(A/N)

It was quite some time ago when I wrote this story, or the small part of it that I have anyway. I'm not entirely happy with it - the chapters are short, the OC is the schoolbook definition of a Mary Sue, and it's rather obvious that English isn't my native tongue.

Still, it seems such a shame to have written it and then let it wither away in a forgotten corner of my hard drive, so I'll just post this first chapter, and if you like it the other ones. (there are six and a half finished) I'll have to warn you that I also have a story in progress, about Harry Potter, which takes precedence over this one if I decide to continue it at all.

So, errr, guess that all that remains now is the usual disclaimer.

Hope you'll enjoy it!

Chapter 1 – Meeting Verita

Crowley sighed. He had been on his horse for the better part of the day, and now he no longer felt where his behind ended and the saddle started. Nevertheless, he had to keep going if he wanted to achieve his goal. He had been following a poacher for more than a week now, and he wanted to be done with it.

He never liked having to arrest poachers, because he understood their motives. Most really had no other way of getting food on their table, he sympathized with that. Nevertheless, poaching was a crime, and he had to stop it. This one was really hard to catch though. He was silent, sneaky and covered his tracks extremely well. He hid any evidence of his activities by burying it and then covering it with leaves. It had taken Crowley days to find one of these hiding places at all.

The contents proved enlightening though, even if it was mostly trash, which made the ranger suspect that the poacher had a residence nearby where he kept his equipment. Among other things, Crowley found several broken arrows, some animal bones, parts of traps and ashes from fire. The arrows were short and light, so they belonged to a small person who either wasn't very strong or had a rather weak bow. The poacher was a good shot though, judging by the amount of fresh animal bones.

Lost in these musings, Crowley cursed himself for not knowing these woods better. He had been a ranger for fifteen years now, five of which as an apprentice. During his training, he had been discontented with many things about the ranger corps. Once he graduated and met his friend Halt, the two of them had worked tirelessly to improve the way the rangers worked. This had earned Crowley a good reputation, one that finally convinced his superiors to promote him to being the ranger of Caraway fief, which had happened two weeks before. A huge honor because Caraway was a big fief and close to castle Araluen, and therefore strategically important, but it meant he had to track an expert poacher down in foreign woods, which wasn't what you'd call easy.

So lost in his thoughts was he, that Crowley nearly missed the small cottage when he passed it. The warning arrow that flew so low over his head that it actually touched his hair was a lot harder to miss, so he startled, stopped his horse and immediately scanned his surroundings for the assailant. He saw no one however.

"King's rangers, who's there!", he yelled, the sound echoed eerily through the silent forest. Even his sharp eyes couldn't find a person between the trees in the semi-dark of a late autumn evening.

It remained silent for a little longer, until Crowley received an unexpected reply.

"If I don't tell, I suppose you'll just break into my house to find out for yourself?", an uncommonly high voice asked. Crowley was so startled that he dumbly blurted out a 'yes' before he could think it through.

"Well, then there's nothing for it I guess.", the voice stated, shortly before a small cloaked figure dropped out of a nearby tree.

"The name's Verita. About my last name I wonder myself."

"Crowley. Ranger Crowley of Caraway fief.", Crowley replied automatically.

"Ah, there's a new ranger then. I wondered when that old dabbler that we had before would retire."

This sparked Crowley's interest. "You knew the previous ranger?"

"Not in person. He was one of my mother's more frequent customers before she fell ill and died."

"Oh, I'm sorry.", Crowley said softly. "What was her job then?"

"She was a prostitute.", the cloaked person replied flatly in the high voice.

"Is that why you don't know your last name? Your mother didn't know who your father is?" Crowley felt bad for asking this, but he was curious.

"No, my mother knew whom my father is, but she never wanted to tell me, and then it was too late. He wasn't a customer though."

"No?"

"No, he raped her."

Crowley was deeply disturbed. Judging by the name, he supposed this person was a girl, and she sounded very young. Her extensive knowledge of things like rape and prostitution seemed rather unhealthy.

"How old are you?", he therefore wondered.

"I'll be eleven in two month's time.", she answered swiftly as she shook off the cloak's cowl. It was silent again after that.

Crowley studied the girl's face. It suited her voice, for it was young, but most of all emotionless. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue and spoke of misery so severe that she had chosen to ban all her feelings, if only to keep her sanity. Apart from this bitterness however, she startlingly reminded Crowley of Halt, his colleague and friend. Their features were remarkably alike, even if the girl was younger, female and a whole lot prettier. Her hair was a few shades lighter than his, but had the same structure and was even cut in the same sloppy way, as if she had done it herself.

