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Winter is coming, and I can no longer walk around in my usual short-sleeved shirts or short-sleeved denim dress.
I shiver when I tiptoe across the cold wooden floors, and I pull on the old, long-sleeved shirt and trousers made from thick cotton and lined with fleece.
I made it myself years ago when I was still living in the settlement. It is still the most expensive and treasured item I own, and it is the only thing that brings me comfort.
And right now, all I need is comfort,I think wearily to myself.
Every orc in this camp knows how I feel about them. They know that I don’t want to be here.
But none of them have ever been anything but polite to me. Some of them have even seemed slightly scared of me.
That’s what happens when you sleepwalk through the camp at dawn, dragging your sheets behind you.
The sleepwalking is another sign that I’m stressed out. I outgrew the sleepwalking habit years ago.
I crawl into bed and wrap my arms around the hessian cloth pillow.
Julie doesn’t know what she’s gotten into. One day, the Risen Ash clan orcs will show their true colors, like all other orcs.
What does she expect? To live in peace and harmony forever? They’re predators!
I can still remember the first time a group of orc ‘warriors’ stormed the first settlement I lived in.
I must have been six years old, and I can still remember them destroying the place where I was born. The place where my first memories were formed.
The place I loved, no matter how difficult it was to live there.
The Earth, the most beautiful place that could ever exist, has been destroyed because of the orcs.
They are predators and destroyers. They leave only havoc in their wake.
They kicked us out of our homes and burned down our farms so that they could destroy the natural ecosystems that we spent years cultivating.
They destroyed so much of this place that there are things in very recent books that I don’t find familiar, because of how much they have taken away from us.
“How am I the only one to remember all of this?” I murmur to myself.
Orcs are the reason why we created settlements in hidden places. Orcs are the reason why so many humans have died.
Because they hunted us. Not just because they drove us out of our homes.
I know that none of the orcs in the Risen Ash clan would do it, but I have heard multiple stories where orcs have hunted humans for sport.
“And now they’re mating with human women,” I say darkly and turn onto my other side.
I toss and turn for several minutes before I feel comfortable.
It has to be some kind of long-term plan they have. They’ll mate with all human women and eventually overthrow all humans that way.
Because that’s what orcs are. They’re destroyers.
Even the new girl, Amara’s, so-called mate is named the Undefeated Gladiator! Nothing good can come from a name like that!
My thoughts are tumultuous as I remember the mating ceremony. I hated seeing a human woman being mated with an orc, only because it feels unnatural.
But seeing them together, and seeing Julie with her mate, Uli, seemed to magnify my loneliness even further.
“You don’t want that. Trust me,” I tell myself sternly after I imagine myself with an orc mate.
