West Harbor, like so many towns in the Mere and along the rocky shore of the Sword coast, has never really changed. Adahni Farishta looked out over it from the border of the swamp. The houses had their same lilting slope, the roofs hanging over the small stoops as though they were growing as gnarly and twisted as the juniper trees, which still grew around the borders of most of them. It was the dead of night, of course, and so the people who might have changed over the past eight years were all inside. She crept over the damp grass to the house she had called home at one point. She opened the door slowly. She would worry about explaining herself to her foster father in the morning... she needed the night to gather her thoughts. The last thing she needed was to wake the old man up in the middle of the night.

To her dismay, he was seated in front of the fire, wide awake, puffing on a pipe. The smell of it washed over her, somehow immensely comforting.

"I thought you might return," he said, without turning around, "One of these days."

"Well," she replied, "Here I am."

"Come here," he commanded, "Let me take a look at you."

She obliged, kneeling before him so that he could look her in the face. Daeghun took her chin in his small, slender hands. He tipped her head this way and that, his pale eyes taking it all in - the swollen mess that her right eye had become, the nasty split down her lower lip, the scars that peppered her shoulders and neck.

"A little worse for wear," he observed, "You've grown thin."

"I haven't had an appetite," she said.

"You're small," he said, "Too small for a girl – a woman, your age. You should eat something."

"My age," she snorted, "I'm a woman grown."

"In body perhaps," he said, "But your heart is still fifteen, isn't it?"

"Maybe," she said, "I suppose I could cut it out and count the rings..."

"You're being flippant with me," he said.

"Aren't you going to ask where I've been?" she demanded, "What I've been doing?"

"We both know you aren't ready to tell me just yet," said Daeghun, "For now, all I can do for you is offer the comforts of home. And when you're spirit has grown a little older, I can offer you an ear. There are clean sheets on your bed. You should have Brother Merring take a look at your face tomorrow."

She climbed the stairs – there were eleven of them, as she used to count when she was a child so that she could take them in the dark or with her eyes closed. Throwing herself down on her own bed, she fell into a sleep so deep, so dreamless, that when she awoke the next morning she thought that she'd blacked out. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She reached a hand up to her face, felt the pain of her eye. She still couldn't open it.

She put on the clothes in the wardrobe. They were a bit tighter around the shoulders and chest than they had been the last time she had worn them, but not by much. She charged down the stairs, her heart pounding with more energy than she had felt for as long as she could remember. She strode right past Daeghun, who was eating oatmeal at the kitchen table. She walked out into the bright fall morning, the pungent odor of the swamp striking her full in the nostrils in a way she had never noticed before. She was oblivious to the stares of the villagers, to whom she must have seemed an apparition, a ghost of a girl who had been eight years dead. She walked purposely, without looking anyone in the eye, towards the Starling house. She didn't even know if Lorne was still there, and if he wasn't, then his younger brother must be old enough to be in the militia.

She rapped on the door.

"Who is it?" called a young man's voice. To Adahni's astonishment, the strapping lad who opened the door was nearly twice the size of the pipsqueak she had left all those years before.

"Bevil?"

"Who are you? Is that... is that you, Addie? You're back?"

"Well I should hope so, because if I'm not then one of us is hallucinating and the other isn't real," she quipped.

"Where have you..."

"Don't even ask," she said, "I need a favor."

"A favor? You show up after eight years, and that's the first thing you say to me? What about why you left? What happened? And what in the hells happened to your eye?"

"I need to learn to fight," she said, "Not just brawl, I need to learn to really fight, and I need someone like you to teach me."

"What... wha... Addie, what is going on?"

"Nobody," she said, ignoring the question, "Is ever going to beat me up again, and if I run across anybody who has, I want to be able to give out worse than what I get."

"That's as good a reason as any, but for the gods' sake, come in and eat something. You look like a ghost!"

As she entered the Starlings' kitchen, saw the little ones at the table, smelled the bread that his mother was baking, she began to feel hungry. Retta Starling, ever the mother, made such a fuss over her that she felt worse about leaving her than her own father. She dutifully gulped down a bowl of porridge that was set in front of her and some bread with fresh butter. At first she felt queasy, but soon her stomach grew accustomed to it and she felt better, stronger than she could ever remember feeling before.

"Where's Lorne?" she asked, suddenly registering his absence.

"That's a question I had hoped to ask you," Retta replied, "He went to fight in the war, and we heard nothing from him since, not even a letter telling us the worst had happened. I don't presume to know where you went on your travels, but... did they take you to Luskan? To Neverwinter?"

"Mum, she doesn't want to talk about it," Bevil said, "If she'd seen hide or hair of Lorne she would have told us right away, right Addie?'

"Of course!" Adahni replied, "I'm sorry, Retta, I really... really don't want to speak of where I've been. Especially not in front of the children."

