I was just ten when I arrived at Wingflight Academy. This was not my first experience around griffins, my mother was a griffon rider and my older brother was a newly graduated lieutenant. As for me, I planned to go into the healer corps. Why? Well for several reasons, but mostly because I thought of myself as a coward,and I wanted to follow my fathers footsteps. My father was the best healer to walk shadowmere in a millennium. All of this, however, was soon to change,when Caldris was caught in a border skirmish with some Drakorian forces, he stood no chance,unprepared, as he was and he perished. This, it turns out, was the final nail for my father, whose heart had been failing him for years,and less than a month after we heard the news, he died.
My mother had never been one for grieving and so as soon as we were done with the period of mourning for him she sent an aide for me, to come to her office immediately.
"Elaris," she thundered. "Stand up straight, look at me, I never stood for this healer nonsense and now that I am your sole guardian you will jump off the cliff, and you will become a rider, or else you shall be disowned."
Now all through this tirade I had been spacing out but at that final threat I snapped.
" You do not speak to me like that" I said "ever, I will obey you because that is my only choice but you are no parent of mine"
I knew that I had wounded her but I didn't care.