The Sapphire Forest was one of the two bigger forest areas in Ivé, the elf area of Kumgolia. Many elves went here during the weekends to have picnics near the smaller lakes in the clearings. Forty-five Sixty-nine didn’t keep track of the days, but today it was one of the holy days where you were supposed to rest and have a nice time with your family. And many elfish families did this too. The Fangilano family was one of them, consisting of Hûni- the father and one of the three who invented the nine-stringed guitar-, Aniania- the mother and one of the more famous authors in Ivé- and Yerili- the daughter of the family. Iakko, Yerili’s newly bought puppy, also joined the family on this very day. Both Hûni and Aniania thought that Yerili would get more harmonic and responsible if she got a dog to take care of. Yerili wasn’t a too happy child, her parents were pretty often too busy to be with her, she didn’t had a sibling that she could tell anything to and she couldn’t consider anyone in her school as her friend. The people she had to deal with every day in school didn’t liked her at all to be honest; Yerili’s family wasn’t consisting purely of elfish blood which was a reason enough to freeze out Yerili from the school’s society. But Iakko had made Yerili’s life a bit brighter; he didn’t cared about titles, races or anything like that, only a friendly mind was enough for making the little dog accept a person.

Yerili ran around, chasing Iakko until her parents called for the dinner they bring to this forest picnic. Iakko apparently wasn’t that hungry at all, he started to walk deeper and deeper into the forest, tail wagging and his nose dug deep into the leafs lying around on the ground. A new smell had entered his nose: something wild, but in need for help or comfort were moving around quite a bit away from him. The trip there could be dangerous, but since Iakko wanted to get new friends and help others, his little dog’s mind decided to find the owner of this smell at any cost. By every second, Iakko could feel he was closer to his goal. With this knowledge, he felt even more eager to get to this person. He started to run now and bark happily, trying to invite this smell’s owner to be his friend. A nervous gasp was heard and a rustle from the shrubbery made it clear that Iakko’s nose had found something he could interact with. He grinned and followed the rustling sound and soon enough an even bigger rustle, a thump and a whimper was heard. Iakko slowed down and calmly walked towards where the sound was heard until he saw what he had chased; it was our little friend Forty-five Sixty-nine who owned that very unique smell. He was now lying on the ground, his right foot stuck in some kind of shrubbery, looking at Iakko with a face that made it clear that he thought he’d be killed right away. Iakko observed Forty-five Sixty-nine curiously, smelling at his dark hair and licking his dirty face.

"P-please don’t kill me!" he whimpered quietly in trollish.

Iakko didn’t cared about the little troll’s whimper much and continued to examine this person until a voice he recognised called out for him. He answered with some barks and started to run towards the familiar voices. Forty-five Sixty-nine stared at the dog, trembling in fear, but looking relieved that the beast finally had disappeared. This feeling of relief didn’t last for long though, soon he heard that those voices came nearer and nearer. Panic stroke his mind again as he tried to jerk his foot out of the shrubbery’s grip.

"What do you think Iakko’s found?" Yerili asked his father with a curious tone in her voice.

"Ah, probably just some dead animal, dear."

Iakko barked every now and then, tail wagging back and forth happily until the group reached their goal. Forty-five Sixty-nine stared at Yerili and Hûni in fear and got about the same reaction from them. Iakko just licked the boy’s fingers happily.

"What is that? Is it an ogre?" Yerili said nervously.

"No" Hûni said, shaking his head. "It’s a troll. Don’t touch that wicked creature!" he growled.

"He seems to be pretty harmless" Yerili said and nodded towards Iakko.

The troll boy seemed to have calmed down a bit, now looking more curiously at the two elves and the dog. Every now and then he tried to jerk out his foot from its trap, but failed. Yerili saw this and stepped towards the troll. She didn’t get far before her father stopped her.

"No, Yerili!"

"But he’s stuck there!"

"Well, who knows what’ll happen if he gets free." her father insisted.

Forty-five Sixty-nine looked at the two, actually understanding every elfish word said during the conversation. His facial expression got more and more nervous. Yerili’s eyes met his more than once, and they could almost feel they could actually understand each other’s thoughts. Yerili closed her eyes, sighed and made a quick move, proceeding to where the troll was lying faster than what her father could think. Her father gasped while she slowly got the branches away from the boy’s foot. Eventually, the troll was free. He looked at his foot and moved it a bit before he quickly stood up on his legs. In this position, you could see that the troll boy was about a head taller than Yerili.

"Back off, Yerili!" her father screamed nervously and picked up a pretty long twig from the ground. "You stay away from my daughter, you hear that?!" he continued to scream, now towards the troll.

