Hi, I'm Lorella!

I don’t really remember my parents. My birth parents, that is. I remember red hair that shone in the sun. I remember the kindness of a mother’s touch, though I only know that’s what it was because it was so like Mummy’s. I remember a deep, rumbling voice that soothed me to sleep when the world got scary. Deep, kind eyes looking down at me.
And I remember screaming. A scream that seemed to tear out my soul when the masters came. I remember shouting, and Father bleeding from his head when the masters hit him. We ran after that, climbing out a window in the dead of night and sneaking out of the city. I remember a broken land full of monsters that Father said we must never go near.
And I remember the kindness of a stranger’s hand, words that soothed a frightened child when I was found curled up next to the cold, still body of my father. Two people little bigger than me, but they saw me for the child I was and took me in.
That’s how I ended up raised by Azurians in Aredenn. Breena and Sebo Springons found me by the side of the road just this side of the border with the broken lands, by father dead beside me. With no idea where we had come from other than the ragged clothes and brand that marked a keltori slave, they could not return me home. They certainly were not willing to take me back to shilen territory to be a slave again. They had no children of their own, due to an accident my father had when he was young, so they had love to give.
I have had a good life. I love my parents very much. And while I sometimes wonder why my father and I were in that forsaken place, or what happened to mother, I have never wanted for anything. And I love the azurian people. They are so quick and clever. They have always been kind, though I have always been something of an outsider, seeing as I am so much taller than any of them. My parents told me the tale of how they found me, but that didn’t really explain to me why I was so different. I just knew I wanted to fit in.
The town we lived in still largely followed the old ways, with the menfolk learning to make golems and massive machines to do the things they couldn’t. The womenfolk focused on making potions of all kinds and handheld weapons. My mother, the best alchemist in the city, took me on as her alchemy apprentice, letting me help her in the still room at an early age.
But when Mummy found me fiddling with some of Papi’s small clockwork devices, she talked him into getting me training in that field as well. They took me to Lilli Sprockets, who was the best female in town at clockwork. She taught me to make small golems and tiny devices the menfolk could only dream of creating. Ms. Sprockets was also the one to discover that I could do things azurians could not do, using a type of magic they knew nothing about. She had heard the keltori people could magics like that, and that the shilen enslaved them for it. Somehow, she got her hands on a book of basic magical principles and let me study it alongside my studies in azurian rune magic.
It was around that time that I met Orryn Woddelsworth at school. I caught several of the other boys teasing him. Orryn is a rolly polly little thing, short even by azurian standards. So, he got picked on a lot in school. The other kids called him Wobbly. I interfered and sent the other boys running. They didn’t know what to do about the small giant in their midst. I got Orryn back on his feet and walked him to class, saying, “Come on, Wobbly. We’re gonna be late.” I flashed him a big smile and threw my arm around his shoulders when I said it, and he realized I was joking. To this day, I’m the only one who can call him that and not get kicked in the shins.
One evening, near the end of my apprenticeship with Ms. Sprockets, something odd happened. I was working on the device for my final test with Ms. Sprockets. I suddenly felt a surge of power inside me, power that swelled through my hand, down the screwdriver I was using to tighten the last of the screws, and into the device. It soaked in, making the clockwork creature in my hand glow like a trapped lantern flame. When the glow subsided, my little creature started to move. And then it started to talk.
And that was how I ended up with Monksy, the Sentient Clockwork Chipmonk.
Yes, you read that right.