Danaria
With the warm summer nights breeze blowing through my hair,
I sit on a roof top looking out over the city. It's the city of Crossing, the town in
which I've grown up. But I didn't always live in the city. In the time before the Gorbesh
war my parents and I lived outside the west gates of town on a small farm. I go back there
sometimes to think and to try and remember my parents, but their faces in my memory are
getting dimmer and dimmer as the years go by.
My life changed one cold fall afternoon, it was the day that my parents both died. My
father only went in once a month to get supplies and to trade his wares. During his last
trip to town he had heard rumors about the Gorbesh but living out of town he didn't think
that we were in danger, and besides, they were only rumors.
There was an apple tree about a mile from our home, so I'd left early one morning so I
could pick a basket full for mother so she could bake us a pie for dinner. I was on my way
home with the apples when I spotted the thick black smoke from over the hill, our home was
over that hill. I dropped the basket and ran as fast as I could, but I was to late. I
found my father dead, my mother died right after I found her. With her dying breath she
told me to run for town, get behind the gates of Crossing and to safety.
With tear filled eyes I did as I was told and made my way into town. We had no family that
I knew of inside the gates of Crossing so I had no idea where to go. Everyone in town was
in such a hurry, no one noticed a young girl hiding in the shadows. That's how I lived for
a long time, hiding in the shadows and eating food the shop keepers would toss out.
One day I watched a young man enter the bakery, he smiled and talked to the Baker while he
took a pastry and tucked it in his pocket. Soon after, he left the shop without paying for
the pastry. After this I began to watch others in town, they were taking rings from the
jewelry store and slipping gems from peoples pouches as they walked through the crowd in
front of the bank.
Late one night as I hid in the shadows of a back street, I watched someone in a dark cloak
duck into a grate. I looked around to see if there was any one else around, when I was
sure there wasn't anyone with them I followed. It was an awful place, the grate took me
into the sewers. I didn't want to know what was brushing against my ankles down there and
the smell was almost more than I could stand but I wanted to see where they went. It took
me awhile to track the one that went before me but I finally found where they went.
In this dark and frightening place I found one called Kalag, he was fierce, yet fair. I
had found my way into the guild of those who walk in the shadows, the thieves of Elanthia.
I found my place among a few from the guild that specialize in opening boxes for others.
The lock pickers of the lands.
So here I am, sitting on a roof top looking out over my town, the town of Crossing, my
home. |