Having been captured five days earlier, Willow now occupied the back corner of the wagon, tied about the wrists, gagged and covered in a layer of filth that was the work of many months without a bath. She watched the city pass her by, noting the transition from the glitz of the main ways to the shadows of the unseen, the setting sun unable to break over the shrugging roofs to touch the tiny streets below. This city was like so many before it, built atop the bones of a former civilization, the modern inhabitants never taking a moment to remember those that came before. The wealthy made their lives on the main streets, screaming towards their final breaths with a wanton desire to destroy themselves. The poor lived their pitiful existence in the corners of alleyways, at the back of brothels, under the very feet of the dying rich without ever knowing a moment of luxury. It was the way of all society to ignore those with no influence; however it would have been a grave mistake to ignore the slave wagon picking its way through the filthy backstreets of this city, and one of the wretched ones within.

She let her eyes wander over the others in the wagon, noting with amusement the way they huddled together, backs towards her,, and she smiled at their discomfort. Admittedly, she never should have threatened to slaughter everyone in the wagon, that had been what prompted the Slave Driver to gag her and what made her wagon companions steal glances at her filled with malice. She waved her bound hands in a jaunty little salute at one of the larger men currently sending daggers her way and snorted when he turned back to whisper to his wife. They had been captured before she had and were witness to her moment of brief insanity, but none could have understood her true reasons for being so outraged.
 
Willow was uncomfortable around mortals, to be sure. She had spent years hiding in caves, eking out a miserable existence away from any social contact and had only ventured in to the local town for supplies. Winter was coming, and she had meant to stock up on the few essential items she could not scavenge from the earth, but had found herself attracted to a backend tavern. She longed for warmth and comfort, and while the tavern was far from respectable, it hummed with humanity and crackled with a fire at the back warming her the moment she stepped through the door. She knew what she must have looked like to the mortals, filthy as she was, barely able to remember how to ask for ale, sitting alone in a corner waiting for the bar wench to deliver her one afforded luxury. The moment the brew slipped past her lips, she knew something was wrong, and soon found herself rushing for the back of the tavern, urgently attempting to get her stomach to vomit up the poisonous liquid. As soon as the bile left her mouth, something had crashed across the back of her skull and sent her face first into the muddy alley. A blow to the back of the head should not have incapacitated her, nor should ale have turned poisonous her in stomach, but whatever the Slave Driver had placed inside her beverage had caused her body to shut down, effectively attacking her from within. The great Willow had been captured by means of a large stick and a pharmacists concoction.
 
When she had awoken, bound in the back of the wagon, and realizing her fate was to be sold off as a slave, she flew in to a rage. She realized quickly that she could not storm as she craved, because mortals would speak of her acts, and if the wrong ears heard the tales she would be discovered, her very existence revealed to those that must never find her. She had survived for so long by being discreet, by hiding within the mouths of caves, and to give herself away now, so close to the end of her sentence would be an act of foolishness. So, she had accepted the binds and gag without striking the entire caravan down with a few well placed words, choosing, instead, to simmer in her corner.

The wagon squeaked to a stop near a tiny shack, and Willow watched the Slave Driver began to speak to a tiny mouse of a man from between two slabs of boards. She gathered they had been brought to a slave auction house, had been purchased at a base fee, and were to be sold that night to whomever had the coin. She had listened to the transaction with mild interest, using the conversation to pick up the nuances of the common language here, the denomination of the funds given and updating her vocabulary. The handlers came to the wagon then, swinging open the doors and cajoling the other prisoners outside and in to the tiny shack that appeared to be attached to a very large stage facing away from their current position. Finally, she was alone and had a moment to consider the likelihood of being able to escape unnoticed before one of the handlers stuck his head in the doors and grimaced.
 
“Come on now, she-devil. You’re gonna be a pain in the ass, aren’t ya? One week havin’ to smell you wasn’t enough punishment, now you’re gonna give me trouble, eh?” He spat something disgusting from his mouth onto the floor of the wagon as he lumbered inside to peer down at her. She looked up in to his eyes, sensing his lower intelligence, knowing she could easily best him with wit or brute strength, but gave nothing away as she let him try to figure her out. He sighed, grabbed the front of Willow’s shirt and heaved her to her feet, propelling her out of the wagon and dropping her to the ground 3 feet below before jumping down behind her. He grabbed the back of her arm and pulled her towards the shack, but was stopped by the sudden appearance of the mouse-man.
 