"Well whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into, you're out of it now," Retta said, "You should ask Brother Merring about that eye of yours. Sometimes they don't heal right. Wouldn't want to lose your sight now."

"I'll take here there now, Mum," Bevil said, "We'll stop by Tarmis' on the way, see if Amie can come and talk."

Bevil hurried her out the door, and arm, much larger and muscular than the one he'd had when she left, around her shoulders. "All right, Addie," he said, "I know you're being all mysterious about where you've been, but there's one question I have to know the answer to."

"Oh, Bevil, can't it..."

"Where's Dayven? Why didn't he come back with you?"

"I left him," Ada replied, "That's why I returned. He wanted to stay where we were, I didn't."

"Did he... he give you that?" Bevil reached up gingerly and touched the swollen mass that was her eye.

"You could say that," she said, laughing ruefully, "It'll be all right, though, I've had worse gifts from him."

"I knew that bastard was no good. Why didn't you listen to me? There hasn't been a day – single day that Amie or I hasn't wondered where you were, worried about you. And now... now you've shown up and you're worse than ever. Why... why didn't you listen to us? Any of us?"

"You know, Bevil," she replied, "I've spent a long time, most of my youth in fact, asking myself the same damn question. And frankly, I've come to the conclusion that I am stupid. I let that no good piece of orc crap push me around for years, and now I'm through, and nobody is ever going to push me around like that again."

"There's the spirit," Bevil said after a long silence. He had decided that being lighthearted about the whole matter might make it a bit better, "Now drop and give me twenty."

"Twenty what?'

"Push-ups."

"What ?"

"Get on the ground and give me twenty. Now!" he barked, his voice taking on the timbre of his own captain.

Dutifully, Adahni dropped to the ground, her hands sliding in the dewy grass, and gave him twenty, struggling all the way. Twice, she could not longer support herself, and fell face-first into the ground. But, at the end, she rose, wiped the grime off her hands, and grinned. So there was something of the old Adahni left in this women, Bevil thought with satisfaction, she wasn't there yet, but she could be brought back.

"Good," he declared, "I'll talk to Georg. You'll start running drills with us tomorrow."

"I... what?"

"Well, you said you wanted to learn to fight. That's how you learn to fight," he said.

"I mean... not like that..."

"Well that's what I can teach you," he said, "Anyway, we need someone else on our team for the Harvest Brawl."

"That's not for another whole year," she protested, "Anyway, I'm a little old for that nonsense, anyway."

"No you're not," Bevil said, "You're only twenty-three, same age as me and Amie."

"I feel too old," she said, "Plus aren't the Mossfeld's going out for it? Last thing I need is another fist in my face."

"Addie, we dreamed about this, don't you remember?" he said, "That year that Cormick won, you wanted to be just like him. We dreamed about it for so long... and then you left, and now you're back, and it's just in time, you can't not do it now..."

"That's what you dreamed?" she sighed, "That's it? The Harvest Cup?"

"Why, what did you dream?" he responded, a little annoyed, "And did you find it in whatever far land you traveled to?"

"Point taken," she replied. She looked at him. He was still hoping for an answer this time, she could tell. It would have been so easy to loose her tongue... no. She had lost her family, her looks, her innocence. The only thing remaining to her was her pride, and she was not about to let that vanish on her as well.

That night she sat in Lazlo's tavern, lazily smoking a pipe and pretending to listen as Bevil and Amie nattered on about things she didn't really care about. As expected, most of the people she had grown up with were married, with four or five little ones, or single like Bevil and Amie and lived with their parents or masters. She sipped her ale, nonchalantly, watching two of the Mossfeld brothers arm wrestle. Each one of them had look thirty since they were twelve. No change there.

"So," Amie asked, trying her best to sound off-hand, "What ever happened to Dayven?"

"I used him up and threw him away," Adahni replied, smirking.

"Did he marry you?"

"Ididn't marry him," Adahni said. That was a lie, of course, most of the few words she had spoken to her friends that day had been lies or half-truths or some mongrel child of the two.

"So what have you done? For money and stuff? Where were you living?"

"I lived above a tavern, in a village, I won't tell you its name because you wouldn't recognize it," she said, "I played the harp and sang songs for drunks for a living." Truth. Lie. Lie. Half truth.

"So play something," Bevil said, "I don't remember you being any sort of prodigy."

"I'm not," she said, "As I said. For drunks."

"Well then," he said, "Let's become drunks, and maybe then you'll play for us."

Four or five rounds later, Amie was red in the face. Bevil had traded words with Ward Mossfeld, but they'd managed to patch things up rather quickly. Adahni wasn't even feeling drunk.

"Let's have a song, Addie," Bevil finally blustered, coming back hefting three full steins in one burly arm.

"I found a harp!" Amie chimed in, "Come on, play one!"

