[Salacia Deloresista]

Left foot. Lift. Forward. Drop. Right foot. Lift. Forward. Drop. Breathe. There had been yelling, loud, angry words. Noises, crashes that made her flinch and want to cry. Rough hands reached for her. Anger, spit, and a smell like old vinegar few at her face. The hands drew back, and in the pain that followed, her twelve year old mind could only retain one thought. She had to leave. And so she left, waiting until he was asleep then, wrapping anything edible she could find in the house into a bundle, she waked out the door.

The terror of the next few days overwhelmed her. Alone, across unknown wilderness, she wandered, her destination that mythical place in her imagination known only as "away." It was a place without fathers, without beatings or fear. She traveled only at night, dreading the light of day that would reveal her to the eyes that were surely looking for her, and the hands that would follow to punish her daring bid for freedom. Every moan of the wind was the sound of the dogs on her trail, every snap his footstep, every breeze his breath. He was cloaked in every shadow, hidden behind every tree. She ran when she could, walked when she had to and crawled before exhaustion forced her to collapse and sleep through another day. How could she know that the drunken stupor in which she left her father would be the one from which he would never wake up?

She walked. Tangles of brush became woods, woods became fields, fields became farms and the hills...houses. Her first coherent thought burned itself across days worth of terror. People live in those hills. But any one of them could turn her in, pick her up, take her back. Left foot. Lift. Forward. Drop. Right foot. Lift. Forward. Drop. On and on, step after step, until one day, at last, she heard laughter and singing, smelled food. The light streaming from the windows pierced the darkness of her mind. The sign outside the building glinted green as it swung in and out of the light in the window. A figure...some kind of lizard...a green dragon.