About the Author: I tend to come off as a very cold individual at times. I analyze a lot, don't let situations create a bad effect immediately, and put more emphasis on logic than emotional outburst. One of the things I want to do, especially after having a glimpse at how Cheyla starts to learn and grow, is create a species and culture that is more utopian in that their responsibility is towards life as a whole, not just their own. Until then, I'll use as many soap-boxes as I can to preach peace and understanding.


About Cheyla: One of the things people have to understand about Cheyla is that things get pretty ugly for her, a lot. She's probably never had an easy year in her life, and the way she survives is by taking the hard parts of her life and letting them define her. Cheyla can sulk, she can brood, and she can get discouraged. But, at the end of the day, she'll turn those feelings into fuel and use them to rev herself up. One thing you can bet for her is to be down and not out. That said, she still writes herself, and if the situation calls for her to die, or pits her against something she can't overcome, that may be how her story goes.

She was also made for RP'ing, so if you want to join Cheyla and Hauch's adventures sometime, you can join her at The New Cornerclub, my TES RP site. The link is just thenewcornerclub dot com.


Synopsis: Getting used to a new life is never as easy as it seems. Sure, Cheyla could get a handy tour and a meet-and-greet with her new friends, but life doesn't stop for her, or bend to her attitude. Still the first day, and there are already things Cheyla can't deal with...


"One word to describe Cheyla, when I first met her? Incomprehensible... Absentminded... Vile. Well, I do admit that there is no word I could think of to properly confine her at first, but at least she was much less complicated than the end result." ~ Matron Giustina Renoldus

They wouldn't let me in the main building. That colored a good portion of my feelings about the women around the Bruma manor. When they came out to meet Claudius and see him to the storage cellar, they ferried me off around the side and didn't let me approach the huge doors out front or even peek inside the windows.

It was an odd building to me for a number of reasons, and that kept my interest even as they pulled at my hands and prattled against my stubbornness. The frame of the thing was huge, and seemed to be built of stone. But it was odd, because there were huge pillars of stone that made up the corners, and between them the stone arched until it was rounded, then went back down to the other side to connect the corners. The middle stones didn't even have supports, they had windows underneath, and wood around them. But they didn't collapse, and my childhood curiosity attributed it to some sort of mysterious magic that held them aloft.

There was a lot of wood in the building, maybe more so than most of the buildings in Bruma that I had seen in my visits. Huge logs had been planed down until the surfaces were smooth, and some sort of siding and pale coloring had been surfaced to what I could see. All of it was built atop a foundation of stones, cobbled and mortared at the base, and often covered by beds of flowers where there were no hatches leading below the earth.

I was even more interested when I saw the back and noticed that the building wasn't just a block. Besides the main house, which was long and rectangular, there were bits attached to the sides that sloped off, and a long section attached to the back that could have been another house. Most of the back was covered by a row of small trees that had been meticulously placed or grown in a loop around it, surrounding and mostly hiding the garden that was out there. Everything that could be glanced at about the main house was scrupulously ornate compared to the rest that I could see.

Further back was closer to a village than the little shed that was behind my old home. A long, wooden cabin had been built into a hill, so that it was short on the outside and towards the back it was nothing more than a roof rising from the grass. There were a few other buildings that had been hidden along with that one, back here. A wash-house, a storage shed, and forge-house surrounded what seemed to be a common hut. Further out, much of the field had been turned to mud and was penned off, but held no animals that I could see.

All of those things had to wait for my curious mind to grace later. The two old biddies that had been pulling me along took me to a house that was wedged between some of the ornate bush-trees. It was one of the only ones with windows, and looked more like a homesteaders house than a mansion or city house, but not so poorly cobbled together as the others around.

One of the two ladies shoved the door open and threw me inside. Her grip hurt, and outside of the colorful language she used to describe my attitude, she spoke with a tone that made me remember when my sister would try to act better than me. I was having none of it, and quickly rose to the occasion as soon as I was back on my own two feet.

