Fan Fiction ❯ Longing to Belong ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

Her skin was a deep olive, the mark of a worshipper of the sun, where a large tunic and a baggy pair of breeches didn't cover it. Violet locks of hair hung down to the middle of her shoulder blades in a ponytail, the hangs stopping just above a pair of green eyes that seemed a little too intense, slightly too bright. Those eyes, narrowed slightly and sweeping the area subtly, hinted at her not being a normal human.

A hint that her exposed arms and hands, criss-crossed by what appeared to be red and black veins, clearly confirmed: she was not Human. Maybe a Tiefling, maybe something else, but definitely not Human.

The other people walking the streets of Carnell ignored her, used to her appearance, but stayed away from her nonetheless. It was as if an invisible bubble or shield surrounded her, forcing people to stay a few feet away from her at all times, but that was not true. No shield protected her; no bubble covered her, and the distance being maintained by everyone was intentional on their part.

She tried to not show how much the isolation hurt, to let them know that their refusal to have anything to do with her was painful to the young woman. A part of her, fed by years of similar behavior on their parts, thought that they intentionally did this in order to hurt her, as they knew that was what it did to her, and refused to add to the satisfaction that they were getting from her pain. But there was a dullness to her eyes, a lifelessness to her step and her luminous green eyes, that clearly told those that looked of her mental state.

None looked in those eyes. None noticed the telltale numbness to the windows of her soul. None cared enough to really look her in the eyes, to try and pierce the mask that she was wearing, to see what she was really feeling deep in her heart and soul.

Her footsteps carried the lone woman to a tailor's shop, the crowd parting before her despite its density as if by magic. Reaching up with a hand, the accursed veins running over even the long, thing digits of her hand, she let herself into the store quietly. A few tables were spread throughout the front of the store, bearing the wares of its owner, who was standing behind a table that spanned almost the entire width of the room on its other side from the door she had entered by.

There were a few other people in the room besides them, idly perusing the new offerings the seamstress had set out for sell, who paused in their search for new fashions and/or deals on old fashions to give her silently disapproving looks similar to those she had received by the people that had reluctantly shared the street with her. If she noticed the looks, or the not so quietly spoken comments that some made, she gave no sign to indicate that she had done so. She simply walked towards the storekeeper, intentionally ignoring the other people in the room, as she glided across the hard wood floor quietly.

"Hello." The woman said, softly, when she had reached the table that had been her destination. "Have you finished mending those items?"

"Yeah." Came the response, as a bundle was removed from underneath the table and placed on top of it. "As good as new."

"Only because you made it in the first." Came the reply, as a hand slid into a pocket of her pants to pull out a small pouch. "Usual?"

"Of course." Came the reply, followed by her customer pouring out a small amount of coins into a hand and counting it. A few coins went back into the pouch, but the majority of them had been counted and remained in the center of a palm with six veins meeting in its center. These were handed over to the blonde behind the counter, her hands staying on the package she had set there, even as the other hand shoved the mostly empty pouch back into its spot in her pants.

The money was calmly taken, even if there was a hint of sadness behind blue eyes and the storekeeper briefly opened her mouth to say something before closing it, vanishing beneath the table that hid her body from the waist down. "Try to be more careful with them this time, ok?" Was what she finally said, after a few moments, sliding the package across the table to the other woman with a gloved hand. "You can change in back, if you wish."

"Thank you." Came the softly spoken reply of the buyer, as she lifted the package off of the table gently. Slipping it underneath an arm, the young woman padded towards a pair of doors set near the open end of the blonde's table quietly.

As she watched the purple-haired woman disappear into the small room beyond the door, one of two small changing rooms in her establishment, the blonde tailor responded with, "Don't mention it, Amarra," too softly for the other to hear. And angrily stuffed the coins she held in her left hand into one of the pockets of her self-made breeches before refocusing her attention on the other people in her store.

Setting her package down on the wooden bench that spanned the small dressing room's width, the young woman just identified as Amarra shook her head as she looked at the lone item sitting on the wooden expanse. Kiarrone always insisted on wrapping her customers' orders, even though most immediately changed into them upon picking them up. Amarra had never left the store with her purchases still in the package she'd received them in, and yet they were always in a brown embrace whenever she came to pick a new one up from the blonde.

Opening up the brown-papered package that she'd been given only moments earlier, Amarra revealed a sea of red and black fabric on a plain brown field. The top-most item was a pair of gloves, done in soft leather dyed a bright red color, which reached halfway up to her elbows when pulled on. A robe, black on one side but a red identical to her gloves on the other, was pulled on over her head so that the world was presented with its black side. Her body was covered by the robe's billowing black folds, only her hands emerging from the ends of the garment's long sleeves, and only the toes of her red boots being visible beneath its bottom hem. A belt, made to appear like red and black-dyed strands woven together to form a single braided strand, was tied around her robed waist, the ends allowed to dangle loosely almost to the ground.

Adjusting the fit of her new outer garment, making sure that it concealed all of her body that it was meant to conceal, soon Amarra's body was concealed by at least one layer of fabric from her neck down. Gathering up the paper that had held the articles of clothing, folding it up into a slightly neat appearance, the violet-haired young woman turned to leave the small room. She headed immediately to the desk Kiarrone was still standing behind, settling her now smaller and lighter bundle on the table's wooden top without a sound.

