Today, I Found You...
Books.
Back on the Isle of Indamar, some who knew me liked to say I lived to be rebellious.
They weren’t wrong.
Others swore I lived for boys.
Also not wrong.
Miss Margaret would’ve bet her best apron I lived for her cookies, harvest muffins, and sweet apple muse.
But here’s the truth: above all, I lived for books. Bottom line.
And on the Isle, I could never find enough books to read.
I knew my letters and sounds before I was two.
I could read well by three.
By five, I read better than most of Indamar. Granted, the Isle wasn’t exactly a place where formal education flourished. Still—I was five. And that didn’t stop me from teaching myself.
By seven, I could finish an entire book in one sitting. And I mean devour it.
I didn’t just read to reach the last page—I ingested what the author meant to say.
I could rewrite entire paragraphs from memory after a single pass, especially the ones that fascinated me.
Which meant that in a place like Dowling—the quaint village where I grew up—I ran out of things to read fast.
Easily, the greatest source of books in the district was the priory—the Obricon outpost near Dowling, doing its best to spread the word of Laeron Madrin’s heroics on behalf of the Kingdom of Malakanth.
And of God’s love.
And how you didn’t deserve it.
And of fire for the unrepentant soul.
And brimstone.
I could go on.
So naturally, you weren’t going to find anything tantalizing on the shelves of the priory’s modest library. Certainly nothing titillating.
Which was a problem for a rebellious girl with a taste for cookies and sweet apple muse.
And boys.
Luckily, a miracle occurred within that very priory—one that granted this girl her greatest wish: unfettered access to a near-limitless collection of books.
Books that enlightened as well as educated.
Dangerous books.
Forbidden books.
Books that teased me.
Books that terrified me.
Books where the guy gets the girl.
And best of all—books where the girl gets the best of the guy.
I found a trove, you see. A trove of books.
Hidden away in a secret room within the priory.
It had been concealed for centuries before I uncovered it.
Less than a dozen steps from the priory’s Rose Chapel—where I’d sat through an untold number of inane sermons—that hidden trove became the cornerstone of my self-education.
Truth is, I wouldn’t have become who I am without it.
The Daughter of Destinies would never have existed.
So, how did I come by this incredible—and quite frankly life-changing—discovery?
Well, it all began with my ears.
Yes, you heard me right… ears.
All my life, I’d attended services at the priory.
And all my life, I’d heard strange noises in its halls—now and then, at least.
I’d ask others around me if they heard them too.
None did.
In fact, I got more than a few curious looks.
Some thought I was hallucinating.
So, I learned early not to ask. The noises became one of those unexplained things—just there.
They faded into the background, part of the soundscape of my life at the priory. Day after day. Year after year.
Until I turned seventeen.
That’s when the noises got louder. More persistent.
And inescapable.
The main reason I spent so much time at the priory was simple: I needed to eat.
It certainly wasn’t for the lessons.
But the priory served a meal after every worship service—and those who wanted to eat were expected to sit through an hour of hymns and lectures, delivered by perhaps the Isle’s greatest hypocrite and philanderer: our resident prior, Karl Shambling.
Anyway, it was during one of those post-service meals that I first heard the distinct cry of seagulls.
And I couldn’t figure out why.
Despite being on an island, the priory was nowhere near the seashore.
This was only days after my seventeenth birthday.
And, of course, no one else could hear these supposed seagulls.
The next day, the gulls’ cries grew louder.
And I started hearing other sounds from the seashore too.
The flapping of sails.
The crash of waves.
Was I going mad?
Then and there, I vowed to get to the bottom of it.
A crucial clue came with the tolling of a shoreline fog bell—something I didn’t so much hear as feel.
The bell didn’t toll often—not nearly as much as those confounded seagulls—but when it did, I felt its vibrations rising up through the floor and into my boots. I could feel the oscillations humming through the walls.
So, I set out to track the sound back to its source.
The breakthrough came when I realized how the bell’s sound was traveling through the walls.
That revelation didn’t come easily—nor quickly, mind you.
It took days of sitting on the floor, eyes closed, hand on the wall, waiting for that damn fog bell to ring.
