Eliya Bunch

Eliya Bunch tapped her feet on the bongos beneath them, each step being echoed by the clapping crowd who had gathered in the dark pub to hear her perform and were singing and swaying along.  In her hands, she deftly strummed her beloved lute, battered and cracked though it was.  She was singing a song about the sea and how it longed to reach its love, the great Sword Mountain, but the river blocked its path.  She had reached the last verse when the sea eventually gathers a great amount of strength and crashes over the land and river until it reaches the great Sword mountain, engulfing and banishing the river forever.

It was a particularly good choice for the town of Phandalin as the great Sword Mountain loomed over everyone and everything there, it was the last habitable area before the slopes were too steep.  They had only bothered to build a town wall and watchtowers to the South, away from the mountain, as none could pass the other route.

She finished the song and scanned the crowd for her parents.  There were smiling faces throughout the pub, the people shouting suggestions on what to sing next included the blustering landlord who had been so resistant earlier about letting her sing because of how young she was.  But her parents had not yet returned to collect her so she started the next song about a gnomish boy who climbed into the stars.

Eliya had spent most of her eleven years performing anywhere that their family wagon could take them to around Faerun.  Every place it was the same, her parents would spread the word in a town that a child prodigy had arrived, who could act as an entire band.  It was true, she was skilled in bongos, lute and lyre and had a clear, strong voice. She had also a grasp of a variety of languages as you could hardly travel the land without working Elvish, Common, Gnomish and Halfling.  Wherever they went, people would stop to hear her perform and her parents would wander the town looking for the next place to travel to.  It made sense that she should perform in parallel with their searching so that they could be as efficient a family unit as possible.  Years ago she had asked why they couldn't just stay in a place for a couple of days until it was explained to her that people got bored.  They might be generous and friendly today but it would not take them long to move their interests elsewhere at which point the entire family income was at risk.  She understood but a part of her longed to sleep somewhere other than the rattling back of a wagon.

Eliya realised that she needed a comfort break so took her leave for a couple of minutes, strapping her instruments to her back as they were far too valuable to leave alone.  She was pointed to an outdoors bathroom through the door at the back of the pub.  The small bathroom building was overlooked by the servants entrance to several of the merchant's houses.  It was quite cramped in the town, houses had been built in any space available, although these wealthier houses disguised the additional floors much better than the poorer accommodation by the town walls.

Before heading back outside, she looked in the mirror, something she was doing much more often as she got older.  What looked back at her was a long, stern face with bright green eyes and pointed ears signalling her elvish heritage.  However her freckled skin and the way her dark blonde hair tried to escape every clip referenced her human side.  Her elvish father and human mother had met due to a shared love of music, something that they had passed on to their only daughter.  They had left together the day that they met and had been travelling ever since.

Eliya was stepping back into the pub when a strange sound made her stop and whirl around.  She was standing metres away from a servant and two other figures who were huddled together, closely.  The servant could have been having a hushed conversation except for one crucial detail.  He had a dagger sticking out of his chest.  The strange sound that she had heard was the gurgling last breaths of the man, whose entire body would have slumped if it weren't being held up by the man holding the dagger into him.

Eliya stepped backwards as quietly as she could.  She knew it was a terrible idea to make a noise but all the two figures needed to do was to look slightly to the left and they would see her.  She managed to retreat into the shadows and, from there, into the pub without them seeing her.  It appeared that the bloodlust or the noises of the dying man had distracted them.  The inside of the pub could not have been more different to the horror of what she had left behind.  Her breath was too loud, the pumping of her heart was more frantic than even the most jolly of her repertoire.  Eleven years old and she had just seen her first murder and everything had changed.  She really needed a plan and quickly.  She went back to the stool that she had been sat on, her father's cap was still there, full of coins.  It wasn't the most money that she had made in an evening but it would do.  She picked up the cap and placed the money in her rucksack.

'Are you not going to do any more songs?' asked the barman, gesturing at the empty seat.  The other patrons look inquisitively at her.

'Alas, no.' she said, with forced bravado.  'I have just seen my parents and it is time to leave.  I bid you all a good night!'

And with that, she left, avoiding any further conversation with those who were trying to convince her to sing one more song.  Once she was outside, she took a quick look to see if she could see her parents.  She could not, nor was there anyone else.  She longed to slump into a corner and sob but knew she had to keep moving and get as far away as she could from what had just happened however she could not stop the tears from falling down her face nor her breaths from becoming ragged.

Everything had changed.  She had seen death and that was not the worst thing.  Her brain hurt from the knowledge.  She had not lied to the landlord.  She had just seen her parents.  Her father, tall and green eyed, with his dagger thrust into an innocent man's chest.  Her mother holding a bag of stolen goods in the light which was too dark to show her freckles.  The features that Eliya had just been admiring in the mirror were so very different on those murderous faces.

It was all starting to make sense, why her parents disappeared when she performed.  She would often draw in the whole town, the child prodigy so well marketed during the day.  How easy it was to then go and gather the goods.  No wonder they were always on the move.  As outsiders they would - rightly - be the first suspected by the militia.  She was walking as far as she could and then realised that she had nowhere to go.  The townspeople seemed nice but no one was going to want to care for some eleven year old daughter of evil.  She looked around, racking her already exhausted mind for a solution, and then she looked up.  The great Sword Mountain stood beyond, beckoning.  It would have caves, berries and some small animals to hunt.  On some of the longer journeys between towns, her parents had taught her how to live off the land.

With one final look at the town of Phandalin and the lost place of her innocence, she started on her journey to her new home.  At least, she thought wryly, it would mean that she would not be sleeping in a moving wagon.