Silk - black, gold, and lavish purple - comprise my earliest memories. My small body was swaddled in it as I drifted to sleep, and the first thing I saw upon waking was the wind pushing at the silken canopy of my basinette. Scant else do I remember from my youngest years. I was cared for well, but with such cold ceremony that I don't recall those times fondly. Robed figures with silver-masked faces and velvet-gloved hands tended to me. They bathed me, brushed my hair, and brought me strange, tart fruit to eat. None spoke.

I spent perhaps four years with my mute caretakers. We dwelt in a dim, cool place. Thinking back, I sometimes believe it was in Neriak. Other times I am sure it was closer to the surface, in small cave or structure. The wind seemed too brisk, and the air too fresh with the smell of water, for the location to be far underground. But perhaps drafts collect in the deeper caverns and catch the scent of subterranean pools. I am, as I said, still undecided.

Abruptly I found myself among the speaking. I awoke in the back room of the shop 'Bites and Pieces' in the Foreign Quarter of Neriak. A horrible stench met my senses first, followed by the awareness that I was not lying on silk, but something rough instead. I sat up and looked about. The stench came from rows of dead things hung on hooks to drain. The roughness beneath me was a stack of small garments.

A loud, booming noise echoed from the next room. It was deep, like footsteps on stone, and yet it had a strange cadence to it. The sound moved closer. I had never known fear before that day, and so my first impulse was to hide under the stack of small clothing on which I lay. I buried myself in the itchy fabric as best I could, holding my breath to avoid the thick, salty smell that eminated from each thread.

A lamp was lit. Tiny fingers of light pushed their way through the crude cloth. I perceived a huge shape moving toward me. The noise started up again, but this time it was softer, and more even. I viewed another shape farther off, smaller than the first. The larger of the two moved over me, making a noise like gravel being tread upon. Its huge, pale eyes squinted through the cloth at me.

The noise began again, and this time I noticed that the thing was moving its mouth at the same time. It was a living thing, but yet like nothing I had ever seen. It was stooped over me, making more of those horrible noises. It was trying to hurt me! The concept shocked me so that my young mind was suddenly convinced that the world had somehow gone mad and that I was at its mercy.

In a fit of breathless terror, I bolted from my hiding place. I darted around the first creature (whose mouth now hung open in shock), but the second one caught me. Its huge hand shot out and grasped me around the waist. I was lifted, kicking and struggling, into the air. Briefly I glimpsed the ground, which seemed very far below. Then I was clamped into a clumbsy embrace against the creature's huge bosom. The large hand that had captured me was now fingering the sleeve of my burgandy silk gown. "Gon'jaah," it vociferated. And then, in the common tongue, "Silken."