Hello everyone ... Cal told me I could post this here. It's a story I've been working on recently about the beginnings of two of my favorite of my own characters, the twins Ismara and Feru Alt'vair. This is the original/rough/completely and utterly terrible draft; whatever you want to call it, so everything is subject to change (if I decide to get off my lazy bum and do so) including the title, so if you get a better idea than what I have, feel free to suggest it. Read and review if you want ... or just read ... y'know, whatever tickles your fancy. Tell me how I did.

Part One: Tragedy

The sun was hot.

That was the main thought wandering through Ismara Alt’vair’s mind, thought she didn’t take the time to consider the oddity of remarking inwardly on the heat. In fact, she wasn’t aware of much anything about herself at all, except for the fact that she was having an incredibly miserable day. No more than a copper or two had found their way into her pockets, which was horrible fare for a pickpocket in this crowded market square.

The thirteen-year-old growled to herself, wondering again about the heat. It rarely got this hot in Northrock - the large city’s name provided enough reason for that. Northrock was only a few miles south of the string of fortresses, anchored by the Granite Shield in the center, that guarded Shadowpass from the frigid Desuir. But that fact didn’t stop the day from being exactly that hot, which made the merchants all the more irritable and the purses she was trying to cut were being kept in tight grips. It looked like she would go mostly hungry that night.

With another soft growl, the redhead retreated to the edge of the crowd, hoping to maybe find someone a bit less careful with their wallets. She was sweating slightly and pushed a strand of reddish hair from her amber eyes, pursing her thin lips and surveying the situation.

It still didn’t look good for dinner tonight, she realized with a sigh.

Her eyes narrowed suddenly as they caught sight of something she was almost sure she was imagining. The string of a wallet was dangling out of a man’s pocket – a man that seemed to be completely unaware of his own vulnerability. The simplicity of it made her hesitate as she glanced around the man, looking for guards or partners. Was it a trap? It wasn’t unheard of to try and lure pickpockets into taking tempting wallets, thought it wasn’t common practice either. And there were people this stupid in the world, though she hadn’t thought she would be lucky enough to find any inside Northrock.

She couldn’t find any hints of a trap, and her belly rumbled at her in protest, as if reminding Ismara that she would have to pay for food later, or risk being caught while stealing from merchant stalls. Once Ismara made up her mind, the young pickpocket was quick to act on it. She stalked forward, darting through the crowd with ease indirectly towards her target. The man must have been engaged in conversation – she couldn’t see his face, but he wasn’t moving. He was merely standing on the edge of the market crowd, waiting pensively for something.

Ismara didn’t waste time finding out what that something was. Instead, she chewed on her lower lip as she glanced around one more time. Now she began strolling casually around the edge of the crowd. She lifted her hand as if hailing a friend, laughing and calling out. She started to run, seeking to catch up to her ‘friend,’ and accidentally ran into the man whose wallet was so tempting – she was so very sorry, sir, she didn’t mean to, yes she certainly would watch where she was going, her deepest apologies – and started to run off again.

Immediately and without thinking, Ismara patted the heavy feel of the wallet now inside her pocket. It was worth more than she had ever expected to take that day; from its weight alone, there had to be at least a dozen coppers in the drawstring pouch. That would feed her that night, and a few more to come if she didn’t overindulge.

She disappeared off into an alley now, slumping down and leaning against a wall. Her hand slipped into her pocket, drawing the wallet forth and dropping it in her lap. She grinned as she tugged at the drawstring, glancing around half-nervously to make sure no one was watching. No one was; or at least, no one that mattered. A wino was sleeping off a hangover not twenty feet from her, a bottle of something clutched in one hand, but he was well asleep and wouldn’t stir if the city was attacked.

Ismara reached into the wallet and pulled out a coin. “Gods,” she breathed with a grin. It was gold. Gold! A sudden fear gripped her and she almost threw the coin in between her teeth, but it passed the test. This was a real gold coin, stamped with the King’s mark and heavy and gold. She dove back into the bag. The rest of the contents were eight copper coins and a single silver, but still it was probably the best haul she had ever taken in a single day, or even possibly a week.

