The Flocks of Eretos

Chapter 1

My first memories of life were dark and vague, similar to looking through a pinhole or a kaleidoscope my mind always strains to make sense of the early life I lived. We moved a lot my family and I, well we were not exactly a family. My mother took Dorian and I away from our homeland when we were young nestlings, with my father dead and the city in war and ruin, it was no longer a safe place to reside and families similar to ours scattered. I remember boats and seas, strange languages, stowing away in horse drawn carts and cold damp dwellings. People treated us like we were the scum of the earth and we didn't belong. Often they tried to steal me or Dorian away in exchange for a draqa or two  but my mother always kept us together like a family. Our hometown was called Eretos, some called it the land of love but my mother always says it turned into a land of hunger, greed and hatred. Bad things had happened in Eretos, the people had turned against the royal family and there was violence everywhere you turned. Tears often welled up in my mother's eyes as she reminisced how Eretos once was, a warm, luscious and harmonious land, which had governed the peace naturally and effortlessly until the royals began to tamper with it. When we left she told us we must never speak of our true identities, no one can know we came from Eretos and we will travel for as long as we can until the flocks can gather again. I didn't understand what all that meant at the time, but let me take you to the day I gained my new name, my first real memory.

We had travelled for suns, maybe even moons and crossed things I'd never thought possible, such as the waters that surrounded Eretos and the hills and mountains on the lands surrounding the coast. The ships had carried us to a place called Marrisse, a town in a large land called Réulanne. Here there were a few small communities of Erosian people and we encountered many Milapolou, the Milapolou are what people in other worlds call 'vampires', at least that's what the scholars say. The night had settled and although people with sense had retired to their houses, the streets where not quiet. There was music and people dancing, trade and barter, an environment where sinful and unlawful things can flourish. Most of these people were the gypsies, travellers that roamed many lands, even when the darkness fell you could find them and there were always people needing their services. Dorian and I had met many travellers in our time, played with their children and learned their culture, they weren't violent or evil for we had witnessed both of these and had found the travellers to be our only constant through the changing lands. As we tailed our mother through the streets she began walking with purpose, we tried to keep up as her steps grew quicker and tripped and stumbled through the wet, winding cobbled streets.  Suddenly she stopped, it was the end of a little side street, a house sat perfectly, warm light flickering through its windows and a smell of rusted metal and rotting wood wafted through the air. Mother knocked on the door and I stepped back, grabbing Dorian's hand and pulling him with me. In a time which felt like forever an old female voice shakily answered "Who is it?"

"Are you the person they call Deveux?" Mother asked demandingly, her accent not as strong as usual.

"Yes I am Mrs. Deveux..." she answered excitedly "have you come with news of my son, after all these years? Is he well...Oh, is it bad news...I should have known, fooling myself after all these years..."

"I have news of your son" Mother interrupted. Her voice was strange, as if she wasn't the same person. At the time it had scared me but later I found it was what is called pretending.

"Please Mrs, can you open the door"

"Oh yes of course" she answered hurriedly and after a series of clicking sounds the door opened. I will never forget her face as the door opened and she saw a bedraggled woman and two children, looking akin to the horrid travellers, stood at her door step. I often wonder what she had thought or whether she even had time to think as my mother had swiftly stepped into the doorway, grabbed the woman by the throat and lifted her while she marched into the house. Dorian and I looked at each other with awe and absently followed our mother's footsteps as we had done all these moons. Mother placed the woman in a chair in the main chamber and looked into her eyes intensely while mumbling words in a tongue Dorian and I remembered from our homeland, the tongue which mother frequently spoke in, Erosian.