A backstory drabble (not really) thing for my little apprentice crusader (I named her after my DN Crus aheh). A series of events leading up to her meeting her master.
Despite what people say, Serrah still thinks of her father as a loving, caring man who wants nothing but the best for his family. The townsfolk spread rumours about him, and gives her looks that are at once scathing and wary when she walks by. She’s asked her mother about it, and in return was simply told to never talk to those people.
Her older sister, Samille, is her best friend. A handsome girl even at her young age, she has eyes that are ponds of unfathomable depths – something she’s inherited from her own mother, before their father was widowed, subsequently took another wife, and had Serrah born to them.
She’s seven years old when her father leaves for work one day and never comes back. He's taken Samille with him – now a prim and proper lady of nineteen, the ponds of her eyes have long since frozen over.
The following morning, before dawn breaks, her mother shakes her awake, wraps her in a travelling cloak and stuffs her into the family cart. She asks many questions, but they all go unanswered.
By the time they stop and her mother finally allows her to stretch her legs, the sun has sunk beneath the horizon. She looks at the dim, foreign sight around her – trees and grass and hills, nothing close to the hometown she’s familiar with. She wrinkles her nose at the smell of smoke in the air, but her mother assures her that they are safe.
She demands answers once more: Where’s Pappi? Where’s Sammy? Why are we out here? Why did we leave? Where are we going? She tugs on her mother’s sleeve more and more insistently, begging her to look her in the eye and tell her the truth, until the woman finally shifts in her silence –
And gives the girl a sharp slap across the face.
It takes her a good moment to realise what has happened, and tears are threatening to come up, until she sees tears already streaming down her mother’s face.
But it’s her eyes that draw a terrified sob from the girl – those hazel eyes that used to be a mountainside in bloom are now as frozen as her sister’s.
They move through small villages and rural towns. She’s promised to stay inside the cart and remain quiet under the threat of being tied up, but she can still hear – rumours travel slowly across the country, but even then she’s gathered a few things over time:
Talks of the Triune, of killings in her hometown Istani, of cultists staking claims.
She and her mother settle in a farmhouse. She’s allowed to ride to the nearby village square, to play with other children, to barter off their eggs and chicks, to visit the scholars and the older folks for stories and lessons.
Over a few years, the visits become rarer and rarer; her mother limits her to two trips per week, then one, then once every two weeks. Every time she comes home, her mother holds her and strokes her, while sobbing into her shoulder, and then she bathes her, combs her hair, feeds her dinner by hand, and tucks her into bed.
She has lost track of the weeks by the time she’s completely confined within the farmhouse. She doesn’t want to ask her mother about it – those eyes scare her more than anything else, she thinks. After all, she is fed and clothed, she is healthy. She has no reason to complain.
She discovers what true primal fear is when she wakes up one night feeling thirsty, and finds the door of her room firmly locked.
She’s escaped. But at what cost? She’s in too much of a panic to think of an answer. It isn’t until a dizzy spell takes over and she collapses on the ground, wheezing for air and trembling from exhaustion, that she is forced to face what she has done:
She was desperate to get out – her instincts screamed, but she knew she had to keep a level head. She had feigned sickness and asked for assistance when her mother called for her to come downstairs and have some dinner. She allowed herself to be led to the stairs, trailing behind the woman.
Before her mother’s advancing foot landed on the first step, she threw her weight at the woman’s back. She watched as her mother screamed and fell. By the time she stopped, she was no longer screaming.
She screams and cries, tries to ward off the fear, but it only grows. It swallows her, she chokes on it, and she drowns.
No-one is there in the middle of the farm. No-one is there to save her.
Somewhere in her lack of complete consciousness and rationality, she has returned to the farmhouse. A small part of her hopes that her mother has merely fainted; that when she enters the house, her mother will come running, hugging her until her bones ache, sobbing until her shirt gets damp, and then scrubbing her skin raw in the bath. She even anticipates a slap across the face – she deserves that.
But her mother is still lying there at the bottom of the stairs. She remains unmoving as Serrah goes about packing some food and fills two skins with water – one of them belonged to her mother. She rolls up some blankets and clothes, coils up some rope, and wraps two kitchen knives in towels. She goes through the backdoor, secures her things onto the horse, and takes off.
Living as a self-made orphan is even less fun than she’d anticipated.
Through bull-headed stubbornness and dumb luck, she’s managed so far to run away from a lot of trouble and hide from many more. She’s tried seeking work at farms, markets, smithies, and would get by for a while before people started asking questions – or worse, try to sell her as one of their goods. She’s decidedly sheared off her long hair, but it makes little difference.
And as much stubbornness as she has, it seems that her luck has run out. In the middle of this barren, open ground where refuse is burned, huddling beneath old broken crates that smell of rotten fruit, she has nowhere left to hide.
No-one is there to save her.
Her trembling fingers are still curled around the knife – blunt and rusty by now, it still served its purpose when it helped her ward off the men. She has an idea of what they’re here for; she’s seen the look in their eyes when they snatch boys and girls and even older women off the streets.
She doesn’t want that to happen to her. She looks at the knife, considers her options. She – a scrawny youth of twelve – can’t even hope to fight them off. They will come, they will take her, and she will wish for death.
She decides. If I can’t kill them, I can still do one last thing to spite them.
She bites back screams as the crates are turned over. She holds her breath, waits to drive the knife through her assailant’s body as soon as she is exposed.
She readies herself as the last broken board is flung aside, only to be blinded by a sharp glare. A large hand wraps around her wrist and she screams, but a gentle voice – deep and clear – hushes her.
“You’re okay, I won’t hurt you.”
Her vision adjusts to the light, and she sees his eyes – warm eyes that remind her of early sun on a calm ocean.
At that sight, despite the many lies she has told and been told, the many questions that have gone unanswered, she knows he speaks the truth.
