This world was a strange one. Humans, elves, goblins, and many others lived together. There was no big war, no great fighting. They shared the cities, the fields, the forests. Life moved slowly.No roaring machines, no glowing towers—only simple homes and dusty roads. Magic existed, but it wasn't everywhere. People used their hands to work, their feet to walk, their hearts to live.It was a world of old ways, where the sun mattered more than the clock. Where every race lived side by side... but not always kindly. And among them, there was one creature who didn't act like the others.
A being driven by pure instinct. Alone, with no one to guide her or help,
She wandered the world, trying to survive the only way she knew how.
The first thing anyone noticed about her was the color. Pink. Not the soft pink of cherry blossoms, but the wild, sun-bleached tangle of hair that hung in ropes across her face. It swayed as she moved—not upright like the other elves, but low to the ground on all fours, her toughened palms slapping against the packed dirt of the market square.
She wore no clothes. Didn't need them. Layers of grime had long become her second skin, smeared across her back and legs where the sun hadn't burned it clean. When it rained, she'd shake herself off like the mongrel dogs she sometimes followed, spraying water in all directions.
Her name was Rena. She was an elf. But for reasons no one could explain, she thought she was a dog. And she spoke in broken, stunted phrases—agrammatism.
She was playing alone, running in circles with a leaf clutched between her teeth near the market. No one knew where she had come from or how she ended up like this. All they knew was that one day, she simply appeared—broken, lost, too innocent for this world. Not that anyone seemed to care.
"Leaf broken," she mumbled, after running and tugging at it too hard, ripping it apart.
She dropped the ruined leaf onto the ground, no longer interested, and began scanning her surroundings for something new to chase. Then she noticed it—the bustling market. It pulled at her curiosity like a scent on the wind.Without hesitation, she padded toward it on all fours, her nose twitching eagerly like a dog's. Her senses weren't as sharp as a real dog's—she was still an elf after all—but that hardly mattered to her.
The market reeked of spoiled fruit and piss. She had found a shoe. Not a full one—just a worn sole, cracked and gnawed by real dogs before. But now it was hers. She batted it with her hands (paws? …yes, paws.), sending it skittering across the cobblestones. Then she scurried after it, knees scraping, breath puffing in short, eager bursts.
A merchant kicked her as she dashed past his stall. She yelped—more startled than hurt—then circled back, hips wiggling, tail-less but expectant. Maybe he wanted to play? She dropped the shoe at his feet and crouched low, rear in the air, ready. He threw a cabbage. It hit her head with a dull thud. She didn't understand. But the shoe was still there. So she grabbed it in her teeth and trotted off, limping only slightly.
Many eyes followed her as she wandered through the market. Their gazes were heavy with hatred, with disgust—not pity. But she didn't notice, or maybe she simply didn't care. She just kept moving forward, exploring her strange new world.
A scrap of cloth fluttered down from a laundry line overhead.She lunged for it with a playful yap, missing, tumbling into a fruit cart. Rotten peaches burst beneath her hands. Juice and pulp stuck to her arms, her tangled hair.
A grocer shouted. A hand lashed out.
She darted away, low and fast, the cloth forgotten.The world blurred around her—boots and wheels and shouting mouths—but none of it truly touched her. Not inside.
Somewhere in the tangle of her mind, she thought this was all normal.Getting shoved. Getting cursed at. Losing things.This was just... how it was.
She didn't understand cruelty. Not really.Pain came and went, like hunger or thirst. It was part of the air she breathed, part of the ground she crawled on. It didn't mean anything more than that.
She pressed herself against a stone wall, panting softly, tongue peeking out between cracked lips. Her bare knees were scraped and caked with grime. She didn't even notice.
Above her, a pair of children leaned out of a window, pointing.
"Look! It's the pink rat!" one squealed.
"Throw something at it!" the other giggled.
She wagged her nonexistent tail at them, smiling wide and open. A real dog might have known better. But she was not a real dog. She was something far more fragile.
A half-brick clattered by her head.
She didn't flinch. She just sniffed it, decided it wasn't food, and moved on.
Somewhere deep down, something small and silent watched all of this happen. A part of her that knew. A part that didn't bark or wag, that didn't chase leaves or chew soles.
But it was buried. Buried so deep it might never claw its way out.
For now, there was only the world and the game. And in the game, you had to keep moving. You had to find the next thing, the next smell, the next scrap.
So Rena set off again, crawling into the sunlight that burned too bright, in a world that had no place for a creature like her.