Khan

1835 A.A

***

A six-year-old girl in a black, worn-out dress walked around the central market of the town. She limped but still tried her best to avoid people. Her dark skin and face were a bit conspicuous among the people living in this part of the world but she blended in just fine by being small and elusive. Her eyes were full of a child-like look mixed with a bit of fear and determination.

She was far from home and had no one to depend on at the moment. The only way she could survive was to endure the suffering and remain on her feet. She remembered her last meeting with her parents and her father's promise not to rest until he returned her to her mother.

Unfortunately as a Djinn, going back to her mother and home was difficult if at all possible. Their city of Shadeniza was closed more than a hundred years ago and its walls had been hidden from all beings. But the girl was still confident she would return home one day. She wouldn't die until she saw her mother one last time.

She was Nusi - Nusi Djinn.

It had been five months since her father left her in the hands of his best friend to take care of her while he went to meet with a team. Destiny happened and his body was brought back dead. Her father's 'best friend' was convinced that keeping her now was a 'loss of grain', so he kicked her out of his house. She had been living on the streets for three months now. It was difficult to even get food. And the only relief she got was from her two friends, Ilias and Spoon, who were also children of her age and were living on the streets ever since their parents were sold in the slave auction.

Nusi continued walking and studying the people around her, ready to jump at a moment's notice. She hid her face and avoided attention as she stepped around a corner, and then, when no one was looking, she took a sharp turn and ran into the alleyway. She took another turn to the left next to a can. The alley was dark and she could barely see the children hiding behind the large garbage can in front of her.

She walked to them and they stared at her in anticipation. Nusi turned pale and the children immediately went stiff. And then she laughed.

"Woo..." She stuck out her tongue. "That's a good one, ain't it?"

The two children glared at her for a moment but they soon laughed. One was Ilias and the other Spoon. Spoon was a fat child with a face that was swollen with fear. Ilias was taller, thinner, and more wise-looking.

Nusi reached into her torn dress and retrieved a small bag containing ayrid coins. Seeing the bag, Ilias and Spoon jumped and hugged her happily.

"You did it, sis!"

She reached into the bag and counted twenty ayrid coins and handed it over to Ilias. Then she handed the same over to Spoon.

"I have taken twenty as well," she said, raising the bag up in the air. It was still full of ayrid.

"Sister, what are we going to do with the rest?" They asked her in amazement.

"I'll return it to him. The job we did for him for two months was for 20 ayrids each. It's not a crime to steal from him since he didn't give us our hard-earned money but we shouldn't take more than what we earned."

Ilias and Spoon didn't approve of this but since she stole the money, they didn't feel like challenging her.

"So, how do you return it? You can be beaten to death if caught. Now that he's confirmed his money was gone, he will know when you return it."

Nusi shook her head with a sigh. "Yeah... but it still has to be returned. Maybe not today, but later on. Now, stop looking grumpy, and let's go eat and buy some clothes. We'll look for a place to stay. Maybe we will even get a room with our money. "

The three of them turned and headed for the road. They bought food and spent the night happily with a roof over their heads.

The next day, Dan-Darbejiya, a well-known businessman among the locals, was on his way home after closing his shops. Surrounding him were three guards whose only job was to protect him. Dan-Darbejia had so much beard that it covered his entire face but that didn't stop the grief in his heart from appearing on his face. Though he'd a reason to be sad considering he just lost all his profits for the entire month. He didn't know how he lost the money. Hell, he'd never lost a single coin in his life.

With a dozen shops under his name, he still walked around looking for lost coins. According to him, anyone who lost their money didn't want it in the first place. The man didn't pay his workers, which was why the laborers avoided him and the reason he employed young children to work for him so he didn't have to pay much.

A couple of months earlier, he asked Nusi, Ilias, and Spoon to work for him. And then he refused to pay them. Nusi and her two friends were so angry that they stopped coming to work. Four days later, he lost all the profit he made that month. He almost collapsed in the middle of the market. The people didn't believe him when he told them about it. Many argued that the man was only trying to create a story so he didn't have to pay his debts.

As Dan-Darbejiya was walking back to his house, sobbing uncontrollably about his lost money, the small bag that was all too familiar to him fell in front of him. Even before he gave the order, the two men around him ran toward the direction where the bag had come from.

Well, just as you might expect from a six-year-old, Nusi was the one who threw the bag and then flee as fast as her little legs could take her.

One of the guards appeared in front of her and her two friends who accompanied her, they turned around to run in the other direction but they found the other guard standing behind them.

The giant guard in front of them laughed. "Haha... Nusi, Ilias, and Spoon, the evil trio. I told him you stole the money but he wouldn't believe me."

The other laughed wickedly and said, "punishment for theft is death."