Dezi the half-elven refugee

Dezi sat on the ground with her hands around her knees and her back resting against a crumbling stone wall, staring off into the evening and trying to decide what to do. The young woman, hardly more than a girl, had only a small bundle of belongings and was clad in a faded and patched blue dress obviously meant for someone younger than she was, the skirts on her form almost scandalously short. She had long legs and a slim, delicate figure, and it was obvious how she'd obtained it, with her slightly pointed ears and platinum hair marking her as a half-elf. Her kind had never really fit in anywhere, though she'd found a village willing to shelter and feed her, first in an orphanage, and when she'd become too old for that, at a run-down inn in exchange for cleaning and odd jobs.

The place had been raided by savage beastmen, however, and she'd fled in the general panic. When she returned a couple days later she found the king's soldiers converting the village into a fort. The beastmen, they said, had been under the employ of an enemy king, who would soon mount a larger attack. Most of the survivors had already been evacuated, and the few that were left no longer wanted a halfie underfoot, pretty as she was.

She could go back to the remains of the village and ask the soldiers to look after her, though she knew what they'd ask in return. Entering in the woods and trying to fend for herself there had crossed her mind, but her kind were especially despised by the purebred elves, and there were...other things that lurked in the deep forest as well. Heading down the road, across the rolling plains, to try and find another settlement and possibly beg meals along the way seemed like a good possibility, until she thought of the beastmen who might still be lurking nearby, or orcs, or bandits, or...the fact was, she was a young woman alone with no protection and anywhere she went, anything at all might happen to her.