"A proper girl should know to walk and keep their attention on their betters," the old woman was saying. She was older than the other, who looked around the same age as my mother or more. This one had graying hair and skin that looked like it was trying to escape her face and return to the earth. Like it wasn't going to wait for her to be buried.

"Oi ain't no propa' lady, ol' hag!" I shouted. For a person so small, I could overtalk almost anyone, and this old lady had no chance. "Oi'm Cheyla! 'N I ain't 'round fo' no witch t' drag me to ha' grave, mind you!"

She must have seen her audible disadvantage. She gave a huff, an insulted protest that was almost a word, but more of a sputter. Then she turned, spinning the puffy dress she wore comically to me, and began to stomp off.

The other one, the younger of the two, took her place. I had yet to hear her say anything, and she didn't disappoint. Instead, she lifted her hand so fast I didn't see it, driving the back of it against my face with a sudden crack that snapped my head back.

She must have been royally pissed. My neck hurt from that smack. My eyes watered, which I could barely tell because my eyes were disoriented and everything seemed kind of distant. I couldn't tell what she said after that, just that she spoke a few words into the room and stormed off after the elder.

It took a quick moment to get my bearings. Given the situation, I would say that I handled it admirably. Less than a year before, I might have started balling in response, but not this day. No, instead I ran out the door. I blatantly ignored the hand that tried to grab me, instead stopping to scoop up a handful of the thick mud that bordered the path of crushed stone, and hurled it as hard as I could at the retreating figure of the old biddies.

The glob ended a few inches short, but one of them still got tagged by the tail end, splashing against the knot of hair on her back and the dark blue work-dress she wore. She must not have felt it, otherwise I would have surely earned another hit, but I was proud and beaming.

"Ha!" I laughed to myself. "Git back t' 'de crypt what ya' belong in." That was said more for my own satisfaction. Those two had already made it around the house, and I was still kicking my feet in front of the little house-amongst-the-trees. It was only when I turned that I saw a few more ears than mine had heard what I had said.

There were boys coming over from the mud-field. They wore light armors, dark red leathers with brown padding over their joints and shoulders, and had wooden weapons between them. At least two had heard me, the one in front being at least a foot taller than myself and stuck somewhere between the softness of youth and rugged handsomeness of a man. He just looked shocked.

I gave a sudden jump when I noticed that there were more people to my side. Back inside the little building were three girls, all of them eyeing me curiously, and one staring with a wide open mouth.

"What 'chu sodda's lookin' at?" I asked, as loudly as I did everything else, at the small group that had come to see the new girl. "Ain't neva' seen a gal what can throw a propa' bit a' mud?" I don't know if I meant to bark at everyone. I was still a child, not knowing that the words I said had weight and meaning, but I was also lost. Nothing in the area was familiar, and nothing was like it was the morning before.

Where was my sister, who always had things under control? Where was my brother, to speak out his ass and back-talk the wind?

Instead there was just a large man-boy, who quickly waved the other two boys back off to the mud-field. "Back to work," he said with a voice that was deep and rolling, "There's nothing worth your training."

The girls weren't so quick to leave, but at least two of the boys had gone and it felt slightly less clustered. People, or at least a large amount of them, had a way of even making a clear blue day seem cloudy. They had a way of making an open field seem small, too, and that's what the extra pressure on me was doing.

"We heard that the Lord Earl was sending someone new," the boy continued as he stepped up towards me. I couldn't help but think of how much taller he was than me, and probably not all that much older as well. He couldn't have seen twenty years pass, probably just one or two more than my own brother had. "Didn't think it was a kid."

"Look he'e, you rot!" I raged in return. "Oi ain't no kid, Oi'm Cheyla!" It was as much an introduction as I could manage. There was barely any feet stamping either, just a lot of puffing out my chest to look bigger and pushing myself his way.

