And it starts.....

A small hand grips the rim of the well as a small cry echoes through its walls, the brick layed thick and solid despite the erosion from rising and falling water over the years. She is wet and cold and her legs have ceased to aid her from treading water for so long. The minutes had turned to hours. The hours had turned to days. The darkness had kept her from seeing the change of light and all passage of time was a blur.

It had seemed still like the first minutes of her being thrown into the well to die after the woman had had enough of the young girl. The other small hand grasps the edge of the well, her arms now shivering rapidly from the constant clawing up the wall almost unable to continue to hold her dead weight anymore. Nevertheless, she pulls up as hard as she could with a loud grunt and scream feeling her muscles rip and tear from weakness as her body hoisted over the edge knocking the wind from her stomach as she gasps the fresh air forcing it harshly into her lungs.

Neferim pulls herself up again with her last bit of strength falling limp on the side of the well. The fresh air bites at her cold tiny frame and she bursts into a fit of drearyness in wails of fright and pain, her dehydrated body crying out without a tear in site. Her ordeal had pained her so. Not being tossed in the well but the dread of the well itself. Being so deep in the ground without the slight glimmer of hope to get out but she had mustered the strength and had been climbing bit by bit for well over a week, falling asleep periodically to rest her mind as her body clung to the cold wall.

As her heart pours out to the sky from her broken heart, her mind drifts back to Constantinople where she had left her dying mother to venture to the west in search of something granduer. How ashamed her mother must be that her daughter was nothing more than a childish harlot that was better at her smart mouth than her trade. Her cries continue echoing through the forest of pain and anguish but no one heard her. The finality of her muddy and dirty form laying there with no one to rescue her tired bones from that point aided in her wailing.

Was she still in Marseille? She could not remember as the House mother had wisked her off so quickly into the woods and thrown her into the well. She had held her virginity long enough with her formidable sarcasm to the kind men of the brothel and the large man was aloud to plung into her without restraint as he beat her from the inside and out, leaving her in a mess of blood and the House mother sought to dispose of the body, not realizing she was still alive though unconscience.

Neferim's cries dwindle into long moaning sobs as she held her small gaunt form tightly rocking back and forth against the cool brick of the well as the night air passed over her weakened form, the moonlight illuminating her long dark tresses draped across the ground like a blanket. The last 12 days had been brutal to her form, the water of the well her only survival but that ordeal was over and another posed in front of her. Where was she and how would she save herself now? Walking was not an option as her muscles had grown atrophied from holding her body. She would die here now.

Her cries suddenly stopped as she choked on the air around her, dust sweeping up with the subtle wind as her eyes stayed frozen open. Her mind wanders back to her mother again as she mouthed her apology, her expiration eminent.