My first life I remember very well. I had no prior experience, and I was naive. I was born in a tiny village in the southern province of the tiny kingdom of Valencia. In the beginning all was well, and my childhood was happy. What I did not know was that there was a growing empire nearby that had a deep and dark need for expansion. This expansion was hinged on the slaves that shouldered this great dominion. And where did these slaves come from? Not from the great and superior people of this great empire. No, they were taken from tiny villages in tiny kingdoms that were home to people so unlike the elites of the populace favored by the gods. What made us so different? Our eyes. Where the elites had eyes in wondrous hues of blue, green, purple, pink, the people of other countries had brown or black eyes. That was it. That was all it took to be marked as less. As a simple tool and cog in the inner-workings of the empire. 

        The day I lost my freedom I was outside my parents tiny cottage sitting in the green grass digging in the mud. my hands were caked in the rich clay, and the blue dress that my mother had lovingly sewn for me was stained the reddish brown of the motherland's soil. I had heard the whinny of a horse in the distance and had looked up from my play to see a column of mounted riders followed by giant carts and footmen. If I was a smart child I would have gone to my parents and warned them, but I did not know of the horrors that approached. So I sat there in the mud and the grass and watched as my doom approached slowly. When they finally made it to the foot of the knoll that my cottage rested on a man separated from the column followed by two others and steered his dappled grey horse to where I sat. I remember thinking he looked like a god riding a steed made of rain. He stopped not far from me and gazed down with a smile.

        "Look here Oram." He had scoffed to one of his followers. "It seems we have found a little worm come to the surface!" 

        I had been so confused. I was not a worm! At that moment I heard my mothers footsteps come around the house and her sharp gasp as she spotted the troop. I turned to look to her for guidance but was only met with the most horrified and anguished expression I had ever seen at the time. It was then that I realized these were not good people. My first mother's screams and first father's shouts are still burned into my mind. As is the sound of my first fathers skull caving under the blow of a war hammer. 

        The rest of that life was spent in a cart pulling me and my people onward to the great unknown.