Grandmother, The First Spellcaster

Her name is forgotten. The claim that she was human is disputed and argued. She is only the Grandmother, the first spellcaster, who used her power in secret to heal and mend. All accounts of her may be more myth than reality as she left no personal accounts, and the earliest recorded descriptions of her were written when she would have been long dead. All accounts must be considered unreliable even if they have since become critical texts of study.   The most important account of the Grandmother comes from Oliver An who also coined her title. Whether she was his actual grandmother, or the term was simply one of respect towards a beloved elder no one has managed to confirm. Written in his twilight years as a collection of memories his childhood during the Eternal War, An's descriptions of Grandmother laid the foundation of most of our modern theories of metaphysics. He describes two incidents of particular interest involving an injured woman and a sick man. An injured woman is brought before her and complains of a broken arm. Grandmother inspected her wound, then sat with her knitting needles and yarn, and swiftly knit an approximation of the woman's arm that crumbled into nothing when she finished. The woman's arm was healed. The sick man came before her but she shook her head and said she couldn't heal him. A sickness was clearly too ambiguous for her skills, but Grandmother had apparently stumbled upon the first theory of spellcasting: "the thing is."   Grandmother vanishes from An's memoir after this as his parents flee with several other families from their encampment in the night. She might have been dismissed as a confused memory of an old man if an elf hadn't read it and written a response that he had also met this Grandmother if only briefly. He wasn't sure if she was human or elf, but her eyes had been bright, and she had helped deliver a pair of babies and their mother during a particularly gruesome birth. He claimed she had sat next to the resting mother and babes the entire first night, intently rolling strands of wool between her fingers making strange shapes he could not remember clearly enough to describe.   The course of history was changed with Grandmother, as she is the first tale we have of a magic user who was neither Fae nor Demon. Once the mortal races received their First Gifts all thoughts turned towards freedom.