Disclaimer: FFXI and all aspects of it are owned by Square Enix. I own the rights to the character backgrounds (albeit not legally) and story ideas, and any other original things you haven't heard of in the game.

- - -

It had been six months since they had taken her mother's belongings. Six long months that seemed to last an eternity.
For when one is an orphan, life becomes very tough. She scowled at the unfairness of it. She passed by houses, looking
in at Elvaan, and occasionally some Hume, children, living the life as if there was nothing wrong. She hated them, envied
them. Those children who still had families, who still had a home. She growled, taking a bite of a well-earned (meaning
stolen) fish. Stupid Elvaans who took her home away; stupid Mommy for dying in that stupid war; stupid San d'Oria, for
making her life miserable. She didn't really understand why no one would take her in; her young mind couldn't comprehend
racism quite yet. All she knew where that the Elvaans here didn't seem to like her.

- - -

Let us backtrack slightly, to when our main character first started out. She had indeed taken the advice of the checklist-
Elvaan and gone to the San d'Orian church. After getting lost and stopping for directions quite often, she had found it.
However, there were apparently other orphans besides herself, and she was turned away, with the excuse that they were
full and had no room to spare. "Stupid Elvaans," she muttered.

She wandered along the streets for a few hours, looking hungrily at the food stands, setting a hand over her protesting
stomach. After a while, she gave in to her cravings and wandered over to one stand where some delicious-smelling fish
were being smoked.

"Fresh fish! Freshly caught and freshly cooked! Get 'em here!" The bald Hume running the stand shouted to the passersby,
waving a fan over the cooking fish. His attention was shifted to a young Mithra standing at the base of his stand, looking
up at him expectantly. He groaned. "Listen, kid, if I gave out my wares to every hungry-looking kid who passes me by, I
wouldn't make any sort of profit!" The girl just twitched an ear and continued to stare at him. He sighed. "In other words,
you ain't gettin' no free hand-outs! Now scram!" He slammed his hand down on the table, and the girl squeaked and
scurried off, away from the scary Hume. "Bloody orphans," he muttered before broadcasting his wares again.

The Mithra wandered about the streets some more, getting the same reactions from other vendors as she had with the
first one.Her stomach was beginning to feel like it was eating itself, she was so hungry.

She suddenly felt someone watching her and looked up; a young Elvaan boy with scraggly silver hair was staring at her
throughthe crowd. He suddenly started forward, dodging expertly through the crowd toward her and grabbed her hand.
"Come with me," he muttered before dragging her off.

"Nya?" was all she could muster, the confusion striking her at a loss for words.

He turned his head, still weaving the two through the mass of adults, and surveyed her. "You're an orphan, aren't you?
You look it." He turned his head back to keep his concentration focused on the navigation.

She paused, and then nodded her head sadly, either not aware, or not caring that a nod isn't audible.

The boy, however, took her silence for a yes. "How long?" he continued. It was said with the sort of tone that you would
ask of the weather.

"Two days…?" she ventured.

The Elvaan boy stopped suddenly and looked back at her. He studied her again. "Wow, you are new at this, aren't you?
Good thingI found you when I did." She flicked an ear and cocked her head to the side. "You have so much to learn if
you wanna make it in this world. Come with me." And with that he proceeded to drag the girl to an undisclosed location,
not even giving her time to protest.

- - -

The duo finally arrived at…wherever – it looked to the girl like any other part of the housing district – and the boy finally
let go of her hand, walking up some stairs. The girl rubbed her sore wrist and looked up, hesitating slightly before following.
The boy suddenly ducked into an alleyway and began weaving through the scaffolding between the houses. She had to pick
up her pace to a jogging speed to keep up. "We have to make it hard to find," the boy stated without looking back, "so
that the soldiers don't find us. They don't like us, you know?" He stopped and turned around to make sure the girl was
keeping up. "By the way, I'm Kayin," he stated, holding out his hand.

"Ai-Airelote," the Mithra girl replied, she looked at his hand before hesitantly taking it. "But Mommy calls me Aire," she
added.

"Well met," Kayin stated before turning back around and continuing through the alleys at his previous pace. Airelote stood
there for a second before hurrying after him, once again attempting to match his pace. And for the nth time that day, Kayin
once again stopped suddenly at a place that looked like any other. It was a triangular-shaped vent, the kind that you see in
attics, with a pretty-looking flower wind chime hanging next to it. Kayin pulled on the wind chime, and Airelote jumped back
in surprise when the vent swung out to reveal a hole. Kayin looked back over his shoulder at her, shrugged, dropped to his
hands and knees, and crawled in. "Come in before it closes," he shouted from the darkness, and Airelote had no choice but
to quickly dive in.

The door shut behind her and the small attic was plunged into darkness. Her eyes adjusted quickly, however (she was a cat,
after all), and she could make out Kayin running his hands over the floor, searching for something. Suddenly, he stopped, and
Airelote could hear him mutter "found it" under his breath, as he lifted up a latch and pulled a section of the floor up to reveal
a trap door. Warm light spilled in from below and she had to adjust her eyes to the sudden light. "C'mon," Kayin stated, and
jumped down. She obeyed and leapt down beside him, looking at their surroundings. They were in a hallway. An empty
hallway,to be precise, except for the candles lining it and providing said warm light.