“What on earth is that?” He asked, his voice dripping with contempt as he regarded Willow with a look akin to horror.
 
“Oh, come off it. She’s just dirty, is all, needin’ a bath. Besides, no one’s gonna care what she looks like, ‘cept the whore houses and this one won’t be going to one of them unless you want to have a Madame in here looking for her money back. This girl’s a runner, and you best to just wash her down, tie her up and sell her fast,” the Slave Driver stood off to the side, near his wagon, oozing nonchalance as he leaned against his rig while picking his teeth with a piece of wood he’d peeled from the boards.
 
“It’s female?! I never would have guessed under all this filth. Don’t you dare put her in my housing facilities!” His voice rose to a high pitched squeal as the handler moved towards the shack once more, and Willow couldn’t help but snicker as the mouse image reinforced itself more the longer she watched him. “Toss her in that trough over there, I’ll get her some soap and take that damn gag out of her mouth! Her face is going to be all bruised and then I’ll never sell her!” He scurried in to the tiny shack, as Willow was suddenly sent flying through the air to be slung over the handler’s shoulder and carried to the trough where he unceremoniously plopped her in. He reached down, tore the gag from her mouth and held it between two fingers as if it might contain something infectious before returning to his boss.
 
Willow worked her jaw for a moment, grimacing at the freezing water soaking through her clothing as she held her hands out of the water. Wet rope would freeze and scrape her skin raw, and while she healed faster than she could ever admit to in mortal company, it did not mean she relished the idea of pain. The Slave Driver mounted the wagon, the handlers climbed atop their horses, and the small caravan departed without a glance back as the auctioneer arrived with a bar of soap and towel. He tossed the soap in to the trough beside Willow who held out her hands to him, hoping for the binds to be removed so she could actually bathe correctly. Months of hard work trying to become unrecognizable, all for nothing now. The auctioneer laughed at her as he turned his back and headed for the shack, thought better of it, and turned to watch her bathe. She growled her frustration at the little man, before taking the soap and going to work on the second skin that was her putrid filth.
 
Once clean, she stood from the trough, now filled with a watery mud substance, kicked it over so it would empty and faced the auctioneer, her face grim. He approached her with the towel, handing it to her on an outstretched arm before letting himself truly look at her. He gasped as she snatched the towel from him, drying herself briskly to return sensation to her frozen skin, as the auctioneer moved far too close to Willow for her comfort. She looked up at him with a threat in her eyes but for once the victim of that murderous gaze was too amazed by what he saw to step back.

Willow was obviously tall for a mortal, reaching about 6’ 4”, with long blood red hair swinging down her back to curl just under her waist. The well rounded body did nothing to hide her liquid grace, but it were the eyes that had the auctioneer speechless. An unusual hue of true violet, with the metallic silver birthmarks that began over the inside of each eyebrow, etching the finest lacework over the brows, down the temples to swirl under her eyes across the cheekbones. Her particular birthmark ceased its tantalizing progression before reaching the upsweep of her nose and caused her to have the appearance of tiny wings captured on her nearly translucent skin with her eyes as the main body. Quickly becoming uncomfortable with this blatant appraisal, she waved a hand in front of his face and he snapped out of the awestruck moment with a look of unease.
 
    “If you are what I think you are then I should not be auctioning you off,” he spoke softly, afraid to look upon her now and Willow stopped drying herself to stare at this mouse of a man with a new respect.
 
    “Don’t worry yourself with what you think. I am nothing but a slave,” she spoke, the first words since she had threatened to slaughter a wagon full of freshly captured slaves, and her voice was like gravel that she coughed to clear away. The auctioneer did not look at her as he turned and went back in to the shack and she had a moment where she wanted to turn and run from this place, run from the little man who seemed to know her true form. She turned to leave, uncertain at this sudden appearance of good fortune, dropping the binds at her feet once her decision had been made, and came face to navel with a giant of a man. She looked up, and up, her neck bending to an uncomfortable angle to take in the Halfbreed before finally allowing herself to step back so she could take him in without injuring herself. He was Golithian, as evident by his mountain-like physique, but clearly he was a Halfbreed due to his two eyes, single mouth and reduced size. While still at least 4 feet taller than herself, with giant boulders for hands, tree stumps for legs and a chest so broad Willow was certain she could have curled up and slept quite comfortably on it, he was definitely not someone she wanted to be face to face with in a mortal city.
 