People thought I was going crazy.
Not for the first time.
But it was worth it. With persistence, I figured it out: the vibrations always traveled horizontally, never vertically. They radiated from a central point within the building.
Now, don’t think I cracked this all at once. It took trial. It took error. It took sitting in every nook and cranny of that sprawling priory, hand pressed to the wall, until I could slow my perception enough to feel the direction the sound was moving.
But I did.
And once I had the skill, I couldn’t fathom how it had ever seemed difficult in the first place.
Ultimately, the tolling bell—and its tangible vibrations—led me to a large painting just down the hall from the entrance to the Rose Chapel.
The title of the painting was The Bearing of the Roseblade.
It depicted a lone woman in a flowing crimson robe, ascending a staircase carved from thorns.
At the top, a sword blooming with roses awaited.
Its hilt entwined with petals.
Its blade dripped with both blood and dew.
A symbol of suffering and sanctification—the path of sacrifice toward divine purpose.
And I adored it, even from my earliest recollections.
For it to be the endpoint of my sonic odyssey was beyond serendipity.
It was… destiny.
And it had become clear: the source of the maritime noises was coming from behind this exact painting.
I suspected a secret passage nearby.
My attention turned to the baseboards beneath the frame. In this older wing of the priory, near the Rose Chapel, the baseboards had been lovingly carved with a repeating motif—roses in various stages of bloom, from tight buds to open blossoms.
At first glance, it seemed symbolic. A devotional flourish honoring the divine feminine. A nod to growth, sanctity, and spiritual beauty.
But one rose was different.
A fully bloomed flower, carved at ankle height just below the crimson-robed woman, stood out—subtly, but unmistakably.
This was it.
I knew it.
Yet, I remember struggling to reach out and touch that one carved rose.
It wasn’t fear exactly—though that would’ve been fair.
After all, these were noises from the sea. And they seemed to be coming from behind a painting.
And no one could hear them but me.
So yes—something odd, maybe even supernatural, was happening.
But I wasn’t afraid of ghosts.
No, what held me back wasn’t fear. It was the weight of the moment.
I knew this was going to change my life.
That much was certain.
But how?
To what end?
Eventually, curiosity got the better of me.
I reached out.
Pressed the rose.
A subtle click.
Then—one side of The Bearing of the Roseblade, my favorite painting, swung open like a door on a hinge.
I remember the exultation that flooded over me.
Not for what I might find behind it—
But for having solved the mystery.
As always, I took great care to make sure no one was nearby before pulling the painting open just far enough to slip inside.
Never more so than after that first discovery.
But I entered.
And what greeted me was something I hadn’t expected—
Light.
One of the Rose Chapel’s many charms was how it was illuminated.
A half dozen alabaster domes drew in light from the outside, casting the entire sanctuary in a golden hush—as if dawn had been captured and caged there for all eternity.
Those domes had been enchanted to absorb sunlight in such a way that they kept glowing, even through the night.
And the secret room beyond the painting—a private study by the look of it—had the same kind of dome built into its ceiling.
When I closed the doorway behind me, returning the painting to its sealed position, I remember thinking—
This place is mine.
There was a bit of dust, but nothing I couldn’t manage.
After a day or two of cleaning, I’d have the place shining.
The furnishings were simple: a monastic-style writing desk tucked into the far corner beneath the alabaster dome, a serviceable chair, and row after row of shelving.
And on those shelves?
You guessed it—
Books.
And I will get to those books—
But first, I had a more pressing matter to address.
Like:
What in God’s name had been making those noises?
All my life?
The seagulls?
The crashing waves?
The fog bell?
The very sounds that had drawn me to this study in the first place.
As it turned out, the mystery was nearly solved already.
The answer was sitting atop the study’s desk.
There, nestled in a shallow cradle of wood and brass between two tall stacks of forgotten texts, lay a strange object—
as if it had always been waiting.
Smooth and rounded, it resembled a sea-worn relic—small enough to cradle in both hands.
Its surface bore the faint striations of a shell, etched in graceful, curling lines that shimmered in the light.
