"Elementals are as fantastical as elves and fae, as improbable as a purple sky and upside down towers. A man must appreciate the real, the now. Dreams are too dangerous to entertain, and Götteril a myth as dark as the Fathers' hearts."

~ Luderick the First (Written in Bederïn Stêr's Time, in Valle, a Southern town)

Färin leapt into the tent just ahead of a large chunk of wood, tugging the flap strings closed with haste. The wood hit the tent and he flinched back. Outside a great sandstorm raged. Shards and dangerous chunks of objects torn asunder by the violent wind flew unpredictably through the air. Some smacked into the sides of the tent every now and again and he thanked whatever deities were involved that he wasn't out there.

    Most of these tents were occupied, he recalled. He turned around slow, wary, expecting a desert savage to chop at him from the shadows with one of those curved blades, but the tent was empty. Not empty of possessions, but empty of life. Thank the Fathers!

    The tent shook and trembled, the storm's tempest assaulting it. Fathers, he hoped it would hold. He inspected the contents of the interior with disdain and mild disinterest. Uncivilised lot, these Sheians were. Färin held up a rugged pot with two fingers, disgusted at its sorry state.

    A great flash of light pierced the gaps and seams of the tent momentarily. What was that? Spots danced in his eyes, the darkness decorated with peculiar specks. He waited, counting the time with his fingers and his breaths.

    'I'm not tired,' he lied, rubbing a hand over his face, 'just bored.' The sand kept his footsteps silent while he paced back and forth. A soldier must always be on guard. Father had drilled this into him, among other grand psychological tortures he'd spend his life trying to revert from. Three steps. That's how many it took for him to reach the tent's boundaries, yet he paced up and down countless times.

    'I'm tired,' he admitted then. The mat on the sand called to him with its smoothness and his weary mind was eager to surrender. Savages carried a foreign sleeping object, one of which Färin lay his head onto.

    It was soft, square, squishy, and more comfortable than he had imagined, except that it smelled strange. He could make a huge profit if he took this idea back home. The storm's rage abated somewhat from its earlier tempest, less shrapnel pummelling the tent and less murder in the wind's howl. Färin's mind wondered from the profits of stealing foreign ideas to an isolated paradise in the woods.

    In his mind's eye he saw lush green vegetation, moss covered rocks, giant trees, and a natural spring. Sunlight filtered through the forest at just the right place, gleaming off crystal clear waters. A little waterfall flowed gently into the ice blue pool. Great stones stood grandly behind the spring, a small cliff hiding the secret spot from strangers. Little creatures swam in the freshwater pool, darting this way and that.

    Färin sighed with longing. He thought of Asrya, with her hypnotizing hazel eyes and full red lips. Though their romance was forbidden, she surely awaited his return. He looked forward to their reunion with great eagerness. Eagerness his father did not share. Father forbade him from spending time with 'the common slut'

    Pah! He knew nothing of love and romance. The man bedded many women but loved none, always more interested in money, driven by his selfish ambition for power. Färin did not want to be like his father, and father seemed to disdain him just as much. And why not? He had other sons. Heirs. More important than Färin, more talented than him. Better in business, better in war, better in bedding the masses. Färin's face contorted with a bitter scowl. Thoughts of the neglect he had experienced since infancy battered him. 'Arrogant, disapproving bastard.'

    He sighed and pinched his eyes shut, trying to revert to the sweet memories of Asrya. The first time he saw her she was standing by the river, soaked to the bone by the rain. She stared down into its murky depths and he knew he could never love another. It was more than her luscious feminine figure, or her thick brown hair. It was the way she weaved her fingers through her hair when she thought and how her skirt was always pulled a bit skew. It was her running bare feet through the forest to their secret spot, and the way she kissed him when they lay together. She was everything a woman should be.

    On the forest floor near the clear pool of water they'd discovered together he imagined her laying, hair sprawled about her heart-shaped face, curves bare to the elements--slight goose bumps running along them--and her wonderful eyes full of love and promise.

    Feeling snug and content, a smile graced his face. Nothing could take from him the love they shared, not even his bitter father. His fists clutched the pillow with zeal and he squished his cheek into its soft surface. Father can't keep us apart... We will be together my love. Gradually his fingers relaxed their hold and sleep overcame him.

    A subconscious jerk of shoulder awoke Färin to foreign surroundings. 'A savage's tent?' He rubbed a hand over his face listlessly. 'Of course,' he thought, recalling the storm. A cold kind of wet thing touched his feet - a smooth mound or rock - but fleshy. The darkness of the night had swept in during his slumber, and he could not see much in the pale moonlight filtering through the tent slits.

