Dawn

Lehanna stirred at sounds of twittering birds just outside of her hovel. [I]Ahh-- Dawn has come again I see. The world has not ended as I slept.[/I] Lehanna stretching as she rose from her pallet on the floor wondered if it had snowed again today.

Her stomach was growling but there were chores to be done before she could eat.

It only took three short strides to cross the entire length of the hovel Lehanna shared with her cousin Lilly, so one would think that Lilly would wake when Lehanna did, being in such cramped quarters and all. But the only other creatures awake in the hovel were the two chickens who shared the space with the girls in winter.

Lehanna nudged Lilly with a foot on her way to the door, such as it was. The "door" was a tanned deer skin sewn to a stout tree branch.

Lehanna pushed the skin aside to peek out into the world. Just to make sure they were not snowed in, and somewhat to her relief she saw in the grey predawn light that there was only a thin sheet of ice covering the ground in the middle of the little "village".

The village consisted of twenty-five people, eight chickens, four dogs, a skinny pig, one tom cat and a central fire pit. All sharing seven hovels the largest of which was no bigger then fifteen feet wide and ten feet long. The smallest of which, Lehanna and Lilly's hovel, was big enough only for the girls and two chickens who rested on a wide rough hewn wooden shelf sitting in something of a bramble pen tucked between a cliff face, which the hovel was built against and the skinny half dead tree that grew out of it.

Lehanna and her brother had built the hovel against the tree and cliff face because it just wouldn't stand otherwise. [I]No. I will not think of him today.[/I] Lehanna told herself sternly.

Lehanna drew back from the door and went to rouse Lilly.

After shaking her cousin awake, cleaning out the chicken pen, by having Lilly wrangle the birds then quickly wipe off the straw covered wooden plank they sat on. Then adding fresh bedding, and feeding the stupid things Lilly was free to step outside with the cache of eggs the birds had lain over the night and Lehanna tidied the hovel.

The hovel had been dug a foot and a half deep into the ground, and the sides of the foundation kept in place by river rocks, and the thick mud that collected on the sides of the streams and creeks that flowed from the nearby lake. So all Lehanna had to do was collect stray straw and place it back into a pile in the corner where Lilly and she slept. Their possessions were in another corner tucked into a sort of concave dent in the stick, stone and mud walls of the hovel so no need to bother them.

Lehanna was pondering adding another layer to the walls to keep out the winter chill when she heard cries of alarm from outside.

She stepped deftly out of her hovel and saw that most of the villagers were standing around the fire pit and looking straight up. Some were grinning holding little children above their heads and some were cringing but not looking entirely displeased.

Lehanna looked up and saw for just an instant the emerald sparkle of dragon scales. She felt the powerful breeze the dragon had created in it's wake and shivered from the chill of it.

"Do you think that rider is off on some important business in Therinsford?" Lilly asked her.

"What? Are you stupid girl?" Asked Lor, the villages most accomplished hunter, which wasn't saying much. "Therinsford." He continued." Is only a stupid hovel just like our own cozy dung heap and that dragon was flying in the direction of Vroengard. Ya know west."

Lilly stuck her tongue out at him.

Corin, the unofficial leader of the village, shrugged his broad shoulders and said "Mr. Needs-to-change-his-attitude is right. But who cares. [I]We saw a dragon[/I]."

Corin was well known for his love of dragons.

Lor grumbled at Corin's comment but didn't protest.

Quite suddenly there was a shout from atop the rock face.

"Ooooweee!! That was a big'un!'

Lehanna looked up and saw old spindly Logan a top the short rock face, where his hut had been built. He was facing west with one hand shading his eyes. He was completely naked.

Lehanna flushed crimson and turned away.

"Oi!!" Corin boomed. "Put some clothes on you old fart. Or we will roast you like a pig!"

The threat was empty Lehanna knew. Corin and the old man were good friends but it still made her shudder.

"What?" Lor shouted. "He ain't go no meat on him! Lehanna however." Lor licked his lips. "Looks succulent."

"Sure, if you like them emaciated." Replied Corins' sister Joan.

Lehanna was used to Lor's attentions by now and paid him no mind. He was bluster. She just made sure that neither she nor Lilly went into the woods alone with him about. Corin took care of them the rest of the time.

"Ooooooweee!" Logan shouted again. "Gonna be some kind of storm today!!"

Lehanna pointedly kept her gaze on the fire.

"Whadayya mean?" Joan asked. She had no problem staring at Logan.

"There is most definitely power in the air. Uhuh. Logan knows about these things." Lehanna looked up and saw the old man atop the cliff, hands on his boney hips grinning broadly down at her. She quickly looked away.

