Seble didn't have friends. She didn't have outside influences on her life save for her father who tended to get drunk and a mother who took his anger and rages. She had one friend, Lily. But that was a dog, not an actual human friend. Seble's entire childhood she longed for a friend, but if she met kids her age they laughed at her and snickered. Her parents didn't let her out much to begin with.
When Seble turned around fifteen winters, her fathers rage began to extend to her. It was not as if he disliked her, or hated her. He just lost his temper while he was drunk. He truly loved his daughter, with every vein in his body, but broken people break others.
The young girl began to turn into a young woman as time passed, she grew to nineteen winters when her father went to the barn where Seb and Lily sat. Seble was grooming her dog like she did every night, talking to her and laughing as if Lily was a human friend. Her father stumbled in, almost tripping over the bucket they collected goat milk in as he roared out.
"Seble, get your ass over here."
A frown slid across the young woman's mouth as she said, "Pa, you said I can have evenings to myself without work."'
"I dun care kid, ge' yer ass over ere."
"No pa, a promise is a promise."
The man grabbed a board that had been leaning against the side of the barn as he moved closer to Seble, holding up as he snarled to her, "Ge' yer ass up, kid."
Seble looked up at her father fearlessly, almost a stupid fearlessness that she typically had to her as she said in the strongest tone she could muster, "No pa. I am not going to get up to do whatever work you want to assign me."
Seble's father would lift the board of wood to swing toward's Seble's head as he almost shouts, "Ya listen ta me, kid!" But before he could hit Seble with the wood, Lily had lunged up, latching down on his arm, allowing her teeth to sink into his flesh as she snarls.
Seble's father panicked as he began to bash the dog into everything, the wall, the door, the stalls that goats were hiding in, but the dog kept her bite on his arm before the father swung her into the fire that had been burning in the small fireplace in the barn. The dog yelped and let go before she could burn to death, leaping away from the fire only to meet the wooden board crash down on her head, then her back, then her head again.
The dog's yelps began to die down as she fell limp onto the ground, her eyes staring at Seble silently. The young woman's hands came up to her mouth as he stared in horror to the scene. Part of her wanted to scream, part of her wanted to cry, but all of her just wanted to wake up. It had to be a nightmare, right?
Her drunken father glared at the dog, then to Seble before he sent a glob of saliva from his mouth onto the dogs broken, lifeless body ,his other hand clutching the bloody wound from where the dog had latched onto the man's arm. His words escaped him like venom from a snake as he hissed, "Served that mutt right. Shouldn' 'ave bitten me like tha'."
Then her father left, leaving Seble alone in the barn.
Morning came and Seble slid from her bed, the light just breaking through the foggy window beside Seble's tiny bed. Her room felt so cold, probably because the fire in the house had died down over night. She slid her dress over her head, down over her small frame as her hair puffed out around her collar. She didn't care to look in a mirror, not that the mirror showed much to begin with. Instead she just wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and slipped out into the morning chill.
Seble did her normal chores for the day, went to the neighbors to drop off milk, picked up crops, but towards the end she went to old Norman's farm, her grandfather, to pick the crops as she spotted an odd man on the hill. Curiosity got to Seble like typical and she walked up to meet the man.
Little did she know in that instance that she would end up following the man out of Bree. That he would lock her away for a few days, and she would end up choosing to stay with him. That he would train her, and she would not see her parents again. Well, mostly because she avoid seeing them as much as she could. However, that man was her ticket away from her meaningless life among her parents, and the end of her empty childhood.
