Musical Harp
Chapter IV: Troubling Beginnings

Lyra sighed in frustration as she stared at the newly found obstacle in her way.

An extremely large trench was in front of her, there was a bridge, or rather had been a bridge but someone apparently didn't want anyone else to cross so they cut it up.

Lyra turned and stared up at the towering trees, they were much too tall to be cut down by one person, and any broken branches that lay about were either too short or weak to be used as a bridge.

"What a burden" Lyra mumbled to herself.

It would take too long to find another way over the trench as it appeared to go on for miles, it was too crumbly to climb down one side then up the other, and it would be suicide if you attempted to jump over the entire thing.

Lyra stood staring blankly at the ditch for a long while before finally concluding that there was no way she could get over it with what she had on her at the moment.

So she made the only possible sounding decision: to find the end of it and walk around it.

"Man this is going to waste a lot of time" Lyra muttered miserably as she started walking.

They had been travelling for at least a half a week now and Lara complained whenever she could, she hadn't lost her voice again to Kai's distaste.

"Ew, what is that smell?" Lara began as she scrunched her nose up in disgust.

"Dead birds" Answered Kai, who didn't seem to be affected by the horrid stench at all.

"Ergh" Lara gagged before deciding to ask more questions.

"Why does it smell so bad?"

"Because they're rotting away" Kai replied, he really didn't feel like talking, then again he never did, but if he didn't answer Lara she would just keep pestering her.

"Why is this smell so strong?" Lara asked her voice rising in volume.

"A lot of birds are hunted around here" Kai responded boredly.

"That's gross" Lara commented.

Kai silently groaned in agony, this girl was really getting on his nerves...

There was a long silence to Kai's relief, but it was cut short by more questions.

"Are we nearly there?" Lara asked loudly.

"No" Came Kai's simple answer.

"How much further are we going to walk?"

"We'll stop and rest when the sun starts to set" Kai told Lara, trying his best to contain the anger and annoyance within him.

"Are we going to eat proper food today?" Lara asked snobbishly.

"We have been eating proper food" Kai replied, very tempted to snap at her.

"You call that crap food?!" Lara screeched.

"Berries and birds are not crap" Kai growled.

"Well it doesn't taste good" Lara complained.

"Then maybe you'd like to try finding the food for once!" Kai finally snapped angrily.

Lara just glared hatefully and disgustedly at him.

"Well that's convenient" Lyra commented as she leaped over the now-narrow ditch with ease.

It turned out that the trench actually got thinner at some points and Lyra was lucky enough to find an area where it got thin enough to jump over.

"Looks like Lady Luck is still on my side" Lyra chuckled to herself slightly as she smirked.

As the now over-come obstacle grew further away in the distance Lyra's thoughts went back to her current duty; to find and most likely have to rescue her older sister.

"If it weren't for our statuses then I probably wouldn't even really do this" Lyra mumbled slightly annoyed.

The main reason to why she was even bothering to find her sister was because she was next in the throne, however if anything were to happen to her then Lyra would be forced to take her place.

The inYuroshi Kindgom the family rule was; "She or he who be the first blessing will belong to the throne after they wed after their18th birthdate festivities", which in modern times basically meant "The first born son/daughter of the royal family will take up the thrown after they turn 18 and get married".

In most other kingdoms all royal children would actually become kings/queens, however the Yuroshi kingdom was one of the kingdoms that did not have such a rule, the family policy had always been that there only needed to be 2 rulers, a King and a Queen, however if one is to pass away early the other would resume the duties.

"Good thing I'm not the first born" Lyra half sighed.

She really did not want to become a queen of any sort, all she really wanted was to be able to do what she wanted to do in life, which she hadn't entirely decided upon yet.

Lyra seemed to be lost in her personal thoughts, so lost that she hadn't heard two voices approaching from behind her.

"Well what do we have here?" Lyra heard a loud voice speak, snapping her out of her trance.

Lyra spun around to see two scruffy looking men, one was bald an had many visible scars on his head, and the other was rather hairy looking.

Lyra tensed, hiding her rising fear as well as she could.

"Hey, ain't this girl one Slanty 'n' One-eye let 'scape?" The hairy man questioned, his grammar very off.

"Looks like her from the descriptions we got" The bald man responded, a dirty smirk crossing his face.

Lyra stepped backwards as he stepped forward, the bald man once again took a step forwards causing the frightened girl to take another step back.

This kept going until Lyra found herself meeting with the bark of a tree.

Lyra gasped as she saw that she had backed into a dead tree at the beginning of a seemingly grey looking forest.

"Don't 'ven try run" The hairy man spoke, it was rather difficult for Lyra to decipher what he had said, because he had a very strong accent and horrible grammar.

"This here's the dead forest, and if you go in there you'll surely be eaten alive" The bald man informed, his smirk growing wider.

Lyra growled, this was bad.

The two men approached Lyra, who found herself pinned on the spot, if she ran through the forest the animals would surely catch her and eat her alive, and she didn't have enough time nor energy to run around the two men.

Lyra tried her best not to yell out in fear as the bald man roughly grabbed her by the shoulders and roughly threw her to the ground.

"What you do that for?" The hairy man questioned dumbly.

"Daze's 'em a little, makes it easier" The bald man answered as he heaved Lyra over his shoulder, who surprisingly to him was rather light.

Lyra was much too dazed to react, her world was warping in many directions and flashing weird colours.

'a little is an understatement' Lyra thought dizzily.

It had seemed like forever until Lyra's vision and train of thought went back to normal, and by that time she had already been carried off for about an hour.

"So we take girl to boss guy, eh, Hammer-head?" they hairy man questioned.

"Nah, I think we'll make a good profit from her if we sold her in Lurakoes" the one called "Hammer-head" responded greedily.

"But boss said we take girls back to him" The hairy man stated scratching his hairy head.

"What boss says doesn't matter Bushy, we're only working for him to get some money, not actually do anything for him" Hammer-head told "Bushy".

Lyra almost cracked up when she heart the hairy man's name, she had never heard a name more rediculous than "Bushy".

"Hey Hammer-head, can we get us house someday?" Bushy questioned.

"Even better than a house Bushy, we'll get a mansion and live in it with our wives" Hammer-head boasted.

"We have wives?" Bushy asked puzzled.

"We will" Hammer-head said confidently.

"I hope they be purdy" Bushy spoke almost as if he were imagining a happy dream.

"They will be, they will be" Hammer-head assured his seemingly close friend.

This made Lyra wonder, the two men appeared extremely greedy, she could easily tell that they wanted much more than just mansions and pretty women...She knew that this wouldn't be good for her.

But maybe, just maybe, if luck was still on her side they could lead her to where Lara had been taken to.