Stolen Beginnings - Eza's Origins

[Lunamor she/her]

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This is a topic I will use to post scenes from Eza's life taking place before Era 7, similar to the Perses' Descent topic. All dates given are relative to Era 7's place on the timeline.

11 years ago

A memory forgotten

Eza sat in the small, empty building, nervous. Everything was dark. She didn’t like being alone in the dark. It wasn’t very safe to be alone. Mother had told her to wait there. She hadn’t told Eza why, but Eza was smart. Mother had seen someone outside, and she had started to look scared when she noticed the person, so it probably had something to do with them. Mother didn’t get scared very often. She was really brave and strong, and she protected Eza from everything. But she wasn’t protecting her right now.

She’d left. Normally, when she noticed danger, she took Eza with her so they could go some place safe. She only left her alone when she needed to go do something super important and sneaky; Eza wasn’t as quiet as she was yet. Mother wasn’t supposed to leave her when something scary happened. This was wrong.

Eza huddled in the space beneath the hovel’s only window. She was short enough that her head didn’t reach the sill, so it was the best hiding place for her. It wasn’t like she could hide anywhere else in the building. There was nothing inside save for some wooden furniture splintered and rotten enough that no one wanted to take it. She wasn’t small enough to fit behind it.

Eza took out one of her trinkets that Mother had gifted to her. It was a little bird made of white crystal with blue gems for eyes. Her mother had said there weren’t any real birds like it out there, which made it extra special. But Eza kept lots of secrets. She knew that you couldn’t make it very far without secrets, which meant the rest of the world had to keep some too. The world was really big, so it had room for lots of secrets. There was probably a bird just like her toy out there, living far away in a forest. A whole sparkly flock nesting in the giant trees. Or maybe it was underground, since that was where crystals came from. Maybe it had gems for eyes because it was super dark underground, so you couldn’t see anything no matter what.

She moved the bird back and forth through the air, pretending that it was flapping around. Eza couldn’t make tweeting noises out loud since Mother had told her to be silent, so she just mouthed them instead. Watching her birdy fly helped her forget where she was. Everything else began to fade away and all she could see was the crystal she knew would sparkle when the darkness vanished.

That meant she didn’t see the man without eyes staring through the window she sat beneath.

[Lunamor she/her]

9 years ago

A memory never forgotten

Eza stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, focusing on the little tin cup resting on a chouta stand across the street. Its owner was currently turned away from it, fiddling with some storage crates. She burned the metal in her stomach and was briefly disoriented by the many blue lines stretching every which way. Some lines connected to the wrists and necks of passersby in particular drew her attention. A kind, soft voice spoke from behind her, reminding her of her current task.

“Now try to pull on the cup like we practiced.”

She closed her eyes. The blue lines didn’t disappear and were instead projected onto her eyelids. She held out her hand and somehow yanked on a certain thinner one, careful to not use too much force as she had accidentally done before. She opened her eyes just in time to see the cup silently rocket right into her hand. Giving a wide, gap-toothed smile, Eza proudly held up the cup.

“That was great, Ezzie!” her mother exclaimed quietly, smiling too. She grabbed Eza’s hand and pulled her slightly backwards, further into the shadows of the alleyway they stood in. Eventually, the merchant finished arranging the boxes and noticed the now empty spot. He looked around in confusion, checking the ground to see if the cup had fallen somewhere. After a while spent fruitlessly searching, a customer approached. He sighed and ended his hunt, speaking with the customer instead. Eza and her mother grinned at each other, both with a different type of pride.

Mother stashed the cup in one of her many bags and peered out of the alleyway, checking to make sure that no one else had spotted her daughter’s thievery. Eza continued to watch the chouta vendor, making sure he didn’t get suspicious of them. Suddenly, her mother ducked her head back inside of the alley and grabbed Eza’s hand again. Mother looked at the pipes lining a building a fair distance away, so Eza braced herself, expecting her to bring them up to the rooftop with an ironpull as they had done many times before. But this time, Mother hesitated.

She let go of Eza’s hand. Reaching into a pouch she kept hidden under her others, she pulled out a shiny silvery case and held it out to her.

“I need to go do something real quick. I’ll be back soon, but I need you to hold onto this in the meantime. It’s very important that you never open it. You can’t tell anyone else about it, either.”

Eza nodded, stuffing the case into an empty pouch. She had learned to wait to ask questions until they found a safe place to rest.

Mother glanced outside once more, then looked back to Eza. There was an oddly sad smile on her face.

“I love you, Ezzie,” she said.

“Love you too!” Eza responded, a little worried by her mother’s expression.

Mother then left, walking calmly out of the alley.

Edited June 17, 2024 by Lunamor

[Lunamor she/her]

The girl waited for a moment, then looked out to see what was going on. She saw Mother talking to a stranger, one she could’ve sworn she’d seen before. He glanced her way, and she quickly ducked back inside.

