Reinien Origiana was a happy child; she lived
with her very wealthy mother and father in their opulent estate surrounded
entirely by forest. They clothed her in the richest fabrics and adorned her
ears, wrists, fingers, and neck with gold and gems. Her parents would insist
that, on a daily basis, she go out into the woods and play as loud as she wanted
to. She never questioned why, just skipped out into the woods to chase squirrels
and birds.One sunny afternoon when she had snuck up on a particularly unobservant squirrel she was seized by a group of men and stripped of her jewelry. She screamed and screamed, and though she wasn’t far from home, her calls were never answered. The bandits tied her up, hand and foot, and drug her off to their camp. Their leader, seeing that the child’s wrists were bleeding badly from the tightness of her bindings and the roughness with which she had been treated, ordered his men to loosen them. The ropes had already cut deeply into her flesh, marring her delicate skin. The one’s who had taken her prisoner sent a ransom note to her family that her parents could have easily paid. The money never came and Reinien figured that they never got the note. The bandits, under the orders of their leader, dumped her off at the nearest temple and left the area.
She grew up there, learning everything that the priests had to teach her and hating it all. Her wounds healed over time, though she was left with permanent scars around her wrists. The older she became the more bitter she grew. She began to wonder why her parents never came for her and never sent out any search parties. From the small amount of memories she had of them, she knew that they could afford to send someone after her. At the age of 16 she left, hoping to find them in her wanderings.
After a few days she ran across the camp of a group of bandits, and not knowing that they were led by the one who had taken her away from her family, joined them in hopes of coming across her family. Reinien immediately took to their ways and they all grew to love her like a brother… sister. A year passed and the leader of the bandits, who had seen the scars around her wrists after a few weeks and realized who she was, knew that Reinien needed to know the truth.
He told her how her parents had written back that they wouldn’t give into threats and that they didn’t want her anyway. She immediately knew that he wasn’t lying. Memories came flooding back of her many unwatched and richly clad ventures into the woods. The gems had merely been bait; she hadn’t been given the jewelry out of love. That’s why her parents always sent her out, they didn’t want her. They were hoping that someone would take her. After this discovery Reinien dropped her real name and went only by Rein.
At the age of 22 she left the bandits, a hard and bitter woman. She had lost anything resembling femininity from years of living in the forest with her companions. The leader of the group gave her some items that they had stolen together to help her on her travels. With a heavy burden of loneliness draped over her shoulders, Rein made her way to Imperia, as the leader had recommended, where she planned to start over.