Forty-five Sixty-nine backed off a bit from the two, scared beyond belief by the elf girl’s rather aggressive father. His tail started to wriggle around his leg as the nervosity rose and the next step backwards resulted in the troll boy on the ground again. Hûni saw this as an opportunity, dashed towards the troll and was about to give him a good hitting if it wasn’t for the person standing in his way.

"Yerili dear, I told you to back off!" he said, being rather irritated now.

"Why? So you can hit this innocent creature? Whatever in the world has he done to you, father?"

Hûni growled slightly as he looked at the troll with a hateful look in his face. Yerili knew the thoughts that flew in her father’s mind, but decided to stand up to herself.

"I do know about our family’s history, father, but I don’t go around and hate every troll because of this. Please, let this poor creature leave us without being harmed!"

Forty-five Sixty-nine stared at the two elves and listened closely to the conversation, knowing they probably didn’t knew about his knowledge in the elfish language. He really admired this girl’s bravery; to be able to stand up for someone she didn’t even knew. The thought of him never being able to see this elf again made him panic-stricken. His mind came to a solution to this problem though. With the knowledge he could get back where he were before he had run away, he stood up on his legs, walked past Yerili and stopped right in front of Hûni. Hûni looked down at the troll with another hateful look in his eyes.

"Thanks to the troll race, our family have been cursed for ages." he growled.

Forty-five Sixty-nine gulped hard, but managed to bow down like a slave. No slave really did this by their free will, only when they wanted to be accepted as someone’s slave.

"P-please..." he stuttered in elfish, "Own me!"

This surprised both Yerili and Hûni. A troll knowing elfish as such a young age wasn’t the most normal, Hûni thought for himself.

"What’s your slave identity?" he asked the troll.

"Forty-five Sixty-nine, s-sir." the troll answered quickly.

Hûni instantly knew from which slavery this young troll came from. The forty-five district wasn’t a pleasant one at all. The owners there just to make them ‘tame’ enough captured trolls at a very young age. No one in the Fangilano family saw at slavery with keen eyes, and would never accept a slave in their house. But even though Hûni hated trolls and slavery in general, he felt he would probably make a good deed if he let this strange troll, that even knew elfish, become somewhat a part of their household.

"You can live in our house, maybe help out when needed, until I find the ones who owned you." Hûni said with a strict voice, "But if you try to do anything at my daughter, I’ll personally sell you to the farm living nearby. They own a lot of slaves, but no-one says a slave owner with many slaves is a good one, right?"

"O-of course, master!" the troll answered, and even though neither Yerili or Hûni could see his face, an aura around him said that this was probably one of the better days in his life.

Aniania seemed to like the new member of the Fangilano house a lot. When they eventually came home from this rather strange picnic day, se was very eager to get the boy a good bath and to clean any bad wounds he might be able to have. Yerili on the other hand went up to her room with Iakko. Her feelings about the new family member made her both happy and shy; happy because she felt that she and the boy probably had a lot in common, and shy because of the same thing. She had never known anyone that seemed to enjoy her company, except for Iakko, of course, and this boy made her pretty nervous to be honest. She looked across the room; a pet cage, not used in thousand of years, stood there and Yerili had been told to make it comfortable for the troll. This had made her even more nervous, knowing the boy would share room with her. She decided to go out for a while and clear her thoughts when she heard something outside her room. She went pale and waited to see the boy enter, but nothing happened. Yerili frowned and walked carefully up to the door. Then, she slowly opened it and looked outside. And precisely as she suspected, the troll boy stood outside the room, looking really like he wished he were somewhere else. Aniania had done a good job to make the slave troll almost look like a respectable young man. His black hair had been combed out and unveiled that his hair actually was very wavy and shimmered in a dark blue shade. His dark, almost black skin was actually in a more olive green tone, the results of a bath showed. And the fact that he really looked good in actual elfish middle-class clothes almost made you wonder if this boy was a troll to the fullest. Yerili stared at the boy, looking more nervous than ever.

"W-well, I…" he stuttered and pointed vaguely towards the room’s door, "Sorry, I maybe should leave…"

"No, not at all!" Yerili said quickly and invited the boy to the room with a nervous smile on her face.

The boy bit his lower lip and entered the room carefully. His grey-blue eyes went all over the room in amazement. Eventually, his eyes landed on the pet cage. Yerili saw this and looked a bit embarrassed.

"I should have cleaned it before you came."

The troll looked at it with a confused face.

"I’ll clean it right away though!" she continued and ran out of the room.