Eza sat there in silence for a minute.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Half an hour.

Her mother didn’t return, so she risked another peek out into the street. There wasn’t a trace of her or the stranger. Eza moved further back into the alley, now nervous.

She waited for another half hour.

An hour.

Two hours.

Five hours.

By now, the sun was just beginning to set over the horizon. Mother sometimes left for a while, but rarely for this long. She deliberated for a moment. Mother had said that she’d be back soon, and Eza hadn’t liked the look of that strange man. She decided to go check on her mother, make sure she was alright. Wishing that she had a hood to cover her face, she crept out of the alleyway. She cautiously wove between the people on their way home for the day and scanned the crowd for any familiar faces. She kept her iron burning; her mother had a pretty distinctive mess of blue lines leading to the many trinkets she carried.

She spent a while wandering without any luck. Occasionally she’d spot clusters of moving blue lines, but they were just connected to someone wealthier than usual for the Roughs. It wasn’t a very smart idea to wear jewelry here, but she supposed that if you were rich enough you could replace anything people stole from you. Eventually, a glint caught her eye. There was a beautiful silver chain across the street. It was in a bird’s beak. A raven, she thought.

Forgetting what she had been doing, Eza carefully approached. She closed her eyes and tried to yank on the line attached to the chain. She tried her best to be gentle about it, not wanting to accidentally hurt the animal. She was a bit too gentle, however, and it retained control of the chain. It gave a loud squawk and tried to fly off, but the jewelry was too heavy. So, it instead began to frantically hop away. Eza tried to pull on the chain again, but now that it was in motion, she couldn’t manage to get a grip on its line. Despite her mother’s teaching, she still wasn’t very practiced with more complicated ironpulling.

She was forced to chase after it on foot, not caring that she was bumping into people in her single-minded pursuit of the bird. She ignored the yelling that started coming from the alley she’d been standing in front of. The raven was surprisingly fast, so she wasn’t easily able to catch up. It turned a corner and she scrambled in its footsteps. Not paying attention to where she was going, Eza slammed right into a woman in front of her. Both of them stumbled, and Eza apologized hurriedly before turning her focus back to the raven. When trying to find it again, however, she was greeted with the sight of a side street seemingly devoid of birds. She burned her iron, but couldn’t locate the silver chain among the twisting mess of lines from the metal the passersby carried. Eza groaned, burying her face in her hands.

Then she realized that the yelling behind her was familiar. Terrifyingly, distinctly familiar.

[Lunamor she/her]

Eza dashed back to where she had been when she saw the bird, hardly able to see where she was going because of the crowd towering over her small form, and barely caught a glimpse of a man disappearing into an alleyway. Muffled sounds of a fight were coming from it. A man yelped, then a woman grunted as the sound of a punch hitting echoed out. Something metallic scraped across stone with an ear-piercing shriek. She ran inside of the alley, intending to somehow find a way to rescue her mother. Maybe she could distract the strangers somehow. She went over plans in her head, thinking of ways to hide or use ironpulls to throw the attackers off balance.

Then, in the blink of an eye, there was a man standing in front of her. He was tall, much taller than she was, with closely cropped black hair. His long, sallow face had pointed features that stood out against the shadows of the alleyway. She would never forget that face. One of his eyes was a dark, hateful green; the other eye had been pierced through with a large metal spike. Before Eza could react, the polished obsidian of a knife glinted in the light of the street lamps as the man in front of her slashed outwards. He cut a deep gash across the side of her face, narrowly missing her eye. She cried out in pain, scrambling away. A voice rang out from around the corner. Her mother’s voice.

“Ezzie, RUN!”

Terrified, she immediately obeyed. Her survival instincts overtook all other thoughts. She dashed away as quickly as she could, seeing steelpushed coins zip by. One caught the edge of her shoulder, another glancing her thigh. She continued to run, her adrenaline silencing the pain. She made it into the throng of people in the street and didn’t stop running, a furious growl escaping the alley close behind her. Her small size allowed her to fit in the gaps between people that others would need to widen with shoves. She didn't care where she was headed, so long as it was away from the stranger. Sure that he was in hot pursuit, Eza continued sprinting until her legs began to falter. She finally risked a glance over her shoulder. No stranger could be seen.

She slunk into an alley and pressed her back up against the wall behind a stack of crates, trying to control her breathing. She desperately wanted to keep fleeing, but knew that she wouldn't have been able to run much longer. After waiting in that position for a few minutes, she decided that she was no longer actively being chased. Eza slumped to the ground, exhausted. She pulled her knees to her chest, then began to silently sob. The blood running down her face mixed with her tears as she realized that she was alone.

Edited June 19, 2024 by Lunamor