I remember a beautiful day.
My name is Narinya. I was with my friend Gigi, the shepherdess while she looked after her flock of sheep on the hills near the coast of the island where we lived.
We were just daydreaming together when she suddenly sat up and pointed out to sea.
“Look, there are ships, lots of them”.
When I looked to where she was pointing, I could only see what looked like dark spots on the horizon but Gigi had really good eyesight. I knew that if she said there were a lot of ships, then there were a lot of ships, which could mean trouble.
So we both started herding the sheep towards the town on the coast Blethwine.
When we got there we went straight to the town square to tell the Marshalier about the ships, who immediately started ringing the warning bell. Then whole place came to life
The Marshalier sent riders out into the country to warn people and the warning beacon on the headland was lit.
I could start to see the ships more clearly now, there were so many of them that it was like trying to count a great a flock of sheep, with the largest group heading down the coast towards the main port of Falla.
Everyone knew what the fleet of ships meant of course.
They were from the country of Naaize but everyone just called them the Power, who supported by their church had come to rob us, although they would say that it was there right to take what they called their taxes from us non believers of the islands of the Emerald Sea.
They called us “splaa” which means; rough, ill made, sea nomads, smugglers pirates and non-believers.
They would take are animals, crops and money as payment for their taxes as well as are people sometimes too. Indenture they called it but it really was no better than slavery.
Not all of these people would return. Those that did were called ” the broken people”, because they returned as strangers to themselves as well as to their families because of what they had suffered,
The name of my island was Pelt, which was the largest island in the Emerald Sea with the biggest population, so the cowards that are enemies were dealt carefully with us because we had given them a bloodied nose or two in the past.
But this fleet was the biggest we had ever seen.
Gigi held on to me as we stood in the middle of her flock of sheep in the chaos of the panic that was beginning to break out around us in the town square.
She shook me really hard because she knew I was in another place altogether.
“This could be the big one Narinya. The one people have been talking about, do you understand me”.
“I understand you. We are alone. My parents are dead and you never knew who your parents were. We need to get to safety.
I think we should head inland towards the Toros mountains to wait for things to sort themselves out while we keep ourselves out of harms way, don`t you?”
She looked at her flock sheep being guarded by her two dogs before she answered.
“I know that you see things I don`t. So I am going to trust in your intuition as I have done before.
You are right. We are friends who only have each other so lets start the journey to Toros while we still can.