In His Harem

Prologue

The night was young, the street lights on, and the clubs filled with youths eager to bring some form of excitement into their lives. The roads were still busy, as were the pathways and hidden alleys. There was nothing unusual or special about it.
The late workers were on their way on home, the teens were sneaking into places they had no place being in, the adults were spilling out of pubs loud and carefree, and the shady people stood in the shadows smoking or passing shifty objects to the equally shady people beside them.
It was cold. Nothing strange for a night in West Yorkshire, England. But the breeze seemed to have an extra sting to it. That didn't stop the eager ladies from baring their assets, nor the males from exposing their arms they had so determinedly worked on at the gym. Everything was as it was expected to be.
Except for the little girl in the emerald green dress, standing at the door of a dingy pub named 'King's Bottle', her hand in her mouth, her large green eyes observing the suspicious lot walking in and out, past her.
She was far too young to be out on a bustling night like this, at the scene unfolding all around her. And her presence, for the very few who cared to notice, was almost haunting.
She was a good looking child, beneath the grime that acted as a second skin to her, with features that could bloom into something special as she grew - a pair of bee stung lips, green eyes that her dress could have complimented if it were clean, and high cheekbones, prominent, even beneath the dirt, and a head full of hair too shiny and healthy looking for the rest of her appearance.
She did not display any emotion - fear would have been the logical one for a lost child wandering in a sea of fast paced,loud activity - nor did she act in any suspicious way.
She just stood there, a part of the night but not so much a part of the crowd. And the way she held herself, so aware and sure, proved she knew that.
To the passerby it would seem it was the activities of the night, or the cold weather that drove her back into the warmth of the broken down pub.
She walked like any wandering child but managed to evade the kicking legs and the broken shards being tossed around.
The inside of the pub was chaos. The lowest of the low came here, and the worst of the worst activities took place in all the deep corners. There had to be at least half a dozen brawls every night, and there were no safety rules. It was all wild. No place for a child.
But she knew her way around, and she made it, behind the bar, through the legs of the intoxicated drinkers, towards a room at the back of the pub.
She was greeted by silence and smell. It had been days since the room had been cleaned, days since anyone other than her had occupied it - precisely nine days since she had been left here all alone, by the woman who'd birthed her and her sickly brother. And she knew that.
She had seen it all happen. The way her mother had fallen through the bed, clutching her child, looking in horror at the one she was leaving behind as she disappeared through the mattress into some place else.
It was the last place they had been together, the last place she knew to stay. So she stayed, knowing, but yet still believing with faithful hope that came with young age, that her mother would be coming back. But she also knew.
She knew she was alone. And that she would be staying alone....