First Steps
The first thing the girl could remember was the feel of cold stone against her skin. Then came awareness that she had skin-she had something to feel with. Suddenly she became conscious of her whole body, and could hear the breath coming out of her nostrils when she exhaled, could taste the ancient air at the back of her mouth, and could see the black of her eyelids. So, realising that she was able to, she opened her eyes and saw.
She had awoken lying on a slab of stone at the side of a large room that she soon discovered was the hollowed-out inside of a hill. The floor was all earth and around the edges were rows and rows of dark slate shelves, piled wih hundreds of objects. Dried meat hung from the rough stone ceiling and from there too came the drip, drip of water as it fell to the floor and streamed away in a tiny rivulet. In the centre of the room was a table of shining black metal with a high-backed angular throne at its head. On the opposite side there was a small low chair, woven of reeds, but ones thick and strong enough to support a child's weight.
It was this chair the girl first attempted to reach, perhaps an hour after first becoming aware of her own existence, shakily raising herself into a sitting position, and, inch by inch, moving her legs around so she could slide off the waist-high granite slab she had been lying on. Her feet touched the ground and she pushed off with her arms. For a moment she stood, then her knees buckled and she crashed to the floor. Unconsciousness swamped her, drawing her back into its dark depths.
