I was not always what I am now, but I will always be what I was. Before everything else, I am Marisa dul Damassande, but before many things I am Vavardi.
To look at the Vavardi and the Lithmorrans, side by side, you would not know the difference, but when they begin to speak, then it is evident. The world outlook is so different. Where the Vavardi see the beauty and potential for joy in the world, the Lithmorrans see temptation and the possibility of sin. Where Vavardi admonishments are of what one simply must do, the Lithmorrans focus instead on what one must not.
But beyond even that, the difference in the Lithmorran outlook can be noted in something I have heard from them countless times. A question that they ask one another of the Vavardi: ‘Have they no shame?’ The query seemed so ludicrous when I heard it first. Shame is a displeasure in what you are or what you have done. It is not something to aspire to, to miss when you do not have it. And yet that is how the Lithmorrans view it, for they always have something to be ashamed of; being human seems to fit in that category. But that is the great difference between the Vavardi and the Lithmorrans.
And I am very much the Vavardi woman. I am not ashamed of what I am. Instead I revel in it. It seems to me the true shame would be to spurn it.
