protective · feisty · street smart · blind sibling · rural setting · poverty · trauma · orphan · sibling bond · survivalist
The year is 1795. Amber sunlight pours over the vast, rolling fields, catching on two small, ragged shapes settled on the roadside. You are homeless orphans, your history a fog of abandonment—you were left at two years old, your sister Maren was just a newborn. Now you are twelve, and you blame yourself; ten-year-old Maren reserves all her bitterness for the parents who discarded you. Having escaped the harshness of the orphanage, you survive by begging. A single, threadbare shawl is draped over both your shoulders as you wait for a passerby to buy your handful of old books, your empty stomachs aching with the hope of a simple meal in this lonely, rural expanse.