He watched her spin around in the yard, skirt fluttering around her skinned-up knees. Momma wouldn’t be happy when she saw those nasty scabs—“Young ladies shouldn’t look like they’ve been out wrestling with the boys!”—or those grass and dirt stains splotched across the lightly colored, linen dress. Perhaps he should have bought her a longer dress. One of those dresses he’d seen her “newer money” classmates wearing. They would have surely hidden those awful tears in her pale skin and the fabrics were always so dark that something like a grass stain or dirt could be easily hidden. But, if he were to be truthfully honest, he didn’t much care for those dresses. They looked too… Old. They reminded him too much of those horrendous atrocities he always encountered when speaking with (or rather, being taken captive by) the gossiping women at his wife’s parties and teas. He abhorred those things. Too much skin showing. Too many trinkets. Too…adult. He wanted his adoring little girl to stay little just awhile longer. Besides, he didn’t particularly mind the scabs much. They were proof of a good and happy childhood. Which, as a father, was all he really cared about.
The faint sound of her giggling disrupted his trailing thoughts. When he turned his gaze on her, she smiled brilliantly, her cheeks red with overexposure to the sun’s rays and exertion. A tiny delicate hand waved at him, enthusiastically, and he had to suppress a chuckle at the sight of her soiled glove. What had once been immaculate, white cotton was now a dingy, light brown mottled in places by streaks of green. She must have found the patch of dirt he had been unable to cover with grass. She had also lost her hat, apparently, because the only thing adorning her halo of fiery curls was a ring of tiny white flowers woven tightly together to create a crown. The white flowers were also speckled throughout the braids that spilled over her slim shoulders. He couldn’t help but to toss a glance over to Emillia, who only smiled shyly at him from her place seated on the ground beneath the timeless oak tree before returning her intense, dark-eyed gaze to her charge: his darling little girl. Even though Emilia's skin was dark, he could see her weariness. All he had to do was peer into those eyes. They could convey an array of emotions in a single moment, flickering quickly in the black depths. It had taken his wife a long time to separate those emotions, to trust Emillia, but he had known, from the moment the foreigner had shown up at his door, begging for shelter from the rain, that she was special and to be trusted with life itself. Her first encounter with his tiny angel had only intensified this feeling…
Emillia had been a tiny girl herself when she had come to the Phuntum Estate, only sixteen. Her previous owner had kicked her out onto the streets when she had refused to lay with him. After beating her mercilessly, of course. Dr. Phuntum knew too well the actions of most Draven owners. Dravens were considered a cursed people, spinners of witchcraft and fortunetellers. In a history long past, Dravens would be the equivalent of what the ancestors considered Gypsies. The difference? Dravens could, in fact, perform what many call magic. But it is not actually magic they perform. No. Dravens are a created race. The history books say the Dravens were once created to be soldiers. Their genetics were altered to enhance certain abilities. The doctors and scientists could not control what abilities were enhanced, however, so the Dravens came out with a variety of abilities. Some abilities were fantastic, unbelievable! These Dravens were immediately taken into training. Other abilities were not so sought after. These Dravens were thrown to the mercy of the public. If one does not learn history and learn from history, then history can do nothing but repeat itself. Just as everything that has ever been different in society, the Dravens were prosecuted, cut down, kicked and spit upon. They were drug through the dirt and treated like animals. It only grew worse as Draven soldiers lost their need on the battlefield, slowly replaced by machines. There are many theories as to how exactly Dravens became slaves, but none of that ever mattered to the owners that surrounded Dr. Phuntum. As long as the nasty creatures did their jobs, they didn’t care. Sadly, sometimes that job included sexual “favors”.
