The tiny girl was falling. Down, down down. The green tinged sky seemed to go on forever, endlessly submerging her in an eerie sea of fog. She almost didn't feel the cruel wind whipping her cheeks, making her tangled red hair fly behind her like a blinding solar flare. She barely felt the burn in her left hand.

It was easy to ignore the fact that she would eventually feel the fall, when she got to the bottom. If she survived.

But she felt the impact. By the Dread Wolf, she felt it. And it hurt. For a split second, anyway. Then, all she felt was the falling of a different kind. Falling into oblivion, which had to be better than the pain. The girl embraced her death, fell into it with an open heart.

If only she had been so lucky.

The room she found herself in some time later was dark, enclosed, and dingy, with odd-looking iron poles on the wall facing the outside. What were they? Why was she here? What was that slimy feeling she felt all over her weak body? On closer inspection, it looked like some kind of salve that the healers back home rubbed on Mamae's body when she was sick with baby. The salve at the camp hurt Mamae. She blamed the stupid healers for what happened to Mamae in the end. No salve would kill her, but… Stretching her arms out, she felt no pain in them apart from the familiar faint burn in her hand. She didn't want to look at the injury yet. Maybe not ever. But the rest of her body felt much better than the pain she remembered from the fall.

A dark, hooded figure stepped out of the shadows behind the iron poles. The elf instinctively reared back, shuffling her rear back into the corner.

"Shh, elf. I'm not here to hurt you."

She heard rattling, and then an uncomfortable creak as a door opened. The figure stepped in, and removed her hood. A woman? But she wasn't like any woman that she had ever seen. She was tall, unnaturally so. And her ears were rounded, unlike the delicate point of her own ears. She had heard of these people. Shemlens. They were cruel, heartless tyrants who had taken away the elves' homeland and their legacy. They were to be avoided at all costs. Mamae used to call them awful names when she told stories, say that if she didn't settle down to sleep at night the shems would come and nibble on her flesh. It would terrify her.

Worse, the shemlen was holding something wrapped. It could be anything,

She screamed and tried to stand up abruptly, but the healing salves hadn't worked as well as she originally judged. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto the floor. She didn't even notice the ball of blue flame that was growing larger in her right hand. She didn't notice the flame shooting past the shem's head, narrowly missing her ear.

The shem dodged it expertly, and nodded. "Alright," she said with a defeated look. "It's alright." There was the chilling sound of the door closing and then locking again, and then the woman was gone. When the elf opened her eyes, there was a small box on the floor. The thing the shem had been holding. Taking great care, she picked it up and shook it. It wasn't too heavy, but had the unmistakeable swish of liquid. Poison?

Even so, her stomach was rumbling. She hadn't eaten for days. Opening the box, she found some ram meat., a few leaves and a large bottle filled with water. Too eager to wait, she uncorked the bottle with her teeth and downed the whole thing, still parched. It felt like ambrosia dripping down her cracked lips, revitalising her throat at the dryest it had ever been.

The food was almost as good, but she felt ill after a few bites. She wasn't accustomed to eating any more. She hadn't eaten for days, and even before that she only had scraps. She hadn't eaten a meal in… Months, maybe?

How long would she be in this cell? What had happened to her? The mark upon her hand didn't have any distinct shape, and it was… Glowing. And throbbing, with some kind of magic, perhaps? Even a non-mage could tell that the Veil was thin. Did this odd mark have something to do with it?

The girl heard an odd wail in a pained voice. The cry was desperate and raspy, and had the air of someone who had seen too much in a short space of time. It was the lament of a lost child, begging for home.

She was surprised to learn the voice was her own.

"Mamae!" she cried weakly. "Help. Help me. I am lost. I don't like it here, and I'm cold. Hungry. Please, come back. Mamae!"