Sasha blinked up at the slowly lightening sky. It was early morning already, she hadn’t felt like she had been in the hoard that long. The hoard… the memories were fresh, and as clear as if she had been awake…

  That could wait, first, she needed to see what happened. So slowly, she pulled herself out of the debris of what had presumably been her bed. Her clothes were nothing but tatters, but her skin? Even her hair? She was completely fine…

  The ground was dry and coated in a layer of ash, it was the first thing she truly grasped onto mentally. Her home was made entirely of wood, her parents not having near enough money to even consider stone.

  Whatever had happened, the fire had burned right down to the ground. There was no floor anymore, same for most of the walls. Only the main six logs that made up the frame of the house were still standing, and they hadn’t escaped unscathed either.

  She walked over to one of the beams, careless of the debris she stepped on to do it. She slowly reached out to it, and ran her fingers along the scorch marks. It was beautiful in its own way, and it made that flame in her stomach burn ever so slightly hotter.

  It had been a lot colder when she woke up, compared to the near bonfire it had been when she let sleep claim her last night. Last night… her thoughts drifted to her parents, and a pit opened in her stomach.

  The scent of pork was still heavy in the air, and she slowly turned to follow it. Two years ago, a family friend had died, and no one could afford to have him buried, so they burned him. The smell of a human body burning stays fresh in your mind, no matter how much time passes.

  This was the same smell. Human meat smells remarkably like pork, but just different enough, that you can immediately tell. Last time she’d smelled it, she’d thrown up on the spot. But now…

  The door to what her parents called their bedroom had been completely burnt down, the hinges still desperately clinging to the beam they were attached to. When she looked into the remains of the room, she didn’t see anything at first.

  Then she noticed something off white sticking out of the ash. She turned around, and started walking the opposite direction. She couldn’t do it, she had to leave, she couldn’t let herself know. She had to give herself the chance that they’d made it out, and just decided to leave her.

  But before she did… a green glow caught her attention, and she jerked to a stop. It was under a pile of debris in what might have been the kitchen. Sasha knelled down, pushing away the burnt remains of what had been her childhood home, and revealed the gem.

  It was covered in ash, but that glow shown through. She started crying. She hadn’t cried when she woke up, or when she had seen what were very likely her parents' remains. But this? She had been so afraid of failing, of losing one of the two things her Goddess had given her.

  It wasn’t even the thought of possible repercussions for failing, she… she would accept that, but the disappointment of her Goddess would kill her in a different way. She had never truly been wanted, her father wanted a son, and blamed her for not being one, her mother, even though she loved Sasha, did blame her for her father’s abuse.

  The constant feeling of not being wanted weighed on her. But last night… last night was the first time she had felt wanted since she was a child, and her father had been going to take that away from her.

  The back of her throat heated up, and the flame in her stomach roiled at the memory. So, she pushed them back, down into the depths, to hopefully never be seen again.

  She slowly picked up the crystal, and held it to her chest, it providing her more modesty than the scraps of what remained of her clothes. Then, in the distance, she heard voices.

  “It was just this way! A monster in the flames last night I tell ya! Had to be eight feet tall at least!”

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  “Yes yes Podrik, and my mother is an elf. We all could see the fire from the wall last night, you don’t need to go tellin tales.”

  “Oi! I ain’t tellin no tales! There was a monster in the fire. I’d bet you 10 silver it’s still there, eating poor Archibald and ‘is family.”

  Podrik, one of the drunks that frequented the inn next door. And he wasn’t alone. That was the voice of one of the city guard, she couldn’t tell who, but she remembered all to well that arrogance, that assurance that they could do anything they wanted, and no one would stop them.

  The base of her fingernails ached, but she ignored it, bolting over what was left of the wall next to the alleyway. The cobbles here were dry, like the ground under what was left of her home, but she could see puddles of water still on the Main Street.

  She couldn’t stay here, but she couldn’t go looking like this. Her tunic was almost completely gone, her breast band had fallen off, some part of it burnt through, leaving it slack enough that it had simply fallen off when she had sat up the first time this morning.

  The less said about below her waist, the better. Suffice it to say, it was rather drafty. She would be pulled into an alleyway within half an hour if she tried to go like this.

