Halfway down the slope of the hill, cold water splashes over the face of the small girl.

“Good morning sleeping beauty.” A by now familiar voice enters her ears. She has to admit that Pete’s voice somehow sounds very tense.

“Come on, open your eyes. We all know you are awake now.” Pete says in a hurry.

As she suddenly snaps open her eyes, the first thing she sees is the most beautiful animal she has ever seen, sitting between her cage bars, spreading its wings to take off to flight. The wings are covered in a multitude of colours and patterns, ranging from a dark purple over her favourite red to a beautiful yellow, covering the wings in beautiful circular shapes.

“Ahh, she’s finally awake.” Pete snaps his fingers as he continues. “If you’d please look over here and not stare at the butterfly like it’s your missing mother.”

But the girl’s eyes are captivated by the sight of the butterfly spreading its wings, taking to the air and flying off towards the setting sun. A sunset, even more beautiful than the sunrise this morning. Watching it fly through the air fills the girl with a strong longing for freedom and she starts to trash around in her chains.

“Woah! Calm down! Calm down! Or we have to knock you out again missy.” Pete tries to get the situation under control again.

The girl stops trashing, snaps her head around and intensely stares into Pete’s eyes.

“Yes. Thank you, that’s much better.” Pete says.

“How do you know that my mother is missing?” She surprises Pete with an unexpected question. “Do you know anything else about me? Or do you even know my best friend?” A sudden flash of hope crosses her face.

“Okay, okay. Slow down.” Pete tries to stop the trickle of question flooding out of the girl’s mouth. “I don’t know anything about you, your mother and your friend. And I have to admit, I never even dreamed about meeting a survivor after all this time, especially not a girl. Never even heard about a child survivor before…” He mumbles the last part of the sentence.

At the sight of a new blood-red tear slowly flowing down the girl’s right cheek, he suddenly comes back to himself and gathers his thoughts. “Anyway, that’s not important right now. I want you to know what’s going to happen from now on and I want you to not cause me and my friends here any more trouble, okay? As you can see, the sun is about to set, so we are getting ready to camp here, right next to this shitty bumpy road. Tomorrow, we will start to move out again at first light even without breakfast. I want to eat real fresh food as fast as possible, once we reached the town. I guess that it will take us about 2 hours to reach the Goa, the next town. This will be the moment when we will part ways and I honestly hope to never see you again, my lady. Mark, the guardian right here, will take care of you and then you will meet more of his guardian friends in Goa. Do you have any Questions?”

The girl just stares into Pete’s eyes without saying another word.

As Pete starts to turn around, he looks back over his shoulder and says “Sleep well, my beauty.” And then a sudden familiar pain at the back of her head drags her down into the darkness of unconsciousness.

----------------

In the middle of the night, the girl awakens to Mark, her guardian, staring right into her eyes. As the girl starts to trash in her chain and a surprised scream leaves her body, he clamps his hand over her mouth and tries to calm her down with shooing noises.

“Good morning. It’s so nice to finally meet you on your own. We got so much to discuss and I don’t want the others listening in on our conversation.” He whispers in her ear. “First of all, don’t you wonder why I am here? I personally think that our meeting was fated to be. Who knows what kind of havoc you would have created and how many innocents you’d have slaughtered otherwise. But with these chains, I don’t see you going anywhere anytime soon.” A mad grin spreads over his face. “You belong to me now, my darling.”

“I don’t want to belong to anybody. And why are you here? Were you searching for me? Do you know my friend?” The questions seem to tickle out of her small mouth without stopping.

“Shhh! Don’t wake the others. No, I was not searching for you. As I mentioned before, I believe our meeting was fated to be. Have you met your fellow cell-mates yet? They are criminals, they tried to disturb the peace of this country and threatened to kill innocent people - as well as our beloved people in important positions of power. I was on a mission to gather them up and transport them to the capital, where they will be punished for their crimes against humanity. But on my way back home, I find myself on a small crossroad in a dense jungle right next to a big caravan. And at the end of this caravan, surrounded by about twenty guards is a small slip of a girl getting continuously beaten into unconsciousness. Do you believe in fate, my darling?”

“No?” The girl answers uncertainly.

“If not for fate, how do you explain how I met you, especially with the right equipment loaded up in the back of my prison cage?” Pete inquires with a raised eyebrow.

As the girl stays silent he continues with his story. “You see. I don’t even know how lucky they were to be able to beat you and keep you unconscious, but without keeping you chained, I can’t imagine them surviving you for more than a day, even in these conditions, am I right?”

As the girl tries to answer the question, Pete cuts her short. He certainly likes to hear himself talking. “No need to answer that one, it was a rhetorical question. Anyway, did you ask yourself yet, why you can’t break out of these chains? Well, that’s because they are special chains, designed for my most troubling prisoners traveling with me. They are reinforced by magic, my darling, old magic strong enough to even chain down a survivor it seems. As I said before, you belong to me now!” A burst of laughter escapes his lips before he can stop himself.

“Magic?” The girl questions him curiously. Somehow talking about magic made her feel an anger she hasn’t ever felt before.

“I’m sure you know about magic, darling. Especially you out of all people here. Don’t you dare to try to fool me, darling.” He threatened her angrily.

As the small girl keeps staring into his eyes, without even the slightest change in her expression, Pete calms down again and continues his story. “Anyway, once we are in the city and managed to find my friends, we got all the time in the world to make you answer all my questions without getting disturbed. Isn’t that great?” This time he can’t stop his laughter and he gets silenced and dragged away by a nearby guard. “Isn’t that great?!” Was the last thing he shouted over his shoulder in her direction as he was dragged away.

After some time in complete darkness of the night, the girl slips into the world of dreams, to gather her strength for the days to come. She knows that she will need all the strength she can muster, to either escape or in the worst case to survive the ordeal which lies in front of her.