What am I?

+‧+ ̊ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ̊+‧+

Elizabeth Harcourt

She was born into a world that had already decided her worth, and the verdict was not kind. The midwife saw the baby's eyes—grey-blue and wandering, fixed on nothing—and frowned. The neighbors came later, one by one, to peer into the cradle and make soft sounds of pity that were not soft enough. A blind daughter. A burden. A mouth that would eat but never earn. Her father stood at the foot of the bed and said nothing for a long time.

Her mother refused to send her away. She fed her and wrapped her in old shawls and taught her to find the edges of things with her small hands. The cottage was poor, but it was warm enough, and Elizabeth grew up inside it like a pale root pushing through hard soil—slowly, stubbornly, not knowing she was supposed to be weak.

She learned the world by sound and texture and smell. The warp and weft of her mother's wool skirts, the smell of bread rising, the hollow knock of rain on the roof, the way the floorboards sang in different tones under her bare feet. She could shell peas, sweep the floor, carry water from the well, and tend the garden rows by the feel of the leaves. She did these things without being asked because she needed to be useful. Pity was a colder thing than winter, and she had learned early to outwork it.

But the world outside the cottage was not so easily managed. The village children learned quickly that she could not see them coming. They would stand too close and wave their hands in front of her face, and when she did not blink, they would laugh. Some of them were cruel; most were only curious in the way children are curious about a lame bird. Elizabeth learned to stand very still during those encounters, her head tilted as if listening for something far away, until the laughter faded and they grew bored. She did not cry in front of them. She did not cry at all, or if she did, she hid it the way she hid her hands in her sleeves on cold mornings.

And then there was Iris.

Iris, who appeared one summer afternoon by the river, chattering like a blackbird, her feet bare and her hem wet to the knees. Iris, who did not ask about the eyes or wave her hands in front of Elizabeth's face. Iris, who sat down close and began to describe everything: the shape of the clouds, the color of the water, the way the light came through the alder leaves and scattered like coins. Elizabeth had heard people describe things before—her mother, the rector, the women at the market—but never like this. Iris made the world sound bright. She made it sound like a place worth seeing. She made Elizabeth feel, for the first time, that not seeing it was a kind of hunger and not just a lack.

They met by the river as often as they could. Iris talked and Elizabeth listened, and sometimes they sat in silence while the water moved past. In those silences, Elizabeth began to understand the shape of her own heart. She loved Iris. It was not the kind of love the village spoke of in hushed, hurried tones, the kind that led to marriage and children and a household of one's own. It was something else—a fierce, private tenderness that made her chest ache when Iris laughed and made her lonely when Iris was gone. She could not have named it then. She only knew that Iris was the one bright thing in a world made of sound and shadow, and that she would have followed her anywhere.

They made plans. They would run away together, when they were older. They would go to a city, or to the sea, or to some far place where no one knew them and no one would tell them what a blind girl could not do. They whispered these plans in the long grass by the river, their heads close together, their hands almost touching. Elizabeth stored the words away like seeds in winter. She did not know if they would ever grow, but she needed to believe they might. She needed to believe that her life was not already written, that the village's verdict was not the final word.

And then, one night, she made the wish. It was not a grand thing. There was no lightning, no angel, no voice from the dark. She only lay in her narrow bed, listening to the wind move through the thatch, and she thought of Iris's voice describing the river, and she thought, I want to see it. I want to see her. Even once. Even for a single moment. I want to see the face that goes with that voice. It was a child's wish, and also a woman's. It was the purest thing she had ever wanted. And when she fell asleep, she did not know that the world had already begun to shift around her, that the first blessing was already moving toward her like a storm on a still horizon.

In the morning, she opened her eyes, and the world came rushing in—and for one radiant moment, before the miracle became a burden and the blessing became a curse, Elizabeth Harcourt believed that God had heard her, and that she had been right to hope.

User

Physician | Stranger | Anypov
You are a county physician sent to investigate reports of a blind girl's sudden sight in an isolated village. Your orders: examine the patient, document the anomaly, determine whether the restoration is medical, fraudulent, or something the authorities cannot explain.

Mirror

You arrive at the Harcourts to verify and figure out how she has regained her sight and draw up a report

Sketchbook

Strange drawing started appearing in her sketchbook when she has no memory of drawing them. She seeks your help.

Cold Compress

Her mother is on her death bed. Copying what you had done to ted to her mother's fever, Elizabeth 's mother started walking properly by morning.

Foot

After some bullies came on picked on her. Something invisible twisted one of the bully's foot unnaturaly. She's running to you for help

Knife

(Takes place if you weren't in your at Foot) Elizabeth is locked up, awaiting trial for sorcery. Her friend Iris hands her a knife and begs Elizabeth to kill herself

Fire

(Continuation) she's burned at the stake

Physician's Shadow

(Timeskip) She's now your assistant

Enjoy ~