Chapter 28: Side Story 1 – An Orphan Girl and her Little “Friends”

"While we live our lives well here, in safety, comfort, and plenty, not everyone enjoys such luxuries. Sometimes new immigrants were fearful, afraid that our blissful living were but a facade, a lie too good to be true, meant to lure them into convalescence.

 

It was sadly not uncommon for such people to seek life on their own, often away from our villages and hamlets, and only interacted with others when absolutely necessary. Their paranoia often meant they'd die alone, in a rickety cabin in the woods, when their time came, with none the wiser.

 

Those affected the most by these people, were young childrens of theirs if they had any, and it was not uncommon for us to find such poor waifs grow feral from years of life cut off from society as a whole." - Andrei Ojoshvka, Village Elder in the Lichdom of Ptolodecca and former Immigrant.

Near Ouskev village, North-western Ptolodecca, Late Autumn. Approximately fourteen years before the Vitalican rebellion began.

 

"Find her! Catch the girl! She couldn't have gone far!"

 

A little girl ran with hasty steps across the thin undergrowth of the dark woods. The night was cloudy, and a drizzle of rain that had begun to fall an hour ago, and it was pitch black darkness in the woods, yet the girl neither stumbled nor tripped, for the woods was her home and she dared say she could run around it blindfolded and not trip on a root even once.

 

A good distance behind her - far enough that the light from their torches failed to illuminate even a hint of her presence - were a good ten villagers or so. They had chased her since someone yelled out when they saw her right as she ran out of the barn with a sack of potatoes and onions carried by her little friends.

 

They had longer legs, and longer strides, but she had a head start, and unlike them, knew her way around the woods like the back of her hand. Her three little friends had the bags carried - they had some difficulty running as fast as usual with the weight, but managed to keep up with her pace nonetheless - as Trí had most of the bag's weight on her/their back.

 

Haon and Ceathair helped support the weight from the back corners, while Dó scouted ahead to ensure that their path was clear.

 

The little girl - probably barely seven years of age - looked at her little friends fondly, as she swiftly ran through the bushes and around the trees with her cloth-wrapped legs. The tattered far-too-large tunic she wore looked more like a dress on her small body, and the only reason it didn't flop around was how she tied it at the waist with a rope.

 

As the voices of the villagers died down behind her, she navigated her way through the dark forest, another good hour of jogging, which left her sweat clinging to her skin and made her shiver in the cold autumn night.

 

Her destination finally came in sight, a small rickety hut in a clearing deep within the forest. The little hut was just enough for one adult to lay comfortably, and was build near a river that cut through the woods.

 

The young girl had lived there for as long as she could remember.

 

When she was smaller, she had a father still, a one-armed man who helped took care of her needs. She rarely lacked for food, for despite its eerie looks, the forest around them had plenty to offer. They lived simply, but quite sufficiently during her earliest days.

 

Until one day, when she was five, her father was standing by the river, washing their meager few clothes. He had just finished his work when his face scrunched up in sudden pain, and he clutched his chest with his one hand, and called her name one last time in a pained, halting voice.

 

Then he fell into the stream and never emerged.

 

To her fortune, at that time they had recently restocked their food supplies, and she had plenty to survive on for the first two months. It was after those months where life became more difficult.

 

The little girl tried out fruits and berries, based on memories of what her father picked. Some of them filled her stomach. Other gave her stomachaches so bad she gave them a wide berth since.

 

It was during this time that she began to find her new friends, that brought both joy, and sadness into her life.

 

Haon was the first one. The girl met him by accident during one of her foraging trips, when she heard a pitiful whine from behind some bushes.

 

Curious, she peeked through the bush and found a little wolf cub, white and grey fur stained with blood from a broken leg, whimpering pitifully on the ground as it stared at her with its large eyes. The girl reached out tentatively with her hand, but retracted it when the cub growled at her.

 

They stared at each other for some time, before the cub whined pitifully. This time, it had neither growled nor bared its teeth when she reached out to it. She brought the wolf cub back to her hut - it was too weak to even struggle much - and tried to care for it since.

 

Haon - as she named the wolf cub - grew used to her presence, and she too grew close to the cub over the weeks. The injury on the cub's leg never recovered, however, and one cold winter morning, she found the cub unmoving in its bed, its body gone cold, as its breath had ended.

 

The little girl cried. Even so young, she had seen what happened to her father, and she knew about death. She wept as she cradled the little wolf's body in her hands, and as she cried her heart out, something in her awoke.

