Welcome to Gaia! ::

Rae awoke peacefully, wrapped within the reindeer covers of her stiff wooden bed. She sat up immediately and stretched her arms, which had grown sore since the day before. Without a sound, she changed into her leather trousers and strung up her favorite buckskin hunting vest that was embedded with the impenetrable iron of the Winterland people. She grabbed her hunting spear and bow, stringing the latter onto her back, and pushed open the leather tight door, which concealed the placid white lake outside. But she sprang back into the hut to pick up a small leather pouch with the letter R in red incribed on the front flap. Looking at the pouch for a moment, Rae let out a heavy gush of air from her nostrils that filled her eyes with bitterness. As the first drops of sunlight hit her face, she pushed open the door again and felt the cool air break against her burning skin.

(Coco can move into ash) Rae kneeled in the frozen soil that was filled with rocky remains of hunted beasts. She stared out into the whiteness that fell in all directions around her. Scanning the horizon, she looked for movement...possible food...Suddenly, she saw a speck amongst the white...it was moving closer to the village...Rae raised her bow with caution, ready to kill for her livlihood, but lowered it in shock, when she realized that it was a young girl who looked as if she had been wandering for days. Outsiders were not permitted in the village...but she was ailing...Rae looked around before running out into the white puff to meet her...

She's barely wearing anything in the cold...obviously she's not a flameling, Rae thought. Maybe she's just foolish... "What are you doing here?" Rae asked harshly. "This isn't your territory. Unless you wish to be burned, I suggest you return from where you came." The girl merely gazed at Rae, clearly weary from a long journey. Rae's cold eyes became softer, as she removed her favorite vest and placed it around the girl's body. "This...'arrangement' doesn't leave the village," Rae warned, "outsiders aren't welcome. We don't need beggars. And only until you're strong enough to move on..." Avoiding direct eye contact, Rae couldn't help noticing the beautiful face of the girl via her peripheral vision, but she dismissed her passing thought as quickly as it had come.

"You're a witch?" Rae sneered. "My village doesn't like your kind here." She looked around, furtively. "I'm Rae...wish I could say it's nice to meet you, but that would be a lie." Rae paused for a moment, sighing. "I take your honor if you break your word. Understand?" Turning on her heels, Rae headed back to the village, turning around fast enough to see this mysterious witch collapse in the snow, with Rae's vest still on top of her. s**t! Rae cursed in her mind. Picking up the now limp body, Rae carried Coco towards the pillars of smoke that bellowed over the Village of Ash...

Picking her up in her brazen arms that were toughened by her father's training, Rae let out a breath of warm air. "Ugh, you're heavy." Rae complained. "What the hell were you doing out here anyway? It's a miracle you survived as a non-flameling being, what with so little clothes." Rae caught a glimpse of the dress that followed the curves of the young girl, but quickly diverted her eyes once again.

Carrying the limp girl to the village, she hustled into her hut, and placed Coco into her bed...pressing her tough, insulating covers under the girl's body, but Coco remained shivering.

"Morning, Darlin'" Elgor boomed from the next room. His pounding footsteps reverberated from the other room through the wooden floor boards. Upon seeing a half-dead, non-flameling girl in Rae's bed, his smile faded so fast, it was as if it was never there. "You do realize there's a girl in your bed?" Rae could only nod. "And you brought her into the village...how?"

Rae whispered, "Found her today while hunting..."

"Should've shot her! You know we don't accept outsiders! She could reveal our location! You could have threatened our entire way of life by bringing her here!"

"What was I supposed to do, Father?! Leave her to die?!" Rae retorted angrily. He never understood her reasoning. Only her mother....but she had died long ago.

"Do not...DO NOT...speak to me that way. I am your father, but more importantly, your chief...She has to go. Now. Before the village awakens further." Rae glared at her father.

"Let her stay until she gets back on her feet. She doesn't have anywhere else to go and she certainly will die out there if we let her go now. I'll keep her a secret...no one else will know...I can guarentee it. My promise. And she promised to keep this location a secret as well. I did not want this, Father."

"Really? Then why didn't you let her die? You are a weak excuse for my daughter. My daughter would have put the village first, not second, to a strange girl."

"If mother were here..." she started, but stopped mid-sentence.

"If your mother were here...I wouldn't have to deal with you and you're disappointments."

"Yes, Father. I'll deal with it. She'll be gone before you know it."

"Better be..."