought a large hammer down on the stone and the weak air-dry clay shattered across the paper. She removed the wax-and-cling-film wrapped SD card from the wreckage and carefully gathered up the fragments of air-clay and paper. It went into a plastic bag between layers of the waste from the cat's litter tray before being flung out with the general rubbish. Her old, ruined computer, the fake flowers and fragments of the vase joined it an hour or so later; she would take it to the tip on her regular weekly run - breaking routine would only arouse suspicion. The stones, she tipped into another jar, including the other phony stones made of air clay... just in case.
Were there other Druids in Europe? Her father had told her that many of their communities had once had international membership, and told her the names of places which no longer existed, although a few still did. If Taren were dead, then she was the last of her kind - perhaps the guardian of the only Druid literature still in existence, and Aeva shuddered at the mere thought. Taking out the moonstone, she turned it by the light of her poor lantern and a symbol flashed before her eye for an instant, deep in the blue iridescence of the stone.
Leave, it said. Leave.
[Note: It is believed by some that Merlin was a title amongst Druids, rather than an actual individual. There was only one Merlin at a time, but the role was fulfilled by many different people as it was handed down. He became a single deity as the Arthurian legends developed, but the title of 'Merlin' may have been held by women as well as men, and therefore the Merlin can be reborn as female.]
Edited by Aeva, Jul 28 2013, 09:53 AM.