Aelid

### Worshippers

Adults who lack common sense, runaway children, doctors imperiled by malpractice (regardless of innocence).

### Favored Weapon

Halberd

**Aelid** is a reviled Goddess of Spring, namesake of the Month of Kites and one of the only spring deities in Kardund. (*To the mistaken relief of many.*)

More of a hazard than a figure of worship, she is known as the **Sorrow of Parents**, occasionally as the **Dewdoctor,** and most commonly as **"That Vile Bitch with the Kite!..."** (typically followed by "*...snatched my child!*") As it bears repeating, most people do not openly *worship* her so much as *fear* her. Despite this, she is not regarded as an evil deity - in part because she is so unpredictable and absurd, that belief in her existence cycles between boogeyman to honest threat and back again with dips in activity.

When parents the world over set strict curfews for their children in spring, this goddess is the sole reason. She travels through the sky lackadaisically on a kite (rather, the kite travels regardless) - and whether by chance or choice, children playing with anything remotely similar to a kite tend to be whisked away by the winds into the sky to join her.

## Description

The goddess' avatar is a short, thin and deathly pale woman, so caught up in kite cloth and strings that she is scarcely visible. She could be easily confused as a child at first glance. In truth, if one peeks under the gossamer and strings, the horror dawns that the goddess' appearance is corpse-like and decayed.

True to fashion, this elicits disbelieving and nonplussed replies from Aelid, who - first off - claims that it is the silliest thing she's heard, then acts as if there is absolutely nothing strange about being an animated corpse, let alone a *soaring* animated corpse.

### Personality

Aelid is infamously frivolous and air-headed, but very personable, undermining the actual terror of her abductions. She truly and sincerely does not mean harm and greatly enjoys the company of the children sent up to her, offhandedly citing such things as running speed and simple acrobatics as 'impressive', which not only implies an ability to observe the world below but also be easily mesmerized by it. Which explains (and does not excuse) her neglectfulness when it comes to children who remain by her.

Though when it comes to 'fellow doctors', she has but the utmost respect; though she will guffaw at any prognosis that does not coincide with her's, believing her own treatments to be the best option.

When it comes to asking the goddess about anything related to her divine duties and the heavens, she has astonishingly little to say beyond her own disorientation. Some who have contacted her believe she is merely playing dumb, but others correctly attest otherwise. All she can say for certain is that she is always very, very confused to find herself in Kardund, as it is not her native world. Where she is outside of the Month of Kites is a mystery people are fine leaving unsolved.

## Activities

For a mercy, Aelid's activities are confined to the final month of the year in spring. The children she ends up abducting are not often harmed, unless they are ill or otherwise abused and reluctant to return to the ground.

Those children that do return, whether by their parents' impassioned pleas or after some time and solid decision-making, find their life's purpose defined for them. Something about being abducted into the heavens makes for a proper rite-of-passage, even in cultures with their own rites. When a child survives the Dewdoctor's grasp, they inevitably turn out to be wise and watchful adults.

However, those children who remain in the sky tend to starve without realizing it, wrapped up in whimsy, conversation, and games. Worse, if they happen to be ill, Aelid is likely to give them a 'consultation' where the end-result will almost always be a swift and gruesome beheading with her halberd - through no real ill intent on her part, as she genuinely and wrongfully believes that she is a capable doctor.

For a fact, she is the patron goddess of all who have been accused of malpractice in some shape or form, disregarding whether they are truly innocent just as long as their lives or careers are endangered in a very public fashion. When someone has proclaimed a doctor's guilt loudly enough, it sometimes occurs that a kite swoops in at sub-sonic speeds and lifts the accuser away, never to be seen again.

This spectacle does more to confirm accusations of true malpractice than silence them, but it has also saved the skins of many innocent practitioners as the case becomes a matter of serious investigation.