  So, she did what she could, grabbing a sheet that had been forgotten to be taken in last night, by the inn's staff, and that’s line had snapped after the wall of her home had collapsed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t burnt, not badly at least. A bit of ash had gotten onto it, and that would probably never come out, but, it was serviceable for what she needed.

  She wrapped it around herself, using it like a cloak. It covered what she needed it to, but it was only a temporary measure. She wrapped the crystal up aswell, trying as best she could to stymie its glow. And then, she slipped into a different alleyway.

  ———

  The tailors she apprenticed at was on the opposite side of the city. It wouldn’t take all that long in daylight, but she couldn’t do that, not as she was now. No, she kept to the side streets and alleyways. The streets were wet, and Illmaintained, meaning water pooled in hundreds of little puddles, and would stay like that for several days after the rain. And, it was dangerous, not just the cold, or the risk of slipping, not, it was the people that made these places dangerous.

  She hid her figure as best she could with the sheet, trying to look as non vulnerable as possible. It seemed to work, those who lingeringered in the alleys appeared to only give her a cursory glance as she made her way by as fast as she could.

  5 streets away from her mistress's shop, she saw someone being stabbed to death. It was brutal, and far from quiet. The back of her throat burned, but she didn’t linger, running by as fast and as silently as she could, making sure to avoid the murder’s attention.

  At some point, she found a pair of worn out boots. But no one discarded perfectly good shoes, no. The bottom of one was worn through so that she could still feel the ground when she had put them on. The other had a dead rat in it, but, it was something.

  Soon enough, after avoiding the murder she’d seen, she made it to the alleyway behind her mistress’s shop. It was only a single floor tall, and made of worn bricks. It was a sturdy little building, with a welcoming glow that poured out from the front windows. But she was not at the front, she was standing at the back entrance, in nothing more than a sheet, and worn boots.

  She steeled herself, and lifted her hand up to the door, and was just about to knock, when it flew open, and a cane whacked her on the head. She fell backwards onto the damp ground, clutching at her head with the hand she wasn’t using to hold the crystal.

  “Owww, mistress, please don't do that, I’ve had a bad day as it is.”

  “Serves you right for walking up to my door like that, if my skill hadn’t told me you were near, I would have shot you with the crossbow. You look like you’re about to rob someone dear.”

  The older woman was in fact, holding said crossbow in her other hand. Sasha had no idea how she’d opened the door with something in each hand.

  Ms. Rithic was a seamstress by class, but a tailor by trade. The two didn’t seem much different at first glance, but the difference had been beaten into her. The older woman had dark black hair, with streaks of grey running through.

  One would at first think that would take away from her appearance, but it only added to it. Her greying hair, combined with her spectacles gave her the air of someone who had a fair bit of wisdom to give. And she did have a fair bit to give, both in the art of making and fitting clothing, and in the art of making poisons.

  It was an open secret among the women on the city that Ms. Rithic had killed her husband, but no one was ever going to do anything about it. Apparently, she had been an alchemist before her husband had made her change her class when they’d gotten married, but she’d kept a lot of the knowledge, even after the church had removed the old class.

  “Misstress, I hate to ask, I really do, but do you have any clothes I can have? I… I can’t pay, all the coins melted together when the house burned down, and I don’t think the church would let me take from what my father stored there.”

  The woman looked her up and down again, her eyes sharpening. She sat the crossbow aside, and held out a hand for her to take. And take it she did, Sasha hauled herself up off the ground mostly under her own power, not wanting to hurt the older woman, but the assistance was more than appreciated.

  “Come in, we’ll see what we can find in the reject bins that will fit you. You’ll have to do the alterations yourself, I have a big order that needs to be done by the end of the week, same one from yesterday. And the clothes will be coming out of your pay, understand?”

  “But… but you don’t pay me?”

  “No, I payEd your father for your time, hated the arrangement, but he said he’d give you the coin when you were ready. I take it he’s no longer in the picture?”

  Sasha felt tears finally gathering in the corners of her eyes. She’d been holding to together well enough, but not that she was safe… she stated to sob as her mistress led her to the room where the rejected clothes were kept.

  “There… there was a fire…”

  It was all she could get out, before the door closed behind them.