    “I was hoping you wouldn’t be going nowhere, Lady,” the Halfbreed rumbled, clearly attempting to keep his voice low but unable to do anything about the vibrations he emanated with every word.
 
    “Oh, well, of course not. I was just checking to see if I’d forgotten anything,” she rushed out, attempting to put on a face of pure innocence, while still trying to discern how he had snuck up behind her without causing the dilapidated shack to collapse from the earthquakes his huge feet should have produced.
 
    “Good. Because my bossman can’t have you leaving on him, and I’m here to make sure you don’t go nowhere,” he rumbled and Willow cocked her head up at him in a moment of confusion. Golithian’s were highly intelligent people, and she couldn’t quite understand what must have happened to cause this poor creature to be of a lower intelligence than even a stupid mortal. Perhaps fate had not been so kind to this creature, but he would still be a formidable opponent to get by if she decided to take her chances.
 
    “Well, I’m certainly not going to be going anywhere other than back in the shack. Your bossman will be most assuredly selling me this very evening,” she spoke quickly, backing towards the shack, wondering how no one had appeared yet to check what was causing the shack to shake as if in gale force winds.
 
    “Oh, that’s not my bossman. My bossman is here to buy you,” he laughed but quickly stopped himself when he noticed how everything around him was affected by his rumbling. This gave Willow pause in her hasty retreat to the shack and stood facing him, hands on hips.
 
    “Wait, you work for someone who wants to buy me?” Willow asked, her anger rising at the notion that some slave owning bastard sent his Halfbreed to ensure that she was available for him to purchase. The Halfbreed nodded, looking mildly concerned at the anger evident on her face, but Willow wasn’t going to let this happen. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t allow herself to be purchased, it went against everything inside of her very nature to be owned, and even if she knew it would only be temporary until she had managed her escape, it still made her want to retch with revulsion.
 
    “Lady, it’ll be ok. Bossman is a nice guy. You be ok with him. Now just go back in there and don’t be tryin’ nothin’ cause I really don’t want to…” he paused, seeing her straighten her back and face him with a challenge in her eyes.
 
    “Don’t want to what? I do not care if your ‘bossman’ is a nice guy. Purchasing his fellow man is wrong, and you helping him is equally as damnable! Your ancestors would be ashamed of you, Halfbreed, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Willow let her voice raise to a good yell before narrowing her eyes and slamming her foot in to his kneecap, dislocating it with a resounding crack before sending her fist in to his other knee with astonishing speed. The Halfbreed roared in pain as he collapsed forward, causing Willow to have to leap out of the way of the giant’s trajectory, but missing his boulder of a fist coming down to smash her upside the head.

She flew in to the overturned trough, her face exploding in pain as her head whipped around with a horrifying snap that left her lying in the trough like a crumpled rag doll. Any mortal would have been instantly dead from the snapping of the vertebrae, but Willow was already attempting to twist her head back into its proper position, then snapping her forearm back in to place, before pushing her jaw back into the sockets. The jaw bone itself was shattered and there wasn’t much manual manipulation she could do to help speed its recovery, but she was determined to use the trough as cover until most of the damage had been healed.  She would have cursed, but was unable to form words without the bottom half of her mouth functioning, and when she crawled out of the trough she was amazed to see the Halfbreed getting to his feet as well. Most beings on this realm could easily be put down by taking out their knees, and she had thought even something as massive as a Golithian would be useless if he could not stand, but perhaps this Halfbreed was part Elvin? They were the only creatures on this realm that healed like she, but this possibility made it even more unlikely he was as dimwitted as he appeared to be.

None of this conjecture was of importance at the moment as Willow was certain any second mortals would arrive to see her bones mending themselves together and her chances for escape would be eliminated. She turned on her heel, about to make a break for the alleyway behind the shack when the auctioneer appeared holding a crossbow aimed at her abdomen. She let her jaw fall open in shock and looked about for the Halfbreed. He was gone, as if he’d never been there in the first place, but the pain of a shattered jaw bone was still etched in her recent memory. She held up her hands in a gesture of compliance and realized too late that she should have still been bound.

   
Willow was tied to a beam inside the shack, made to listen to a verbal siege about the dangers of attempting to escape and then abandoned to her companions from the slave wagon. Oh, how she loathed mortals, especially mortals un-tethered to beams who decided to spend the remainder of their relatively free moments assaulting her with words and brave moments of physical proximity.