    He poked the thing with his toe, and it moved. Färin jumped into the side of the tent, nearly bringing down the whole structure. 'Fool,' he swore, shaking his injured right hand. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the mound was in fact a young, pallid, bare little girl - asleep.

    'A torch,' he thought, 'that's what I need.' He fumbled around in the heap of possessions the savage had abandoned. After a lengthy search, he found a torch and flint. Great! Something normal in that cursed tent. Next, anything that could be used as a weapon; a curved blade, a carving knife, and rope. All useful things to have. Flint sparked and flame awoke, chasing the shadows.

    Now, what to do about the girl. Färin stood thinking while the torchlight danced. Bölla, his youngest sister, had given him a soft spot for little girls with her sweet demeanour. Because of her, he found it hard to do any injustice to little children, and in particular little girls. Was that why he found it so hard to walk out of the tent and leave the girl to whatever fate awaited her?

    The torch's flame licked its wick hungrily, its shade dancing across the girl's features. Her long hair was hard to distinguish from the sand, almost identical in colour. She was bony and fragile, her skin white like milk. He guessed her to be maybe five years old.

    To the dogs with this. Färin turned his back to the child, lifted the tent flap, looked out at the moonlit camp and the tent peaks like a breast's shadow in the starry sky. Darnit. He couldn't leave her, he wasn't completely without conscience. A man as good looking as he was rarely humble, but he felt he was.

    Humility was in the acts of kindness we did for the undeserving. Hadn't a Wise Man said that once. Damn. He'd have to take her with him, maybe to a village nearby where her people could find her parents. She seemed awful pale for a savage, though. Maybe a fellow soldier's daughter or a kitchen maid's child then? He would need to find out. His eyes wandered the tent momentarily and returned to her naked form. And he would need to clothe her somehow.

    Digging through the scattered possessions once more, Färin came upon some material garb he could wrap the girl in. Should he wake her? Would she scream? Lash out at him? Perplexed, he stared at the sand and the shadows moving with the flame's flicker. Fathers, he had no clue what he was doing; he'd never been responsible for a kid before.

    The girl had to be covered where she lay with the strange coat-ish, he decided. Whatever she did next would help him make further choices. Färin approached her as a hunting cat approaches a pigeon. After laying the coat thing gently over her, he sprang back, as though she might have been a desert cobra and not a little girl at all. She did not wake. Only her chest moved, with each breath she took. His relief was obvious on his face. This could work. He might be able to carry her.

    A few minutes later, he emerged from the tent carrying a small bundle covered in material. Towards the horizon of white dunes he snuck, through the dormant encampment. It was not visible from the enemy camp, but he knew the northern army to be just beyond those shadowy dunes. Probably. Hopefully. Sheia whispered secrets into the fresh morning air. Her murmuring breath rippled tent cloth and concealed Färin's footfalls.

    Northerners were not accustomed to extreme heat and wild sand storms, so it was possible few had survived the storm. Even more likely was their hasty retreat into the Gruwoud. A few hours would pass before he reached the edge of the camp, and he hoped to arrive before sunrise, when the day's lethal heat would eat at his flesh.

#

    It was empty. Deserted. The Lord of Skävia, Färin's father's tent was empty. Well, not empty of possessions, but empty of life. Not an unfamiliar feeling. Dawn had just arrived and the forlorn camp looked grey and dead.

    Half buried pots lay a distance away from poles and tattered materials sticking up out of the sand. Those must have been tents. Färin knew they were the pale green colour of the capital city's insignia, but they looked grey and drab like burial cloths in the dawn light. A chill went up his spine. He shivered, though it wasn't cold.

    Why had the savages' tents not collapsed? Färin shifted the girl's weight to the other arm and felt the torn fabric between his fingers. The foreign tents had stood when he escaped their encampment, but the northerners' tents were ruined. Was it the material they were made of or something more sinister? His father's tent stood, albeit with extensive damage to the tent fabrics that flapped about in the desert breeze. Events like these sometimes made Färin wonder whether the Fathers, or other deities for that matter, might actually exist. Certainly something beyond natural had kept the Sheian tents from succumbing to the storm. He laid the girl on his father's huge oak table, the one that'd always had maps and graphs spread out on it.

    A glob of spit was stuck in his throat and he swallowed it, nervous as heck. The little girl stirred. A drop of sweat dripped from Färin's temple. Two light blue eyes peered over the edge of the material garb from the foreigner's tent with angst. Her eyes entranced him with their large, crisp beauty and nude naivety. He saw her tension and felt he needed to reassure her somehow.

