Legends of Belariath
Jonie
Jonie's story begins just over 19 years ago that she can count, she was born in a small forest village just a day or so away from Nanthalion. A small kitten that was new to the world, far bigger than she could imagine yet big even in just her village, and she was unique. She was albino among her friends who had so much color, she had no fur on her body but her tail and ears and her friends had so much, she also had no sight of color as she was born to only see black, white, and shades of grey. She was also the slowest at learning as she always liked asking more questions and could hardly remain still enough to concentrate on much.
”Mummy, daddy.. why Jonie not have colors or fur?”
Her mother would only explain with a simple story to not despair her heart. “Because my kitten, the great cats simply ran out when they got to you. There were so many born near the same time as you and you were the last. That is why you only have your little tips where they tried to dip you with messy paws.” Jonie seemed happy with the story and thought herself as special because of it. She continued to play and learn as the youngest kitten in the village and the last to be born within it.
Her father would spend time teaching her to defend herself as a fighter, her mother would teach her manners, and her friends would teach her pranks and tricks while she was young, but none ever prepared for the little kitten for the day that her life turned for her at a small age. She was 3 and the village was attacked by hunters that began burning the village and chasing all of those in it. Her parents ran Jonie to a safe hiding place, but they were wounded badly in doing so.
Her father told her to take his weapon and armor to keep her safe, her mother gave Jonie her collar and said it would protect her. Jonie simply cried and did not want to hear such things and wanted her parents to wake from thier sleep. “No.. mummy.. daddy.. I will get help! Wake up!” She took her father's dagger and ran off to find help, but the forest was so much bigger than she had thought, she ran for 2 days and became lost. She didn't know where to go or if the forest would ever end. She hadn't eat or rested since she was trying to hurry to save her mum and dad, but she failed as she became caught in a steel trap of a hunter.
When found in 3 days time, she was barely alive and bleeding to her death, her feet and legs were mangled in the trap even more as she had tried to escape it before submitting to starving and exhaustion along with her blood loss. The hunter arrived to check for his catch and shook his head with a grin, he obviously thought he had a great find as he spoke, but Jonie could not understand his words. She was scared and alone, she wanted her mum and dad more than ever but they had done passed before she even left. “Muugc mega E ryja y nyna lydlr, y meddma ympehu geddah femm pnehk eh cusa vundiha.” (Looks like I have a rare catch, a little albino kitten will bring in some fortune.) It was all she heard before she slipped away into blackness.
When she awoke, she was looking at a human man with a large build speaking funny words, but it was a different person than the hunter, and he seemed a bit nicer in his tone of speech. “Drana drana geddah, E femm dyga lyna uv oui yht daylr oui du ramb sa eh dra rihd vun dra crub.” (There there kitten, I will take care of you and teach you to help me in the hunt for the shop.) The man was a tanner and smoked meats to sell in the new village, he paid a high price for her as his hunting pet and treated her fairly for finding game in the forests. She always figured that her parents would find her someday as they knew the forest more than she did. Her father was an excellent tracker and her mother would not want her to come to harm. Though after 15 years of being with the man she called mister tanner, he became too old to care for her any longer.
”Jonie, I grow too old to enjoy the hunt or to keep this shop, and I cannot keep you here. Soon the hunters will come to take you from my side. Run to the forest where you can hide and never come back.” She pouted and would scare of the hunters coming, but she waited at his side and soon he would not wake up just as she had seen before. Days passed and soon men carrying weapons entered the front of the small shop and she ran away into the forest to hide.
She spent days of roaming and hiding, hunting the food she could eat to survive and kept furs to keep warm in the chilly nights. She finally smelled smoke and followed the scent, “mummy.. daddy...?” Her only find was a large place filled with lots of strange looking people inside. At a window, she would peek into the building and see odd things that made her curious with questions. She went around to the door and sneaked inside to ask people questions, maybe they have seen her mum and dad.
There were so many people and most talked funny as she listened, there wasn't many words that she could understand and they all talked so fast. As she tried to get a drink where a person was handing out drinks to the people, a man that looked like a big sturdy tree bellowed at her. He shouted things that she couldn't understand for the most part, but his simple words she heard and scared. “Sit!” with a point to a table top and as she tried to keep from any harm as her mother said would help her, she climbed to the tabletop and sat. “Stay cdemm yht damm sa ouin (still and tell me your) name, kitten!” Well she knew stay and name, so she stayed there and replied with a bit of ponder, “Jon-nie..?” Not sure if that was the right answer.
