Page 153 of Griffin Food

A crop lands across the center of my back, jolting me out of my daze. I stagger to catch up with the line and drop my sack of grain into the back of the cart.

But the image is emblazoned upon my mind.

A portal.

One that will take this army somewhere else… maybe another world.

“Do you know what Fenix means?” My mother’s words return to me. “It means you won’t stay here forever.”

The last few sacks are stowed.

“Form up!” the guard calls.

The wagon begins to lumber forward. We cluster behind, following it toward the portal.

Rapid hoofbeats come from behind. A dozen fae soldiers in smart livery ride in. And in the center, General Adharde. To his right, a brutish rockling is collared and leashed. It trots alongside the general’s horse, towering, its heavy tread making the ground vibrate.

Being this close to one makes my skin crawl.

I have seen the before and the after.

I have heard the sounds that accompany the making.

But I’m distracted from my horror by the young girl upon a fine horse who sits to Adharde’s left.

She has the same vacant eyes as the rockling.

She is dressed in silk.

Gems adorn her hair.

Unlike the harsh, iron collar around the rockling’s throat, hers is delicate and gold.

Molly.

Just a different kind of pet.

I’ve never been outside before. The dreary strip of daylight as I walked between the kitchen and the pig pen was my lot. But in the many days since we passed through the oily embrace of the portal, I have come to understand the oppressive nature of my life.

How hard it must have been for someone like Molly when she was ripped from her home and taken prisoner.

I don’t want to go back.

It didn’t take me long to come to that conclusion.

Part of me wishes I’d never come out here. Never seen the wonder of a forest. Never heard a bird, nor the rustle of an animal in the undergrowth. Never felt the dappled sunlight against my skin.

But now I have, and it has broken me for sure.

I am older, if no wiser, for the experience, and when we return—as we will after this war party has done with its war—the oppression will cut all the deeper.

Thoughts of escape consume me as we follow the supply wagon through the forest.

In the evening, when we set up camp.

When I help prepare and distribute the food.

And when I scrub pots in a stream, where I used to scrub them in the kitchen.