"Corin?" She said. "Was today the day you had wanted to go to Narda and buy supplies?" She twiddled the end of her corn silk colored braid. She desperately wanted to go to the fishing village.

Corin nodded. "Yep I'm taking you and Joan this time." he said.

"Why does she get to go and not me?" Lor complained.

Corin glowered at him and Lor shut up. Nevertheless Corin answered the question. "Because Leah has business there and you and your bow have business in the forest."

Lor stalked off, hands in his pockets, not bothering to reply.

It was true morning now not dawn and they would have to leave soon if they wanted to make it back before dark. Lehanna, who had been a bit listless since she woke up was now fired up and ready to go.

"Leah, Sis, gather your crop and get ready to leave." Corin said. So they did.

Their crop was actually an herb. A special dark green, almost purple, leaf that only grew in a few places between the spine and the sea. The little village made a living off of selling furs and this herb. Corin and a few others would walk for not quite half the day to get to the closest village, Narda, and sell their painstakingly gathered and dried crop every three weeks or so. Corin would not sell the fresh herb.

The herb in it's dried form was mixed into a poultice then applied in small amounts to open, festering wounds. The mixture would literally melt away dying flesh but had to be quickly wiped away once it's job was done or it could do a lot of damage. The fresh herb could be mixed into a tea and given to someone for a drink- and melt a hole through his or her throat.

Lehanna went back into her hovel and retrieved the packets of the herb, and nearly forgot to pull on her stockings and boots until the big tom cat GreyWind asleep on her pallet reached out a claw and scratched the top of her foot.

She yelped and glared at the cat. Lehanna had found GreyWind several weeks before the hovel had been built, right where he sat now at the base of the rock face. He'd broken leg and she had set it as best she could.

He was a grey and tan long coated thing with tall tufted ears and a shortish tail. Croin had told her to kill it out of mercy, the cats sire or grandsire obviously had to have been a bobcat or something and it would only claw her eyes out if she tried to help it. GreyWind had certainly tried but Lehanna had patched him up anyway. So now GreyWind, named for his habit of climbing to the top of the hovels, lifting his head to the wind and just standing there motionless for hours, would drift in and out of the village and let only the women touch him. For whatever reason.

Lehanna pulled on her deerskin boots and sighed when she felt the holes in the bottom. Once she was dressed she joined Corin and Joan outside and they set off.

It took them until an hour past noon to reach Narda, and to Corins delight the small market was buzzing with activity.

Lehanna handed her bundles of the herb off to Joan and milled about for a several hours watching Corin haggle for goods and get a better price for his crop. Occasionally she would offer a suggestion to him about the quality of goods he wanted to buy, and she would wander about making sure that none of the venders were giving better deals to someone else.

"Why don't you go entertain yourself Leah." Joan said after she had seen Leah scuff her boot on a rock for the third time.

Leah didn't have to be told twice. She was bored and cold and needed sustenance.

There was an Inn in this town. Very small mostly a tavern really. Not many people bothered to stay in over night unless they passed out drunk or were waiting for Corin to come down form the spine with the herbs but it had an Inn Keep, ale and beds to rent so it was technically an Inn. The nn keep, Rosta or Roz as some people called her, was a buxom and talkative middle aged woman with copper hair streaked with grey. She beamed when she saw skinny blonde Lehanna stumble in form the cold.

Leah wondered how different they most look side by side. Friendly red Rosta and pale quiet Lehanna. It was, in a way, amusing.

"Leah!" Rosta called as the skinny blonde girl entered the Inn. "Pull up a stool I'll get you something to warm your bones." Leah did as she was bid.

"Do you have any news?" Leah asked. It was her standard first question whenever she came to Narda.

Rosta's bright brown eyes saddened for a moment. "Sorry hun I don't"

Leah shrugged. She'd expected as much.

"You know Leah." Rosta said in a gentle tone as she slid a flagon of rich dark ale toward her. "It may be time to face the fact that he isn't going to send word."

Leah knew she was going to say this. It had been four years since her brother had left Narda and the Hovel telling her that he would send word to Rosta to pass on when he got to where he was going. That he would send for her. Four years of silence.

"No… I can't do that Rosta." Leah said softly.

Rosta drew her self up. "Well. He is your Brother. I'm sure he'll find his way to you or you to him someday. It's the way of the world. Blood calls to blood you know." That was Rosta's favorite saying. Blood calls to blood. Or sometimes Stone calls to stone or flesh calls to flesh, it was always like things calling to each other. Leah had not yet puzzled out the meanings of all of Rosta's favorite sayings but it was something she aimed for.

