“Did I ever tell you I had a daughter? No? That's right, I've never been married. NO, I never did wrong by a girl either… but for a while I had a daughter.

“I found her one day, you see. Back then we were at something like a war with these folk calling themselves the Bloody Hooks. They felt that we were getting in the way of them taking our stuff, and we felt they were too eager to stick us with the hooked knives they carried. The mists were high back then, and they had this sinister Geomancer calling the shots. He was good, and kept their land dogging ours. We were constantly patrolling, for fear they appear from nowhere and catch us napping.

“So I'm walking the cliffs when the mists roar up thick around me such that I can't see more than a pace away. Don't know where they came from so fast, but knowing how the mists addle the mind, I knew that more than a pace away could be my death if I moved. I was worried, but I'm no good for anything dead. I mask up with a posy, pull my cloak tighter, and sit down to wait it out.

“So I'm sat waiting, listening to the mist hum and guarding my thoughts, when I hear this babe wailing like the world is ending again. I thought it might be a trick of the mists, and tried to sing it away but the wailing just keeps on and on. Not a thing you can just sit there and take if you're an honest man. So I did the stupid thing of getting up, and I start looking for that noise.

“Takes me a while to find her. Swaddled up like her mother couldn't be far, just led there in a patch of moss, bawling her eyes out from the cold and hunger… until she sees me. I call out, but all I hear is the mist. I fear a Hooky trap, but I know first hand just how cold she is… We waited out the mists together, and my brothers were more than a little surprised at the tidings I brought home with me.

“She stayed with us for three years, our little mist born Angie, but it wasn't a threeday before we realized she wasn't natural.

“See, the Bloody Hooks did try it on again, and this time they were committed to it. Some awful things happened that day. I saw a brother die, and almost did myself chasing after vengeance. They're running scared by then, fleeing for their own lands, and I catch up right on the bridge between theirs and ours.

The bastard takes my blade in his gut, but his mate catches me before I could get it free. Cuts me down and starts rolling me like I'm already dead. Course I'm not thinking straight, so I don't lay still. I'm up and back on him screaming like a madman. We rolled around with teeth, thumbs and one of them hooked knives, both praying it's our side that reaches us first. Thank the spirits it was mine, but they don't get there before I put the pirate tumbling into the mists. He almost takes me with him, but my necklace gave way before my balance.

“Took my ma's Bloodstone he did. Snapped it right from my neck and clutched it to him as he screamed and faded. I'd carried that thing for twenty seasons. I'd promised to give it to my wife when I found her, and he just snatches it away… I was dying from the loss as much as from the wounds.

“For a week its me and Angie in the room, both helpless, me minding her while my brothers do the real work. She never cries. Doesn't need to. I know she's hungry as soon as she does, and if I wasn't so cut up by my losses I would have seen how odd that was. My mind is full of thoughts of my dead brother though, and for some reason that bloody necklace. It sorta symbolizes the whole sordid affair to me. Thinking of it made me mad, and that makes Angie cry.

“Then I wake up one day… And there it is, Angie curled asleep around it like it was her ragdoll and not a cold crimson stone. I think I'm dreaming, but it was as real as the pinch… and we were looking at that child with new eyes. Another family might have had no more to do with such things, but we've never been one like them. Called that kid a blessing and challenged anyone to disagree.

“We watched her take steps, learn my name, break a tooth… and there's plenty more interesting stories to tell as well. I still hadn't found a wife, but we just about made a mother between the three of us. We smiled as she asked foolish questions, but we all were waiting till she was old enough to give us some answers.

“But one day the mists rose up again, and she was gone.”