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.