 

It was an utterly new sensation, as if she had suddenly grown another limb, and yet she instinctively knew what to do, and allowed the power - for it was power she awoke - permeate the little cub's body.

 

At first she looked on with dread as fur fell off, followed by flakes of flesh, but she continued on, something in her heart telling her that she was doing it right. Before too long only pristine white bones were left of the little cub's body.

 

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And before her eyes, it rose to its feet, and nuzzled against her legs with its skull, like a spoiled pet wishing to be petted.

 

Thus, had the girl found her first friend, a friend that would accompany her throughout her entire life.

 

Over the rest of the year, she had taken in a few more small animals. Dó was a little lizard that liked to climb atop her shoulders. Dó had died when a tree branch broke and fell on it.

 

Now that she had more experience with the power she learned she possessed, the little girl did the same to Dó as she did to Haon, and the little lizard soon rose again, as a skeleton of itself, yet still the way it used to be.

 

Trí was an odd case. She had found them separately, four small wild dog cubs, and two small wild kittens, on separate trips. The six small animals had grown close to each other after they lived with her for a while.

 

It was just last winter when Trí passed away, as a starved mountain cat had stumbled upon her hut, and lunged at her.

 

Her little pets had bravely intercepted the cat's assault, yet they paid the ultimate price for their bravery. By the time Haon returned from its hunt - it had recently grown strong enough to hunt small animals for her to eat - and drove the beast away, she was crying, and hugged the torn bodies of her little friends in her hands.

 

She had never known what caused it, but when Trí came to be, the white bones of the six little animals had rearranged themselves into a single amalgamation of all six, with six heads and eight tails, and four sturdy legs composed of many leg bones. She had not questioned it, however, when the mixed cluster of animal bones rubbed its heads against her leg and purred gently.

 

Ceathair was a small tailless monkey, who had the most ignominious death of all, as in its curiosity it had eaten a berry that had given the girl the horrid stomachache before. She had sighed when she found it sprawled near the plant and allowed her power to raise it like the rest.

 

By now it has been a year since she lived with the help of her four little friends, and with the food she got from the village, she would not have to nearly starve like last winter - where only Haon and Trí's occassional hunting results alleviated her hunger.

 

She just had her friends put down the sacks of potatoes and onions when Do gave a small noise from the side. A warning noise that a stranger approached.

 

From the direction Dó looked at, came a small figure, scarcely taller than herself, one with adorable features that reminded her of Haon when he still had flesh on his bones. The figure walked closed with their hands raised, and spoke a couple sentences she had not understood, before he spoke once more, in words like those her father used.

 

"Girl, do you understand me? Please respond if you do," said the small figure.

 

"En," mumbled little girl as she nodded, her eyes on the figure, while her little friends had arrayed themselves before her.

 

"Take it easy, child. I am not a bad person," said the figure as he sat down, and plucked out what looked like a large cube of bone larger than his body out of thin air. The cube of bone unraveled before the little girl's eyes, and before long had transformed into a majestic beast, shaped like a great hunting cat, with wicked fangs and claws, entirely made from interlocking bits of pearly white bones.

 

"As you can see, I have my bony friends too!" Said the figure with a chittering laugh.

 

The little girl just nodded, her eyes transfixed upon the mighty beast of bone, which was a sight that had filled her heart with awe. And yet, despite the awe she felt, she couldn't help but feel that there was something missing in the majestic beast.

 

"These little ones are your creations, I assume?" Asked the figure as he gently scratched Haon's chin with one finger.

 

"They… friend," replied the girl haltingly. It had been years since she last spoke with someone, and she had to struggle to find the word she wanted to say.

 

"Friends you say?" Asked the figure with a quirked eyebrow. He then took a closer look at the girl's little friends, as they watched him in turn, eye to hollow socket.

 

"How very… curious…" muttered the figure as he studied the little bone animals. He looked and peered at them with curiosity, and touched them gently, before he looked back to the little girl.

 

"Girl, tell me your name, if you have one?" Asked the figure kindly at the girl. By now she felt somewhat safe with the figure, as he had not made a single move to harm her. And he also possessed such a wonderful friend!

 

"Father… call… me… Aoife," replied the girl haltingly.

 

"Charmed to meet you, little Aoife," said the small figure as he looked her in the eye. "My name, is Nec Aarin, and I want to make you a disciple of mine."

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