The young pickpocket licked her lips as she replaced the coins in their wallet, adding the other two coppers she had taken earlier in the day. What now? She didn’t want to go back out into the market anymore that day, not until it was time to get something to eat. Picking pockets wasn’t high on her list of enjoyable things to do at the moment. But wait … why couldn’t it be time to eat now? She had the money for two meals today, lunch and dinner, like she had never had before. Why not?

That question was answered for her as someone cleared his throat with a deep and sonorous cough.

Ismara’s blood ran cold as she glanced around slowly to find one of Northrock’s constables standing close by, his hand nonchalantly resting on his sword hilt and his dark grey eyes staring directly at her. “I received a complaint,” he said in a calm, soothing voice. “A gentleman within the market announced that his wallet had been taken, and when I saw you fleeing into here, I followed. Come along, lass.”

“I wasn’t fleeing!” Ismara responded, trying and failing to sound indignant. Her sharply chiseled features had turned hot with what she hoped translated as anger and not embarrassment at being captured like an idiot. “This is my money. My mother gave it to me, I was to buy food and drink for the family … and medicine. My mother is very sick, else she would have been here herself. She has the Wilting —”

“Please, don’t lie to me,” the guard told her with a small smile. “You’ll get no sympathy from me, not if you’re an orphan taking care of a whole host of Wilt-infected brothers and sisters. Give me the money.”

She hesitated, glancing down at the wallet she held in her hand. Oddly enough, the thought was passing through her mind at that point that perhaps orphan would have been a better tale to tell. It didn’t matter now though. “And if I do?”

“Perhaps we can save your hands, or at least your soul. Picking pockets is no way to make a life, lass. Maybe we can help you — Come back!”

She hadn’t even taken the time to listen to him. He seemed to have been ready for her to flee because he jumped after her immediately. His legs were longer than hers, but if she could outrun him for just a while, he would tire quicker than her. The long, dark pants and grey tabard – inscribed with a black mountain jutting into the center of the chest – of Northrock’s constabulary would be murder in the heat.

Ismara ducked into the honeycombing back streets of Northrock’s slums, hoping that she could lose the constable in there. She didn’t hear him call for any help in catching her; would his male egotism not allow it, or did he just think he could catch her? She neither knew nor cared; all that mattered was that she only had one guardsman to outrun. And, she decided with a confident mental nod, she would outrun him. The difficult part - the initial escape - had already been accomplished.

A person could die in the back streets of Northrock if they weren’t born there. Ismara was both cursed and blessed with having been born there, and proved it now by quickly leaving the guardsman behind. She would have smiled to herself, but she didn’t trust it. It had been far too easy, hadn’t it? She tried to console herself by consciously forcing her mind to remember the many times she had escape capture in similar ways, but still something about the escape bugged her. It wasn’t supposed to be that easy.

Still with the nagging thought of her too-simple escape, Ismara ducked into another alley. The afternoon sun couldn’t hope to pierce the thick, if crumbling, walls of the squat and square buildings around her. She glanced around, but couldn’t see anything in the darkness. That didn’t bother her near as much as the thought of the guardsman coming up behind her; she had lived her entire life in darkness. So instead she slumped to the ground, leaning against the building on the right with an exhausted sigh.

She swallowed hard, but was smiling as she fished out her wallet. The drawstrings were still pulled tight and it felt like all the coins were still there, and she felt safe now, so she was content to smile. For the second time that day, she tugged the strings loose, and for the second time that day she stared at the gold coin with a childish grin on her face. Ismara pulled it out, running her fingers over the coin’s edges almost lovingly, her eyes trained on the gold with single-minded intensity. She had never held a gold coin before, not in five years of picking pockets. Few people were quite so foolish as to bring such a valuable coin to market.

A voice caused her head to jerk upwards, her fingers shoving the coin back into the wallet instinctively. “What d’you have there, m’lass?”

For a heart-stopping moment, she thought that it was the constable, having kept up with her after all, approaching to clap her in irons and take her hands for thievery. But then she realized that the figure was coming from the wrong direction to be the constable, and besides he was lurching drunkenly—just another wino who had had too much to drink. She got to her feet and stepped backwards, clutching the wallet protectively close to her chest.

