Disclaimer: Not. Mine.
A/N: Okay, I'm proud of myself. I really enjoyed writing this, though I feel a bit bd saying that, considering what I put the character through...anyways, enjoy!

The sand whipped against her face as she walked. She had walked so far already, and she felt as if she still had a long way to go. She'd been out there for months, after she'd been exiled from her country.

Kel didn't know how much farther she could go, she was tired, and her heart seemed to ache from what the other knights had said, and what had transpired since her supposed treachery.

Only a few people had sided with her, but King Jonathan had forced them to give it up, or they would be exiled with her. Neal, Merric, Owen, Raoul, and Alanna had chosen to believe her when she had told them that she was innocent, that she would never betray Tortall. A furious King Jonathan had had a 'discussion' with Raoul and Alanna in his office during the trial when they'd spoken out.

The resulting shouting match could be heard throughout the castle. Finally, Jonathan had threatened them, and not just idly threatened them, with exile as well. A distraught Alanna had left the office sullenly, and Raoul had stalked out, and sat down as far away from the king as possible.

She remembered that day so well, when she barely remembered most of the days since then. After the trial, her family, out of shame, had been forced to disinherit her, and cast her out. She wasn't allowed to call herself Keladry of Mindelan. She was just Kel, a no-one, who didn't belong anywhere.

Now that she thought about it, she didn't really want to go back. Nobody cared about her there. Not anymore. Except for her friends, they'd accompanied her to the border, though the knights had been forbidden to speak to her once they were past her old post, New Hope, when Jonathan had overheard that they had been talking to her.

He hadn't thought to stop Dom from talking to her, but it made it hurt worse. Just the look in Dom's eyes sent shivers up her spine.

She missed Tobe, too. What was going to happen to him without her? She could only hope that he would stay at New Hope, and not cast a thought toward her.

It was rather odd, she thought, that all she managed to be able to think about was her old friends. She wasn't even thinking that much about her own survival, just about what was happening to them. She didn't even realize how much she herself had changed since she'd left Tortall, both physically and in her own thoughts.

A few days earlier, she had caught her reflection in water she'd pulled from an old abandoned well. Her hair, which had been cut neatly at her earlobes, was nearly at her shoulders, and instead of the mousy brown it had been when she'd left, it was streaked with sun-bleached blond. She had lost a lot of weight, so she looked gaunt, when she had been well-fed. She was just…different, there wasn't any other way to describe it.

She did wonder, however, if she would ever see them again. She was never going back to Tortall – she couldn't, not after she'd been exiled, but she could go everywhere else. Maybe she'd see them in her travels.

Now, all she had to do was decide where to go when she got out of the desert. Outside of the countries bordering Tortall, the knights weren't taught a lot about the other countries on the continent, probably because they rarely had to deal with those countries. She didn't even know most of the names of most of those countries, much less anything about them. She hadn't even known that there was a desert on the other side of Scanra.

She sighed and kept walking. The sand whipped her cheeks, chapping them more than they already were. She knew that eventually she would have to stop, but where, she didn't know.

It was days later when Kel found the next town. By then, her tongue was thick from lack of water. The desert was a harsh place, especially this one. It was harsher than the one in the south of Tortall, where the Bahzir lived.

She didn't know how much more of this she would be able to take, she had been a knight, yes, but that was nothing compared to this. She walked for endless miles with very little hope for the end of the desert, not after so long. At that, she would never know what would happen once she was free from the desert.

She walked into the town, meeting no one's eyes, as they watched her, a lone woman who walked through the desert, with no company, and few possessions. She knew they probably thought she was strange, but that didn't really bother her.

What she was, was a survivor, she was going to prove the Tortallans wrong, show them that she wasn't what they thought she was. She wasn't a traitor. At that point, she mentally berated herself. If she was going to prove them wrong, she had to stop dwelling on what had happened.

One last thought appeared in her mind before she shut those thoughts out all together. What would Neal, Dom, and Raoul think if they say her now, what would Lady Alanna think?

She cut those thoughts off, trying to rip them from her mind. She wasn't going to see them again, so what was the point? She had to move on, not dwell.

She stopped at the well, and drew up some water, pouring it as best she could into her waterskin before drinking some. She looked up from that to see a young boy at her elbow.

"Can I help you, miss?" He asked sincerely in heavily accented common. Kel could have smiled then, but she didn't.

"Thank you, no. I have to be on my way." She brushed some of the dust off of her clothes, and walked away from the well.

The boy followed her. "You sure? You look tired," he persisted, barely understandable when he said 'tired'.

Kel sighed, turning, "I am tired, but I have to move on. Thank you," she muttered, meeting the boy's green gaze.

She trudged away from him, leaving him with nothing but the sadness that he'd met one of the famed Tortallan lady knights that he'd heard so much about, and he couldn't help her.

Kel would never know that her shame would never reach this village, and that she wasn't a fallen warrior here, she was still a hero. She wasn't a hero in her own heart, not anymore, but she was still a hero to the people who'd heard of the Protector of the Small. She was the woman who had taken a stand for the children in her care, and saved other countries from the same fate as Tortall.

But she'd never know that she hadn't lost that person. To herself, she was just Kel, the nearly heartbroken outcast who had to find her way again.

She had no idea what destiny had in store for her.

A/N: Review!! Please?