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1
BRIELLE
Should have brought a torch,I think to myself as I walk down the main street of Lowtown. It’s dark this time of day. In the distance, smoke rises from the mills and factories that keep Pyrthos running.
I can’t quite make out the smoke through the dim light of pre-dawn, but I know it’s there. There hasn’t been one day that I’ve lived in Lowtown that smoke hasn’t risen from those buildings.
It might be a dark, frigid, early morning, but every human in Lowtown is already up and awake.
Many of them are preparing to start their shifts at the mills and factories, but many of them are also coming home from the night shift. Someone must keep the fires burning to produce smoke at all hours of the day and night.
“Brielle!” a voice calls behind me, and I turn to see one of my neighbors calling my name and waving excitedly.
“Sarah,” I reply with a wan smile as she comes running up to me.
“We’ve got new humans moving into those abandoned houses at the end of the street,” Sarah tells me. Her animated face is red from the cold, and clouds form whenever she speaks.
“Well, I’m sure you can deal with the welcome party,” I tell her tiredly.
Yesterday was a hard day. I spent my time doing backbreaking work at the factory I work in. The owner of the factory isn’t one of those dark elves who treats their human ‘employees’ nicely.
Employees? That’s a nice word for a glorified slave.I snort to myself as I turn away from Sarah and continue to walk down the street.
Another one of my neighbors, Colson, who I work with and actually like talking to, waves me down, and I pause to talk to him.
He doesn't bother to greet me and speaks impatiently. “Those humans that Sarah was telling you about! They’re nothing more than children. They must be fifteen or sixteen years old. The owner of the silk mill bought them and let them make their way here on their own.”
My blood goes cold in my body, and my throat goes dry. I haven’t bothered to really consider who those humans were that Sarah was talking about – we’re all slaves here.
How could they do this to literal children?My rage is quiet and unseeming. Colson nods as a flurry of emotions crosses my face.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply. But my hands are already balled into fists, and blood is welling up from the cuts on my palms.
“I hate them,” I whisper furiously.
Colson nods again sagely and sighs.
“We all do. I don’t know how much longer any of us can go on. Katherine, from the next street, lost her baby after a beating from the dark elves. Jennifer was raped so many times by her owner that she’s lost all feeling in her lower body.”
I leave Colson then, sick to my stomach and unable to hear more bad news. I am so, so exhausted, and I know that feeling more rage will only tire me out further.
But as I walk down the street towards the back of the Lowtown settlement, I hear the same sentiments over and over again.
More and more of the humans in Lowtown are tired of their treatment by dark elves. More horror stories crop up every day as the dark elves become more merciless.
They own us in every way, shape, and form now. We are no longer autonomous beings.
We have lost all of our agency, and it seems that there is nothing we can do about it except wait for the next whipping.
You’re lucky that you haven’t been hurt too much yet,I think to myself and uncurl my hands when they finally start to ache more than I can bear. But I know that I have only been lucky so far. I also know that the time will come when it is my turn to be hurt.
I suppose the only thing that has saved me so far is that I make far too easy of a target. I am too thin, too bony, too unattractive to torture.
I have noticed a trend among the dark elves who own us and who own the factories and mills. They pick on the beautiful women first and then work their way through the rest of the population.
I hear the flutter of wings then, and I become unsteady when my messenger bird, Skye, takes a heavy seat on my shoulder. I reach up to pet her, and she crows softly as she sways from side to side as I walk.
I turn down the street, which is nothing more than a dirt road, onto another dirt road that widens and curves downwards. It leads to the forests behind Lowtown. The sun is rising, and the sky is a milky pink that could almost be pretty.
