"Akh'sien," my mother said as she held me in her arms, gently rocking.
"What?" said Jo'dara, my father.
"That's his name, Akh'sien." She beckoned for my father to bring her a bowl filled with an odd, Crimson-red liquid. He set it down by her feet - along with a small piece of paper - which she had folded together on the ground that she sat on, in our old home in Rimmen. She reached over and dipped two fingers into the bowl, covering them in the liquid, and then smeared it over the top left area of my furry, gray head and around my ear, trailing down to the bottom of my left cheek, and then she folded the piece of paper and tucked it into my thin linen shirt. Then, she looked deep into my solid blue newborn eyes and said, "Hello, Akh'sien. I'm your new mother, Ja-" Then she was cut off by the sound of the door to our hut bursting open, three mercenaries riding on the backs of Senche-rahts flooding into our home, and the twang of a bow firing the arrows that would pierce my parents' skulls. And the pale white face of the man who killed my family.
