The bright light of the sun fell on Red Feline's glowing body for a brief, warm moment as the man dragged her into a dark realm. The kingdom of the unknown.

Red Feline was in between consciousness and her land of fantasy from which she was being extracted. In her mind, the images of the woman hanging from the tree, her body slowly burning, were still vivid, as if she had been there not long before, like the memory one has of an unforgettable experience.

She was confused, was she dreaming? Was she still under the spell of her sensual experience? Was this real?

The cold wooden floor was a better friend to her skin. It was basically clean although it was old and splintery but still, it was better than the path of broken glass and dirt she just left.

She didn't open her eyes, afraid of what she might see, the firm grip on her wrists was enough for her to know that she was not in friendly territory. That feeling was not unfamiliar to her.

The images of that girl being taken away, along with all the girls of her village and the few surviving women were vividly passing through her mind, even the cries and the voices were as real as the sounds of the street beyond the walls.

The cries of a few dozen girls of different ages, taken away to captivity, were not easy to forget. Their faces were all familiar, those were the faces of people she always saw, every day, some of them her friends, her cousins. She heard her own voice talking to them, in between her cries, promising them that she would free them. She was the daughter of the head of the council ...she was all that was left of the council...it was her responsibility.

Red Feline didn't know how much time had elapsed since she crossed the corridor. As she regained consciousness she noticed that her face was covered by her own stocking which now was like a mask and she was barefoot. Her skirt was gone, so were her shoes. Her shirt was still on...she wondered why. Had she been raped while she was unconscious?

She didn't have any memory of what had happened to her from the moment she was struck from behind. Only a faint feeling of knowing that something was not right. Her mind had played tricks on her before and she thought, before losing consciousness, that it was all part of her rather active imagination.

Still, she didn't open her eyes, she preferred it that way, even if she was growing aware of her condition.

The man dropped her rather brusquely when the dragging was over. He let her hands go and they fell to the wooden floor, crashing with a sharp noise. She held her moan inside, her fingers were hurting on the spot the bones hit the floor.

Almost immediately she heard a noise as the man moved around her, she wasn't sure what it was, it sounded metallic, she then felt the rough hands of her captor placing her wrists in shackles, she realized that the noise she heard was the rope he was pulling down.

So far, the situation was eerily familiar, once again she had the sensation that she had had such an experience before, but she was not sure when.

The man pulled the rope, a sharp noise of the pulley was heard over the faint breathing of Red Feline. She felt a sharp pain around her wrists and her arms as they were pulled up, she still didn't open her eyes, still afraid to look where she was, or perhaps she didn't need to see where she was. Perhaps it was as familiar as the image she had inside her.

In her 'memory' of that familiar place the floor was not made of wood, it was simply dirt. The familiarity of the situation was not the place she was in but rather the situation itself.

She felt her body being pulled up.