"You're right," he said, while I silently damned the fact that I liked how his voice sounded. "You're not a kid, you're a little rooster." Then he laughed, turning and starting to walk away.

One of the girls tried to reassure me. "Forget Eda," she was saying. I probably should have listened. Listening was just never my strong suit.

Another thing was, she couldn't calm me because I was already a half-pace behind him. I tapped Eda on the shoulder, and he turned towards me with that cheeky smirk on his face. I hadn't even known him twenty seconds and I already hated that smirk!

He saw the punch coming at the last second, damn near tripped over his own boots trying to avoid it. The punch itself was sloppy and wide. I threw it from my shoulder, and my knuckles just barely grazed his face, clipping his cheek and lip before he fell right down into the mud. He spent several seconds down there, just staring. The smirk was gone, and I was standing in front of him beaming.

"Oi'm Cheyla, flippin' rotta'!" I shouted in his face, pointing a finger down to him. "And don't you fa'get it!"

With that said, and the childish pride of 'beating him down', as my mind called it, fully instilled in me, I turned and started to walk away. I faced the little house, heading back to where the three girls had been standing. Only one of them was there now, the other two having disappeared, and that one just looked frightened. She was a mousy thing, with just an eye and a mass of auburn hair showing, as if I couldn't see her.

I felt like I was a soldier. I felt like the toughest girl around.

And then I saw the girl flinch away. Her eyes told me that she was hiding from whatever was happening behind me, something that was going on right behind my back.

The world felt like it was almost stopped, like I was trying to move up a current or through molasses. I tried to turn, but I couldn't make it. Something hit my back before I could. And it hit hard, harder than anything I had felt before, harder than a horse kicking me in the ribs.

I felt arms around my stomach. I felt a shoulder pushed against my spine. I felt a head tucked against my side.

I watched as the world came closer and closer. The soggy ground I had walked out on wasn't there to save me. No, it was the path, the one made of cobbled stones that had been layered out in front of the little house.

My eyes squeezed shut right before I hit the ground. And then, there was nothing. Just bright white stars.


Everything came back slowly, and everything was fuzzy. I thought my eyes hadn't fully opened yet. I guess that wasn't the case, cause the more I tried to open them, the more I just felt pain and saw more smeared colors everywhere.

Speaking of pain, I was in a lot. I was just starting to realize it too, but I was in more pain than I had ever been in in my life. I couldn't help but groan and squirm. Every bit of me felt like little blades were digging into my skin, and my head was pounding. There was a sharp pain in the side of my skull, that made me even more uncomfortable. I felt the need to pull a piece of rock out of my head that was embedded there, but knew somehow that it did not exist.

Moving didn't help. Groaning didn't help. It felt like hours of just writhing around in agony, and nothing helped. The walls, blurry as they were, seemed to close in on me the more I tried anything. I was rapidly losing what little breath I had, and my headache kept pounding faster and faster with my heartbeat. Those long moments of agony were the closest I had come to wishing for death in my life.

In reality, it was probably a few minutes before someone came to my side. I only noticed them as a dark blob overtop me, and then I pushed myself back and let out a mixture of a groan and a hiss as my side pushed against what I was laying on. It was the pain that made me move like that, not being startled. At least, that's what I told myself.

"Relax," the figure cooed at me. It was a girl, a soft-sounding, angelic girl. My savior. "Eda put you through the wringer," she explained, "Don't move now."

"Oi flgeth," I managed. It was only after the first word that I realized that most of my jaw was swollen, and it hurt like a bitch to speak. Instead of continuing, I replaced words with an extended, "Ow."

"Quiet," the voice chastised me. I kept looking at her while she moved, shuffling around and messing with something behind her. The feeling of helplessness was killing me, since it hurt too much to sit up, but it hurt to lay down, and I couldn't see. My supposed savior was still just a dark blob against a slightly lighter dark blob, in front of an orange blob that I thought was a wall.

