| Birgit-Nietsch.de/Muds/Xyllomer/Jenkira/childhood |
Jenkira was born as the eldest daughter of a well-to-do family from Ki-Eren-Home. Her parents were traders, not really rich, but hunger and misery had been unknown to their house during the past three or four generations.
Her mother was not only a proper housewife, but also intelligent, smart and full of energy. Her father was rather different from his wife: careless, lethargic, irresponsible. As the years went by, their marriage wrecked and the situation in the family developed to a desperate state. The father had started to drink and ran the family into debts.
Violence and furious yelling became normal in their house. Late at night, Jenkira and her little sister used to hide in a corner under their bed, while their father madly stomped around in the house, yelling in bad language and even beating up his wife. One night, when his wife threatened to take her children and leave, he went completely crazy and ran amok.
He snatched Jenkira's little sister from her mother's arms, grabbed her by the feet and hurled her little head against the wall, where it was smashed in an instant.
Blood and pieces of the child's brain were spattered all over the place. Jenkira's mother desperately cried for help, but the neighbours had heard her for so many times before, and so nobody reacted to her calls. He threw her onto the ground and crashed a wooden club into her belly and her face, until she didn't move any more.
Now there was silence. One child dead, his wife, as it seemed to him, too - and little Jenkira was sitting under the bed, trembling and trying to suppress her sobbing because she was so scared she hardly even dared to breathe.
Jenkira's father looked at what he had done, and suddenly panic and fear overwhelmed him. He was a murderer! He would have to flee in the same night, if he wanted to get away, or else they would catch him, and he would be sentenced to death. Hastily, he stuffed some clothes into a worn out backpack and dragged his sobbing daughter to the harbour. There, he took the next ship and fled, never to return to his home town any more.
Jenkira and her father went on traveling from town to town, or rather, from pub to pub. He kept the child on a lead, like a dog, pulling her around and kicking her when she didn't obey. An indignant adventurer finally plucked up courage and knocked the vicious drunkard down. He freed Jenkira from the lead and brought the child to the elven orphanage, where he thought they would care for her.
But even here, Jenkira's martyrdom did not come to an end. By now, she was 13 years old and still unable to read and to write, though one could not call her stupid. She was intelligent, but she lacked any school education. Therefore, she was mocked by the elven children, and also, naturally, because she was a gnome. After a few months, Jenkira could not stand it any longer and ran away from the orphanage.
She collected anything she could find in the streets and in the woods: lost stuff, waterskins and even the empty bottles from the pubs, and sold them in the shops. She was begging in the streets and saved each and every coin for a ship passage back to Ki-Eren-Home, but her honesty was not rewarded by her fate. A stranger, a vicious drunkard just like her father, robbed her and left her in the woods, badly injured and close to death.
It was night, when the dying girl felt that someone was approaching her. A dark figure moved around her, examined her tortured body and aided her wounds without a single word. Due to the horrible pain, Jenkira fell unconscious. When she woke up, she found herself in a stable, all alone. Her wounds were neatly bandaged, a vial with healing potion stood beside her, and there were even some gold coins in her pockets.
After a few days of rest, Jenkira managed to stand up and walk back to Padorn. She took a ship, back to Ki-Eren-Home.
When Jenkira arrived in her home town, neighbours told her that her mother had barely survived the vicious attacks of her husband and that she had left the place, searching for her daughter. Nobody knew where she had gone.
Jenkira stayed in Ki-Eren-Home, desperately hoping that her mother would return some day, but nobody ever heard of her again. It was believed that she died on her travels, but nobody could say that for sure. Neighbours gave food and clothes to Jenkira and took her into their home. But she was kept like a servant, and she always felt displaced and unwanted. When she was 19, she decided to leave.