"Fine," Adahni said, smiling slightly, "All right." She took the harp that Amie had borrowed from behind the bar. She played a couple of notes. It was finer than the one she had played before, better made, the strings made of spun silver instead of cat gut.

"What kind of song?" she asked.

"A drinking song!" Amie and Bevil shouted together, joined by five or six others. Adahni shook her head. Her eye was paining her something terrible.

"Come on then," one of the Mossfelds shouted, "Let's hear it."

"All right, all right," she conceded. She struck up a melody, still very conscious of the pain.

"I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home!

And if you don't like me, then leave me alone,

I eat when I'm hungry, I drink when I'm dry, and if the moonshine don't kill me, I'll live 'til I die..."

The song had five or six thousand verses, but Adahni forgot most of them, fortunately. She was enjoying herself, she found. Her eye didn't hurt her nearly as much, the pain was receding like ripples on a pond.

"Ada!" exclaimed Amie, "Your eye!"

"You just notice?" Adahni laughed, "It's been like this all day."

"No," Amie replied, "It's... it's getting better."

Adahni put her hand up to feel it, and instead of the mottled bruise that had been, she felt her own eyelashes. She blinked. She shut her left eye. She could see.

"How in the hells...?" she breathed.

"Ada, do you have any dragon blood in you?" Bevil asked.

"Dragon blood?" Adahni said, "Hells, could be. Not like Daeghun's terribly forthcoming with that sort of information." She thought back, to the last place she had slept. The flames licking the walls around her, sparks flying everywhere, the screams of the people trapped inside the inn. And yet, she had emerged unscathed. Not a blister.

"Sometimes people with dragon blood can do that," said Amie, "Tarmis thinks they're stupid, of course."

"Really," Adahni replied, "I dunno, seems like a useful trick."

"What did you do?" asked Bevil.

"I didn't do anything," she replied, "I just... it was hurting, and then I played, and now it's gone, apparently."

"Oooh, magic," hissed Wyl Mossfeld, "She's a witch!"

"No, that'd be your mother," she retorted, "Here, let me see your arm, Bevil."

Bevil extended his arm. There was a deep gash there, marred by the stitches that someone, himself in all likelihood, had used to mend it.

"I've been a moonshiner for many a year, I spent all me money on whiskey and beer..." Before her eyes, the wound closed, and there was nothing but smooth skin where it had been. Not even a scar.

"Well that's useful," he remarked, opening and closing his hand, running his fingers over where it had been, "Just as good as if Merring had done it himself."

"Lovely!" exclaimed Amie, "You're a natural. Don't tell Tarmis, he'll give you one of his lectures on the benefits of studying the arcane and how irresponsible it is to use talents untrained."

"Like I'd speak to Tarmis on my own," she scoffed, "I'll tell Daeghun. Well, he'll see my eye and I guess I'll have to say something." She sighed and sat back in her chair. "Interesting, very interesting."

"That's all you can say? Interesting?" Amie said, "That's a marvelous talent! You should study it more!"

"I will," said Adahni, "I never imagined a drinking song would be so useful."

She returned home that night, a little tipsy, but nothing to be embarrassed about. She ignored Webb Mossfeld's invitations up to his family's hayloft, and laughed as Amie stumbled so badly that Bevil had to sling her across his back and carry her back to Tarmis's house. She shut the door as quietly as she could behind her, but again. Daeghun was at his place by the fire and registered her entrance.

"So I see you saw Merring," he observed.

"Actually," she said, "I didn't." She related what had occurred in the tavern.'

"Interesting," he said, "Very interesting. That's a useful talent you have there. I suggest you explore it."

"I'm joining the militia," she said.

"Good," he said, "You need some muscle on your bones. And I dare say that your next lover will think twice about damaging that pretty face of yours."

She felt her cheeks go hot.

"How did you know?"

"How couldn't I know?" he asked, calmly, "You were quite aware of what he was when you decided to run away with him, as was I."

"You didn't try to stop me," she relied.

"I knew it would have been of no use. Trust me, Adahni, I've learned a thing or two in this past century. I've met dozens of teenagers, and I know how they function. I had just hoped that you would have realized your mistake a little sooner."

"I did," she replied, "Do you think it was easy, getting away from him?"

"I didn't say that it was," he replied, "And you're back, at least for now, and I dare say there's a bit more sense in you than there was when you were fifteen."

"I should hope so."

"You should go to bed now. I can smell the ale on your breath. And if you're to be in the militia, it's best not to start drills with a headache."

"Yes, father," she drawled, but took his advice and again, climbed the stairs into her old room. It was smaller than she had remembered it, but cozy. She curled up under the blankets and was soon snoring. Her sleep, though, was troubled. The screams echoed through her dreams, flame dripped like water through the cracks in the ceiling. She felt its heat, but no pain. She saw the charred carcasses of those she had been entertaining only hours before. But she was alive. She was alive, and she could still escape.