And in a sense, she never stopped running. The world became a dull slide show of forests and hills, small villas and sprawling townships. She would take whatever refuge she could from whoever and wherever she could manage it. Bread was stolen from carts, lies were spread like the thick chalky paste applied to her skin to look less like the heritage given her by her parents. Another bedraggled, bad on her luck country wench living from one moment to the next.

The night haunted her wakening moments as dusk faded, for from every murky corner she saw eyes watching her. Cold, cruel eyes that watched with bemusement. Looming in every shadow was the tall silohuette of the man with dark eyes, the plainitive cry of a wolf heard even in silence. She lay awake in bed, never daring to sleep for her dreams would be full of the dark shapes of wolves that licked at her heels like flames in a field of withered white flowers. Of falling, and never did she stop falling into the darkness, crying out for someone to catch her, crying out for someone to hold her close. Crying out for Kale.

It was then that the dark man approached her, offered her a life beyond her wretched existance in the almost forgotten tongue of the Romani people. Her people. Offered her shelter and salvation, the fufillment of a fairy tale fantasy where all of her dreams would be hers. For a price. Like a gentlemen, he only gave her a pendant that would lead her to him and his people should she ever wish to accept his offer, leaving without another word..knowing that he had her, and had but to reel her in. Thusly, began to orchestrate such a reel.

There was a time of peace. A time of nothing. The dusk of a meager existance mercifully about to be snuffed. They came for her in the night with rope and knives, following the pale gypsy guttersnipe to the hole she hid within. They bound her, and bled her muttering obscenities into her pretty ears and there was no avenging angel to save her now. She was left a broken mess in a dark corner and no-one cared. No-one even glanced where she lay in the shadows as the last raspy mutterings of how the great Wyrm creature Kale had once told her about went mad, trapped in the Weaver's great web, fell on disgusted, if not deaf ears.

Footsteps echoed in her mind, and how the pain flared turned her vision to a single point of white light that dimmed into a red haze that settled over her vision as she went to sleep, and dreamed that Kale was slipping away from her all over again in a crimson rain that washed her life away.

((Yeah.. I know this is a bit short, but I think Part 5 will be better. )) =) ~ Rosalina

((Once again,a really great post,nice work))

((cool

((Superb as always :)

((excellent as usual =)