At the age of twelve years old, I buried my father in the graves of the estate, I had no idea where or who my mother had been, and I was left a colossal, desolate mansion all to myself and the burden of my father's debt. By the following spring that came and washed away the snow and ice with the welcome sun it had also brought forth the debt collectors. Regardless of my age, they sought to gain what they saw as rightfully theirs. The estate was only worth a fraction of the debt owed and I would need to pay off the remainder of the debt or the collectors would find other means of recompense.
At the time, I cursed my father's very existence for burdening me with this curse, I turned to the grave at the rear of the manor and shouted at the head stones and pounded my fists against the fresh dirt that now lay over my father's corpse. As my fists ripped and tore through the thin vail of earth, my father's corpse was uncovered from the shallow grave I had dug him and in that hallowed soil I saw a glint of hope and gold.
Round my father's neck had been a singular gold pendant with silver chain. I plucked the piece of jewelry and scrutinized its details. A fine work of craftsmanship like this would have fed the two of us for weeks, perhaps even prolonged my own father's life. And yet he concealed this bit of jewelry for a reason that became apparent once I opened the locket and saw that it contained a picture of a young woman and an older man. The man looked similar to my father, but not exact and the woman had the slightest hints of sharing these features as well. I remember grazing my fingers across those old photos of family I had never met and feeling my heart grow heavy and I could no longer find it in myself to curse the existence of the man that was partially responsible for bringing me into the world. I could only think of the salvation that my family would be able to bring me in this sea of dirt and tomb stones that lay before me.
That very same day, I sold the pendant for the sturdiest shovel I could afford and set out to the graves once again. I stripped the burial clothes from my father's corpse and set them aside, knowing the thread would fetch a coin or two and did the same with the other graves. Each one was like a bank vault unto itself, each past member of my family buried with jewels and trinkets and clothes that had been well kept inside of their sealed caskets.
It was there that I found myself morbidly fascinated by the corpses that lay buried. Some of them with flesh skin still clinging to muscle and sinew. Others had decayed away into nothing more than gilded skeletons. It was there that I noticed the intricacies of the human form and subtle clockwork of the body. How the joints and ligaments all served a proper functionality to one another. How the muscles pulled on the tendons to flex the hand and arms. I began to piece together what was missing by looking at my own body.
When the graves were all emptied of whatever wealth I could strip from them and the trinkets were sold to pay off the debt collectors, I found myself with more than enough money to last me some time. I took the small fortune and set out to a city well away from Eros, Stronge and Agape. I fled to the island nation of the human colonies: Philia. It was there that I found a prestigious school and a multitude of benefactors more than willing to sign a scholarship to someone who showed enough promise. Over the course of twelve pain staking years of sleepless nights and my face being constantly buried inside of medical journals, essays, and text books, I not only learned how to read and write, but I mastered the art of medicine, and with it, a way to save lives. It was with this skill, this gift I gave myself that I was able to pay back my generous benefactors and establish myself as one of the top doctors in Philia.