2 May 2024

The summer before she turned 18, however, a plague swept through the land. Many people claimed it was a graveborn curse, and fear ran rampant. By the time their little village was hit, people were already reaching their breaking point.

“Do you think it’s actually a graveborn curse?” Lily asked.

For a moment, Astrid didn’t respond. “No. It spreads too slowly for one of theirs, and leaves too many alive. It’s spreading farther, too.”

When the village did get hit, it was hit hard. Lily was one of a small group unaffected, and she worked herself past exhaustion trying to help and save as many people as she could. Every once in a while, she’d start to worry about catching the disease herself, but she always pushed the thought out of her head. And somehow, Lily never did get sick.

On one particularly hard day, she was tending to a young boy. Johanne. His father had lost to the disease just the day before, and Johanne himself was fading fast. 

Lily did everything she could think of. She banked the fire and wiped his sweat. Nothing worked. When she tried to feed him medicine, he coughed it back up. All he could do was lie there and groan in pain.

Something broke inside Lily, and she clung to the boy and wept. Unbidden, the words to an old lullaby came to her lips, and she started to sing, eyes closed.

30 April 2024

This is when I figured out who I wanted my Perish Song protagonist to be. This was inspired in large part by the AFK Arena series’ concept of graveborn, along with the trope of the little girl with the doll you see right before her town gets destroyed, leaving the heroes to find only a doll in the wreckage. That girl is my main character. Though I do worry that this trope loses power as far removed from the story as it is.

Lily didn’t remember much from before her mama, Astrid, adopted her. She had only been six or seven at the time, after all. She knew it had been during the [Gravewrought] wars; Astrid had saved Lily’s village from the undead, only to come back a few days later to find it had been destroyed. Lily didn’t remember how she survived, or even what had happened. The only vague memory she had of that time was when she had offered the cool, scary lady–Astrid–her homemade doll. The dolly Lily still had tucked away under her pillow.

She knew after Astrid had found her, she retired to a small town to try and raise her. Lily was pretty sure Astrid had been someone important before her retirement, because a lot of men and women came through just to see her. Lily didn’t mind; it meant she basically had a bunch of aunts and uncles out there.

They lived a simple life; Astrid worked as a woodcutter, and if she wasn’t helping with that, Lily helped out at the bakery with her best friend. On some level, Lily was aware the other townsfolk thought her strange, but she was cheerful and friendly enough that only the bitterest of them gave her any grief. Though Lily did get tired of hearing she was too pale and need more sunlight.

Astrid had only given one rule to Lily; she wasn’t allowed to sing. At least, not anywhere there was the slightest chance someone could overhear her.

“I’m serious, Lily; if you ever sing in front of people, you’ll be lucky if they stop at hanging you. It’s far more likely they’ll burn you at the stake or worse. Do you understand me?”

Lily, who’d been eight at the time, nodded. Even now, roughly nine years later, she remembered that day clearly. She’d started singing to herself while they were out cutting wood, when Mama got really scared and put her head over Lily’s mouth. Lily also couldn’t forget the dead squirrel she noticed nearby while they were leaving.