After watching the small rabble of drunkards and serving wenches in the tavern for a moment Rosta smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. "So girl how's our handsome farmer?" Rosta meant Corin of course. In Narda everyone referred to Corin as The Farmer. Though only Rosta referred to Corin as 'handsome'. He and Rosta had a [I]thing[/I] with Corin when they were younger. Corin however had no talent for fishing and a deep suspicion of the sea so the only job with prospects Narda had to offer, fishing, was not open to him so he moved to the forest with some few others to make a living off of gathering the deadly and life saving herb.

He didn't make much off of the crop but he insisted he fared better, and was much happier where he was then some of his relatives who worked at sea. He would not let Rosta come and live with him in a hovel however so Rosta had stayed in Narda where she had better job prospects. Leah wondered if Rosta was still waiting for Corin to come sweep her off her feet or some such.

"Corin is quite well and beside himself for seeing a dragon today." She told the older woman.

Rosta smiled. "That's just like hi--" Rosta was cut off as suddenly the earth began to move.

"Earthquake!" Shouted a drunken man as he flung him self at the door missing by three feet and slamming himself into one of the support beams that lined the tavern room.

Rosta hopped over the bar and grabbed Leah by the arm.

"Outside! Get outside!" She shouted.

Leah could not get her balance on the roiling ground. Dust and some splinters of wood fell from the low ceiling, and she kept tripping on drunken men trying to escape the building. There was a sound like thunder in the air, so many people were screaming.

Finally Rosta managed to kick the last of the drunken men, the most sober of whom couldn't walk in a straight line when the ground wasn't moving under them, out of the way and yanked Leah, who had also partook in Rosta's potent brew a moment ago, out the door and away from the building.

Just as the two had stumbled through the arched doorway the ground stopped moving.

Rosta huffed and puffed. But managed to pull herself together enough to say. "Girl, go find Corin and whoever else he brought with him today and make sure they are unhurt understand?" Her tone was hard but she was not yelling. Leah could still hear screaming even though the village was eerily silent.

Putting aside her own fears and confusion she did as she was told and ran off toward where she thought Corin and Joan had been.

Leah had rounded two corners and navigated around an upturned wagon not stopping to help the wagoner recapture his oxen when she saw Lor. He was slinking out of the village, bow in hand, gazing nervously behind and around him.

Leah had never liked Lor, and she liked that he was stalking about Narda even less especially when he was supposed to be finding their dinner.

Perhaps if she followed him she could learn what he was up to and perhaps rat him out to Corrin.

She let Lor get ahead of her by several hundred feet. Out of ear shot and hopefully out of range of his short bow. She tracked him as he left the village. She wouldn't have really cared that Lor was fleeing the village itself if he had been fleeing the place in the direction of The Hovel. But he was traveling south not east.

Lor grew bolder and less edgy the farther away he got from the village. This made Leah suspicious. Lor was a dangerous, seedy sort of man. He had shown up in the The Hovel just after her brother left and had always seemed more nuisance then help in her eyes.

As dark was settling Lor made his way down a somewhat steep ravine.

Leah was considering the value of following him any further when another earthquake struck.

Leah tried to hold onto a tree to keep herself up but the shaking was so violent that she was knocked tumbling almost end over end, down the ravine. She landed with a crash against the stump of a tree that had probably fallen when the first earthquake struck.

She heard a sound that was similar to a moan then footsteps, angry muttering and the unmistakable creak of a bow being drawn.

Leah opened her eyes as saw the point of an arrow not five feet from her.

"What do you think you are doing following me?" Lor asked.

"Put down the bow and I'll tell you." Leah said.

Lor smiled rather coldly and drew the bow a bit further. The ground at the bottom of the ravine looked to have been ravaged by the quake. Rocks, roots and down tree limbs lay scattered about.

Leah took all this in, and cat quick, dived to her right rolled and snatched up a heavy rock in the same instant. She was not fast enough though. Lor loosed his arrow and it caught her in the leg as she rolled. She cried out and managed to twist around kneel on her good leg and chuck the stone at him.

The impact the stone made with the side of Lor's head was accompanied by a sickening cracking sound.

Leah sat on the ground for a few moments gasping for breath. Attempting with little success to wrap her mind around the situation. She inspected her leg. The arrow had gone almost clean through her calf.

That was something at least. After gathering her courage a moment and tearing strips off of the hooded cloak Lor had been wearing, feeling grateful it was so thread bare.

Leah gritted her teeth and yanked the arrow all the way out of her leg. She groaned loudly as the wooden shaft slid through her flesh.

As she tied the strips of cloak around the wound she wondered if tying the strips too tightly would cut off enough blood to her leg that the flesh died but her chief concern was getting out of the ravine. She knew that she couldn't climb up the side and didn't want to risk getting halfway up and being tossed down by another quake.

