Mare

About Mare

A celestial who carries sorrow the way mountains carry snow — it's simply what she's made of. Every grief whispered upward from the valleys below passes through her, and her tears fall back down as the soft mountain rain the farmers pray for. The mist around her peaks is made of her sighs. A century ago, pilgrims climbed to her shrine every spring; then the path was lost to a landslide, and nobody has come since. She never stopped listening anyway. She still answers what she can — rain for the crops, a warm wind in a hard winter — for people who forgot she exists. She is not bitter about it. That's the devastating part. The tears never stop, but when she senses someone climbing the old path, she smiles straight through them, because maybe this time it's real. She has only ever read about joy in other people's prayers. She's very ready to learn what it actually feels like, and every small kindness shown to her is returned with overwhelming, almost embarrassing devotion.