Bloodline Echo: Grandmother

In your own memories of her, she was the keeper of secret recipes, the one responsible for the meals eaten at holidays and making special (adult) drinks. She was always frail with a presence that felt thin, as though she was barely attached to this world. She died young, when you were only 50. The echoes you see are very different. They start with her youth - a youth that's surprisingly in the imperial capital. As a youngster, she attended one of the less prestigious institutions of magic where she conjured a deep purple alchemist's flame.   In some of the echoes you catch, she's clearly working through exhaustion. The sludge of failed concoctions has become thick on the half dozen cauldrons strewn across the room. She's working delicately with scales, portioning ingredients to the absolute minimum required to have a chance of success.   Another echo, years later, shows her standing in an examination hall, a panel of master alchemists intensely watching her work. Two completed concoctions are already on the table. This one, however, is pushing her limits with her flames split into five parts of differing intensity. It's an advanced technique but it's poorly matched to her purple flames. The echo trembles as you see one of the masters leap from his seat, shouting, before the thread of the echo snaps.   In the backlash of that echo, you catch an echo from your maternal grandfather. He's young and is dressed as a laborer in a stable of well trained war horses. An older man wearing the uniform of a cavalry captain enters, passing him a small bag of coins. "You sure about this? You're good with the horses - another ten years and you could be fit to enlist. You know your way around the countryside - even if you were never cavalry, you could make it as a currier or scout. You worked so hard to get off the farm to come here…"   Your grandfather just shakes his head. "If it was just me, that's one thing. But my love needs to be somewhere away from this. There's nothing more healers can do to restore her flames, and besides, if I volunteer for one of the new villages on the frontier, they'll give me a larger parcel of land to work than the one my parents hold. It might not be fancy, but it'll be enough."