Shaydefire--2.1

Reina tucked the Shadow princess into the basket of cloth that lay in the cart, climbed up front, and clicked with her tongue, spurring the donkey at the head of the cart. She looked back every so often, finding it difficult to look into the eyes of the child, which were a deep and never-ending black. Dark thoughts ran through her mind, briskly moving from worry to comfort to fear to sorrow and back again. She knew how her husband felt about Shadows. She knew that he thought them to be myths, legends, figures of imagination conjured up by drunks and fools.

Reina pulled up to her little cottage and sighed as she passed her fields of grazing sheep and the mounds of bodies that they had lined up earlier that morning. The battle had gone straight through their fields, had slaughtered or displaced a great number of their sheep, and left the soil uprooted and devoid of vegetation. The sheep had begun to wander in search of greener pastures, but Reina and her husband both knew that the dwarven soldiers needed immediate tending to. The sheep could wait.

“Here ye are, Ava,” Reina said as she hitched her donkey to the post outside the stone cottage. Reina’s home rested about three ranges from Whitebear, far enough away such that the great city couldn’t be seen from the cottage, but close enough to be relatively easy to travel to and trade without having to stay overnight. For this, Reina was glad, for it only took two hours to get the child back to the safety of the cottage.

The princess had fallen asleep during the trip, but once the wheels of the cart stopped moving, she woke and was more scared and hungrier than ever. Reina cradled her in the basket as she brought her into the home, where she placed the basket on the wooden table in the kitchen and fetched preserved goats milk from the pantry beneath the ground. She hushed the child and offered her the milk, which she promptly refused. Uneducated in the culture of Shadows, Reina went through her entire inventory, looking for something that the baby could drink. Reluctantly, Reina offered the last thing that she had in her storage that was drinkable: beer and ale. The princess’s face didn’t contort or scrunch up in disgust as her lips tasted the beer, and she drank happily for a few moments before Reina pulled it away, staring at the happy baby with a quizzical smile, her hands on her hips.

“Well, I’ll be a moving mountain. Child, you are of a strange sort, aren’t ye?” The princess looked back at Reina and clapped her hands together, reaching out for the beer. Reina laughed and shook her head. “Oh no, only a little at a time, you silly little thing.” Reina poured some water into the beer and mixed it, trying to deafen the alcohol such that the baby wouldn’t be drinking something so strong. After a few more sips, the Shadow fell asleep peacefully, and Reina carried the basket to her bedroom, where she placed it upon the chest that lay at the foot of the bed.

When her husband came home, Reina explained the situation in frank terms, knowing that putting it delicately would only make things worse. Euri hated long and digressed conversations, and felt cheated when things were explained in such a fashion.

“She’s a Shadow?” He asked again, quietly, knowing the child was still sleeping. They were sitting in the kitchen before the fireplace, and Reina was cooking dinner. She nodded. Euri sighed, as he had been doing often since he heard the news, and rubbed his forehead with his hand, deep in thought. “We can’t, Rein, we can’t...I’ve ‘ad my share of raising kin…” He trailed off, then went on when his wife nodded gloomily, “I mean, ‘ow do we go about this? ‘Ow do we keep this a secret? It can’t get out, no, no...the Kernar would be all over us...what’s left of our ‘erd will be gone, and they wont hesitate to...sweet, ye know where I’m going...is this worth the risk? For a Shadow?”

Reina faced him, a dull anger within her.

“It’s more than just a Shadow, Euri. That’s a baby. That’s a living, breathing child in there.” She pointed towards their chambers with her free hand, the other holding a ladle. “The Spirits ‘ave blessed us with another chance…’ow can we deny them?” The two children that Reina and Euri had together were gone. The first was a boy named Mendel. He grew to be twenty one turns, but was killed in a mining accident. The second was a girl named Fola, who died in a Blossom flood when she was fourteen.

Euri sat and ran his hands through his beard thoughtfully for a long time. When soft crying began to come from the bedroom, Reina offered him the ladle and scurried out of the room to tend to the child. When she returned with the princess, she held her out for Euri to see. Reluctantly, he took her in his large arms and held her delicately as Reina took the ladle and placed it on the table. Slowly and cautiously, Euri moved the blankets, revealing the pale-skinned baby with the black eyes and tufts of black hair. Little pointed ears faded to black tips on either side of her cherubic face and head, and she looked up at Euri with curious eyes, her short little black tail flicking back and forth. He smiled just for a moment before looking at his wife.

“Have ye checked?” He asked her, his voice sincere. She seemed puzzled for a moment before realisation struck and she grew pale, shaking her head. Tenderly, Euri removed the blanket from the whole head of the baby, and held her up such that her back and tail faced him. His eyes widened, then closed, and he shook his head slowly. Reina drew a hand to her mouth, and moved to look at the back of the child’s neck. There, darkly imprinted, was the princess’s Tarak.