"I'll walk along the streambed." She said to herself. If the ravine kept running north to south then she should find a place she could climb out of or get close enough to Narda to be found, if anyone was looking for her…

Leah, head spinning and mind racing grabbed Lor's bow intent on using it like a crutch when she spotted that he was lying on a pack that in the dim light she recognized as belonging to Corin. It was heavy but she snatched it up anyway. Lor was still breathing but she didn't care if he was left to die in the stream bed. Maybe. When she was in a better mood, she would send help for him. Or maybe she would forget where the ravine was when she got to Narda. That would teach him to steal and try to kill her.

And so Leah hobbled off down the ravine. She tried not to cry but every few steps a choking sob would escape her lips. "I can't feel sorry for myself." She said aloud "And I can't get scared. Nothing in these woods would attack me. Bears are VERY uncommon and wolves know to stay away form an archer." Not that she could draw Lors bow nor had she thought to take his arrows. Now she was cursing her stupidity.

She had to stop several times during the day. The ravine seemed to go on and on.

When it was full dark Leah decided she could walk no more. Her leg had bled through the bandages. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest as well. She had to stop. "Just my luck." Leah murmured.

After a while Leah noticed a strange humming in the air. A deep sound like the sound a long bow makes when an arrow is loosed from it but continuous. she looked up but all she could see a large grey boulder in the middle of the stream bed. Water pooled around it's base. From the state of the sides of the ravine around her Leah guessed it had fallen loose during the quake.

She stood ponderously and walked toward the great rock thinking to get a sip of water from the pool, and cursed when she tripped into the deeper end.

Was the stone vibrating? Was the sound coming form just beyond it?

The hair on the back of Leah's neck stood on end as she approached.

She clutched Corins pack closer to her and stepped carefully toward the boulder.

Long streaks of something black ran down the rocks' sides.

[I]I have to walk past it if I want to go home.[/I] she thought. No longer interested in the thrumming sound or the thought of a drink.

As Leah reached the rock she gently brushed the black substance that ran off it . She lifted her fingers to her nose and sniffed.

It was blood.

Suddenly the rock shuddered and wheeled around. A long grey serpentine neck with a bloody head attached to the end stretched out to her.

Lehanna stepped back hurriedly. Her mind or some primal instinct told her that this was a dragon. The hot breath, the scales the… wings? On the monsters back were two short appendages, torn and bloody they waved waving furiously splattering blood as they did so. Leah could see sinew hanging form the wounds and splintered bone. Something had torn off the dragons wings.

The big grey beast opened it's mouth and Lehanna saw a faint orange glow in the back of it's throat but it seemed unable to spit fire at her. Leah saw with horror that the dragon had no tongue. It flapped the bloody stumps of wings at her spraying her with blood that stung like herb she gathered

It gurgled a hiss and tried to stand but only managed to move it's front legs. Lehanna dodged the creatures furiously lashing tail then screamed. Something was clutching at her wounded leg. Leah wheeled around and saw a woman without eyes yanking on her with incredible strength for one so wounded. Her legs were twisted at angles so horrible Leah wanted to be sick.

She screamed again kicked at the woman and turned to run- then froze in her tracks when she saw what blocked her escape route.

Standing at the base of the more gentle slope of the ravine was a man sized creature covered in rust red fur standing on two feet but crouched low to the ground. It's wild gold eyes leered at her with such hate and rage that Lehanna was driven back a step. The things lips curled in a cruel sneer and a low and wild growl sprang from it's throat.

The creature sprung toward her with amazing speed and in three short leaps it had knocked her to the ground. It's clawed hands ripped at her chest. The savage sounds the red creature was making, the horrible cries of the dying Dragon and Leah's own screams filled the night air. Leah kicked with her good leg and drove the creature off her.

It rolled and crouched. It was clutching something dark in its claws.

Lehanna locked her own cold blue eyes with burning gold eyes of the creature.

A sudden scream, filled with rage sounded from somewhere nearby. This broke the gaze of the monster and it stood up startled.

A grey blur whizzed from the trees atop the side of the ravine and landed on the beast. The Red beast screamed in rage and fought back but the smaller grey blur darted away with whatever the red thing had been holding.

"Give it back." Moaned the legless woman behind her. Leah bolted.

Without heed to her wounded leg or care as to what direction she was running Lehanna ran for her life. A distant part of her mind said that running injured and screaming through the forest at night with strange and mutilated creatures all about was not entirely smart, but Leah was to far gone in panic to really care. Something she could not ignore however was the fact Corin's stolen pack was moving.

Lehanna slowed to walk and pulled the shoulder strap of the violently writhing bag over her head. She reached inside. Something bit her hand as she reached in. Leah yelped and yanked her hand out of the bag, lost her balance, fell and hit her head. The world went dark.

Chapter two will be called LOST