They jostled her along, snapping to bunch the others around her.  She did not react, and merely turned her head to stare when one barked an order.  Once, a few months ago, she would have cowered from him. She was lost again, but now she held a golden truth, and it kept the darkness of her life from consuming her.  Was she still afraid?  Yes, terrified, in fact.  But she had learned that to show weakness was to draw the Red Dragon, like a shark to blood. So she steeled herself, and swallowed the fear. It sat at the base of her spine, spreading ice through her limbs, crystallizing around her heart.  As the hours turned to days, turned to weeks, Alphyn was losing energy.  If she thawed, she would break.  Her Master had vanished, her God gone silent.  Something had called him away, somewhere she could not follow.  She must be patient until his return.

The band had wound through trails until she lost her sense of direction.  It didn't take long.  She'd always been horrid at knowing where she was going.  Sometimes they stopped in camps, mostly they slept out in the open.  Slaves came and went, were bought and sold.  Most of the time she was considered too young to be interesting.  Packs looked for breeding females, or working males.  A few cults might have interest in youngsters, but she was more in her adolescence, and her doctrine was embedded deep. Slaving parties swapped stock when they were heading in more appropriate directions, and she had been traded more than once.  She didn't run, didn't see the point to it.  Her internal compass would only lead her astray.  So she waited, and she prayed.

Now they traveled through a muted forest, the light barely filtering through the overgrown canopy.  As usual, the slaves plodded along, with their handlers driving them like sheep.  As they walked through a breach of sunlight, Ally shook herself, and dust flew from her coat, revealing it to be golden in the light. But she was tarnished, caked with mud and grime from the road.

Ahead in the path was a stream, and the handlers let them stop to drink. She moved with the others, more herd than pack, but did not pause at the bank. She waded in up to her chest, and submerged herself by laying down.  It was deep enough that she sank in even over her head. The water was cold, and it shocked her system.  She opened her garnet eyes and for a moment she saw only the light, but then the murk cleared and she stared at the opposite bank of the stream.  She murmured a prayer in her mind, opened her mouth and released the last breath from her lungs, and arose. It had been just a moment, one instant of peace and tranquility.  She stood, dripping in the stream.  The handlers had come after her, and the one closest pulled back his lips in warning.

"Get back on the bank, Arume." he growled.

She looked at him for a moment and then shook herself.  Droplets of water and stray mud splattered all over the male, covering him in her discarded muck.  There were always these silent bouts when they used that name with her. He snarled, and made a lunge for her.  He was full grown, and she a bare mess of spindly legs.  Yet she dodged him with a grace and ease the bespoke of something not yet awakened within her.  She moved around him and stepped towards the bank.  The enraged handler came after her again, but one of his pack stepped in between them.

"Cool it, Groll.  No point damaging the merchandise."

Ally stepped back onto solid ground, droplets clinging to her guard hairs. As she passed again into the dappled sunlight, they glinted like diamonds set in her gold and ebony fur. She had matured out of her puppy coat, and the thick velvet of black had fractured into golden veins.  She had grown into her mask, and it now framed her face with a curling catseye.  She was blossoming from ugly duckling into a swan.  Her coat hadn't been anything fancy when she was a child, it had been unremarkable, even garrish.  But now she was becoming what the traders were calling "an exotic beauty".  She had declined to give them her name, so she had been given the nomenclature "Arume".  The golden one.  This pack's plan was to take her to a harem pack, where she would certainly catch the eye of one of the noble males. "A prize for any collection" the leader had said when he had acquired her.

There was no fight in her that presented for her captors.  As far as they knew, as the pack before them had told them, and so on, she had always been a meek, timid thing.  She rarely caused trouble, and while she had moments of insolence, she was never outright hostile.  Most of the handler pack regarded her little outbursts as teenage hormones, and disregarded them.  Groll, however, eyed her in a way that made her mentally shiver.  He was more than a trader, more than a handler.  He had the look of someone who enjoyed inflicting pain.  It was probably not her smartest move.  She closed her eyes for a moment, and recalled the vision of the stream bed under water.  She listened to the phantom current that sang through her ears, and she prepared to lose herself in her meditation that would keep her frozen, that would allow her to endure the next hour, the next day, the next trail.  She had to endure until she was shown her deliverance.  It would come.

Of all the times she wanted to be mysterious and independent she picked hours before one of the greatest disasters to hit Nardir. Sure Kyra was pig headed, and when she was angry at you she gave you the cold shoulder and stomped off on her own to do her own thing. So of course she didn't tell Akutan she went hunting on this side of the mountain. Of course she hadn't even been speaking to her father lately at all so he wouldn't know what she was up to in the slightest. Granted her fur was a bright beacon anywhere she went. It was possible that someone had seen her head in this direction or knew she was hunting in the area.

And now here she was in the dark, alone, after the mountain had literally swallowed her whole.
She was starting to come to and taking stock of her situation. Her front legs were crammed close to her chest, she was literally head first in the earth. She tried shifting her head but couldn't even manage to put her ears up. Her chest was feeling squeezed and she could feel her breath condensate on the rocks in front of her nose. She would not last long in this position and her previous folly would not let herself be easily found.

She struggled against the rocks again, pushing her front legs away from herself. It was then she realized she couldn't feel her back legs and it felt like the rest of of the wind in her lungs was knocked out of her from panic. Back broken?? she thought desperately and tried to strain feeling into her back legs. Nothing. She couldn't feel anything. She wouldn't have been able to tell if her own back paws had been touching her belly or not. She couldn't move her tail nevermind know if it was even still attached to her body.

Stars! What the hell happened? At first she was trailing a stupid squirrel and then the world turned upside down! She hated being rescued. She hated depending on anyone else besides herself. She hated feeling weak and helpless and above all... she hated waiting to be rescued. And she was in a tight spot. Again she tried to strain for some leg room or shift her head for some head space but she was locked tight and then her head started swimming from the exertion. She was running out of air. Think THINK! But her thoughts began to get foggy and it was a struggle to stay awake.

Her body was whole, regardless of how she felt about it, buried under a tumult of stones and soil except for a bright red, white tipped limp tail with a brown stripe poking out of the rubble like a war banner of a lost battle.