And Never Forget To Serve Your Betters[edit | edit source]
This story is true.
Hattie was never the kind of hero who forged swords in the burning teeth of great wyrms. No, she was Hattie Handmaiden first and foremost: a Boggan who was a homemaker wherever homes were needed. A bowl of Hallowed Hattie Soup could bring the most brutal Thallain to tears or bloom the most withered Arcadian heart. But the story of Hattie Handmaiden is a lesson in forging your own eternal tragedy.
You see, Hattie made a home where no homes were welcome: in the Bramble Garden of the Sabermanes. In the houses of women left to be murdered by shame. In the unseen screams of those whose minds were treated as enemies. The Bramble Garden was for those who were not worthy to walk without tearing their feet: rebellious commoners, snide commoners, idle commoners, and perhaps the occasional rivals deemed to be all three. When Hattie came, with her soup spoons and sweet rolls, the counts and countesses of the land were not invited to the feast. Hattie was to spend her life among the brambles for her insult, but she had other impulses. Hattie snuck into the Sabermane Library and read the True Title Treatise. It is unknown exactly what was within that tome, or how Hattie beheld its secrets without losing herself to such potent magicks, but she emerged from the Sabermane Library imbued as she hadn’t been before. Hattie went into the room of Count Stonesmile Sabermane, reached out with her calloused little fingers, and twisted his True Name inside out. So it was that Count Stonesmile Sabermane could wear a smile that was soft as gosling and shed tears for the shredded legs of those he had called enemies. Hattie and the newly changed Stonesmile began to uproot the Bramble Garden and liberate its prisoners, but not everyone escaped before they were found out. It was Stonesmile’s son, Thornsong, who executed his own father for treason and then sought to do the same to Hattie; at the last moment, however, he thought of something far crueler. Hattie was held in the remnants of the Bramble Garden while Thornsong gathered three powerful wielders of the Naming Arts from within Sabermane lands. Three wielders, two verses, one curse.
The Handmaiden, heroine she thought she’d be,
has forsaken her place and so this is foreseen:
Hattie shall never stand for herself again
and her fury so righteous never ever rear its head.
It was only after a week of an unchained Hattie being used as both jester and chef that Thornsong finally granted her death. The Curse of Deference would grant her no such reprieve in her following lives.