"Looking good Amarra." Kiarrone told the other woman, as she slid the paper underneath the table smoothly. "That just seems to fit you for some reason."

Rolling her eyes slightly, Amarra gave a most unlady-like snort and commented dryly. "You said the same thing the last time I came here, and the time before that. Can't you come up with some new line to give me when I come to pick up my clothing to tell me you prefer it when you can't see my body at all?"

Kiarrone's eyes hardened slightly as she looked at the robed woman in front of her, and her voice was slightly colder when she spoke. "You should know that I don't just spout out lines to my customers, Amarra. If I always say that you look good like that, it's because I always think that you do look good in that when I see you."

Flushing slightly, suddenly finding the rug-covered wall behind the other woman to be extremely interesting, the chastised young Tiefling sent her violet hair a swaying back and forth as she nodded her head slightly. "I know, and I'm sorry." Amarra offered, her normally soft voice even softer than usual, as she nervously toyed with a sleeve of her long robe. "It's just …."

"It's okay; I understand." The blonde told her, gently, as she shot a warning look at a trio of gossiping women at a nearby table over Amarra's shoulder. "It's tough being the only Tiefling in a town of Humans, ain't it?"

"Especially when it's so obvious that you're one, like me." Came the unnecessary response, not voicing the obvious reason why her being a Tiefling was so easily deduced most of the time. "You just got to learn how to adapt to it, though."

Kiarrone choose to not voice her thoughts on the subject of Amarra's way of adapting, though she did let her blue eyes dip down to look at the black robe that she had made for her. "Come again when you need my services again." She said, finally, as she noticed the telltale signs of the violet-haired young woman getting anxious to leave.

With a subtle lifting of the edges of her lips, into the small smile that only a very few had the pleasure of seeing, Amarra tilted her head forward into a slight bow at the other woman. "You know I always come to you to meet my needs. Why should I go elsewhere when I know where the best at it is?"

Walking out of the room, passing a woman with an armful of clothing that stuck up her nose as they passed each other, Amarra simply walked on towards the door without a response of any kind. She did respond, with a tiny grin that no one else saw, as she heard the woman's voice drift to her ears as she walked out of the store. "What do you mean the bill's thirty-five commons? They're only five a piece, and I don't have seven to buy." Kiarrone's response was blocked by the wooden door of the store swinging shut behind Amarra once she had left the store, and thus stopped holding it open.

Glancing around, noticing that the comments had softened in intensity while the looks had remained the same, Amarra turned to retrace the path that had brought her to Kiarrone's shop. Her Part Crowds innate ability seemed to activate itself instantly, as a bubble of empty space formed around her almost as soon as she stepped out into the moving crowd of people going about their business. Even with the physical markings of her mixed heritage covered from sight, the people that she met refused to do so much as to walk near the quietly hurting young woman.

Eventually her footsteps brought her to the edge of town, and an old house that had definitely seen better days in its existence. Though those better days had undoubtedly been far off in the distant past, and not in most recent times, from its appearance. Faded paint was peeling off of old pieces of wood, hastily done patches dotted almost all of its surface and even overlapped each other in spots, it was obviously not the home of the town's richest or most influential member. It was the house, however, that Amarra approached after forcing her way through a rotting gate on rusting hinges, completely ignoring the hole that the fence sported a short distance from said gate.

Flowers and grass grew wildly in the quasi-fenced off yard, having grown out of control from years of neglect and self-management. What had once been a nice and orderly garden, the pride and joy of its owner no doubt, was a tree-less forest that owed its existence to the slowly developed apathy of its owner and once caretaker. It was through the "dirt path" that ran through the center of the grassy sprawl that Amarra made her way to the house that sat in its center, a decaying wooden giant on a carpet of green dotted with an assortment of other colors, being careful to not venture off of it and risk angering the animals that undoubtedly call the untended portion of the yard home.

It wasn't a large room by any stretch of the imagination, and her bed took up a lot of its space by itself. There wasn't a dresser or any other form of place to store clothing or other items in the entire room: there wasn't room for them. A small table, appearing to be made by someone not very skilled in woodwork, sat next to the bed in a corner of the room. The bed was covered by red sheets, while a black one blocked the sun from entering the room through its lone window that lay suspended a few inches above the headboard of her bed by timber whose color was only partly because black was one of her favorite colors.

Walking into the small room, Amarra immediately shut the door behind her despite the flash of confinement that ran through her as she did so. Then she pulled the black robe off of her body, revealing tanned skin and plain brown leather to the world once more, before tossing it into a relatively clean corner of the room negligently. Stretching slightly, uselessly brushing at parts of her body already starting to sweat from being covered by such a heavy robe in the middle of summer, she reveled in the feeling of not being covered even as she tried to ignore the veins that pulsed along her skin.

Laying down on her bed, arms crossed behind her head, Amarra stared up at the ceiling of her room as if searching for answers to her problems. As was the case so many times in the past, however, the ceiling was not divulging any solutions that it might have to the young woman lying underneath it. And as her mind was filled with a maelstrom of thoughts, of solutions to her problems as well as more complications that could arise from each, young Amarra fell into an uneasy sleep on a sea of crimson red.