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I was whining and listless as a child, always hanging on to someone. I was not brave, nor did I scamper or play.  I did not run or shout. I was never adventurous, or energetic. Apathetic and pale, mostly. I cried often. The elders said it was because I was more sensitive than the other children. I could sense the trees' woes, they said. I think I was a spoiled, ignored little girl, nothing more. My most recollected past-time was sitting and moaning about some imagined ache or another, and when I was content, I would play with leaves and sticks on my red cushion. It was red, I remember, it was the only thing we owned which didn't come from the trees around us.  My mother was an important woman, always busy, and speaking with old men with serious, drawn faces. She ignored me mostly, and to atone for it, she coddled me intolerably. I was an infant in a nine year old's body when the attacks first came, used to amusing myself when alone and whining incessantly when there was hope of receiving attention. I remember lying in my bed, swinging back and forth - our beds are in the open air, like little slingshots. Many westerners shake their heads and mutter when I tell them this. - and hearing my mother's voice travel up and down, like the unsteady groaning of a tree about to fall. I could not hear their words, but fear pierced through her voice like a needle. I laid there and swung back and forth until the stars above me blurred together and I couldn't keep my eyes open.
         I didn't know where my father was. I knew that I must have one somewhere. I knew also that I had brothers. I knew this because there were certain little things around the house that mother would not let me touch. They were little toys, or feathers, or rocks. The boys that I saw played with such things, but my mother kept them on a shelf, with my father's bow. My mother did not look at that shelf very often but when she did, her face weighed down, suddenly very old and sad looking. Those moments always frightened me, and I tried to keep her away from that shelf. It reminded me that I was not her only "little elfing", as she liked to call me in my better moments. I cannot remember anything about my brothers and my father, other than one memory, if it can even be called such. I remember a sunny field and a round, smiling face with curly dark hair. This boy is much bigger than me, I think it is my second oldest brother. He leans down to pick me up, and he wears a carved wooden leaf on his neck. That is all I can remember. However, my mother sometimes told me stories of my brothers, when I begged her to. I used to sit on my cushion and try very hard to remember their faces. I used to dream of them as well. This is probably nothing more than a childhood dream so wished for that it has been cemented as  true memory since.
        I remember when the first attacks came. It was late at night, and I woke up because strange lights were flashing behind my eyelids. I was very irritable, and stumbled out of my little sling, calling for my mother. I saw large orange billows in the sky, and some of the greatest trees were on fire. Perhaps I should explain. My people live in the trees. They build circles around the tallest region of the trunk, and make their houses in them, using the parts of the tree as walls, staircases, windows, fire pits,  cabinets, chairs, tables....My people are a mystery to the westerners. The trees are our survival, as well as our greatest treasure. We respect them. They are the symbol of my people, as much as we are the embodiment of them. Whenever we move, it is slow and calculated. Our speech is strange and thick, we are slow to anger, slow to joy, steadfast to tradition. Our minds are steeped in the roots of the trees with whom we live. They are in every ritual and every part of our lives. Perhaps this can explain the panic, the childish terror that erupts when beholding the destruction of a forest in which you live. I was frozen in time, watching it all unfold like from a separate world. I saw people leaping from the burning masses of dying, twisted tree flesh. I saw smoke cover up the moon, making everything a confusion of orange and gray. My eyes burned with the ash, I could not breathe without coughing. Then I saw one. It was a shape, running between the trees, and I could see every detail from the fires' merciless illumination. Bulging eyes and mottled skin, twisted features and bent frame, blackened teeth and deformed mouth: this looked me in the face. I could not scream, I could not look away. I could do nothing. I have gone through much since, but I remember no moment when the blindness of death would have been so preferred.
             My mother found me soon after, standing like a statue, staring forward to where the thing had been standing. To my mother, I looked like one gone mad, looking into empty space and muttering. She shook me, and when I turned to see her face, it was covered in sweat, dirt, and ash. She looked older than she ever did looking at the shelf. She looked frightened. She took my hands. I looked down. They were wet with something red. She told me to promise her something. Hoping for the possibility of coming affection, I eagerly promised. I will never forget her words.
           "Run. To the west. Your uncle, he left this place many years ago. He lives in the west, in a fort by the sea. It is called Fort Vale. Remember that. Say it to me. Say it to me eight times."
            I looked at her, glaring reproachfully. I could not understand how she could ask such a thing of me. I had begun to pout.
           "Say it." said my mother, losing patience.
           I mumbled the words under my breath.
           "Good." she got up, towering over me, and took me by the hand, dragging me down from our lofty home onto the forest floor. "Wait for me at the closest town for three days. I will come and find you in three days. Three days, remember? But after three days, you will have to start moving west. I will come find you. Remember, Fort Vale."
          I nodded my head sullenly, and she shoved me in the direction of the road that traveled through  our forest. I contemplated running away and hiding in the brush, simply to spite her, but then I remembered the thing I had seen, and made my way towards the road, frightened and whining to myself along the way. I slept on an old farmer's doorstep. His wife shooed me away at sunrise with her broom, clicking her tongue like one of the strange birds I sometimes saw in the deeper forests. I waited in the town for three weeks. My mother never came.