Someone she knows

Cold water to the face shocked her awake. Salt, she tasted. From the bay. She spat it out then shook her head to throw the strands of raven black hair from her eyes.. and regretted it immediately. Her head HURT! Jennai cried out involuntarily.

"On your knees," someone said. The brutal voice seemed familiar and she shivered. But maybe it was just the water they had doused her with.

Rough hands took her arms and pulled her to her knees.

"Poor little Jennai," the voice mocked. "faithful as a dog Jennai.."

"You!" Jennai hissed.

"Is that any way to speak to your dear brother?" The man knelt forward into the light. His handsome face was marred by a savage scar from chin to ruined eye. Her work, and her only regret was in not smearing the blade in something unclean, so perhaps it would have killed him.

"You sold me."

Her brother sounded bored. "Yes, yes, and you escaped. And the troll demanded his money back. With menaces. By law you're still mine."

He was only her half-brother in truth. Jennai had never decided what species his mother must have been. Something truely repugnant, she had long ago decided.

A cool clear voice intruded. "Will you not introduce me to my stepdaughter, son?" A pale woman stood to one side, out of the light. The most beautiful woman that Jennai had ever seen. Surely too young to be her brother's mother. Why hadn't Jennai noticed her standing there before? Perhaps her eye had mistook her for a marble statue and skipped over her. Dispite her beauty Jennai felt her gaze slide off her, leaving only the memory of the dream of beauty. So perfect Jennai could not hold the picture of her stepmother in her mind.

Jennai shook her head once more to clear it, before she rememberd the earlier pain. But as the headache drove like glass into her brain, for just a moment she saw something different.