Discs. and Warnings: Violence, future lemon, all that good stuff, and I made them all up. They're mine, I tell you! All MINE! BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Oh, and "//...//" means private thought. *** Kanani turned another year older in what seemed like no time. Only the Holy Man was allowed to know the dates of birth if the Clan members, so birthdays were generally not celebrated. Erfen, however, knew the birth date of Kanani, so he gave her a gift in a quiet little celebration. It was a bag that she could put around her neck and put tokens of good luck in. When he gave it to her, it held a tooth of a Great Lion, to help protect her. Kanani was even happier when she received this gift from Erfen, becoming an even kinder little girl with an even brighter smile. Murre, however, learned of Kanani's gift and became positively furious, screaming at anything that happened by. How dare Erfen give that brat a gift! She was supposed to be Erfen's love! What was he doing giving presents to some little creature of a child?! One day, Murre's fury reached an awful peak after Kanani had proudly shown Erfen another token that she had: a small stone that shone as blue as he sea. The virulent woman made a decision that very day: Erfen and Kanani had to die. She retreated from the Clan to plot her attack, saying that her monthly womanhood had arrived. Finally, barely two months after Kanani had received her gift, Murre crept over to her mate's sleeping area and very swiftly smothered his head with a soft skin. When he was unconcious, he was tied, gagged, and thrown into a ship she had stolen. The bitter and adrenaline-filled woman crept now ever quieter into her daughter's room and did the same to her, throwing her roughly into the back of the small carrier. She drove for many hours before Kanani awoke. The girl sat quietly in total fear, praying to every Spirit she could think of that she would be safe. She couldn't see anything, and all she could smell was the sickening perfume of dirt and sweat. She was laying on her side, an awful ache throbbing in her head. Her left arm was squished uncomfortably under her small body and was numb from being in the same constricted opinion. Everything hurt and she was perfectly terrified for the first real time in her short life. After many hours of simply travelling in the void of space Murre pulled the ship into landing in a forest on some large, impersonal planet. She roughly dragged Kanani and Erfen out onto the fresh terrain that was still wet from the early-morning dew. She untied the cloths from across their eyes and undid the gags, roughly cutting Kanani's lip in the process. The girl lay in the cool damp grass, watching almost fascinated as the coppery blood dripped from her mouth onto the fertile earth below. As she watched the bright red fluid sink into the earth, she suddenly felt small and very afraid. This was something that her young heart was unprepared for. She had never been so injured or rudely treated. This was different and there was no one to guide her through this experience as there had been other times. There were no racial memories that she could depend on, and she had a foreboding feeling that there never would be again. This was it. From that moment on she would forever be Kanani. Kanani of No People, with no friends, and no family to lean on. She shuddered and felt goosebumps crawl over her skin. Slowly, she heaved herself up off of the ground and looked at her surroundings. She was in a foreign, but lovely forest, next to the largest, purest crystal river she had ever seen. The morning sun shone brightly and a cool breeze wafted gently across her face. Kanani looked at Murre and saw that her mother was standing next to Erfen, who was moaning and trying to get up off of the ground. Kanani gasped as Murre turned to face her; the normaly pretty woman's featured had been rearranged in her bitterness into a grotesque caricature of a true being. The girl shuddered again and felt a drop of blood hit the top of her tunic. Gooseflesh overtook her and she had to look away. Murre walked toward Kanani, holding some woven fibers in her hand. She roughly grabbed the girl and threw her against a nearby tree, winding the twine tightly around the girl until she was firmly bound to the trunk. As Kanani struggled vainly against the cords, she saw Murre reach into a bag and draw out something. It was a sacrificial blade that was used only during the most holy and sacred of ceremonies. The woman smirked and drew the blade along Kanani's face, watching, enchanted, as a thin stream of blood poured out. The girl felt tears flow out of her eyes, stinging against the wound on her cheek. Murre laughed lightly, almost cheery, and turned away to Erfen. She watched, tapping her foot, as Erfen heaved himself up and looked at his mate, whom he loved dearly. "Murre... What is this?" he asked, as he saw Kanani tied to the tree and his love holding a very sharp, very important blade of stone. "Erfen," began Murre, "I'm tired of knowing and you not caring that I know. Erfen, this is a rough time for me. After that brat was born things have just been getting worse! I hate you! I hate you, I hate her! I hate you all! You!" she shrieked, pointing her knife at Erfen, tears streaming down her face, "you caused this pain! If you men hadn't taken over, my life would be different! If your Spirit wasn't stronger than mine, I wouldn't have to have this stupid, worthless, blind little wretch of a child! You ruined me! You killed my life! I hate you! I loathe you!!" She then lunged at him, slashing at his face. Kanani shrieked as she watched her mother attack Erfen, slashing into his face and neck with a sharp blade. The blood poured out onto the ground, staining the soft green grass a sickly red. The rich smell of drying blood filled the previously sweet