AN: Okay, please don't set your dragons on me (or an angry pack of urgals, that would be bad, too)! I know it's been awhile since I updated. Sorry!!! School has started with a vengeance, and homework...shudder. Sorry it's so short as well, but I also have the next chapter or two up. By the way, how have you people been pronouncing Taize's name? I have received some very interesting answers from my friends...Anyway, the correct way to say it is "TY-zuh." So say it that way or I'll be setting MY dragon on YOU. That is, I would if I had a dragon. :-(

Chapter Five
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"Now, what was it that you were going to tell me?"

"I…It should wait until morning."

"Don't make me hurt you," Taize threatened.

Rhet sighed. He had no doubt that she would make good on that threat. "I…Can't it please wait until morning?" he asked hopefully, but at the same time almost desperately. "Please?"

"NO." Taize held up a fist. "I will punch you in the face if you don't start talking, so I suggest that you do so."

She looked extremely pissed off, so Rhet began to speak. "I'm going to be leaving here soon, maybe as early as tomorrow morning," he said miserably.

"Are you free?" she inquired interestedly.

"No," he answered, looking even more miserable. "I've been sold."

"What? No. That- that- that can't be," she stuttered.

"Why?" he laughed bitterly. "Because you actually see me as a human being? Because to you, I'm not just a- a thing, to be bought and sold?"

"Well, yes," she answered, much more quietly than she usually would have. "But also because...I'll miss you," she said simply.

Over the past weeks, they had become close friends. Taize could already feel loneliness eating at her insides, but she reminded herself that Rhet wasn't gone yet.

There was a long but not unfriendly silence between them. Taize was the one who, at long last, broke it.

"Who were you sold to? Do they live in Urû'baen?" Taize had never been allowed out of the palace since the day she'd arrived, but if there was a chance, however slim, of being able to meet with Rhet—

"No," he said, the simple word shattering any hopes she might have had. "I don't know who bought me. All I know is…they live in Dras-Leona."

In that moment, both of them had looks of such utter despair on their faces that anyone seeing them might have thought that they were Riders who had just lost their dragons.

"If we're never going to see each other again…" Taize said bleakly, "Tell me…about your past, and I'll tell you mine."

It may seem an odd request, but by some unspoken agreement, slaves rarely discussed how they had been captured or what their life was like before, except to their closest friends.

They stayed up all night, telling each other their life histories. Taize told Rhet about her life in the desert and the night the slavers had come, her flight into the Hadarac, and finally, her capture.

Then Rhet began his story.

Disclaimer: Oh, yeah. By the way, please don't sue me for not being Christopher Paolini.

AN: By the way, that whole "close friends" bit...They are NOT in love, just friends. I suck at writing romance anyway. But whenever T makes a friend, it's a remarkable event. Being orphaned and sold as a slave at age five tends to give one some antisocial tendencies...