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[Vryn Vhae'Naliek]

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Filthy and forlorn, the drow child flit from darkness unto darkness. A gaunt, furtive shadow in tatters, striving with the Underdark for stray, and tenuous strands, and scraps of existence...however meager.

His nightblack skin torn and needled with dozens of scratches and cuts born upon the bare and jagged rocks that had become the only home he could now remember.

Cold radiated from the unending caverns' floor in constant waves. The invisible icy claws of an army of frozen ghosts permeating into every corner of the child's being until the idea of true warmth seemed some hazy reverie, never really attainable.

It was if the very stones of the earth resented his presence to such a degree that pain and restlessness was all that it would offer up.

A part of him whispered things were not always so. A part of him whispered the word, 'lost,' over and over again.

There was no way to tell how long he had been alone and forgotten.

"Living," had fallen away into just another word.

[Vryn Vhae'Naliek]

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He held himself perfectly motionless, crouched like some obsidian gargoyle. His fingers splayed upon the cold cavern floor slightly in front of his bare feet.

If he took breath or blinked away the long moments of patient waiting, the act was so minute as to not have happened at all.

A strange, albino lizard skittered furtively just out of his reach, stopping to lash out at faintly luminescent insects that decorated the stagnant air. His surroundings so quiet, the scrabbling clicks of it's tiny claws drummed into his head like a heavy, incessant rain.

The boy still remembered, in vivid detail, the hours he had spent thrashing upon the scree covered floor, sick and without the full control of his extremities. His world trailing colors.

He learned with alacrity, in the time since, to pass on the many fungi, and vegetation that clung to the stone, and polluted the darker corners of his enviorn. For hunger, it seemed best to snatch up things that moved and lived, no matter how noisome life so low appeared to him...or tasted.

And so, on all fours like some ragged beast, the boy watched and waited. Alone in his dark place, and hungry.

[Vryn Vhae'Naliek]

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Like bilious clouds caught upon a lazy breeze, alien noises slowly filled the tight crevasse the gaunt drow boy had taken as his own.

A chaotic din of sharp hisses, splintering wood crashing upon rocks, and an angry chorus of voices whose language held a wispy ghost of recognition.

A sudden, wrenching fear fought bodily with a searing curiousity that left the boy torn, and unable to move. Eyes shifting nervously from the aperture of his tiny cave, to his shaking hands, the boy struggled to reconcile the two warring emotions. Willing himself wordlessly to inch forward, if only to have a closer listen.

How he could hear anything over the hammering pulse within him seemed impossible, and yet he moved.

Inches became feet, as he inexorably wormed his way through the rough passage out into the larger world beyond. Many feet below, a drow caravan had lost a baggage cart when two enormous pack lizards had run amok, trampling several retainers in the process and bringing the entire procession to an abrupt standstill as order was restored and losses minimized.

The scene below shook the child of his fear, as the dimmest flicker of memory lit the darkest corners of his mind. Hearing words again, echoing against the unyielding rocks all around him, awoke something which had long slept. He leaned forward, his deep red eyes straining for more, but still not daring to move any closer.

Silently mouthing words he seemed to recall, the boy fought to suppress a slight smile. He pointed to the milling figures below as if to remind himself of what he had once seen, or remembered, nodding to himself as he did.

He felt it, before he heard it. Jarring him out of his waking reverie.

The scuff of feet. Movement just behind him.

Whirling quickly,his face a feral mask, he came within inches of a smiling drow girl, much the same size as him, but clean, and dressed in a rich spidersilk dress. Soft leather boots and gloves.

The sight stopped him completely.

"Oooooh," she cooed as she stroked a hand through his matted hair, "Look at you."