The road back from the refuse pits was hot on a warm Aarae day.  Ellna’s feet felt as if they were on fire as she climbed up and down steps and ramps.  All of the trees of Ornod, Lilaca Island had been cut down countless years before.  The last time Ellna had seen a tree, she’d been fever-sick.  This was two years later; two long years of living as an exile in the biggest and oldest city anywhere around.

In those days, there was no Old Ornod and New Ornod.  There was just Ornod; after all, the Rhetian and Lilacan Islands had only been discovered by the Rest of the World a few years before.  Ellna wondered how big the Rest of the World was, but no one seemed to know.  They had “planes”—silver needles glimmering in the sky that left white thread behind them that puffed up wider before disappearing.  This was how the foreigners moved from one place to the next.

Ornod stunk, Ellna thought.  Lilacans didn’t seem to follow the Law of the Waters, or at least not in Ornod.  Rich people lived upstream and dumped their refuse into the Nae Arrali without a care for the poor people who lived downstream.  Ellna held her breath when she passed by the river, though that wasn’t the only foul scent.  No one washed in this part of Ornod.  Drinking water was boiled and sent through a strainer then boiled again.  It was odd to buy water from a merchant, but cheaper than the amount of fuel it would take to heat the water on their poor stove.  They also had to buy bread and gruel, though they grew their own vegetables.  Ellna’s mother worked as an accountant; Amyra worked as a healer.  They were bad times for the true Leader of Rhetia and the true Religious Leader of Rhetia.

Aarae was Ellna’s favorite season. The heavy snows during winter melted from the heat of people and buildings and combined with the dirt on the streets to create a slushy, disgusting mess. By Aarae, however, all that was gone, yet it was not too hot out. Ellna might have lighter hair than a Yai should, and she might have tanner skin than a Yai should, but she still didn’t like the heat that radiated off of all the brown, earthen buildings.  She could blend in by wearing a light delaisc dress, but she would never blend in if someone checked to see how much she was sweating.

A Lilacan girl of Ellna’s age wore light-colored short clothes with a piece of loosely woven plant-fabric draped around her shoulders and a second piece of fabric used as a skirt.  Both were pinned together by a piece of metal, though Ellna’s pins were plain so as not to draw attention.  Ellna also wore a head covering that kept her head from getting sunburned but let her long, red-brown hair flow freely down her back.  Corina sometimes complained about not being able to wear ribbons like a Rhetian girl of her age.

“I’m back,” Ellna called out as she arrived at the small two-room hut her family called home.  The drought had driven them out of Kry Island to the east.  It was not that the food situation was much better here than what Ellna remembered, but according to Amyra, the food plants on Kry Island would soon die off.  Finding fresh water had also been difficult.

“Yes, yes,” Amyra said.  She was working through an old Rhetian book with Corina.  “Ellina, twari [bird], go and check dinner, yes?”  Amyra was a grey-haired old woman of around one hundred. She had been present for Ellna’s birth, for Ellna’s mother’s birth, for her Grandmother Calina’s birth, and for her Great-Grandmother Ktlie’s birth.  She still had her faculties about her, though.  Amyra was incredibly intelligent and had been named by Queen Satina as religious leader many years before, a position she had held ever since.

Ellna left again.  Sometimes, she wished she didn’t have to run so many errands.  Her mother and Amyra had promised again and again that they would move soon.  Ellna was eleven, after all; the perfect time to get a proper education.

The ovens were on the roof through a back path.  Ellna walked up there.  A dark-haired boy was up there.  Ellna froze a little.  She wasn’t used to seeing others with such Rhetian features in the poor district of Ornod.

“You are Rhetian, yes?” He asked in Rhetian.

Ellna had been taught Lilacan since birth, but she knew Rhetian passably well.  She decided to feign innocence.  “Sorry?”  She asked in Lilacan.

“I’ve been following you, and you live with those dark-hairs,” he said.  “You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t speak your language,” Ellna said, shaking her head.  She struggled to keep a straight face, to keep her emotions hidden.

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