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Old 07-13-2006, 02:46 AM   #69
Undómë
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
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Join Date: Mar 2005
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Undómë has just left Hobbiton.
Brenna


Old habits die hard, and especially for one who has been under the thumb…the eye..the lash of others for so long. The old feelings came up, shouting Danger! Be quiet; be small! Invisible…

Brenna was rooted to the spot she stood on..and that standing a precarious one from the blow she’d received from the slavers. Her eyes were cast down, shoulders hunched, arms hugging herself, as if to make her already small frame smaller still. There were angry words flying about and strong gestures and posturings. She shrank away from the hot words, the fiery waves that flashed from person to person.

Brenna withdrew to a small rise apart from those who were talking. And while it brought her some feeling of safety, it brought only a cold comfort. Two children were gone, snatched back by foul hands to that hateful life they had hoped was left behind.

‘Kwell…Azhar…’ she spoke aloud. Naught but the night and a small bird, a nightjar she thought, perched on the twisted limb of a stunted tree nearby could hear her. ‘I remember now.’ Their faces emerged from the crowd of those on the dusty trail of their escape route. ‘Those were their names; the ones those fiends took away,’ she said aloud again, making them more real to herself. ‘Kwell and Azhar. They were just at that twist in the road leading on to being a man, being a woman.’ She rubbed at her eyes. ‘Those demons should have taken me. I’ve spent all my life under the lash. What would a few more years matter.’ She rolled up her ragged sleeve, baring her left arm. The skin of her forearm bore an old scar, nearly lost amid the old bruises and scars left from hard work and punishments. It marked her as a slave, as someone who belonged to someone, somewhere.

She held her arms up in the moonlight. ‘But not forever…not forever…’

Brenna sat back down, her hand straying to a small flat rock lying near. ‘Bran, Nevan,’ she sighed, bringing her brothers’ still young faces into her mind. She picked up the stone, turning it over and over in her hand. ‘If only you would find me. You would stand up for the two taken, I’m sure of it. You would shout we should go north and take them back.’ She took out her small scythe and began to scratch a design into the stone’s surface. A few tears fell on the marks and she hastily wiped them away with her sleeve. ‘But I can’t…I can’t…’ She balanced the rock carefully on a pile of twigs near her little camping space.

Pulling her ragged shawl about her thin shoulders, she looked up toward the moon, wishing it were the sun instead and they were up and on their way to somewhere. Running or rescue…either, as long as they were moving along, no time for thinking. The small, plain bird hopped along the branch, craning his head at her, one bright black eye giving her a considering look.

‘Little Bird,’ she murmured, rocking back and forth a little on her haunches. ‘That’s what they called me…my brothers…when we played our games of hide and seek…’

Last edited by Undómë; 07-15-2006 at 12:52 AM.
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