There are times and places of the mind, like in fantasy lands,
where the phrase Once upon a time, starts some of the stories.

In the Sorrow Mountains, things repeat in cycles within cycles.
So that once upon the time is just a event that has happened before


Part of the Story is about a girl named Sal-li , who was enslaved by the
Eastern Empire as it retreated from the Western Empire through
her home land of high mountain Valleys during one of the many wars.
That she found herself an orphaned slave in the East, was just part of the
ways of her Homelands

Life as a slave was not too harsh in her Mistress’s house,
She fetched the water and tended the hearth in the kitchen.
She would be there to fetch and carry for the Mistress.
She often would sing a song of wishing to lighten her spirits
Eventually the Mistress died and Sal-li was freed, she sought the
way back to the mountains of her youth that she had never truly known.
Taking shelter, where ever she could.
She wandered into the Sorrow Mountains, hiding in caves and
Avoiding all the other people, going in to the very isolated canyons
And following the rougher ridges. She slept where ever she could,
Existing on the berries and roots, but ever moving farther away.
Eventually she came upon a familiar area of stone as a springtime
Thunderstorm forced her to seek shelter. This shelter was the place
Where she had been born, and now she would be reborn there too
The Hovel was crude in extreme, large stones formed the walls with some
mansized, others just piles of stones one on top of the other. Chard trees
was the roof support but the roof was gone, grass thatched roof burned away,
no doorway or windows. A circle of stones was all the hearth that was left.
In the broken down burned out pile, she found a man, Li the Poet.
Sal-li nursed the crippled old poet back to the living.
They lived together in the hovel for many years.
At first, the spring was gentle, but the old man knew it
wouldn’t stay that way. So at his direction, they made a Garden
in the rocky soil. And with that little plot of land, survived the first harsh winter with the help of the Rouge Hero .


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Li would sit atop the pile of stones working on speeches and poems;
Sal-li would drag him back to the protection of the Hovel and
Save him over and over and over