I was still scared, even with her presence. Introspection wasn't in my repertoire yet, but I remember asking myself what I was afraid of. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have done it already. Instead, she was just putting something together quietly.

Finally she leaned closer to me, then over me. I could feel the heat of a person next to me, and it felt odd. I'd never felt closeness like that outside of the coldest winters. She smelled like flowers. I'll remember that until the day I die, the smell of those flowers.

"Drink," came another command. Something was pushed against my lip, a rough wooden bowl, and it was slowly tilted back until I could feel the liquid on my lips. It was cool, bordered on cold, and it tasted… horrible! By the gods, I had never tasted anything so awful in my life!

I sputtered. The liquid refused to go down; it hung on my tongue and tried to drown me. Only that drowning made me swallow, and half of it then made it to my stomach. The rest went down the wrong pipe and made me cough pitifully, since each time I made a noise my chest constricted painfully.

"Now, rest," she commanded. Her voice might have been that of an angel, but I had heard nothing but commands from her yet. The thing that really struck me about her was when she reached over and dabbed away some of the medicine that had crept down from my lips. "Tell no one that I came."

And then she was gone. Only a slight rustle of fabric told me that she had even been there, and I couldn't tilt my head to see where she had gone.

I found myself oddly comforted by the fact that I was alone again. In all my life, I had never been constrained to a room or bed, even during sickness. Being free felt better to me than being blocked off by a person. And, yet, she had been caring and tender, more so than my mother, to whom I was a nuisance that had to be dealt with.

Did I want her back? Not really, I was more curious about how long it would take me to see my family again. I recalled, like a passing dream, the feeling of sitting on a bed like this while my mother brushed slime off my face with a rough cloth. I could recall the hard pat she gave me as she sent me off, with the hope that it would not happen again and maybe, just maybe, I could wear some clothes for a few days without them needing to be cleaned or stitched.

I had only been consciously gone from home for about a day, from early in the morning to the waning evening when I they had set me down in front of the house. It had been that long and I already missed my family.

How long was I supposed to be here? How was I supposed to survive when my soul hurt so much?

It didn't take me long to change my mind about the girl who had just left. If that girl returned, I told myself, I would not fuss at her. What I did not know was if I could honor that promise.

The loneliness didn't last long, only as long as it took for the door to open. It had been a few long moments, enough for my vision to start to clear as the healing tonic took effect.

Three girls walked in, and I recognized them as the three who had been in the house when I first arrived. I recognized the little house too, but it was more of a hut with four bunks on either side of the room, warmed by a small brick fireplace and a cooking spit in the center. The corners were filled with cleaning supplies and tools, any sort of bucket or cleaning bristle I could think of. The girls were all dressed to match, wearing hardy sleeves and leggings with cleaning frocks on top.

They paused at the doorway for a moment to unload before entering; one to warm her hands at the spit in the middle, one to go and rest on her own bed, and one in my direction. She was the tallest of them, a pretty girl with grime coloring her nose and hair tied back into a messy tail behind her head. Her expression made her less pretty, like my sister when she was feeling snooty.

"You're up," she said, standing at the side of the bed I was laying on. "Get out."

"Eh?" I managed. I had never been exactly eloquent, and my split lip and swollen cheek didn't help anything.

"This is my bed." Her tone was cold, it chilled me, almost frightened me. I was just waking up and she sounded like she wanted to kill me, something I was never used to as a kid who had only ever had her family.

"Oi' piss on ya' garta' o' somet'ing?" I asked as I achingly pulled myself out of her bed, only for another sharp sting to whip across my face.

One thing I had forgotten when I was cloistered away at home was that older kids were generally stronger. My sister could get a stick up her ass on occasion, but she was too busy to play my games. This girl was older, taller, stronger, and hurt like hell when she backhanded me and busted the other part of my lip.

