My first memory might as well have been created by my own imagination. That’s how young I was back then. I was within a building made out of cold marble, my neck felt tight as if something was pressing down on it. In front of me, there was this man; shoulder long black hair, a sharp face and an expression as if he had been chewing on dirt, while looking at me. His shoulders were broad and he seemed endlessly tall while looking down at me. I changed gazes between him towering over me and the woman lying there on the ground. She had blonde hair, red eyes and pointy ears, her expression when looking at me made me happy. She stretched out a hand toward me and I grabbed it. She grazed over my fingers and laughed slightly. In the end she told me those three last words:

<>, and stopped looking at me. She was looking at the ceiling, not moving, not breathing, letting go of my hand.

I don’t understand what is going on, so I try to keep my hold on her hand but then I am punched by the man, who is standing before me. It hurts.

I look up at the man, tears welling up in my eyes, only to see him staring down at me with a hateful grimace. He hated me.

..

Year 316-324 RPT: The 8-year war between the nations of Estica, Ayrilia and Dondonpa has taken place. The country of Ayrilia has accused the two neighboring countries of inhumane conduct and declared the necessity of a military solution to the problem. Ayrilia was in a geographical disadvantage, since Estica is located to the north from it, while Dondonpa is facing its southern boarders. Furthermore, the two allied countries have been able to negotiate a non-aggression treaty with their other neighboring countries. This treaty included limited trade with all countries involved in the war until after the conflict was finished as well as a closing of the trade routes through the neighboring kingdoms toward the countries in question.

The main benefactor of this treaty was the 2-country alliance of Estica and Dondonpa, since the treaty did not block the previously established trade route between the two countries as well as trade routes with the country of Ylvia, an economic ally of Estica. This meant that they had an economically stable flow of goods and wares, while Ayrilia could only trade with a single country, the country of Rabakda. Rabakda was the only country that did not stop trading with its allying country and through this alliance as well as the Ayrilian trading organization, the Alpata-Guild. Through their own economic power and their strong military, Ayrilia fought an 8-year long war against the two countries and was in a surprisingly advantageous position towards the end of the war. Nevertheless, the country had underestimated the economic strain on itself and under some mediation through neutrally inclined countries as well as some political compromising, the three countries have formed a temporary peace-treaty that lasts us until today.

The Estican and Dondonpan reigning faction compromised a minimum amount of humane rights to the people as well as those treated under the social standing of slaves.

Furthermore, they relented to the regular supervision through a committee of supervision, that was created through a coalition of 10 neutrally inclined countries as well as Ayrilia.

In exchange Ayrilia had to tribute them an amount of natural resources, that was separately agreed upon by the countries, as a price for the inner-political changes of the two countries.

Additionally, as a price for starting a war, that endangered the Estican and Dondonpan civilization, the Ayrilian War-slaves were not returned to their home country.

This point brought a lot of wrath from the Ayrilian royal faction, however the Esticans argued, that this should naturally not be that much of a degradation for the country, since they did just adapt a new policy in regards to treatment of the enslaved social-class. In the end, the treaty was accepted and a temporary peace has entered our countries. I sincerely pray to the spirits of peace and stability for them to hold their protective hand over our countries.

An excerpt of the book “Political Nuances of Ayrilia and it’s Neighboring Countries ” by the highly esteemed politician Raga Bloomroot.

In short, a war between the three countries of Ayrilia, Dondonpa and Estica has resulted in the social standing of slaves to be improved for the cost of the prisoners of war being degraded into permanent slaves. One such family, that was given over as a result of the father becoming a slave was the Ashenwald family consisting of Mada and Rem Ashenwald including their unborn baby, who had yet to get a proper name.

Because the baby has been born into slavery under Estican rule, the naming rights were given to their respective masters. In this case, one of the elders of the Blueseva-family decided on the name Imogyeran meaning an egg with untapped potential as the name for the now born child.

It was within Carcera, a city of Estica. Imogyeran’s parents had a mixed reaction to someone else naming their own child:

His mother Rem was simply happy that he would be able to survive and she was the one, that took over the young baby’s nurturing until he passed state of being an infant.

It was his father, who was the problem. Mada Ashenwald has been born into the well-off Ashenwald family and was raised in a very fundamentalist way, which is why his pride in his own country and beliefs is incredibly strong.

