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Dawn broke hesitantly through the glowering canopy above the travelers, casting faint shimmers of light against the trunks and debris strewn forest floor. Raefindan wriggled stiffness from his limbs, rubbing an ache away that had been caused by an unseen root in the night. He glanced around the group; Liornung moved restlessly in dreams, on the verge of wakefulness. Ravion moved silently amongst the sleepers; he nodded to Raefindan as he passed. Aeron sat a short distance away, seemingly deep in thought, staring toward nothing.
Raefindan looked to the small pile of blankets between himself and Bergil, that would be Indil's sleeping body, and knelt beside her to wake her gently. When he pulled away the blankets, he found nothing. Indil had vanished in the night.
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The little girl woke to find herself alone and cold on the forest floor, cuddled against a fallen tree in nightclothes streaked with earth and blood, with new scabs forming on a skinned knee and scraped hand.
"Bergil?" she called nervously, "Raefindan?"
Tears began to fall and she shivered violently in the chill dawn air. Light had not yet broken through to her, though she could see patches of sky far above her, lighting the highest branches.
Movement behind her, on the far side of the fallen tree startled her and she squeaked and tried to press herself to the dead wood, to become part of it, hidden and safe.
"I am not here," she breathed frantically, wiping away tears with the back of a dirty hand, "I am not here. You cannot find me. I am not here."
A pair of strong hands gripped her from behind and lifted her from her hiding place. A low voice murmured cruelly, "And who is this, all lost and alone?"
He turned Indil in the air to look into her face and she began to scream.
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