Fomorians in their own words: The Nurse

I was not born a Fomorian, nor did I willingly become one. I was in fact born near Headford and, at the tender age of seventeen, was snatched by those bandits known as the Fomorian Brotherhood. How they got past the vaunted Wall of Connacht has never been explained, aside from their poitín-fuelled boasts that nobody beats the Brotherhood, but the result is that I spent over two years as an apprentice nurse among them.

I had a good chance to see the Brotherhood up close, and I can confirm that there are indeed bandits among them, people for whom it was merely an excuse for raiding and throwing around their weight. I have no sympathy for these, and in truth, I got the impression that the Brotherhood’s leadership considered them to be merely useful cannon fodder. The more senior healers rarely deigned to focus on these types, leaving them to me.

Others were involved merely because it was what their family did, and many of those struck me as conflicted by it. Still others were zealots who genuinely believed that they were the first line of defence against the banshees, and that being turned into a Fomorian is a blessing. Both of these groups had little love for the League; a frequent accusation I heard is that the dwarves left them to die out there when the League pulled out of the region.

After I escaped, I wound up at a detention centre where I currently work, still as a nurse. The Fomorian children I work around are, in many ways, very similar to human children. They have different likes and dislikes. Some are possessed of choleric temperaments. Some are melancholic and withdrawn. Others are pleasant, outgoing and helpful. One point in common is that they are all possessed of denser musculature and are physically stronger than what is normal for a child of their age. Indeed, some do not even have the fangs or skin fungus that everybody knows they should have.

Would I accept a cure for ‘Fomoritis’? At this stage, I don’t know. The extra physical strength may be useful, but I find myself burning through food at a faster rate than I should and I feel the cold more than I did before. I do not consider these major disadvantages, but I cannot fathom how it is a blessing – certainly not enough to be forcibly exposed to it.

Sarah Delaney


Slight change to the format (i.e. moving the author’s note to the end), and replacing the preformatted block with regular paragraphs. As for the narrator here, I figured that somebody with medical training would be the best person to explain the physical changes (or at least be seen as such in-universe).


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.