Veins of iridescence ran beneath the stone’s surface, flickering with hints of green, blue, and gold—like sunlight scattered through shallow seawater.
Portions of it were semi-translucent, glowing faintly from within, as though some hidden tide still moved through it.
Even in stillness, it seemed to hum with memory—its curves whispering of ancient coastlines and lost songs borne on the wind.
In time, I would learn the proper term for this kind of object—
an echostone.
Then, as I approached the object, it began to emit one of its most familiar sounds—
the cries of seagulls.
So loud. So clear.
How had I ever failed to recognize exactly what I was hearing?
As the gulls cried, the echostone glowed from within—
not brightly, but with a slow, rhythmic pulse, like the light of a lantern seen through fog.
I lifted it from its cradle.
And it fell silent.
Sadly, its wave would never again lap the shore.
Its fog bell would toll no more.
After all those years, it had fulfilled its purpose.
It had drawn me to it.
And that was enough.
I returned the object to its place with reverence.
Then I noticed something else on the desk—a wooden keepsake box.
I pulled it closer, studying the hand-carved inscription on its lid.
A girl’s name.
Tannon.
I opened the box and found a collection of homemade figurines nestled inside—each one a court jester or harlequin frozen in some amusing pose.
And I fell in love with them at a glance.
Someone—presumably Tannon—had carved each figure from wood with incredible care.
Every one was exquisite, from the contours of their lithe bodies to their expressive faces, right down to the tiniest fingers.
They’d been painted with painstaking precision.
Yet as lovely as the figures were, their clothing was just as remarkable.
Tannon had tailored each jester’s attire with near-perfect craftsmanship—jerkins, doublets, caps and bells, even slops—all fitting flawlessly.
After admiring each, I began placing them throughout the room.
Such splendid art wasn’t meant to stay boxed away.
These jesters were meant to be seen.
By me, at least.
Now… the books.
There were many—over a thousand.
So, with that many volumes packed onto the shelves of that little room, which book do you suppose fate guided my eyes to first?
The answer: The Fifth Stroke by Violette d’Vereau.
They say the first four were for pleasure.
The fifth… was for power.
Whew.
Violette d’Vereau and her brother Vasian ranked among the most infamous authors in Malakanth’s history.
Sure, they pushed boundaries when it came to portraying passion on the page.
But they also did it at the expense of some of the realm’s most powerful figures.
That’s how you get your books banned. And burned.
But the copy I found?
It was handwritten. Autographed.
I remember its black and crimson spine—
and the silhouette of a nude woman beside d’Vereau’s name.
I remember reaching for it.
But I didn’t take it from the shelf.
Not yet.
And it’s a good thing.
That book was so hot, it might’ve burned my fingers.
Then there was perhaps the most notable addition to the room’s collection—
The Westen Codex.
A sprawling, fifty-volume epic chronicling the true history of Malakanth—
rife with heresies, counter-narratives, and damning truths.
It had been banned by every major ruling body in the realm,
yet secretly passed between scholars, rebels, and witches for centuries.
The Codex was written by Westen the Quill—the scholar king.
Westen was one of the most maligned monarchs in Malakanthian history,
at least in his day.
Reviled by the elites, almost to a person.
And his only fault?
He valued the truth.
I could go on and on about the books I found that day.
They shaped me—personally and academically.
But I’ll name just a few of the standouts.
There was The Black Veil by Séverine Vaudrin, the definitive tome on Indamar’s witchcraft history.
Banned by the High Council of Arinar, of course.
The Ruined Empire: A History of Aisen by Edras Thalverin—chronicling that civilization’s rise… and mysterious fall.
And The Gilded Tyranny by Kaelor Dresmorne—an unflinching account of the Luxonican Empire’s conquests and corruption.
Indeed, these books—along with so many others—shaped me.
They pushed me to think beyond the confines of the village where I grew up.
Beyond the Isle of Indamar entirely.
The more I read, the larger my frame of reference became.
My paradigms shifted.
And I grew more intelligent.
Interestingly, my final discovery during that first visit to my newfound study…
would turn out to be the most important of all.