It seemed to upset the burly man even more when she said her name and he looked as if steam poured from his ears. “Oui fayn y lummyn, oui sicd pa y cmyja. Fru tu oui lymm sycdan?” (You wear a collar, you must be a slave. Who do you call master?) With a silent blink, she just looked to the man and did not know what to reply. It was then that he grabbed her by the throat and begin to terrify her as he still shouted unknown things. One word stuck out as it was easy to repeat in sound, “Krom.” And once that was said, he gave an evil grin and began to abuse her in a way that no man had ever done to her small core.
Soon after she would try to hide and sneak out of the place where men were mean, but a man wearing a mask found her and thought to abuse her as well and he shouted a same word and she would say it as it sounded. “Sla-ave..?” It was something people seemed to repeat often around her along with “Col-lar..?” She was passed around and abused by many men of many scarey types and sizes before she could manage to escape to hide again in the forest.
It was there that she hid and tried to live by herself from what she could hunt or find once again. The only thing she kept with her was her mother's collar on her neck and her father's dagger strapped to her thigh. Often she would pose to peasants as a wounded catgirl to get food or even a warm bed to sleep in, mostly barns. Once while sneaking into a cabin to find food, she was caught by a strong looking man and feared. Yet he offered her more food and drinks. He asked her name and she worried, “Jen-ny..” He smiled and replied simply, “Zeph.” But the name had a bit of trick to it, she repeated it, “Zep.” She saw him grin and he said she could visit anytime and sent her back to the forest. He was nice and reminded her of the man she called mister “tanner” for so many years.
She ran wild for months and while trying to fish from a creek, she was found by a sneaking dark elf. They fought and she resisted his tactics until a slip on the wet creek bank. There the dark elf pinned her down with a katana to her throat, he said strange words and then the same ones reached her ears. She scared at the large blade and then startled as he burnt some sort of mark onto her chest with a flash of light. “Pet” was the only word she caught in the fast pace of speech and she was then grabbed up and drug to the building where she recalled the mean men.
There the dark elf said what must have been his name when he locked her up in his room up the stairs, “Riz-zen.” and he would always hit her when she did something he did not like. He would keep constant watch over her while he let her downstairs to “play.” and wouldn't mind if the men abused her sexually. As long as he watched, she would remain a fright. Soon he became noticed as one who would hit her for nearly no reason, most times for her learning the language and saying it wrongly. A man with a winged back named Rei-Kai came to her defense after spotting Rizzen hitting her for calling him by the wrong name. It was after this that Rei-Kai would begin teaching Jonie how to fight in the town arena when Rizzen was gone.
Jonie grew stronger and more skilled with her blade and her speech improved as well, she begin to recall and understand what had been happening to her in the past and what Rizzen was doing to her now. Jonie grew more angry at things and the fire from the anger keep her going for days on end without sleep, resting when exhausted. By this time, she only trusted a few people that she had met Rei-Kai, Zeph, and Layne. Layne was an elf friend of Zeph's and seemed rather funny. On her 19th birthday, Zeph bought Jonie a new weapon, a longsword, and she learned how to use it with his help and Rei-Kai's.
With the fall, she wanted to visit her friends at the village she called home fore many years and she carried along her harvest of game for celebration dinner. Her return was met with the village being burned and raided. she quickly tried to help where she could but only managed to save 3 children who she sent off with a man to another town to find new homes. She began to fade her way into a burning temper and that started all of her mean pranks and troubled days. Her collar she removed and hid in the home she had paid for with her job money, and her father's words seemed to make more since, “Be tuff, and always try ta appear meaner than what ya are insyde. Never let them beat ya down without a good fight.” And that is what she intended on doing so that no one would ever want her again. She wanted to be by herself and never be bothered, she would soon get revenge on those that had made her so mad.
She soon became so troublesome that even Zeph and Layne grew angry with her, she would brave against things like a fool. Dragons and people who could kill her on a whim. But on a weary soul, a fight took her off guard. Another dark elf came to her tempered path and took her captive again and to a cave where he began to disable her fight by first taking her movement from her legs. Dangling her trapped in chains as he would beat her for even speaking. Her temper continued as it was all that would keep her alive. For 5 days he starved and beat her until she pleaded to go home.
To her pleas, he granted her captivity to her home, on the 5th day he knew she needed to be treated for her wounds or his prize would no longer be worth any value. He had her see a druid that lived closeby and made sure that the druid kept the visit a secret. Jonie was saved and yet only to be let to the dark elf Gazafan's mercy once again.
Like Rizzen, her would punish her for what he thought was wrong and continued to try breaking her spirit. Soon Jonie was treated like a child again, she was disciplined for behaving wrong or not using her manners. She was beginning to act as if she was finally breaking and he trusted her to wear the collar on her own. She added a bell to it inhopes that it would irritate him with its constant sound, but it did not.
After weeks of him constantly testing her, he allowed her to return to her work at the inn, but under demands that she return afterwards or be hunted down. Then like Rizzen, Gazafan became vacant for periods of time and Jonie gained back more of herself. Her prank was red pepper in the beds to remind him that she was still not his to control. It was a fatal mistake.
