It was a rainy night sometime in mid-winter, during one of those murky hours in between midnight and dawn. A little Altalar lay contorted around her father's leg, her face pressed into the rough canvas of his pants. She slept peacefully in the supposed security of her family's apartment. True, the door did not close properly, and her father often commented about moving to a better place. But still, they remained. It would not be for long, though.
A crash woke the little Altalar. Groggy, she simply yawned and tried to return to sleep, even as the sound of something making the floor creak reached her ears. It stopped, and she started to drift back off. Only to be ripped from the warmth of her blankets, and from her father's leg. She cried out, and bore witness to her sole parent jerking up, kicking away his blankets and groping around under the cot. She screamed and kicked, but captor did not let go. They only cursed, smacked the little girl on the head, then turned and fled.
The rest was a blur to her. Looking back, she would vaguely remember being heaved through slick, muddy streets, then becoming part of the mud and grime of the street. Next came the brief sound of metal clanging on metal, something that she would later come to understand was her father fighting off her caper. Then, it stopped. She remembers, her last memory of the night, that she was lifted by someone muddy, wet, but still familiar, and then carried off to somewhere warm and safe.
It took a few days, but she was eventually told what happened by her father. He explained to her, his daughter of almost seven years, how close she had come to being lost. How close she had come to never seeing the city, her caretakers, and him ever again. It was difficult, she being as young as she was, but she seemed to understand the basic idea of what was going on. And she was afraid.
The following years of nightmares and stories of what happened west of her home only solidified this fear. A fear of those grey skinned elves of the west, who almost gave her a very different life.
A crash woke the little Altalar. Groggy, she simply yawned and tried to return to sleep, even as the sound of something making the floor creak reached her ears. It stopped, and she started to drift back off. Only to be ripped from the warmth of her blankets, and from her father's leg. She cried out, and bore witness to her sole parent jerking up, kicking away his blankets and groping around under the cot. She screamed and kicked, but captor did not let go. They only cursed, smacked the little girl on the head, then turned and fled.
The rest was a blur to her. Looking back, she would vaguely remember being heaved through slick, muddy streets, then becoming part of the mud and grime of the street. Next came the brief sound of metal clanging on metal, something that she would later come to understand was her father fighting off her caper. Then, it stopped. She remembers, her last memory of the night, that she was lifted by someone muddy, wet, but still familiar, and then carried off to somewhere warm and safe.
It took a few days, but she was eventually told what happened by her father. He explained to her, his daughter of almost seven years, how close she had come to being lost. How close she had come to never seeing the city, her caretakers, and him ever again. It was difficult, she being as young as she was, but she seemed to understand the basic idea of what was going on. And she was afraid.
The following years of nightmares and stories of what happened west of her home only solidified this fear. A fear of those grey skinned elves of the west, who almost gave her a very different life.
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