air with its sickening scent. Suddenly, Murre cried out in some form of primordial bloodlust and stabbed into Erfen's abdomen, ripping through him angrily, somehow avoiding enough major organs to let him live through the torture. Erfen's terrible shriek of pain rolled out across the calm earth, filling Kanani's head with its terrible sound. Murre laughed and cut thin grooves across the tender skin of his neck, eliciting more anguished cries. She stabbed into his legs and feet, laughing victoriously every time he screamed out in pain and misery. Kanani's voice had grown hoarse with her own shouting, and so she watched silently, tears steaming down her face; her normally bronze skin ashen with the terror. Murre finally slashed her knife deep into Erfen's throat, drawing one more garbled and pathetic cry as he sank down onto the soft ground. Kanani watched as her beloved Erfen turned flaccid and pale, his eyes rolling back into his head. He features were rubbery and coated with his blood that still poured out onto the earth. But the most horrible thing had been his final cry. Itwas filled with fluid and drizzled out in a high-pitched and bubbly shriek that rang through her mind again and again. A stream of rich red blood had streamed out of his mouth as he had screamed; his once clear and shining eyes clouded over with the fear and the pain. The blood still poured steadily out of his mouth as he lay flaccid and overpowered on the surface of the green earth. Murre dragged him over to the river and threw him in, panting in exhaustion as the crystalline water grew red with steady streams of blood. She turned to Kanani, her hair frizzy and her eyes wild. "See?! See what women can accomplish?! See what miracles we can perform, child? I killed him! I sent him to the next world with my own hands!" she held her blood-stained hands out to Kanani to show her the evidence. "But you don't understand, do you? You only see murder and hate. And what do I see?" she leaned her face in close to Kanani's, "I see a revolution," she whispered. Her breath was warm and thick on Kanani's face, and all she could do was stare wide-eyed and weeping at this insanity that was once her mother. Murre's face suddenly hardened and she glared bitterly at her daughter. "I hate you. I really and truly hate you. You conform! Don't you understand? You're different! You're special! You're too stupid!" she hit the girl roughly across the face, "You're just like him! You can't see what is so awful about your life!" here she started beating into Kanani with a fervor that few had ever had. She continued beating and tearing into the girl with her bare hands, finally leaving the child nearly unconscious and bleeding, bound to a tree. Murre panted and looked at all the destruction she had caused. Suddenly, she cried out in anguish and crouched onto the ground, sobbing and screaming, the blood of her family drying on her arms. Finally, she stood up and walked away, her tears drying on her blood-stained cheeks. She climbed into her ship and flew off to find a place where she could be alone and suffer in anger and pain for the remainder of her days. Kanani awoke in a red-stained haze, Erfen's last cry still reverberating fully in her mind. Her bindings had loosened and she saw a few small rats chewing at them joyously. They must like the rope... She thought, watching quietly as the rats gradually freed her from her bindings. The girl collapsed weakly to the ground as soon as the rats freed her from the ropes. It must have been at least three days since the girl had eaten or drunk. He head was throbbing and she was dizzy enough that she could barely stand without support. She held on to the tree trunk with her small hand, trying to fight off the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake her. The whole world was shaking and trembling around her, rolling in her stupor until she couldn't tell up from down. Overwhelmed, she vomited into the soft grass beneath her and collapsed a few steps away on the bank of the river. //I can't do this... Why couldn't I have just died there? Like she wanted me to...// Tears rolled down her face as she desperately tried to creep closer to the river for a drink. She couldn't die. Not now, not ever. Her Spirit was far too strong to dare let her die so young. She took a slow sip of water, feeling its coolness roll down her dry and stinging throat. For some reason the water seemed to revive her and she painfully hauled her body into a sitting position to think for awhile. Erfen was dead. That was a fact she knew for certain. Murre had tried to kill her. That, also, had its painful reminders. She was tired, dizzy, and hurt. She needed to get food and shelter until she could figure out some way to get back home. That involved making a fire. Fire was the center of everything. It was the Ancient Spirits' only true Gift to men that was still to be honored. Kanani reached far into the back of her mind for the memories she needed to make a fire. She stood up on wobbly, unsteady legs and walked off to try and find wood enough for a fire and maybe some edible berries to hold her over until she could solve the problem of getting meat. She found two sticks and some tinder, and tried rubbing them together, but she was so weak and tiny that there was no way she could ever get a fire started in such a way. Miserable, with tears starting to stream down her face, she vainly tried to rub the sticks together, until finally they were impossible to see for all the tears. She curled up into a small ball and sobbed wretchedly for a very long time. She was a tiny and cold girl, huddled in a ball in the middle of a massive wilderness, sobbing for someone to comfort her and take her home. A small ball of wretchedness in the middle of nowhere, cold, lonely, and more terrified than she ever remembered having been before.