I lived in the Temple of the Mother Goddess until I was seventeen. My parents dropped me off one day and never came back to get me.

I did what I was told, and every hour of every day, I prayed and I played the sweet little maiden, hoping that if I could be good enough, helpful enough, or kind enough, the Mother Goddess would answer my prayers and bring my parents back to me.

But it never happened.

Every coming year I would smile and sing and participate in the Midwinter festivities. I was the first up to light incense in the chapel every morning. I waited to take food after everyone else, just in case we ran out. And I tucked the younger girls in every night, telling them adventure stories of the lioness and her friends, stories in which good things happened to good people.

It wasn't until the Midwinter festival of my seventeenth year that I realized good things did not happen to good people, and that good things happened for the people that took what they wanted.

I was tucking in the last of the young children when I smelled it. Smoke. Not like the normal scent of incense, but real smoke, from a fire.

I tried to get the children out of their beds, but men barged into the room and one swooped me into the crook of his arm, carrying me down the stairs. He held me over his shoulder as he walked down the stairs, and I could see that the children in the room had awoken. I saw just enough before my captor turned a corner, to let me know that the young girls would not be saved. I saw terrible things before that room was out of sight. I saw things that weren't supposed to happen in sacred places, things that weren't supposed to happen to good people.

I wept and prayed for the Mother to intervene for her poor children, but there was no answer. I prayed for her to stop the man from lying me down and trying to hurt me. I prayed for her to help me stay pure, to stop him from holding my neck.

I prayed for her to stop him before I had to. But she didn't.

I pulled his own knife out of its hilt and stuck it into his ribs. He died on top of me. I was a virgin, but I was no longer pure. I felt a sour ball rising in my throat and I reeled as I vomited onto the floor. I saw the men coming down from the smoky stairs, bloody and laughing. When the building collapsed around me, I welcomed it.

It would have been better if that had been the end. But it wasn't.