Ender Origins: Beginning

Starting Point

Galaxy

I finally opened my eyes, and all I saw was darkness. A black, cold night. I sniffed the air, scrunching my nose and thus rubbing it right after. It was almost frozen— and so were my hands. What a bore. Being a runaway had never been fun. Almost never, that is.
I sat up, eyeing the branches towering way over my head before tending to my ice-cold fingers, which were so numb they could barely move. I clasped my hands together, while my mouth exhaled a hot stream of air. There went a sigh in the midst of those hasty breaths.
I had covered myself with a blanket that I had bought off a wandering traveller for half the original price, after being able to strike a deal. He wanted companionship until a certain point, I wanted a blanket. Seemed fair enough, until he tricked me: I went so far out of my path and I didn't respond to his 'demands' that he didn't even want to show me the way back to where I previously was. That idiot hopped on his horse and dropped me there, literally, on the ground. Well, lying on the dusty ground, without a direction, was far better than being his personal maid, for Thesalia's sake. I just wanted a blanket, not a man. A grin crawled upon my dry lips as I thought that last line in my head.
"I hope the Gods are all merciful with you..." I mumbled under my breath, flopping the blanket away from my body, and I grabbed my bag, dragging my hood and my boots out of it.
My hair was a wild mess. Running a hand through it to calm it down even a little, I looked at the landscape beyond me, not even sparing the tree under which I had rested since afternoon. I had looked for my previous path all day. I was lost, there were no coordinates that I knew of that popped up on my compass. There were some castles and cities I could see from that far... but I doubted they'd welcome a runaway like me. A rogue. A renegade.
Another sigh escaped me, and I strapped my boots real tight. The sound of leather straps against my fingers urged me to stand up and keep moving. Even though it could easily be almost midnight or something, judging by the position of the moon, I had to keep moving forward. Something inside me told me that it was going to end up good for me.
... But searching inside my bag once more proved me hella wrong.
"What the hell—" I cursed rather loudly, shocked by the aftermath of what had happened. My food reserves were gone. There was only a bottle of water, chugged in half. "Un-freaking-believable! He stole my food! That— that idiot!"
Hell, I was pretty sure he had done it: why didn't I suspect the moment he started looking inside my bag whenever we walked side to side?... Was he a rogue traveller, too, or something?
But the questions washed away, only to be left with the remorse of losing the only food I had. I knew I'd be forced to steal again, and I didn't want that. I didn't have much money remaining, either: after all, I had taken money worth of 5 months of travel. It was 2 months past that deadline, and the Goddess knew how I was able to survive through so little consumption of food, trying to save money, of course.
Trying to channel the anger out of me, I grabbed a stone that was close to me and hit the tree under which I slept on as hard as I could. It left a rather large hole, right in its midst, by my strength alone, but I was too blind to look at it: anger can blind anyone, really.
I holstered the bag upon my shoulders, trying not to crush another stone in my hand. But I soon calmed down, throwing the stone pebble in a shallow pond nearby.
"Dammit... how am I going to survive?... This sucks; I'll probably need to ask for a place to sleep again. This really sucks."
I hated being a nuisance to people. Maybe that was why I grew up in an orphanage in the first place... but I shook the dark thoughts away. I needed my head to think about my future, not my past.
And so I walked, the moon throwing its soft light over my hair, while I caught reflections of myself in a large lake that had been summoned nearby by my tired eyesight.
Purple hair, piercing purple eyes... pale skin... freckles. And a frown to make it all better. I wasn't in the mood to smile, especially after coming up to those two previous realizations:
1. I was, still, without food!
2. ... Where the hell was I going to go in the middle of the night?