It lead to Gazafan punishing her and hanging her in chains once again, yet he prepared for her temper and simply let her exhaust herself with it. Then he took what he wanted to claim without any notion of care. He finally found out how to break her spirit and she nearly collapsed from the torment. She simply wanted someone to hold her and she had spent all of that time turning people away from her. Gazafan was all that remained.
She curled up with him in the bed and accepted her defeat. There was hope for better days as he promised. But the next day became one that would not have been by mistake.
She stumbled onto a white dragon attacking the inn, and tried to distract it away from the inn using a language she was gifted with once before by a dragon, yet when the dragon seemed to be responding, Jonie was caught in heavy crossfire of those attacking the dragon. She fell to her death just before the dragon fell to its death.
The last thing she remembered was the slow blink of the white dragon. What happened after that was viewed in many ways. The blast of the fireball that burned her alive, the dragon that crushed her underneath its fallen corpse, to the healing of her lifeless body before being sent to the temple. Yet after the blink, Jonie saw one thing..
”Mummy! Daddy!” She ran to her parent as she saw them, she couldn't help but dash over and hug them tight. She hadn't seen them since she was a small kitten. They has been killed in a hunting on thier village back then and she always thought that they would come back for her. They had come back!
”Yer back! I missed you! I wanna go home! I dunt wanna be here anymore.. they are mean.” She had been treated badly since she lost them, hunters trying to kill her to people trying to enslave her and the fall of the village she had grown up in. She cried the happiest of tears and was glad to see them again, like a child who was finally reunited after being lost.
Her mother stroked her head as her father held her tight. Moments later the both of them let her go and she saw that they were upset. She pouted and asked what was wrong. “Mummy.. whats wrong? Why do ya look sad?” It was then that her mother would tell her the truth that Jonie had been too young to know. Jonie sat and listened and would soon cry.
”Jonie, you can't stay with us, we are already gone to the great cats. You must go back to where you were and this time you can return with the truth.” Her mother began to explain more with her story and held no silly content to it. Jonie was old enough to learn the facts.
”Jonie, your father is my master, and he was when you were a kitten. You were born a slave to this world. It is what led us to the village in the forest. We wanted you to have the choice of which life to take, but Slave hunters came to find out about the village. It was a slave refugee camp, a hide out for parents to have thier children and eventually let them run free from slavery.” Jonie could only cry in disbelieve.
”When the hunters came, we got you to a safe place and left you the items you would need for either life. It is you that must choose your path in life, but your father and I knew that it would be hard for you to understand. And with that temper that you have gained, it will take someone tough to keep you happy.” Her mother only tried to help Jonie understand why things happened, but it would be up to Jonie to make her choice.
”In fact, I think you already have found someone that will take care of you, even when you get mad.” Her mother gave a light smile to Jonie and hoped that Jonie would think it over. Jonie's father simply listened and kept silent. It was his way for most times. Jonie pouted and then sniffled away her tears. “I wanna be tuff like daddy, I wanna fight and be strong!”
Her mother frowned and then her father spoke, “Jonie, ya have tried to be tuff and it made ya lose friends. It got ya into foolish trouble. Listen to yer mother, she knows what is best for ya right now.” He seemed stern in his voice and Jonie would cower back as he spoke.
She looked down and saw something shiny, easily distracted as always when her father was being stern. When she glanced back up, her parents waved as they began to fade from view. “Mummy wait! Come back!” She chased them until they were gone, then she sat and cried. She was alone and wanted someone to hold. Then the object blinked and she went to see the shining object again.
”ya just wait mummy and daddy.. ya'll see. I will be better so I can see yas again.” Upon her decision, the object became more evident, a white dragon scale that the dragon must have lost in the fight. She clinged to it and then saw someone standing there in the strange building.
He then shook her awake gently, “Jonie...?” She blinked and then sat up, “I'm awake.” He gave a smile and it cheered her heart, “Can you walk Jonie?” She was glad that he was there for her and gave a nod, “yep! All patched up!” She stood and took his hand, they traveled home and she finally learned what her mother tried to say. He was strong enough to make her happy even when she got mad, she would try to keep him happy and her parents as well. Zeph was like her father, stern and yet could discipline her when she was in trouble.
Yet she would keep her visit a secret, at least for a while. *giggle*========
In the winter of the new year, Jonie was forced to find an old friend to keep warm from the cold. Zeph recently moved to a new life that despised her, Jonie figured he would help welcome her there and treaded her way towards Zeph's home. The two talked over many things and Jonie was given a choice. She decided the final answer and she tries to find her real place and path as his slave and companion. -January 14 2004