The first thing she became aware of was the ceiling. It was very high above her. The light in the massive room was orange and glowing. It seemed to flicker and pulse, wax and wan. It didn't really reach the stone arches so far, far above her as she stared up. After a while, Phera also noticed the sounds. There was a lot of screaming and a lot of crying. Children all around were crying and crying. Phera sat and watched the pulsating light on the ceiling.
Even with her preoccupation with the stones above her, Phera's shrewd eyes still spotted the dwarf as he approached her. She waited until he was seated next to her to switch her upwards gaze over to him. He held out a goblet and a loaf of bread and she took it silently. She set the bread down on her knee and took a drink from the goblet. The golden liquid inside it made her feel better, though she would not have said she had felt bad before drinking it. She stared down into the patterns of the drink for a second, then turned again to look at the dwarf beside her, who sat patiently, watching. "Thank you," she said. He had kind eyes, a startling blue above his black beard and below his black hair. He had a charcoal stick behind his left ear and a sheaf of parchment in front of him.
"You are welcome, young one," He said somberly. "I only wish I could give you more than mead and bread." A sad smile twitched his beard before he went on. "My name is Ragekut. Can you tell me your name, child?" He raised his hand and removed the charcoal and sat poised to record her answer.
"Phera," she said. He didn't move, but continued to stare at her, eyebrows raised. Phera stared back.
"What is your family name, Phera?"
She blinked. "I don't know."
Ragekut looked at her a moment more, then tried again. "What are your parents' names? Your mother? Your father?"
"I don't know," Phera said again. She saw his eyebrows twitch before he smoothed his face again. She wished he would speak again. His voice reminded her of the drink he had given her. Warm. Comforting. Golden.
"What about where you lived? In Gnomeregan?" He smiled again, encouraging her without making her feel too interrogated.
She blinked at him again. "What's Gnomeregan?"
Ragekut's face froze for several long seconds while he watched her. She was nothing but innocently curious. Then he smiled again and gestured to the bread on her knee. "Eat. Sit and rest. Don't go wandering off, I'll be right back." He gathered up his blank parchment, stuck his charcoal back behind his ear and walked off. Phera watched him go, tearing into her loaf as she did. She lost track of him as he weaved his way between all the gnomes and dwarves in the large room.
She could see how many of the gnomes present were children. They looked worn and weary, dusty from road travel and many crying. Her eyes scanned back and forth among the dwarves taking notes on parchment and the crying children and the adult gnomes. The adults were calling for children or spouses, wandering around aimlessly, or just sitting and staring as she had been doing. She had lost track of Ragekut, there were so many dwarves around and they almost all had beards. She looked down the hall and discovered that the light she had been so fascinated by was from massive falls of melted metal, flowing down into a huge forge. The fumes of the blacksmithing center bothered her.
She spotted a gnome child, even smaller than her, crouched down behind a brazier, half-hidden in the shadows. Phera rose and walked toward the girl. Her eyes were wild, like she wasn't seeing where she really was. Trapped in some nightmare in her head. Phera gently took the girl's hands and placed the bread in it. When the child looked up at Phera, some of the panic seemed to leave her face. Phera left her there to be tended to by the dwarves. She had to get away from the fumes, the ones that were somehow chemical and making her start to panic. She started away from the golden light.
To her right there was a great gear gate and nothing but more gnomes and dwarves. One of the dwarves called out, "We will need to make a list of the names of all refugees before we can start reuniting families." Phera supposed she was one of the refugees. But her name had already been written down and she needed space and, above all, to escape the fumes. So she headed left.
She weaved between scared gnomes and harried dwarves and tall, tall pillars that disappeared into the ceiling. She kept going, he pace increasing until she was running, but in a crouch to avoid unwanted questions and list-makers. She crept from shadow to shadow until she went through an archway and finally found a chamber that was fume free. It was a little humid here and she spotted the source quickly, a large pool to the right. She slowed down and approached the pool. Looking down at her reflection, she could see her brown hair in two bunches on either side of her head. She had a flash of memory, a bright morning with a kind-faced gnome styling her hair like this while another gnome laughed from across the room. He was wearing spectacles. The memory flashed again, the man, her father, his spectacles cracked and his face panicked. "Take this, Phera! You might need it!" he was shouting. He was fastening a belt around her waist, with a dagger hanging off it on each hip.
Phera blinked at her reflection as the memory faded. She looked down and her hands found the weapons still at her hips. Slightly too big for a gnome-child, but it wouldn't take her long to grow into them.
"You'll want to be careful around that pool, lass!" A voice called out to her and she spun toward the sound, one hand on each dagger scabbard. But it was just an unassuming dwarf sitting on a porch across from the pond. "Some of the fish in there have toxins in them. One drop of the stuff in your bloodstream would do you serious damage."
Phera looked back at the pond, spotted the brightly colored fish, then looked down at her daggers and smiled.