    'Good morning,' he said, in what he hoped was a cheerful tone. 'My name is Färin. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help you get home.' He smiled a toothy, ridiculous smile.

    She lowered the material with both hands, until her face was open. Beautiful.

    No shame tainted her features. 'Wh-at is my n-name?'

    The sentence was a struggle, her tongue fumbling over the shape of each sound, as if she had never spoken before.

    'I don't know what your name is. I found you in the tents of our enemies.' Färin scratched his head. 'Don't you remember your name?'

    She shook her head, frowning with wide, perplexed eyes.

    'Will yo-u give me- a name, Fär-in?' Her face lightened up at the idea.

    She was so hopeful, he could not disappoint her just as he could never disappoint little Bölla at home. 'I will, child.'

    In thought he scratched his hair, mussing the messy nest of it even more. After a minute of thinking, he found the perfect name.

    'Let us call you... Sheyå.'

    A radiant smile shone from her innocent face. Names were what gave one worth after all. An identity, a purpose.

    'Wh-at does it mean?' Her diction was still strangled and jerky.

    'It means daughter of the desert, in my home tongue,' Färin realized he'd been pushing his chest out a bit and promptly deflated, thinking himself to be rather comic. He may've been humble, but his chest did not know of it.

    'Sheiaaaaa,' she said, shaking her head, then, 'Sheyå.'

    Her expression seemed smug.

    'I like it,' she said, speaking with a bit more confidence.

    'Are you from the north?' Färin asked.

    'I... I don't know where I am from. I do n-ot remember... except l-ast night.' Loss of memory and the exertion of the long sentence seemed to affect her diction.

    'I remember a g-reat storm.' She watched the sky as she spoke. 'I was in it.'

    She frowned. 'I was ea-ting sand. I was happy. Then I felt tired, s-so I slept.' She shrugged then, looking to him for guidance.

    Her sentences did not make sense to him, but he reasoned that most children her age made even less sense than she did. 'Hmmm...' An awkward moment he'd been trying to avoid surfaced. In the lull he stood taller, trying to appear as though he knew what he was doing, as though he had a plan.

    'Well, seeing that you speak the northern tongue and your skin is so pale, I'm guessing you aren't one of the savages. Let's see if we can find some sort of clothing for you to wear.' He started looking around. 'The Gruwoud is colder than this place and that's where all the northerners are most likely headed.'

    Sheyå looked confused, but said nothing. Her legs dangled over the edge of the table, swinging back and forth.

    'Stay here,' he told her, 'it could be dangerous. I will be right back.'

    Blue eyes wide with childish fear, she nodded. During his search, a red sash caught his attention. The shift he'd found would need to be tied to her little body. When he returned to his father's dilapidated tent holding both in his arms, Sheyå played in the sand off to the right of the table in the morning heat.

    She seemed quite comfortable with the coat thing wrapped around her frail shoulders, but otherwise naked. Naked in sand. He grimaced; he would find it quite uncomfortable.

    A rivulet of sand poured from her right hand which she held high. Her left hand lay almost against the ground, right in the pathway of the approaching rivulet. As he watched, her eyes became a dark kind of blue, comparable to the colour of storm clouds back home just before a downpour of rain.

    The rivulet of sand bent away from her left hand and spiralled into a tiny whirlwind on the ground. Färin froze. His eyes felt as though they were popping from his skull. His left hand twitched to his scabbard. What kind of sorcery was this?

    'Run,' his heart told him, 'fight,' the man in him shouted. The muscles in his arms bulged and tensed, and his fingers tightened their grip on the hilt at his waist. Just then she noticed him and smiled, beaming proudly at him as though he were her father or brother. Fathers, he couldn't think straight. The idea of attacking lost its lustre, so Färin turned away, strolling through the rubble of the camp.

    What should he do? If anyone saw this, they would kill her, or imprison her, or use her. One question stayed in his mind: What was she? Should he ask his father? Or maybe a wise man? No, he had once heard of a Mage living in the Gruwoud. They were said to have great power and wisdom. Maybe he had better take Sheyå to the Mage? If he truly existed.

    A Wise Man was too risky. They had their own ambitions and quirks. He could not tell for sure, but he thought his father a merciless monster. For fear of her life, he could not take her to him either.

    'Ohhh.' He sighed, hunching his shoulders and dropping his head to his chest. Best get to it then. He turned around and walked back to Sheyå. With each step, his idea grew more enticing. Meeting a legendary Mage! Well, if he existed. What an idea. His humility had stretched, reaching new bounds. After all, this was extremely generous of him. A smile burst from his sullen face, and he quickened his pace.