Desert Blossom

Ch 13

Iris Pov 

I immediately regretted coming over into the Moors. I chastised myself repeatedly. I should have known better than to let my guard down and trust the fey folk so willingly. Yet here I am at their very mercy. The one called Borra blocked my path by fanning out his tawny colored wings. The frustration was no doubt clear on my rose colored flushed cheeks. This was rather an embarrassing situation I found myself in. I knew I should have stayed in Ulstead and steered clear of this place. Even though what Borra said was true. I just couldn't abandon the only place that I've ever called home.

Why do they even care what a human like me even thinks. Don't they hate my kind. Weren't we just in a war. Many good people I knew died. We didn't ask for our kingdom to go to war. But some did support this war. The stronger voices that silence the weak.

I was so conflicted about what Udo had said.
If I stay would I be considered a traitor to my own kind. Humans in Ulstead, people like me are still rummaging and combing through the rubble for scraps of their old lives. Stores were destroyed, markets were doused in the dreaded red powder that destroyed all the good food, people were slaughtered and left for dead. Their were too many dead people, and with most the ground covered with bricks and fallen stones, the people congregated together to have the bodies burned.

Flashback

My sister Adela was a healer. She was with the relief effort to move the elderly and infirm out of the central square when the second wave of war began. Then the red powder came. I was her little helper. That is what she used to call me. It made me smile because I was loved and wanted. I wasn't a burden I could prove to her my usefulness.
After the red powder came rushing down into the city. Things got harder to see. I struggled to keep up with my sister and then the dreaded noise of a rams horn was blown. I was frozen in horror as I saw debris raining from the sky all around me shops crumbled to the ground collapsing. People screamed and ran away in fear all the while I stood there paralyzed unable to move.

I don't know how I got out of Central Square unharmed with only myself being dirty. But I found myself in front of the inn keepers inn. This was a few blocks away from the main Central Square, this was where the elderly and infirm were to be brought but the place was reduced to ruins. I sunk to my knees and cried as I tried but realized it was useless. Then I noticed an arm sticking out of the rubble, so I dug ad much as I could. It was my sister she looked so pale like the life drained quickly out of her. I hoped that she felt no pain when death claimed her.

When the guards came to burn the bodies. I asked the guard to leave me alone with my sister to prepare her for her final trip. I knew she wasn't coming back. I just wanted to make her look pretty before they cremated her.
I brushed her hair with my nails and made her look pretty, I put rose colored powder on her lips and tinted her cheeks so she didn't look so pale, I fixed her dress as best I could. Then I removed her bracelet, so that I could have something to remember her by. Then I let the guards come and take my dead sister away to her final resting place. Her ashes and those that were recovered from the rubble were going to be burned together. Their ashes rose from the fire and scattered to the wind.

End flashback

My sister and all those people were dead. And here I am. The sole survivor in front of the dark fey that were willing to accept me, a human girl from Ulstead. I wondered if they kept me. Stole me away like sleeping beauty, would anyone even notice or care. No one noticed when my sister died or cared for that matter. I'm just a lowly peasant girl who would think to care about me.

The other fey folk like udo were talking in hushed voices but stopped when a woman approached. She was human like me. But she looked like one of them. She said her name was Jordan and Udo was her husband. And that she thinks I'm really cute and that Iris is a pretty name.