This is the way it has been for my people, for as long as anyone could remember. Each new life brought with it the threat that the creature posed. Each new life could be snatched away from us too early, too harshly, and far too cruelly.

Malina-Deprassi was a world of extremes. The Big People had more than they ever could need. The Small People struggled to get by. Events occur which cannot be explained. Prophecies are told which gain widespread attention. Children are born into the world.———

This work is in the public domain and anyone can do whatever they want with it.

Azania was sixteen. And she couldn’t take it anymore. She had spent her childhood lonely, spent it terrified, spent it desperate, spent it aching. The only adults in her life were the people who saw her as nothing but a tool to exploit and use. She was told over and over and over again that she was nothing and no-one and she didn’t matter. The only people in her life who cared about her were fellow slave-children and she barely ever got to see them at all. She needed freedom. Escape. She was willing to do anything for it.

And she wasn’t the only one. All over the city people were being exploited. People were being forced to work under impossibly degrading conditions and live in abject poverty. People were silenced. Stifled. And they were longing for escape.

The Forest was beyond the edges of the city. It was a place of magic and miracles. It was a place of hope and freedom and rebirth. But getting there was next to impossible.

Within the Forest the wolves howled. Azania emerged from the water. And she wasn’t the only one. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Who she met changed her life forever.

————This work is in the public domain and anyone can do whatever they want with it.

Azalia was child in a farming village that was hovering near poverty but getting by just fine. She had friends, family, peace, health, free time, and happiness though she never had what one would call a luxury. She was happy. Until the bombs started dropping. She didn't know why. No-one did. They just knew that there were many different ways to lose your loved ones.

Right now she's trying to provide for her loved ones, trying to survive. But to the soldiers anything is fair game. Anyone is fair game. For whatever their purposes are.