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Mother was calling her name, and the pain in her voice was echoing in Shiara’s head. She struggled to move closer to Mother but her legs were cylinders of steel glued to the ground.Bam! Shiara’s sapphire-blue eyes snapped open as she wiped off the sweat that was sticking to her forehead in a sticky sheen of heat. Looking down, she saw that her legs were tangled in her sheets so that any way that she moved, her legs would stay in one place. Well that explains the dream, she thought. Quietly untangling herself, she dressed purposefully in villager clothes- a plain brown tunic with a burgundy cloak thrown over it. These were nothing like her normal clothes- carefully embroidered dresses with silk sashes. Nonetheless, she felt free away from those heavy velvets. It was as if she were another person now. Free to run through the surrounding forest without being caught and yelled at. Her mind wandered back to the dream of Mother. Her step-mother actually. She had died almost four years ago, when Shiara was eight years old. Now she opened the door, and after tiptoeing past her sister Erie’s bed she darted to the window. She had gotten up early enough so that she could go outside and watch the sunset while eating her breakfast. Shiara stole a slice of bread and some preserves from the pantry, and slipped through the door and sat on the front step. The glorious sunset stretched from each side if the heavens, banding it with pink, red, orange and gold. Crystals of light peeked here and there through the striped clouds. Sighing with pleasure, Shiara finished her meal and opened the door. The house creaked and Shiara paused immediately. It creaked again. Intruders!! She stole through the half open doorway and stopped upon seeing a moving shadow about in her departed mother’s formal sitting room. Shiara’s father had set all of her mother’s belongings in that one sitting room. That particular room was the one her mother had loved most and had not been opened for two years. Mutely she drifted to where the shadow stood and was jolted back to her senses as a thin, reedy voice called softly “Whose there?” Slipping one of her father’s hunting knives off the mantle in the foyer, she tried to recall the few lessons her father had ever given her on hunting. He was a governor and after all, and had duties. “Whose there?” the voice called again. Shiara thought about crying for her father, but that would only give her away. Then the thief stepped into the hall. He was tall and thin, as his voice suggested, and was burdened with a mane of long, thick brown hair. He seemed as stunned to see her as she was to see him. Realizing that this was the thief that had been rummaging through her dead mother’s belongings, Shiara’s fist tightened around the knife and murmured confidently “I have a knife. Move even once and I’ll scream.” The color drained from the robber’s face as he stepped slowly toward the door, almost as if sleepwalking. “Don’t you dare,” Shiara cautioned, attempting to make her voice menacing, but only squeaking out the would-be menacing sentence instead. Inside, pure fear was pounding in her veins. Anger and temporary courage took over fear as she growled “Drop whatever is in your hands.” The man dropped one thing and ran. Shiara swept up the case that he had dropped and pursued him all the way down to the forest, where he disappeared into the shadows. “Are you all right?” a concerned woodcutter called out. “Yes,” Shiara responded. Looking down at the case in her hands she slipped into the forest herself and gazed at it. It was the type of box that expensive jewelry came in. Opening it slowly, she saw a necklace, precisely the same shade as her eyes. Made with a jewel in the middle and spraying thin streams of silver and gold out like a fountain, the necklace gleamed in the early morning sun. Hands shaking, Shiara placed the necklace around her neck and closed the clasp. Then everything went black.
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