Snippet #2653239

Vadania snarled as she rose to her feet. How dare this human - no, this child - speak to her in such a way. She glared at him with as much venom as she could muster and hissed through gritted teeth.

"You should be more respectful of your elders, human dog." she sneered. "You might wake up with your family jewels stolen - along with your gold."

She proceeded to spit in the human's face and retreat to the back of her cell to sulk. Vadania had seen those eyes before. They were the eyes of the highborn and middle-class that always looked down upon her. Though the matron tried to shield Vadania and her orphan-siblings, Vadania could catch glimpses of the rich's scorn against her and her kind. They were without lineage - casteless - and barely worth their space in the world. Vadania saw those eyes more and more after she left the home.

She hated them.

To them - she was the filth of the streets. After all, what good were you without families, titles, and lands? She had none of those things, and so she was less than nothing. When she resorted to theft and murder to survive, she graduated from revulsion to outright hate in their feeble minds, but what did they know?

They didn't know the gnawing pain of a week without food.

They didn't know the shivering cold of winter without a bed.

They didn't know the nausea or fever of plague.

They didn't know the numbness of thinking every sunrise might be your last.

They didn't know the horror of waking up to find your lover's neck sliced open beside you.

They didn't know... nor did they care. Why should they? She was trash.

A thing.

But this thing was not fragile. It was a poisoned blade forged in fires of suffering and tempered through hardship. It - she would not be broken.

Not before I can slit his throat in his sleep...

Vadania was far too distracted by her dark thoughts to notice the sound of a stone being tossed - or to sense the shadowed figure down the hall.