Title: Legend
Fandom: Changeling the Lost
Rating: Teen and up audiences
Length: 275 words
Content notes: mention of slavery
Author notes: For the "Backward" challenge.
Summary: Even the tormentors can't hold a daughter of desert.

Legends spoke of people of the water. They were hauntingly beautiful, but they were as treacherous as the the storm and as deadly as the undercurrent in the water. They hunted people and took them to their underwater home to suffer for their fickleness.

There was a young woman with hair as dark as coal, with a flame in her eyes as fierce as the desert sun. She had a lot of pursuers but she rejected all their advances, until a golden young man of the water came out of the sea and abducted her to his domain.

For seven years the young woman was sculpted into a decoration in the house for display. Every night she was broken into pieces. Every day she was shaped into another form. She had no mouth to scream, no eyes to shed tears, but her heart longed for the hot red sand of her home, which finally set her on a course to freedom. There were not enough words to describe her despair when a capture seemed imminent, her pains when thorns tore at her fresh.

But hope overcome all.

When she returned home, no one could look straight at her without forgetting the swords in hands, the crying babies in their arms. She glowed without the assistance of sunlight, and her voice was as beautiful as the flowing water in the oasis. The young woman became a wanderer. Rumour had it that she would dance all days in the desert, only to celebrate life and pain. She taught people that you had to embrace your pain to face your life. Her wisdom lasted to this day with us.