Trillagla slept. Darkness had fallen only a few hours ago, but such was the way of the city. With the price of candles these days, the citizens figured they might as well just go to bed when nature intended. So with the exception of a few tardy merchants, bagging up the last of their wares, various unsavory individuals, roaming idly, and the soldiers, posted throughout the city, the streets were empty. Like this, the streets seemed to make sense. One could almost see their artistic beauty, the winding turns and weaving paths. During the day, when the streets were mobbed by citizens, the beauty was lost.

With the exception of its streets, Trillagla was a very organized city. The very poor lived at the farthest right edge of the city, in shacks and huts made with whatever spare lumber they could find. Should there be a speck of space in the morning, it would be gone by afternoon. People poured into Trillagla, searching for work, food, and everything else that the surrounding villages lacked. The very few who managed to escape that side of the city settled in the middle areas. These were primarily merchants, who arranged to be selling whatever people happened to want that day. Their homes stood strong, usually betraying the precarious financial status of those living inside. Whenever someone was prepared to move in, another had lost it all and needed to move out. The houses, thus, seemed to be more on loan than sold. The very rich, then, had segregated themselves on the very left hand side of the city. They rarely ventured out and cared little for the rest of the city, generally.

Every home in the city, every street in the city, every small speck of land in the city had a view of the palace, located on the very left edge of Trillagla. Even now, its whitewashed stone walls shone in the moonlight and it stood, regal and beautiful. The palaces of Trillagla could have been a city themselves. The Lord and his noble ranked attendants lived within those walls. On the very far side of the palaces was the only part of Trillagla that did not conform to the stratification rules. The slave quarters of the palaces were basic shacks, hidden on the very edge of the property.

In the second to last little hut, Valina was preparing for bed. She hadn't spent much time at the river, where most of the slaves washed up for the night, but most of the dirt had been scrubbed off her hands and face. If anymore was left, Valina couldn't bring herself to care. She didn't care about anything today. Today was her thirty-third birthday, the twenty-fifth that she'd spent in slavery. With each passing year, the situation seemed more permanent, more horrible.

Valina had only dim memories of the time before her enslavement. Then, she had lived with a family - her two older brothers and one younger sister. At the time, she remembered feeling frustrated by the lack of privacy. Now, she longed for those days. Living with three siblings seemed much better than sharing a one roomed shack with seven other slaves.

They were trickling back into the room now, finished bathing at the river. Gram came first, as she always did. She was so old that she'd outgrown her name, she would say. Gram stayed only because their master hadn't figured out how to get rid of her yet. She was far too old to spend long days in the fields and wasn't even useful in the house. Mostly, Gram spent the days doing a few odd chores and minding the little slave children. Next was Yarka, who, in her late thirties, still pined for the lover who had been sold away while she was only a teenager. She never bothered with anyone else and they mostly ignored her back. Maylinda's entrance involved a commotion, as it always did. She and her husband, Draka, lived there together with their two children. The little ones, a seven-year-old boy and two-year-old girl, made enough noise to drive anyone insane. Last to enter was Cinna. She was the only one remotely close to Valina's age and the girls had become friends.

"Valina?" Cinna knelt beside her bed, calling across the small room.

This incited a tirade from Maylinda. "Can't you see I'm trying to get my children to sleep?"

"I see that they're wide awake and running around the room." Cinna replied, pointing after the toddler.

"Well, if you weren't bothering me!" Maylinda huffed, leaping off after the baby. She grabbed the child by one arm and managed, in between muttered curses, to wrestle the child back into bed.

Cinna grinned and walked to Valina's corner. "How was your day?"

"The usual." Valina didn't want to answer questions, didn't want to think anymore about being a slave on her birthday.

"I got you something... for your birthday."

This was new. Valina glanced up, startled. "Got me something?"

"Stay right there." Cinna ordered, with childish eagerness. She darted back across the room, fetching a bundle out from under her bed. When she returned, she pressed this into Valina's hands.

"Bread!" Valina identified the object, which did take some work. It was a bit stale, smushed into a few of Cinna's handkerchiefs. No doubt it had been concealed and smuggled from the kitchens, where Cinna worked.

"I wanted to get you something." Cinna explained, proudly.

Valina pulled her friend into an embrace, feeling almost guilty for sulking earlier. Things weren't quite so bad, she supposed. At least she had friends who cared for her. "Thank you so much!"

"Better hide that." Yarka's voice interrupted their exchange and gave them their only warning that the overseer was approaching. Valina had just enough time to get the bread into a hole in her mattress before the door burst open.

"Good evening, sir." the slaves chorused, holding back resentment.

The overseer didn't bother to reply. He simply did his duty: making sure all the slaves were accounted for and that none had jumped into the river and gotten away. This accomplished, he departed, letting the door slam behind him. Naturally, this woke up Maylinda's children and brought about another round of angry cursing.

"Thanks, Yarka." Valina tried to give the woman a smile, but Yarka curled up on her mat and ignored them.

"I should go to bed." Cinna shrugged. The two embraced one more time, before she crossed the room for her own bed.

Valina climbed beneath her tiny sheet and tried to forget the hardships of the day. Her whole body ached, as usual. She'd spent the whole day in the fields and the overseers had been particularly harsh. Everyone was on edge lately. The rumor mill claimed that the Lord, their master, was getting married soon to a young woman from the village. He demanded perfection from the overseers - perfect harvests, perfect cleanliness, perfect order - and they took it out on the slaves. Personally, Valina could care less about the Lord's upcoming marriage. She had no interest in the honor of the man who owned her, the man she held responsible for destroying her life.

She could still remember bits of those days, living with her siblings in the wooded clearing. And of course, she remembered that particular day, when the soldiers came. Then she had been but a mere child, watching as the adults tried to stave off disaster. Her brother's fiancee's sister tried to escape, slipping away on a raft with Valina's younger sister, Mridina. Valina and her family watched the two disappear down the water, then returned to daily business.

That's when the soldiers had come.

They burst into the village, weapons ready, faces cold. No words were spoken before the bloodshed began. The women were quickly slaughtered, with a vengeance that Valina had never before seen. She watched grown men fall to their knees, crying over the bodies of their wives and daughters. Soldiers rounded up the men, giving them no time to grieve, lashing at them with whips and swords and yelling, "Tell us who she is!" But no one knew what to respond.

Ultimately, Valina watched with wide, horror filled eyes as most of the men were killed as well. Some managed to flee; she saw the soldiers pursue them into the forests. Some were spared, for no apparent reason. None were returned to their families. The men who lived were tied up, attached to the back of carts like horses. Village children were tossed into the carts, sometimes tied up if they were big enough to make a fuss. Valina's hands were forced behind her and the rope cut deep into her flesh. Her screams and sobs earned her only a few sharp slaps across the face, which taught her quickly to be silent. She curled up in the cart as best she could, for it was crammed full of children and there was very little room. Through tear filled eyes, she watched the village she'd called home, now being set up in flames, disappear as the cart set off up the path.

That was the day that the innocent little girl named Valerie died and Valina was born.