Interlude
The girl had been awake for a week when they came for her.
She was in a new city by that point. She’d fled the first, Terlian, the morning after she came to. Managed to hide in a hay cart and travel fifty miles to the next city, more of a town, really.
It had been a hard week. The first few days her only focus had been staying out of sight, and finding food. Most of the food she stole, or plucked out of trash that others had thrown away in alleys behind their houses. At night, she slept in barns, only horses and cows to keep her company.
But it was the deep, aching hole inside of her that was the hardest part. The missing.
Not having any recollection of what her life had been before that moment seven days before was jarring enough. Maddening. Infuriating.
The ache, though… she knew there had been people in her life.
Family. She could still feel them, could see flashes of their faces when she closed her eyes, even though she didn’t remember anything else.
Parents, a man and a woman. A sister, or a cousin, perhaps.
And she missed them, with a painful longing, even though she didn’t remember them.
But hunger didn’t care about her sorrow.
Nor did rain or sleet. And certainly not the men who leered at her from dark alleys if she wasn’t careful where she traveled within the town.
She made very certain that she was inside one of the barns before twilight had faded from the sky and darkness fell, thick and full.
Surviving alone was difficult enough. And then they came.
She first saw them on one of her food runs on the morning of the eighth day.
Down near the market, where she was lurking in the shadows between the ramshackle carts clustered practically on top of each other.
Three men, dressed in black and carrying swords.
It was instantly clear they were not from town.
They had a distinct sense of otherness about them.
As she watched them, merely curious at first, she saw that they were questioning the locals.
Merchants, farmers, people riding on the street in wagons or on horses.
And then, to her astonishment, she heard them describing a girl who looked like…
her. Long red hair. Fourteen years of age.
Pale skin, a dusting of freckles along the cheeks.
They wanted this girl, they told the locals. She was family, and she was not right in the head, and she’d run off. They were oh so worried.
And the girl knew, even though she didn’t remember, that these men were not her family.
They were not the source of the deep ache in her ribs that felt as if someone had taken a very vital part of her, a part that could never be replaced.
She could also hear the lie in their tale, and how very much not concerned for her wellbeing they were.
She may have just awoken, but she could tell a lie when she heard one.
So, she slipped away again, deeper into the shadows, until night fell, and then she hitched a ride on a merchant’s caravan heading to Tervanne, an unknown passenger inside a wagon full of wine barrels.
And after that, she never stopped running.