by Horace, trader
Her name was Leyla, she said, and her
hair was braided wild with creepers and thorns. I marveled that they did not hurt her, but
when I asked, she but shrugged and let her eyes roam once more across the woods. Though I
had my hands securely fastened by her ropes, I itched to reach out and comb that unruly
golden mane, dirtied and leaf-ridden.
Her provenance, she told me over nights illuminated by campfires,
was once the city of Trinsic. She claimed to have been kidnapped and raised by orcs, which
I judged an unlikely tale, for all know orcs delight in eating the meat of honest folk.
When I told her this, she laughed a fey laugh, and gaily admitted that honest she was not,
for oft had she stolen folk away from caravans to loot their possessions from an
unconscious body!
At this, I began to fear for my life, and her smile seemed full of
teeth sharper than a human ought to have, for the tale of orcish raising had struck fear
into the marrow of my bones. "Wil thou eat me?" I asked, a-tremble, fearing the
answer.
And she cocked her head at me, like a wild animal facing a word that
it dost not understand, and the fixity in her eyes was a glimpse into the deeper reaches
of the Abyss. But she finally grunted, and said "Nay," in a voice that recalled
to me a child. "Nay," she said, "for thou dost remind me of a boy I knew
once, when I was a girl who played in a city of great sandstone walls, before I was taken.
He had sandy hair like thee, and I dreamt as a child of holding his hand and sharing
flavored ice. His name was Japheth.
The next morning she let me go, stripped of my pouch and clothes,
and bade me run through the woods, and to fear recapture, for surely her heart would not
soften again. 'Twas a fearful run, and I came to the road to Yew with welts and scratches
run rampant crost my skin, but I did not see her again.
Oft have I wondered of the boy named Japheth, and whether he
remembers a girl who lived in sandstone walls. The only Japheth I know is the Guildmaster
of Paladins who died last year warring amidst the orcs, and though he had indeed sandy
hair, I cannot picture him side by side with a feral girl whose tongue has tasted of human
flesh. Yet the paths of fate are strange indeed, and I suppose 'tis possible that this
paladin died defending his remembered lady's honor, unknowingly struck down by the orc
that she called father.
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