The Eldars

1

Katiri watches the sunset fade. She loves this secluded part of the mountain forest because the elves had shown it to her when she was younger. She comes here when she needs to think. Within a moment she has to wipe away the tears from her eyes.

Katiri had come here to think, but what is there to really think about? Grady was willing to marry her, the only man round about here that was. She personally thinks it's just because he needs a mother for his seven half grown children.

Although the children were all  sweet and dear, some of them weren't much younger than her own sixteen years. She likes Grady, he's a good man. He didn't beat his late wife and doesn't beat his children. He isn't known to get drunk either. He's always been polite to her but she just doesn't love him.

But it doesn't really matter. Her family's poverty and the rumors about her make it so that the other men are only  willing to become friends with her. Not one of them will take the challenge for her hand. 

She turns away from the fading pink tones of the sky to return to her family's home to give them the only answer she ever really could give them.

As she is about to step into the clearing where her family's home is she stops. Something isn't right. There is no sound. In the rapidly fading light she notices that there is no smoke coming from the chimney or light from the house.

Today is her mother's baking day. There is no reason for there to not be a fire in the fireplace even if she hadn't started dinner yet. And there definitely should be light coming from inside.

The winds shift and the smell almost makes Katiri lose her food from earlier although it does make her fall to her knees as she tries to fight the desire.

There is no sound from the barn either. The animals her family has should make noise, at least a little. Whatever killed her family also killed the animals.

The last of the fading light is enough for Katiri to see the door is broken in and hanging on the hinges. Katiri fights the urge to be sick even more as the stench of death comes rolling out at her from inside.

The light has faded too much for her to make anything out, but she cautiously steps forward. She almost loses her balance when she steps on something small and cylindrical. A piece of candle. 

She bends over and picks it up and as she does so she knocks something else. It is too dark to tell what the other object is until she is able to light the candle. She has to hold back her scream as she looks at her mother's face locked in terror.

Katiri had accidentally knocked the skull as she was walking into the darkened house. 

She holds the candle up and is shocked at how destroyed the house is. Katiri is a proficient hunter and has taken care of her own kills many times. But this is death and destruction on a whole other scale.

Katiri isn't sure that there is anything even salvageable in the room. The blood and other bodily fluids cover most of the surfaces. Body parts are tossed about the room, like some giant had taken his toy dolls and tore them apart. Realization creeps in as blood dripped from the rafters that some of the limbs had even caught in the rafters.

She can do nothing for her family. The pain and grief are nearly overwhelming, so she slams shields of steel over her feelings. As she does so, another mask of equal strength takes over her once warm and loving face.

She searches the room. She finds her mother's ring and slips it on. It must have come off when the whatever tore the fingers from her mother's hand. She comes across a hunting knife, her father's by the feel of it. She slips it next to her own.

There is a water bag that somehow escaped the massive destruction and a bag. Katiri smiles bitterly. Her family never had much, but now she is reduced even further. She's not even sure if Grady would still take her in marriage at this point.

It doesn't matter though, she's going to go after the things that killed her family and kill them or die trying.

Just as she's about to leave, she remembers the secret compartment her father showed her when she turned sixteen. She's not sure why he showed her; after all, he had planned on her getting married shortly.

In the compartment she found a small bag of coins that her family had and her father's flute. This makes Katiri give a small smile. The family's most prized possessions. She takes both the money and the flute. She is the only one besides her father that could play it and he had always meant to give it to her. Just like her mother's ring was to be hers as well.

She had never expected to get them in this manner, nor did she desire to.

She adjusts her hunting weapons on her back as she goes to check the destruction of the barn. 

The doors are also ripped off here. The smell of death is nearly overwhelming, but Katiri now has plenty of practice of keeping herself distracted from the smell.

She gets enough dry hay to fill her family's home and then makes her home her family's funeral pyre. There was no way she could bury them like it is customary for the humans, so she gives them the typical elven burial.

She feeds the fire of both the home and barn until there is nothing more than ashes and cinders. The morning sun breaks through the darkness of the night as the last of the flames die out.

Katiri puts away the flute she'd been playing in honor of her family as the flames burned. The look of cold determination enters as she finds and follows the tracks of the things that did this to her family. She hides the guilt that she wasn't here to share in their death with the promise of revenge against those that killed them.

She doesn't care if it also makes her join her family in death.