I wake up feeling more relaxed than I can remember feeling in a long time. I open my eyes and am instantly confused by the dark, green-brown fabric a few feet above me. Didn’t go to sleep in the middle of the clearing just off the road? Wait… I bolt up with a start, the events of the previous night coming back to me.

Before I can fully rap my head around what happened, a girl about my age peaks her head in from outside what I now recognize is a small tent.

“Oh good. You’re finally awake.” She says stepping into the tent.

I can’t help myself but stare. I know I’ve lived a life rather isolated from other people but I’ve never seen a girl like her before. Her thick, dark brown hair that hangs to about her waist is not that different than many of the girls I’ve seen in Isthmus, and neither are her brown eyes but I have never seen a girl with skin like hers. It’s color is similar to the men I’ve seen who have spent their entire lives working under the hot sun in the fields that lie just south of the foothills of the mountain range I call home, but without the withered, leathery texture that usually accompanies that.

The girl ignores my staring as she looks me over as if inspecting me. I seems I pass whatever inspection she was giving because she speaks again, “Who are you? Where are you really from? How did you know how to activate the amulet? Some nobody mountain kid shouldn’t know how to do that.”

My face scrunches in confusion, “Activate? What do you mean activate?”

That was definitely not the answer she was looking for. Her face contorts in anger and I think she may actually attack me for a moment before she gets control of her emotions and replies with more than a hint of snark, “Really? You honestly expect me to believe you have no clue what you did? Or do you think I didn’t notice how you miraculously survived a fall that should have killed you and spending the night buried in the freezing snow?”

I attempt to reply, but my mouth just flaps open and closed silently. Her words seem to have broken my brain, because I have no clue how to respond to that. “W-W-What?” I finally manage to stutter out.

Her only response is to cross her arms and glare at me, the look in her eyes telling me she’s not going to back down till she gets the answer she’s looking for. My brain finally starts working again as I realize, this strange girl actually seems to know something about the amulet and possibly all the other strange things from the last day or so. Upon realizing this the questions start rolling off my tongue, “You know what the amulet is? What is it? Who was that man? Why did he give it to me? And who where those people that attacked me? You said I used the amulet, what does that mean?”

She looks me over again, this time with a confused expression on her face. After a long moment of awkward silence, she finally seems to come to a decision. Sitting down just inside the entrance to the tent, she sighs, “Fine if that’s the way you want to play this, I’ll pretend to believe you really don’t know about anything that’s been happening. But you still haven’t answered my questions, and I won't answer any of your’s until you answer some of mine.”

I sit down across from her and thinking back to her first questions, finally respond, “I’m David. I live up on the side of Mt. Dauben with my mom. And…I really don’t know anything. I only got the amulet yesterday by mistake. Some guy I’d never met before traded me this jacket for one of the pelts I was selling and left it in his pocket by mistake.”

She rolls her eyes at my continued insistence that I don’t know anything but seems to believe the rest of my answer, because she responds by answering some of my questions, “That man was Richard Sullivan, formerly one of the richest merchants in the world, and he most definitely did not give you the amulet by accident.” She pauses, as if deciding whether or not to continue, “He was trying to get rid of the amulet. There are some very bad people who have been trying to get their hands on it. They ruined his life and forced him to go on the run because of it… And now they know you have it and they’re coming after you.”

“why do they want the amulet so bad?”

She scowls at me, and opens her mouth, looking like she’s about to yell at me for interrupting her, but seems to change her mind, pausing for a moment before finally speaking, “The amulet is very powerful. Some say it makes the user invincible, others say it grants wealth, and still more say it grants you the power to destroy all who stand against you.” My eyes are round as saucers as I try to process what she’s saying. “No one knows for sure what it can do because almost no one knows how to activate it.” She leans forward, staring into my eyes as if trying to see all the way into my soul, “And that is why I refuse to believe that you, David, are simply some random nobody, from the middle of nowhere, on the edge of civilization, who lives with their mother.”

I squirm under her gaze and murmur quietly, “but I am some random nobody, from the middle of nowhere, who lives with their mother.”