I fell out of bed with a gasp, landing on my hands on the packed earth. Slowly I reached up and brushed the new blood from my face, spitting a bit of it out to the ground. It tasted, the blood. I'm not sure what it tasted like, but I could tell when the first drop of it reached my tongue.

"You still haven't learned your lesson, fish." She was looking down at me, and I was just staring at the floor.

Why? Why wouldn't my arms move? All I had to do was spin around and I could lay her out flat, but instead all my limbs wanted to do was stay rooted to the dirt and shiver uncontrollably. Why was I thinking of that boy; the instant my head hit the cobble; a vivid picture of him standing over me like she was?

"You're just a little fish," she was saying, "You're a minnow, brought here from some piss-poor country stream. You're food to us, you do what we say, when we say it, and you. Don't. Talk. Back." Then she drove her boot into my side, and I let out a strangled noise of pain.

I had fallen to one elbow, and now I used it to push myself shakily to my feet. The other one, who stood there warming her hands at the spit, saw me look at one of the other beds and shook her head slowly. By the gods her eyes were cold. They chilled me, sent a shiver down my spine.

I didn't want the bed anyway. I just wanted to get out. I managed to slow my breathing, with just the occasional small hiccup where my throat caught. It was miraculous that I didn't choke up more, with how hard it felt to breath. The walls were closing in on me and I felt the deep-seeded need to escape.

But I got out. Almost stumbling, I walked to the door and pushed it open, then closed behind me. Magnus had set, and now the only evidence of him was the pink hue from above the Jarals. It was dark out, with a spring chill that made me shake but felt so good on the warm bruises covering me.

Still, my wounds were healing and soon I would be cold. Cold, alone, and lost in a world I didn't know. Were these the adults that were supposed to watch over me? Was there anyone to talk to after I had just gotten beaten near to death, and beaten again?

That got me thinking about the old crones who had dragged me here and started all this. They made me miss Claudius, who could at least put up with the shit I said, and he made me miss my family even more. And everything made me miss the feeling of freedom and control, because I knew what Claudius had said, that I had to be here because my father had debt to be paid, and that made it even worse.

I found myself crying, stumbling out towards the field of mud, where a row of practice dummies had been set out, then riddled with arrows and swords. The boys that had been training out there had all retired, and I could hear their voices from the long, short building covered by the hill. No one was up, which was good for me, because I didn't want anyone to see me.

I cried. I let the tears streak down my face, my lip quiver, and snot leak from my nose. The cold drew in, and I pulled my ripped dress tighter around me and cried more because this was all I had anymore.

Unfortunately, the yard was the only place I could go, for fear of what might happen to my father and myself when the cold struck harder. I found my way back to the house after the tears had streamed down my face, but refused to touch the door again. Laughter came from the other side, and my lip quivered to it because it was laughter at my expense, I knew. Even if their words did not speak of me, that none of them had even gone to check in the hours I had been gone meant more than words alone.

I would freeze to death before I spoke to any of them, I told myself. Those words helped until my arms started to chill even more, and the wind that whipped down from the mountains pulled an unnatural cold with it.

My savior was found after another hour, most likely, in the cold, after all my wounds had healed to tiny marks and my limbs shivered with every step. No one wanted to be outside, I had seen no souls that would yet, except for the horses in the stables out front. The stable was just three walls and a roof, with piles of dried hay on either side and the horses in the center. One of those piles of hay looked more comfortable than anything I had seen before, and I sat despite the bristles, points, and smell of horse-stink and made myself comfortable.

I used to sleep outside in the summer months, when the heat was too bad to stand my family anymore. That had been my choice.

This was different. I was an animal, now, kicked out of the house by the humans to sleep in the barn.

That thought saved me; the thought of being an animal kicked from the house. I hated it. I hated them, every person I had met to this day. My anger burned as I huddled into the hay, in the cold of the night wearing blood-stained rags. My anger burned hot enough to chase away the chill of fear and and the night.

My anger raged into an inferno inside of me, and that kept me alive.