In his family tradition, naming a child should be decided by the father of the family. The current situation of him being forced to accept an unchangeable reality was simply unacceptable to him. He decided to rebel multiple times and was punished accordingly, which in the end also extended to his wife and child, when his behavior got too far out of hand.

Nonetheless, he kept insisting his silly charade, as it was perhaps the only thing he had to keep himself alive on. In secrecy, he decided on naming the child ‘Imogyeran’ as ‘Pasch’, much to his wife’s displeasure. Unlike him, who insisted on bringing her and their son in danger, Rem’s goal was simply to hold out and rear her child into a fine adult. It was her belief, that as long as they held their heads down now, there would eventually come a time, when they could walk proudly again, as normal citizens of Ayrilia. That belief often had her clashing with her husband over the future of their son.

But that belief was sadly never fulfilled.

The time was May 15th year 328 RPT, within the servant’s quarters of the main mansion from the Blueseva-family. Imogyeran had just turned 3-years-old and his mother gave him a small birthday party. She had asked for permission from their new master, Sir Frutto, to get a few utensils for her son’s birthday party, but her permission was denied.

Regardless of their allowance, Rem wasn’t the kind of person to just accept that decision that easily.

As one of the attendants for the youngest daughter of the house, she utilized a moment, where no one was looking, and grabbed a bunch of sweets from the daughter’s personal reserves and gave it to her son on his birthday. The young boy was barely at the age of roughly understanding his parents words and occasionally blabbering a somewhat coherent sentence.

For his age, he was a relatively slow learner, but his mother didn’t care. Instead she gave him all the affection she could in the place of her fundamentalist husband, resulting in the child having had a decently happy upbringing until now, considering her situation. When he ate the sweets, she had presented him, the young boy flashed a bright smile that from one ear to another. Everything seemed to go smoothly, but at some point something went wrong.

During their small celebration party, Rem has called her son “Imogyeran”, the name that he has been given as a slave, as opposed to “Pasch”, the name he was supposed to bear according to his father. Maybe it was this scene, that pushed him over the edge, but suddenly Mada went berserk. The next scene was one, that no one was able to remember afterwards, since only the young boy and the angry father were there to witness the scene at that time. The nobles in the mansion only heard a myriad of screams from different people and hurriedly called out to their security to assess the potential danger and, if necessary, eliminate it.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

This is a report, that one of the guards gave to his master about what happened:

-The location was in the western bedroom for our house-slaves

-When we arrived there, there were three people inside the room:

one male adult servant, his young son and the corpse of his wife

-The adult male has give the following witness statement:

His wife tried stealing food from the noble’s daughter and eating it for her own pleasure.

When found out by her son, she apparently started beating him up for several minutes, which the son has confirmed after we interrogated him.

-Afterward the father had to intervene to save his son from being hurt any further from her and in accordance for the crime of stealing from their master’s food, he punished her by death.

-The father hopes, that his wife’s foolish mistake will not extend to a punishment for them, who have always been grateful for the care they have been given.

-The son was in a heavily injured state, but he did confirm the father’s statement and was then carried to the infirmary

This concludes the report of that night’s incident.

The case was put to rest, since the participating parties had already acted according to the rules and dealt a proper punishment to themselves and the family, now only containing two people continued their lives under the nobles, without ever mentioning this ‘incident’ again.

This ‘incident’ changed the life of those two for the rest of their lives:

First off, since the mother of the group has used to attend to the youngest daughter of the house, it now became the duty of Imogyeran to be the one, to overtake her past work.

Since he was roughly the same age as the house’s daughter, he was often made a plaything for her whims and spend a large amount of time attending to her in that way. In case anything happened due to her actions such as broken toys or furniture or if anything occurred that annoyed the higher-ups, then he would get punished accordingly.

When not attending to her directly, he was tasked with helping with menial tasks such as helping the other maids cook or helping in preparing the dinner table or washing the dishes.

Surprisingly, the young boy Imogyeran was never really treated badly by the house’s residents. This was partly, because the young daughter, Elise Blueseva, took quite a liking to the boy and because he never really gave any opportunity to the nobles to badmouth or punish him.

After he started his work, he was always giving it his best to be as diligent as possible and when he interacted with the young miss Elise, he never crossed any lines and always kept a respectable distance, respecting the difference in the status of these two children.