The boy stared as Yerili left. Being alone in this room really made him nervous. Nervous that someone would think it was his fault that the elf girl left. He squirmed where he stood and got more nervous with every second. A while later, Yerili entered the room again with some cleaning equipment and night snack, now noticing that something green that was there before had vanished. She looked around nervously, body trembling.

"Hey, troll-boy…where are you?" she whispered nervously.

She didn’t get much of an answer, but in one of the corners, she found what she looked after; the boy sat down in the corner, hands and tail wrapped up around his legs. He trembled and his face showed that he was about to cry. Yerili first sighed out that he’d found the boy again but then got a rather confused face when she saw the state his face were in. She brang the plate with the food on when she walked towards the boy and took a seat in front of him.

"Are you afraid of us?"

She didn’t get an answer.

"I mean…my father hates trolls because…well, our family has troll blood in us since the big war, and he really don’t want us to get more troll influences in the family. My mother and I don’t mind you though, and I think my father got fascinated when you proved that you know elfish."

No answer again. The boy had dug his face against his knees and seemed to actually cry. Yerili bit her lower lip and reached carefully out a hand towards the boy. The fear of getting bitten by him made her hesitate, but eventually her soft hand touched his silk-soft hair. Eventually, he stopped to cry and looked up at Yerili with his blood-shot eyes. Yerili smiled slightly and let her hand dry away the tears on his face. His eyes followed the little hand as his facial expression went shyer.

"Hey, do you have a name?" she asked and offered him a bun, "Forty-five, Sixty-nine can’t be your real name."

"W-well…" he answered quietly, "I do have a name that my mother gave me."

"Oh?" she said, watching him eat the bun, "What’s that name?"

The troll hesitated to answer.

"Aw, come on! Any name’s better than some silly number combination, right?"

Mikki finished his bun.

"Well…the name my mother gave me was Mikki. It’s one of the few things I remember about my family."

Yerili smiled and offered Mikki another bun.

"Mikki, eh? Isn’t that some rodent in trollish?"

"Rat."

"Yes, a rat."

Silence filled the room for some seconds.

"…My mother thought I looked like one when I was born, I guess." Mikki said silently and made Yerili burst out giggling.

"That’s not a nice thing to say about your son!" Yerili said between the giggles.

"I guess it’s better than being called Snowdrop, Violet or-"

"Forty-five Sixty-nine."

"Yeah."

Silence filled the room again.

"Hey, do you mind if I called you Mikki? I think it’s a good name actually."

Mikki hesitated.

"But wouldn’t your parents be mad if you called me something else than my slave name?"

"Nah, they asked me to name you and give you these buns when I was getting the cleaning stuff." she answered and smiled, "That’s the reason why I was gone longer than expected, you see."

Mikki nodded.

"I think we will get along eventually" Yerili continued, "Don’t you think so too?"

Mikki shrugged.

"If you say we will, I guess we will."

Yerili got a bit disturbed by this answer. It sounded very much like Mikki didn’t liked her company at all and was going to be her friend just because he had to.

"Hey, Mikki…if you really don’t enjoy my company, say so. I won’t be mad at you."

"What? No, I really like you…your company!"

"…Would you prove you do?"

"Well…yeah, but I don’t know how to prove it."

Yerili smiled and stood up on her feet. Mikki watched as she started to clean out the pet cage. Yerili was 110 years old and not the strongest girl in her age, so cleaning up the cage was quite a big job for her. Eventually, Mikki took over the cleaning job and really made it shine in a very small amount of time.

The cage itself was actually more of a small part of Yerili’s room, enclosured by bars so the person in the cage couldn’t escape. The walls were pretty dull, kind of beige. Yerili frowned at this.

"I should ask father to make this one look better."

"It’s much better than anything I’ve had before."

"I won’t lock it during the nights"

"You better should."

"Why? I think it’s cruel to do so. You are just like me, but…slightly different."

"I sleepwalk at times. You really don’t want me to end up in your bed or something…"

"If you say so."

"Yeah."

The two looked away from each other.

"Well, it’s getting late. Maybe we should try to sleep a bit? I can leave the rest of the food with you if you’d like."

Mikki nodded, took the plate and walked into the cage. It was big enough for him, a bed on the floor and some other things would fit. He curled up into himself on the bed and shut his eyes. Yerili looked at Mikki, bit her lower lip, went into the cage and put a blanket over Mikki.

"I will show you around the house tomorrow" she said quietly.

Mikki had already fallen asleep. Yerili smiled slightly at this, exited the cage and locked it, as requested. She then made herself ready for sleeping and finally laid down in her own bed.

"Good night, Mikki" she said quietly and turned off the light.