At Your Service

1. Fia

The sun was shining brightly as it was a warm day for the time of the year. Winter just made its entrance in the country and the people were preparing their rations for the year.

There was a buzz in the streets as women and children went to the markets and the men returned from the fields for the last time with the final crops. I watched them all from the attic of our house.

"Fia we're hungry!" I heard my siblings yell from down the stairs.

I covered my ears and stared out of my window in an attempt to ignore them. We ran out of food two days ago. I was starving myself as I offered my last bread to those kids that weren't even my full siblings. We didn't have enough land to plant grain or vegetables to help us last through winter. We had some chickens, but they'd died in a plague. All we had left were a few goats we milked every day as if that would keep us alive.

"FIA!"

I gritted my teeth as a frustrated growl rolled over my lips. "There is nothing left! Go complain somewhere else!" I screamed back before grabbing my bag and running down the stairs.

My half-sister Maria was holding the crying twin brothers Remi and Rumi on her lap while my other half-sister Maura was searching all the cabinets in our petty little kitchen.

"If there's no food, give me some money and I'll go get food." She suggested making me laugh.

"There is no money either Maura! For fuck's sake what do you take me for? Mom has been gone for a week. I can't find work here. Where should I get money?" I questioned her.

She shrugged. She was ten of course she couldn't answer me. Maria was twelve and the twins were three years old. None of them should have been born in this shithole, but then again I was a part of this shithole.

Our mother, a dreadful woman that sold her body and soul to anyone willing to pay the smallest amount of money was not in shape to raise children. Our father. Well the father of the youngest children was no longer in the picture, he ran off the moment he found out he was going to be a dad. Maria and Maura's father died of an illness a little over five years ago. Everything went to shit since then.

My father, he died long before that. When my mother was a lot younger, only just a lady, she lived in the city of Dale. She was a trader there, on good days she would tell us of the beauty of that city. It was known far and wide for its markets and the trinkets sold from the halls of Erebor, the mighty dwarven kingdom rising up at the foot of the city.

Yet those good days seemed centuries ago, my mother fell in love with a dwarf named Belethor when she was sixteen. She met up with him in secrecy as their parent's wouldn't approve of her love for the dwarf. Or so she always said.

One day Belethor suggested that they should run away. There was a battle coming up and my mother had found out she was pregnant with me. She was terrified, her parents couldn't find out about the pregnancy. Belethor promised he was going to take care of her and the child. He wanted a family and he wouldn't let anyone break them apart.

The night before the battle they would run away. They were going to meet by the outpost. Yet when evening fell and my mother arrived by the treeline she noticed Belethor wasn't alone. Two guards had seen him sneaking around and they sounded the horn. They believed him to be a traitor to the crown as he tried to run from the upcoming battle.

Belethor was escorted back to Erebor. Out of fear Mellia, my mother hid herself and didn't dare to stop them. She saw them drag away the love of her life as he begged to listen to him and let him go.

She never heard from him again. When she asked around the dwarves said he died in battle, but Mellia would never truly know what happened.

She couldn't hide her pregnancy for much longer and so she decided to flee herself, that's how she ended up in a small town in Rohan. She had me and she worked hard to provide food and clothing.

When she met my stepfather a couple of years later life became easier. Sadly it couldn't last and after having two more girls he died of an illness. That day I lost my mother too as she was losing her mind with grief.

I worked hard to help her raise the children as she wouldn't get out of bed. In time her pain seemed to soften and slowly she started joining us for dinner or she would go back to the market. One day she came home telling us she found a job. It turned out to be a job as barmaid in a whore house. I didn't care at first as we needed a steady income, I could barely feed us all by the little bits of money I earned selling our chicken's eggs or the sheep's milk.

When she started working at the whore house everything seemed fine, yet after a while she started coming home drunk, then some nights she wouldn't come home at all. Then she announced she would get married as she was expecting again. Sadly for her the moment she told the father about it he ran and she was left with twins.

Since then she lost all interest in life. She still worked as a barmaid, but she barely came home. Now and then she would drop some money or give me some food as I found her by the market. Yet I was left as a seventeen year old raising my brothers and sisters alone.

Technically I wasn't always alone. When I had just turned fifteen, a young man noticed me while visiting here from our capital. He was in training to become a Rohirrim and had to travel around the kingdom by order of the king to report on how the villages were doing after a violent storm raged over our area.

He was three years older than me, but it was love at first sight. For him, anyway. I was young and naive and he was the first boy to look at me. Our village knew me as Mellia's daughter, the outsider, the whore and people saw little more in me than that. I was a bit smaller than most of my age, I had bright grey eyes and curly white blond hair. Luckily my hair was light in colour as I had a little more hair growth than normal woman. Probably had to thank my dwarf father for that trait as well. I also had wider hips and fuller shapes around my breasts and buttocks. In build, I looked older than I was which often made me attractive to older lonely men, but this time a boy fell for me. Baldred was his name.

He was almost two heads taller than me, had medium-long brown curls and deep green eyes. He complemented me on my mysterious grey eyes as I made my rounds to bring the brewer's beer to the alehouse where he was just enjoying a drink. I didn't know what to say at first and laughed at his words. On the way home, however, they stuck in my mind; never before had anyone complimented me.

The following day, he was suddenly at my door with a bunch of flowers and asked if I wanted to go for a walk with him. We walked for hours and there was never a quiet moment. He told me about his family and how his father had also died in a war and how his mother was now barely able to leave the house due to illness. I in turn told him about my family. There was an instant click and since that day we saw each other every day until Baldred would have to move on again two weeks later.

We promised each other to keep in touch through letters, in those two weeks I became a completely different person. It had been so long since I felt loved and wanted. Baldred came to see me on the last night he was in the village. He still declared his love to me, promised that when he had enough money we would live together in his village and he kissed me to seal his promise. I was always suspicious, but him I trusted. I looked forward to a letter every day since he left and barely a week later the first one came.

We kept in touch for almost a year and with each letter, my hope grew to one day be able to leave this terrible farming village and start a future with Baldred. Till suddenly no more letters came. I waited weeks, months, eventually news came from his mother that she found our letters when she was going through her son's things after he died in an attack on the village.

My world stood still. Only at that moment did I understand what it felt like to feel the ground disappear under your feet. For a year, I had dared to dream and hope to start a new life and now all that had been wiped away.

Here I was again with screaming children who were not even mine and no prospects of ever being happy.

This place took everything away from me and I was done!