In return he experienced many positive benefits:

Not only did he get plenty of rest inbetween chores and was even lucky enough to participate in the young lady’s lingual lessons under the condition that he remained a silent bystander. This was a huge chance for the young boy but during his entire time as a servant of this noble-family he never once showed even a single hint of a smile. He always wore the same stoic expression, eyes hollowed out, looking at the boots of any person, he talked to. His back was straight, his legs were shaking but always tried to remain upright. He never tried to speak his mind and just listened to his instructions, trying his best at fulfilling his masters’ wishes.

It was like a robot, simply living on behalf of someone else: It was pitying.

Though nobody ever approached him because of this, most of the citizens as well as the workers in the mansion noticed something on the boy’s body: With every passing day, there appeared to be more marks on it. Blue spots, red spots at every part of it. It was especially bad around his neck…

..

SMACK

…

…

My father goes over into his bed to sleep, while I am laying on the ground like the doll, remembering the doll that Elise used to play with a few days ago. When she got bored of it and threw it onto the ground, maybe it must have looked like I am looking right now.

For the past time, ever since ‘that’ happened, my father has made it a habit to repeat this ‘lecture’ once every day for every single day. I have no idea, how long it’s been, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. At first, it used to hurt so much, that I passed out every time. I cried a lot during that time. But it only took a few days, yes only a few days until I didn’t feel anything anymore. Even now, I don’t feel anything, no pain, no sadness, only emptiness.

…

I slowly heave my body away from the ground and make my way to a vacant bed in the room, throwing myself onto it and closing my eyes. I have no idea what it is, but for some time now, every night that I lie down like that, I begin to hear something around me. At first, it felt like a cold breeze, brushing past my cheeks but we are underground and there is no wind, that can reach this far into the ground.

No matter, where I look, I cannot seem to find the source of this sound, so I gave up on looking after a while.

As the days passed, the noise intensified and it changed from being a ‘noise’ into something like being a ‘feeling’. Every time I get into this state, I feel a strange calmness, as if nothing matters anymore. Today is especially intense of an emotion emanating from this thing. I fall into a dreamlike state.

I watch a barren field of wheat, that has been abandoned due to the farmers moving out. As the seasons pass, the crops are trying to sustain themselves through eating the nutrients, they are naturally getting from the earth. The air; the life-force that they siphon from nature. These crops persist for a long time without anyone caring for them, eating the sunlight from the skies, drinking the water from the ground. But the fields aren’t made to sustain themselves forever.

Once the seasons change, the sky becomes more cloudy and the sun shines through the thick layer of clouds less and less, the wheat is getting less and less sunlight to eat.

They are starving

Once the climate is getting more stable, there are extended periods of drought, making the rain coming down diminish and the wheat is not able to absorb the water from the ground anymore.

They are thirsting

Once the seasons change, there is a big thunderstorm and rain keeps pouring down on the ground, making it soggy and over-saturating it with water. The crops are unable to absorb this amount of water and their foundation is getting loose. The plants are in danger of losing their stable footing and being plucked out.

They are drowning

The thunderstorm eventually subsides leaving back a couple of wheat that have to endure a cold winter. The temperature on open field as well as the cold winds make the fiber porous.

They are freezing

Throughout all this, a single batch of wheat remains on the field, any other crop having long withered away.

This one batch starts discoloring into a gray and lifeless color. The golden beauty that has once been, is no more.

I am weakening

But throughout all this, the single strand doesn’t wither. A day passes and another one. This piece of weed remains resilient and always stands upright. More days pass. The weed is eventually shrinking, the yields of the next season nowhere to be seen and the fiber becoming as brittle as old fern. Eventually this piece of crop has a thought:

I am dying

With a gasp, I wake up, my body shivering from an immeasurable coldness. My body doesn’t stop shaking and I try to cuddle under my piece of cloth that I normally use as a blanket.

I can hear my teeth chatter like a cicada. I am almost getting teary-eyed and I look for anyone to help me. I don’t care who it is, but I need someone to talk to me, I need the warmth of another person.

Gasp

I remember the other person inside this room: my father. At this point in time, I don’t care what he will do to me, if I run to him this late at night but I don’t care about that right now.

With shaking hands I lift the blanket off of my body and I turn towards my father.

…

He is sitting on the ground, his gaze turned into my direction, eyes wide open, hands red, chest red, a short dagger protruding through it.

..

Unable to run away, unable to avert his eyes, unable to fall unconscious, the boy lets out the loudest scream in his entire life.