For AnnBlackwater. Your friendship and encouragement have ment the world to me. Thank you.
Weakness was not permitted beyond the Wilds at the edge of the world were the Chasind dwelt. Weakness was a curse that could only bring death or exile. Scrapes covered the girl child from her dirty terror filled face to the soles of the bare feet. Exhausted and lagging from hunger she fled through the dark as root and rock struck at her toes and the soles of her feet, seeming to spring from nowhere. She stops only briefly to lean her slight weight into the rough bark of an old fallen ironwood. Her labored breath fogged the cold night air.
She had been apprentice to the tribes shaman Tollak and failed to progress in skill at what the shaman deemed to be an acceptable rate. She had been named Svakhet, weakling in the Chasind tongue. She could not summon more than a spark of flame or change her shape into even the least of wooded creatures. She was of no use to her people and so they had expelled her. Like so much waste. They could not even be bothered to kill her. 'Drive her out' they had said, 'Let the woodlands take this one. She is no threat to us. She will likely be mistaken for a rabbit and caught by the Alven for their supper!' This had caused much laughter. The rabbit was viewed and least of the woodlands creatures and the elves scorned for their earlier defeat at the hands of the Bortkommet set, or lost ones, to the far north. A people that would summit were no people at all to the Chasind. They little like to remember how the Alamarri had driven them southward a millennium ago.
And now they were after her. With chains and malicious laughter they hunted her through the night time forest. Not the Alven for she was no rabbit. In truth she longed to be one, then she could hide. She could dart and weave through the brush and her pursuers would never find her. She stumbled, fell and the Bortkommet were upon her. 'I am the rabbit. I am the rabbit. Let me be Kanin…'
It was surprising how heavy chains could be. She had been bound and collard for only three days but in those three days everything familiar had been stripped from her. In her short twelve years of life she had never ventured beyond the woodlands and now she found herself held captive on ship bound for where she could not say.
Tiny arms wrapped tightly around bent knees, trying vainly to conserve body heat and find comfort on the hard wooden hold floor. There were others with her, but the press of bodies could offer no warmth or comfort in these cold winter waters. The stink of fear and bodily waste was heavy in the stales air of the ships hold. They could offer no solace… they were rabbits too, just like her.
She had never seen so many people before. The noise and color of crowds made her feel dizzy and nausous. She had filed off the ship with her fellow captives blinking under the glare of a much warmer sun stumbling on legs weak from long weeks of disuse. She and her fellows were marched slowly to the mournful tune of jangling chains to a staging area not far from where the ship had docked. They where herded on to wooden platforms, stripped and brought forward one at a time for the waiting crowds inspection.
"Twenty five Silver and not a copper more!" She stood small shoulder hunched looking on as a fat man with all of two teeth in his head made a bid for her.
A/N: Kanin is Norwegian for rabbit. I just want to stress that I don't know any Norwegian myself. I am using a translator I found on the enternet. If I I get anything wrong please shoot me a pm! Thanks! Reviews are loved!