Emily: The Apothecary's Daughter

I was 7 years old when I first learned my country was at war.  My father ran an apothecary’s shop in the alchemical district of town, due to the sometimes disasters results of the alchemists and their experiments our neighbors were some of our best customers.  It was quite common for someone to come in suffering from burns, smoke inhalation, or even poisoning, and my father had a good reputation of great healing abilities but also as someone who would not gossip about how exactly someone had been injured.  But the night they brought in the man with ink stains on his fingers was the first night I had actually seen wounds.  The patient stretched out on my fathers work bench had long gagged stripes across his back, and I was soon to discover they had been caused by a whip, and that it had been done by the Kings guard.  We had a new king that year, and I soon learned to call him the Goblin King.  While I had always known that our kingdom consisted of humans and non-humans, several of our neighbors were non-human and my best friend was a Vampire,  it had been centuries since there had been fighting between us.  The Goblin King revived that old animosity and seemed to feed on it.  For years my father treated the wounded of the silent war waged by those who disagreed with the Goblin King, but it wasn’t until after his death that I realized he had been so much more active in the war than I had known.  Our neighbors, who had long been his patients and friends, became my father’s allies as they tried to overthrow the Goblin King.  To restore the true monarchy and find a peace between us and the others.  After his death, they became my allies for I am proud to be the apothecary’s daughter and I will continue my father’s work.