A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)

That was strange Krista thought slowly, as her reasoning was foggy from the hits she had taken to the head. One eye was swelled shut, but she could still partially see out her right eye. An old woman was yelling at the group, who had been beating her.

The old woman reached for something at her waist, which she then poured into the outstretched hand of the field master. He grunted something and moved off. The old woman motioned to another man, who then approached her and picked her up and slung her slim frame across his shoulder. The pain of her abused body being moved caused pains to shoot throughout her and she eagerly welcomed the comforting warmth of unconsciousness, as it surrounded her with its dreamless cloak.

There was warmth and pain, but Krista tried to focus on the warmth more than the pain. Warmness enveloped her. She couldn't remember a time in recent memory, when she had been so warm and cozy.

She heard rustling near her and her eye popped open defensively. She was in a room dominated by a roaring fire in the hearth next to her. The floor was made of old worn boards and she lay on some sort of a pallet of blankets on top of the boards. The sound she had heard had come from the hunched figure of a woman working over a table that ran the length of the small room. There was a window across from her and it was open and through it Krista could see stars in the night sky. Feeling the need to escape she began to move her legs into a position to spring towards the open window. The pain of moving her legs was excruciating and she must have made some noise that alerted the woman over the by the table of her consciousness.

The woman turned and she briefly recognized the old woman from the street, before she crammed her one good eye shut. She heard more rustling and then steps that drew closer and closer to her. She tried not to cringe as the steps drew close to her, but she did.

Thunk!

Krista flinched hard causing more pain to herself, but it wasn't because she had been hit. Peering through her eyelashes she saw a big bowl sitting on the floor in front of her nose, with steam rising off of it slowly into the air. The steamy smoke drifted over to her and her stomach began to rumble telling her just how long it had been since she had eaten. Her hand started reaching out for the bowl, with a mind of its own when caution got the best of her.