It was quite literally brought back from the dead. It was a huge insect, with a sharp curved spike coming out of the top of its head, its pale yellow eyes bursting through the bluish skin that covered its rotting frame. Long front arms ended with two fingers, tipped with lethal looking nails, and Page wondered why it was in the woods, who had summoned it. Of course, she did this from a huge distance, over fifty feet up in the foliage that toped the noble trees in the forest that was her own. She had barely managed to escape it in her terrifying flee, scrambling up the tree’s natural net of vines until she was out of reach of the husk.

It was still looking for her, she guessed, so she stayed up there waiting for it to loose interest. Crouching with her knees bent forward and her arms between them, monkey style, she looked at it with keen interest, for though it was terrifying, it was interesting. She dreamed of the power it would take to summon something like this, something forbidden to her in Asica, though she had heard tales of places beyond, where women could learn to be great sorceresses, or even just scholars.

She was so immersed in her observations that when she turned to get a more comfortable position to watch it as it shuffled around at the foot of the tree, she almost jumped out of it when she saw the boy next to her. They stared at each other, green eyes matching gold.

He was maybe a year older, his skin browned by the sun, his hair stopping just below his ears in the front, and by the base of his neck in the back. It was brown, soft looking, with golden highlights in it where the sun hit it. But his eyes were deep green, emerald green, and patterned, and his ears were pointed. His limbs were long, his face handsome, and he was an elf.

He looked at her with the same interest, taking in the golden eyes and dark brown hair, her small hands and feet and frame, and the way she regarded him with such intelligence, he knew she was different than the other girls he knew. Her ears were rounded, though, she was human. A strange impulse seized him and, without thinking of the consequences, he took his knife out of his pocket, slit his palm, and, before she could move, slit hers and mixed their blood. Red met green and both felt the change, though Page felt it so much more than he.

The power flow slammed her against the tree, and she would have fallen to the husk’s mercy had he not grabbed her around the waist. Then, her eyes closed and she fell against him. She lay unconscious, long past when the husk lost interest, long past the fall of night, and when he was found, the changed girl in his arms, they were taken, not towards her village, but away. To his home.