“Oh, there’s no need to be afraid, lass! It’s just old Cad, no one but old Cad. You wouldn’t be afraid of old Cad, would you? Old Cad wouldn’t hurt you.”

The comforting tones of the wino did nothing to soothe Ismara – who had never known anyone named Cad, old or otherwise. She stepped backwards hesitantly, wishing suddenly that she at least had a small knife to wave before her warningly. But she was unarmed and Cad was approaching steadily. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered but with a large gut. He hadn’t shaved in days, and smelled like he had maybe had a bath a year or two ago. When he smiled, it was clear that hygiene wasn’t Cad’s first concern; his teeth were yellow and in more than one cases, completely missing.

Ismara scrambled backwards even faster, well aware that she was in no condition to deal with any sort of danger. “What do you want?” she asked softly as she hesitated near the entrance to the alley, considering her options. The constable seemed a likable alternative to Cad, whoever he was.

“Whatever you want to share with old Cad,” the man replied in what was clearly supposed to be an amiable voice. Instead, it was deep and grating, frightening. Ismara felt her blood run cold as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she became increasingly aware of her own weariness, wondering if she could stand up to another chase. Cad was clearly drunk and out of shape, but she was utterly exhausted from her run. Would she still be able to escape? She wasn’t sure, and that lack of certainty was what kept her rooted to the spot.

“And if I don’t want to share anything with old Cad?” she responded, licking her lips. She should probably throw the wallet at the man and run, but she was loathe to abandon the shining gold coin, not to mention the security offered by the other coins. She knew she would never spend the gold one as long as she lived, but the rest of the coins were sure food and drink for at least three days.

“Then old Cad would have to hurt you, and he doesn’t want to do that, no he doesn’t.”

Everything clicked then in a flash as Cad raised a rusted dagger. Ismara hadn’t seen the weapon before, no doubt due to the darkness in the alley, but as she did now, her eyes widened with realization. “No,” she breathed, and hesitated but a moment with shock and fear before bolting.

The hesitation cost her.

Cad reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, twisting her around violently. The still open wallet flew across the alley, slamming into the wall of the next building and spilling its coins across the road. As she had feared, Cad wasn’t the least bit interested in the coins. He let the dagger draw frighteningly across the bridge of her nose, not bringing blood but still making her eyes go wide with fear. “No,” she said again, louder this time. “Please.”

“Lay down, lass. Old Cad doesn’t want to hurt you.”

* * *

When it was over, Ismara was crying.

She was lying on the hard ground, not recognizing whether it was packed earth or brick or stone. She barely recognized that it was ground at all; she was only just conscious, floating somewhere between the realm of death and life without any coherent thoughts. All she knew was pain. Between her legs, she was vaguely aware of a horrible stabbing pain and blood flowing, but that was a world away because Ismara willed it to be a world away. She had no use for pain now.

A voice floated into being, but she couldn’t understand the words. It was a horrible, grating voice that she connected with the pain between her legs, but beyond that there was no thought. She recognized that someone was stroking her face, but she didn’t know who nor why. It didn’t matter either. Nothing mattered now.

Other words, sharper now, not directed at her. A figure swam into view, blurry and unidentifiable from the tears and Ismara’s subconscious mental block. He was facing away from Ismara and she realized that now, no one was stroking her face anymore. She liked that. The fingers had been rough and calloused, the breath filling her nostrils rancid, smelling of alcohol. Now the figure was moving and another form came into view, though it was also murky and she couldn’t quite be certain she saw it. The second figure moved suddenly, violently, and the first form dropped like a stone. Ismara viewed it all through distant, almost unseeing eyes as the second figure approached her, crouching down beside her naked body. He whispered something, but she couldn’t understand him. He reached out and she knew that she didn’t want him to touch her, but he did and his touch was much less terrible than the other man’s.

She was vaguely aware of being picked up and carried, but then she finally allowed the blackness to take her and blissfully knew no more.