Sakhi, Part 1 & 2

Have you ever had to start afresh in life?

Sakhi has.

A few days ago, a horrible war caused her to lose her parents and her memory. Now, she is alone and friendless, without knowing anything more about herself than her name. She has no belongings, except the set of clothes she was wearing, some coins she must have been carrying on her person, and a small, intricate comb with her name on it.

She has now shifted to Lyonesse, the closest village to the place that she was found, and is starting to learn to be an alchemist. She struggles on, trying to find her place in this new life.

But she is still looking - for those elusive people that she must have belonged to. The people who gave her name. The people who gave her the comb.

The people who she has forgotten.

--

The story continues in two parts. Sakhi continues on with her daily life in Lyonesse - she has prospered in the village, and besides her profitable farming business and her alchemy, she has also taken an active part in the wars that take place periodically in her kingdom. In fact, she has even been made a marshall, to lead the battles from the front. All this has been accompanied by the learning of the most basic things - like who the king of the kingdom is, or what the various kingdoms are. Understandably, these jobs occupy nearly all her time.

But once in a while she takes out the time to visit the other kingdoms, stopping at the small villages and big capitals - hoping against hope that someone will recognize her. So far she has made many, many friends, but no one seems to recognize her. But still she continues, relentless in her search, with only her pet with her (have I mentioned that she has found a squirrel on one of her frequent plant-picking excursions?), on her old plodding donkey...

There is an interesting story behind that donkey too - once, on one of her excursions, she reached a curious no-man's land called the land of the middle. There she met a man called Joon of Winchester, who wished to send her on a quest to save his sister Claudia. That took some time (and a lot of work - including getting through a maze, picking a lock, breaking a code, picking apples, harpooning fish and finally guessing a word), but Joon was kind enough to give her a donkey in return. And he also directed her to Hermeline, who collected a lot of gold and buried it in various parts of her garden before becoming blind and repenting. Now Hermeline wants her to help absolve her sins by going to a mysterious man called Tiagus the Saint who wants her to do a great deal of travelling...

Well, its all for the good. After all, there are a lot of villages in the world, and she must search in all of them to find the people she has lost. Part of her still wonders if she is just being silly, after all, maybe they are dead. Maybe they don't want her. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they never existed, and the comb was something she had bought herself.

But she must try...