Chapter 23

ESMERAY

The last time I ever had a new outfit was during the feast of the moon when I turned eight. I still remembered the look on my mom’s face when she picked out that dress for me. She’d almost gone into tears rambling about how fast I was growing and how perfect the dress looked on me.

‘I bet this was made especially for you Ray,’ she’d told me. Even if I wasn’t exactly a fashionable kid, the look on my mom’s face made me fall in love with the dress. Every day until the war broke out, I admired the little green dress, counting the days till I got to wear it again. But it never came. My parents did the worse and I lived the rest of my life putting on rags that I picked out from the dump at Silver Moon.

Ailana gave me some of her clothes, but I could never wear them at Silver Moon. Zayden found them on me and ripped them off my body, telling me how unworthy I was of the dresses. He went on to threaten Aila and we thought it best that she stopped giving me her clo