I wasn't really famous, nor excellent at anything really. My swordmanship was mediocre at best, I could not run very fast, not very far, I could throw a couple of punches as well as any other inn-lurking drunkard (which is not very well, for the record), my looks were average, and so was my build. I was absolutely terrible at farming, or at any manual labour.
With the exception of a few husbands or pretenders, I had never really crossed anyone. Sure, I had to sneak out of my fair share of windows, ass-naked, at unlikely hours, and I probably knew rooftops and damp alleys as well as, if not better than, any cat in the village, and I had spent a considerable portion of my waking hours freezing on, or hanging from, or climbing up, some balcony. But, let me assure you again, I was mostly quite average and remarkably un-remarkable.
As some of you might have guessed, there was one thing I was actually good at. Of course, every man will claim that, but I actually was. Not in your average tavern-dwelling brawling mercenary way. I was really, honestly good at it. And when at it, I felt good, complete, at home, in the same way people feel when they're doing something they enjoy and are good at doing. Beds and sheets were my arena, corsets and laces my lions, my hands, and other bodily appendices, my tools and weapons, tense muscles and a muffled moan were my bounty.
Until that night. Maybe I got too confident, maybe I had a tankard too many, maybe there were some quiescent desired I always had been unaware of, dozing off deep inside me, which stirred and woke up that very night, me unknowingly. And oh, she was beautiful, beautiful she was. Rosy cheeks, blood-red lips, porcelain-white skin as smooth as silk, raven-black locks gently cascading over her shoulders and leading one's gaze onto her bosom, perfectly encased in a brocade corset. She looked like a princess, whose beauty had forever been caught on canvas: and yet she was alive, moving graciously, darting lustful glances around.
Only too late I realized the mistake I had done. Intertwined in bed, lips against one another's, hands groping and wandering all over each other's body, fumbling and fighting against layer of clothes, whispering and breathing into ears, breathing in of lightly perfumed skin. And that's when I noticed, felt it actually. And it came down, crashing down on my world like a boulder on a tea cup. I didn't even make a scene, right there, I kept my composure and excused myself politely from the lady. I only cared to wear my trousers back, and walked out the inn through the common room. Nobody really cared, as it wasn't such a weird sight anyway.
I guess I crumbled, when I realised that I literally had nothing to my name anymore. The one thing I did good, I had failed at. There are a lot of people who don't mind frolicking both side of the fence, and I didn't mind those, but I only enjoyed my side. I liked girls, and girls liked me, and I was happy with it. I considered myself an authority on the subject of feminine graces, and a connoisseur of the female gender: to some sort of extent (mind you, a very whisper-y, word-of-mouth, girl-to-girl confidence extent), I was even known for it.
Take all of that away from me, and my uselessness became too much to bear. As I mindlessly hopped off the cliff, I wasn't really thinking much. No turmoil in my heart, no maelstrom of feelings inside my mind, just emptiness. The drop lasted longer than I expected, the impact didn't last anything at all. No goodbye note, no big fuss. Just black, soothing, emptiness.
And now, at the hand some of the afore mentioned disgruntled husband or fiancé or lover, even the humble headstone the village had honoured me with (paid for by selling the jewellery found on whatever was left of my body) was stripped from me. The handful of crudely carved lines, a few rhyming words composing at the same time something both a jest and an edgy remark at my short life, scraped away, and my memory with the words. I, well, my memory, wasn't even granted the comfort of fading away slowly, like everyone else, lulled into nothingness by the slow, motherly, care of time. It must have been some heinous degree of hatred, that made some barely-literate sod go through the trouble of erasing my tombstone and scrawling a few meaningless words on its surface, thus effectively erasing me from the thread of time.
I leave these thoughts for you, wayfarers, so that someone might, out of curiosity, or contempt, occasionally still speak the name of Firedorn Lightbringer, at least a few times more, before my light is spent forever.
Firedorn Lightbringer, a lover, and not really much more.