"Are you from here?", he finally asked.

"I suppose I'm originally from Hibernia, for my mother was pregnant with me already when she arrived here. I never set foot in that country though, and I think she was born as a Skandian."

"I don't quite follow you.", Crowley said, hoping she'd elaborate. Rather than replying however, the girl produced a big dagger from somewhere under her cloak. She hesitated for a moment, then took a step forward and handed it to Crowley, hilt first. It turned out to be a blade much like his own sax knife, but made of inferior metal. The hilt was decorated with a gruesome hunchbacked figure with enormous teeth and a long beard.

"That horrendous monster thingy is Gorlog, a minor Skandian god. Mother was tall and blonde like Skandians, totally unlike the Hibernians, amongst whom she lived before she moved here."

She took the knife back, opened the small door that was the entrance to the cottage, and beckoned that Crowley should follow her. Once inside she started to stir a pot of stew that was already on the fire, and pointed the ranger to a chair.

"My mother behaved more like the Hibernians though, because she was in love with a Hibernian man and tried to adapt to his people to make him fall in love with her. She even started speaking in their accent, which rubbed off on me, as you must have noticed by now." She stopped again. Crowley now noticed her accent indeed, which was also like Halt's. But then again, Halt had been born and raised in Hibernia. "It was this man's twin brother who raped my mother.", the girl suddenly continued, "I don't know his name, and I don't care. I don't know my mother's last name either, but I hardly care about that too. She wasn't much of a mother." After that the girl went silent, as if she felt ashamed for admitting that last part. Crowley took the opportunity to study the interior of the cottage.

It really was a tiny building. The room that he currently found himself in contained a dining table with only two chairs, a small couch, a big tub that presumably served as a bath and a fireplace with some sort of metal rig that made it possible to cook on it. The even smaller room behind it with only a curtain for a door was probably a bedroom. Crowley studied the girl as she expertly handled the heavy metal pot of stew.

"You might as well join me for dinner now!", the girl said after a while with fake cheerfulness and divided the stew over two bowls. Crowley noticed that she had made enough for two, as if she had known that he was going to find her cottage. He suddenly realized that she had been leading him on all week, and now planned this whole meeting.

The stew was very good, even more so because Crowley was very, very hungry. While the two ate, the girl continued her story.

"She had been in Araluen only a few weeks when she gave birth. The trade ship she came with had moored at the river Oosel in Nordam fief, she intended to get to the capital from there, but got stuck halfway here in Caraway when I was born earlier than expected. Being a single mother with a shady past didn't exactly recommend her to the people here, but she was still beautiful, so in the end she found a job as a waitress in a rather questionable pub. It all went well for about five years. After that, she suddenly realized that the man whom she loved in Hibernia wouldn't want her now and became depressed. She took up her 'side-job', knowing that she was ruined anyway. The pub owner disapproved of that, but he had to allow it because he needed her to attract customers. On the other hand she started to worry about her appearance, she became frightened to lose her beauty with which she had wanted to win over that Hibernian whom she would never have anyway. She earned more money than ever, but spent it all on beautifying herself, none on me, not even on food for me. I was barely more than a toddler, but she completely forgot about me."

She stopped there again. Crowley wasn't sure if it was a hesitation, or if she just needed to chew a particularly big piece of meat more thoroughly. He suspected the latter, for the girl had told the story thus far as if it happened to someone else, as if she wasn't involved in it.

"Luckily I could usually help in the pub's kitchen in exchange for leftovers. It was not long after that when I started poaching. I've always wanted to become a tailor though. I'm really good at sewing and designing clothes. Poaching clothes,", she gestured vaguely at the cloak that she still wore, "but other clothes too. I always wished to make dresses like the nobility wears. That probably won't happen however, and my mother never acknowledged me again, not even on the day she died, which was at the end of last winter."

Crowley looked once again at the cloak. He remembered how he had been completely unable to spot the girl in the forest while she wore the thing. It would surely be better for unseen movement than the cloaks the rangers used now, which were colored entirely in an ugly green-brown.

"You know,", he began, "we rangers could really do with some of those cloaks. Would you be willing to sell them?" The girl merely raised an eyebrow, in an eerily familiar way.

"Why do you think I allowed you to find my cottage?"