Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land
Dawn edges between the board slates of this shelter. It is a rosy red streaked morning and foreboding of a stormy winter’s day.
I don’t know what I will do with this freedom I’ve gained by loosening the chain. I’m tired and starving and find myself in a hostile, but still, sleeping world.
The sled trail I was following ends with these men who chose to capture me and whose language I don’t understand. I would be safer here if they didn’t fear me. Their way of camp, sleeping in the open around the fire is just as I found their last campsite, abandoned, yesterday. They seem to select their campsites to be near clean water. And yes, I find a sweet little spring running down into a creek. After a long quenching of my thirst, I’m renewed and more thoughtful.
Thank you, God. May I soon find good food and peaceful human company.
I could walk in this creek to hide my tracks so no one would follow me as I escape, but my feet would be near freezing, wet, and still, I would have no way to find any peaceful human company. So, I gather some wood and stir their fire while the two marauders sleep. I find my own deerskin in the sled. Now I make a little shelter of it hidden in the thatch of brush on the other side of the creek where I can watch this camp while also, hiding from them. Yesterday, these two discovered me following them. Today, I will stay well-hidden but always watching them. When they wake and find my deerskin gone and the chain laying limp, they will find my tracks to the creek and hopefully will assume I have escaped by walking the creek. So today, I will be the watcher of them.
Sheltered here in the deer skin, I am snoozing when the sleety rain awakens the marauders. They are roaring curses in a language of words I don’t know, but curses are recognizable in any language. They are already bad tempered. What will they do when they find their heavy chain has been set free of me?
It is Mara, calling from inside the thrall hovel that alerts the men to my escape. She is calling for help in my language fearing that I am a lurking danger to her now that I am loose. Why does she fear me?
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 