I had just pulled The Great Atlas of the Known World by Evrard Luthais from a shelf and was sliding the chair out from the desk to sit down and enjoy its many maps—
when I noticed another book already lying on the seat.
I set the atlas on the desk and picked up the other book.
Its title: The Journal of Tannon Baelthorne.
It was a rather large book…
at least, it was in that moment.
Sitting down, I began to inspect it more closely.
The journal appeared to be made of leather—weathered but proud.
Its cover was mottled with age, the once-supple hide now creased and softened by years of handling.
A brass clasp, dulled with patina, held it shut, while arcane etchings shimmered faintly across its hued surface.
Again—this is how the book appeared to me then and there, during my first visit to Tannon’s old study.
But with only a glance, I knew:
this was something magical.
I must confess—
I felt a little intimidated being in the journal’s presence at first.
My palms grew slick as I unlatched the clasp for the very first time.
Immediately, the harsh caw of a crow split the air.
Startled, I leapt from the chair, eyes scanning the room.
But there was no crow to be seen.
Still, that didn’t stop me from looking.
Under the desk.
Behind shelved books.
Beside the painting that served as the study’s door.
But… nothing.
Once I was certain I wasn’t being stalked by some crow from the abyss—
and my heart had settled—I returned to my seat at the desk.
I stared down at the journal and gave a low, appreciative whistle.
Could the book have produced the crow’s caw?
I got my answer when I finally worked up the nerve to open it.
This time, the cawing of many crows filled my mind.
They seemed farther off than the first—but unmistakable.
I heard the flapping of wings.
A murder had taken flight.
Amazingly—though in truth, typically—I had opened to the journal’s final entry.
It was dated the fourth day of the month of Yancrist, in the seventeenth year of the reign of Maegor the Vrax.
Maegor the Vrax.
Now, those books of mine were bound to make me smarter.
Even so, I wasn’t a fool.
I knew Maegor the Vrax had ruled Malakanth roughly five hundred years before I was born.
My eyes widened.
Was this journal… five hundred years old?
I swallowed hard.
I read the last entry.
And just so you know—Tannon’s handwriting was impeccable.
The way she formed her loops, the way she crossed her letters… it was simply lovely.
Compared to hers, my own handwriting was nothing but chicken scratch.
Hers was something to aspire to.
And I vowed then and there that I would.
Now, please understand—Tannon’s story was a tragic one.
Her final writing reflected that.
I won’t go into the details here.
But there was heartbreak.
And danger.
And ultimately, I’m afraid… that danger claimed her life not long after she wrote those final words.
So that got me thinking.
Had this study been sitting within the priory all this time, waiting for someone to find it?
Waiting for me?
Yes. I’d been led here for a reason.
Tannon’s story was meant to become part of mine.
Or maybe mine was meant to become part of hers.
Either way, to know her—even through the pages of her journal—was to be in awe of her.
And I got to know her the only way anyone still could:
Through the words she left behind.
Sitting there for the first time at her old desk—preserved all these years by what had to be magic—I read through many of her personal entries.
And I quickly realized: Tannon was a lot like me.
She clashed with authority.
So did I.
She was rebellious.
Same.
Boy-obsessed and proud of it?
Guilty. As. Sin.
The more I learned about Tannon, the greater the ache I felt for what had likely happened to her. And the deeper my need grew—to honor her in some way. To thank her for compiling such a splendid array of books, ones I fully intended to read in due course.
But what could I do?
In the end, I figured the best way to honor Tannon was to pick up where she left off—starting with that very journal.
I would make an entry then and there. I’d express my thoughts, my opinions, my dreams and desires with the same eloquence she had shown.
And I’d work on my hideous handwriting.
Atop the desk, near the echostone that had drawn me here, sat a quill and inkhorn.
They, too, could not have survived the centuries without magic.
But this study was a place of magic.
This was the dawning of a time of magic.
So I dipped the quill, scrawled the date, and made my first entry—just four words:
Today, I found you.
Satisfied, I closed the journal.
And to my amazement, the magic had already begun.
The title had changed.
And now?
It was this: The Journal of Marissa Bonifay.
