DAY 889The day fades away. The forest is quiet and calm. No wind, no bird chirping. Just crunching of dry grass under the hooves of the animals in their pens.
“I'm home”, Fiara thinks, looking round her small homestead. She has returned from another trip to Driik, where she has obtained a few of jewelry, valuable hides, some masterwork clothes and two pots with handy wrought-iron legs. However, she failed to find mail armor of masterwork quality. Njerpez slavers began more and more often to roam in twos or even threes. With hounds, sometimes. Now hunting them will be even harder and more dangerous.
Fjara is tired. She enters the kota, legs giving way under her, and falls to a pile of skins, then puts a noaidi's mushroom in her mouth. Occasionally it makes her sick... but the mind, once it has found its way back from the spirit world, clears and breaks the shackles of exhaustion. She closes her eyes and slowly slips into a haze of visions and dreams.
Somehow, the past emerges in mind this time. Fjara recalls what had happened two and a half years ago. The very day when her whole life had been irretrievably ruined.
***
She's heading home, leading the only reindeer doe Fjara managed to find after wolves attacked her homestead. Not for nothing is her name Tuuri — “lucky”. She is, indeed. The wolves killed or hurt the rest of the animals so bad that they had to be finished off so as not to prolong their suffering.
Not far from home, she suddenly smells a smoke. Heart goes down in a bad vibe, and Fjara slows her pace. It's quiet. Too quiet. Having walked a hundred more steps, she hears the crackle of fire and stops. She feels so scared as never before. A minute later, Fjara makes herself walk the last few meters to the homestead.
The homestead, which is no longer there. It's just burnt-out ruins. A few steps from her lies father, the ground beneath his head is dark, and Fjara knows at once, it is blood there. And there's too much of it to hope that father's still alive.
She wants to call to mother, but her voice fails her. Those who did this may still be close. Fjara ties the reindeer to a tree and sneaks around the clearing, listening and peering into the thicket.
No one's there. An no sign of mother. Next to the father's body, she notices a piece of red cape trampled into the ground and clenches her fists in silent ire. Njerpez. That means they took mother as a slave. That means she is alive. And there is a chance to find her.
***
When Fjara wakes up the next morning, a lynx skin beneath her cheek is wet with tears.