I was born in the back room of a Vesper Inn. To say we were poor, would be putting it quite mildly. My mother, broken and old before her time, had found work scrubbing the filth ridden floors of the Ironwood Inn. For her effort she was given one meal a day and a straw mattress on the floor of this back room. How she survived her pregnancy, I'll never know, afterwards though she was never "quite right".
The Innkeeper was not a tolerant man, and a young woman with a baby was more than he could take most of the time. Many times, after I was old enough to realize what was going on, my mother would drag herself to our corner of that back room and collapse bruised and exhausted onto the soiled straw mat. There, she would sob herself to sleep, cradling her bleeding hands to her chest.
When I was weaned from her breast, we subsided each day on the one free meal she was given, and from scraps she could sneak from the trash barrels around the Inn. After I was old enough to walk, she'd turn me out of a morning and I'd wander the streets of Vesper, at times begging for a coin or two. I remember one day finding nearly a whole roast pig in the trash bins back of the Vesper Youth Hostle. I ate till I could take no more, knowing for the first time in my short existance, the meaning of the word full. Searching around I found a few scraps of paper, and I wrapped a feast of this near rotted meat to take home to my mother. It was a day of great joy for us both to be well fed.
My mother's health steadily grew worse, and near about my ninth year upon this earth I returned home from one of my forays into the Vesper back alleys to find one of the town priests uttering the final parts of the last rites over her lifeless body. It didn't take the Innkeeper long to burn our soiled sleeping mat and my mothers belongings. I was put out into the streets to fend for myself.
For days, weeks maybe, I lived in the back alleys. I scrounged what I could from the garbage and slept anywhere that would keep the chill of the impending winter off of me. Some days, if business was heavy, I could seek shelter in the Provisioners Shop. If there were people coming and going steadily, no one took mind of the small dirty blonde girl in the corner.. I worked hard at blending in, so as not to be noticed wherever I was. But all that was soon to change.
One day, I slipped into the tailor's shop in the middle of a downpour of sleet and rain. I went to the fireplace first to try and warm myself. The weaver, Shynall O'Mera, saw me there, wet and dirty. Calling me over to her, as she spun piles of yarn from a seemingly endless pile of wool, she offered me a cup of warm broth. As I drank and warmed myself, I began to tell her my story. I ended up staying in the shop until closing time, helping her roll the yarn into large balls.
After closing up the shop Shynall took me home with her. She had four children of her own, two of them close to my age, one older, one younger. I was bathed and given a new set of clothes, and fed till I thought my stomach would burst. I slept in a real bed for the first time in my life that night. It was pure heaven.
I began following Shynall to work each day, and she'd set me in the corner rolling the yarn into balls. Soon she taught me the fine art of spinning and I'd spend hours at the wheel while she used the huge loom that stood nearby. I was paying my way into a real family.
I lived with Shynall and her family for a good two years give or take a few months. In that time I learned not only the details of spinning and weaving, but also learned that I was good at pattern cutting and stitching.
It was near the start of my thirteenth year when Aldrick, the tailor who owned the shop, called me to him at the start of the day. He had a man with him, dark and forboding. The man's name was Em'iai Saep. He was the Chief Tailor from the court of Lord Blackthorn in the town of Britain, looking for young workers. Aldrick walked the two of us around back of the shop. I heard the clink of coins, as Em'iai handed Aldrick a pouch, and took my arm. I was led, quite against my will, to a boat at the Vesper Docks. It was the last I was to see of Vesper for many a year...........
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