"I have returned!" Kayin suddenly stated rather loudly, and Airelote jumped in surprise. She jumped again when he grabbed
her hand and pulled her down the hallway and into a room. It was a nicely furnished room, to her surprise, and the walls
were lined with beds, most of which were empty. Those that weren't empty had other children, most about her age (which
was five, by the by), playing card games or jacks, reading books, and two children who had gathered a group around them
were playing an odd-looking game with pebbles and a long board with carved out depressions in them. A second look around
revealed that the children were of the different races; Airelote identified other Elvaans, some Humes, even other Mithra to her
delight, a few Tarutaru children, which she recognized only because some of her Mommy's friends were Tarutaru, and one
boy who sat in the corner that Airelote could not, for the life of her, recognize. He was large, not so much fat as muscular,
bushy hair, a chubby tail, and greenish skin. She wondered briefly if this was one of the beastmen her mother had told her
about; he certainly looked beastly. And his eyes looked like they belonged to an adult, not a child, of which he most certainly
was, that she could tell. His eyes lifted from the odd pebble-game and glared at her. She "eep"-ed and hid behind Kayin. The
odd green kid's eyes then lifted to the young Elvaan and stared at him.

Said Elvaan stepped aside and gently nudged Airelote forward. She took one more look at the scary kid and lowered her eyes,
not speaking. Kayin sighed. "Everyone, listen up. Everyone," he repeated when no one looked up. He cleared his throat. "You
guys! Everyone shut up and listen!" Airelote flattened her ears and covered them when he shouted. "This is Airelote, and she'll
be living with us from now on, ok? Got it? Good." He walked forward and motioned for her to follow, which she did, and led
her to an empty bed in the corner of the room. However, much to Airelote's discontent, it was the bed right next to the green
kid's, whose eyes followed her trek across the room. She instinctively hid behind Kayin again, who, once again, sighed. "You're
gonna have to stop doing that, you know?" He then looked from Airelote to the other kid and back again. "What, you've never
seen a Galka before?" he asked.

"Gal-ka?" she repeated. The name sounded familiar, and she recognized it as one of the races her mother had told her about.
She relaxed slightly when she heard that. The Galka child nodded.

"My name's Halgrin. Pleased to meet you, Airelote."

"Pleased to meet you," she responded meekly, out of habit.

Kayin sat down on her bed. "Don't mind him, though, he's an odd one. I still don't get the whole reincarnation deal those
Galkas do."

"Re-in-carnation?" That was a tough word.

Halgrin nodded. "When we Galkas die, our sprits are reincarnated into new, younger bodies, with all our memories of our
previous lives. We are, in a sense, immortal, though our bodies are not." Airelote flicked her ear in confusion. Halgrin sighed.
"What I mean, is, we're reborn into these childlike bodies…" Airelote's other ear twitched.

"Give it a rest, old man," Kayin sighed. "You're lucky at least some of us here understand you." He turned to Airelote. "Let's
see if you understand this: Halgrin's an old man in a kid's body." Halgrin gave him a stern glare.

Airelote twitched her ear again, then let out the famous one word many children her age use: "Why?"

- - -

She flopped down exhausted onto her bed. Two Hume girls, whose names were Clarissa and Stephie, had the duty of stealing
the food for the day, and had brought two bags home for supper. It wasn't much, and Airelote's stomach still growled at her,
but at least she wouldn't starve. After eating, Kayin had taken her to do some more training. She was supposed to try and steal
a rock from a table. Airelote couldn't understand why; her mother had always taught her that stealing was bad. It was still too
soon for her to realize that the only way to survive was to steal for her dinner.

She looked over at Halgrin, who was reading a book. By just looking at the cover, Airelote could tell it was an adult book,
and therefore would be hard for her to read. She was beginning to get the idea that he was older than he looked, not
physically, but mentally, and, well, she couldn't quite get the explanation into words, but the basic summary is that she was
beginning to understand Halgrin. Because of this, she was beginning to understand this "reincarnation" thing, and soon found
out that Halgrin had "reincarnated" not too long ago. Sometimes, Airelote would catch Halgrin muttering curses under his
breath, and then Kayin and Coco, a fifteen-year-old Elvaan, eldest of the orphans, would berate him, telling him not to use
such language in front of children. Airelote couldn't understand any of it. What she did understand, however, is that Halgrin
told her wonderful stories, about a desert called Altepa, about the frozen northlands of Uleguerand, and about a giant sea
monster that roamed the oceans and was sometimes spotted on the ferry between two towns called Mhaura and Selbina.
And that was good enough for her.

Living with other orphans was actually pretty nice, she mused. As Kayin had explained to her, "We orphans have got to
stick together. No one else cares for us, so instead we care for each other." She found that there was a sort of schedule,
where certain children would go out to gather the food. It had taken her a while to understand the fact that they were stealing
food, and when she realized that, she kept asking why. She still didn't quite get why they couldn't ask for the food, or why
adults wouldn't give them food, but it was starting to set in that "that was just the way things were," as Kayin had stated
many times.

She rolled over to her back, groaning in discomfort as her stomach let out another growl for food. Her last thought before
she drifted off to sleep was that perhaps stealing wasn't so bad if she would live because of it. Maybe she'll try harder
tomorrow…

- - -

A/N: Well, this is slightly longer. Still short in my opinion. Anywho…yeah. About Kayin and Halgrin and any other of these names you see here…unless specified otherwise in an Author's Note, these are all original characters of my creation, and if there is a silver-haired Elvaan named Kayin, or a Galka named Halgrin out there somewhere, it's pure coincidence your names are alike, ok? Also, some people might wonder about the title of this fic: Snow in the Dark. Yes, I stole the name. It's the name of a wonderful one-volume manga which retells the story of Snow White in a much darker tone. And it's a tragedy. Which this fic won't be…mostly… Anyways, it also fits, cause, I haven't said it yet, but Aire's hair is snow white, and these are dark times they live in…oh, I amuse myself so! But the next chapter shall be written either A: when I feel like it and/or B: when I have time to write it. Being at college takes up some time, y'know? So, I shall see you all later.