I have no recollection of my birth parents, where I was born, or how I got to where I was found. What I do know is that I was found in the middle of the Nyctea Scandiaca Prairie by Alarra, the Trusted One, a shaman amongst a herd of centaurs. It was Alarra who raised and taught me how to understand the ways of nature, the way a shaman should.  Though it has been more than 10 years since I saw her last, I can still remember her sleek chestnut body and vibrant, ever tender, blue eyes.  I remember the things she taught me and the words of wisdom that she passed on.  She was a mother to me, for this she was and still is greatly missed.
Alarra was the one that taught me how to use a bow, with marksmanship great enough to shoot and make a kill when the time arose.  She told me that it did not matter that I wasn’t her child and that the others shouldn’t worry because I was not a centaur.  I lived with her and our herd until the year of my thirteenth summer.  It was on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of my birth that I was forced to flee from the herd, and into the adventure that would become my life.  During the last six years of my life with the herd there was an air of hostility that seemed to grow stronger between the tribe and myself.  It was on this night that Alarra was killed by one of the herdsmen, whose hostility towards me was finally released in one of the most horrific ways possible; murder.
Her scream of anguish and fury at this betrayal of her clansmen filled the prairie and echoed through the surrounding forest.  The haunting noise chasing me as I ran, dodging between trees, my feet carrying me as swiftly as possible.  Terror filled me to my core, caressing my soul with it’s icy touch, as I fled into the depths of the darkened forest.  The fear of being hunted by those I, at one time, had considered my family, worried at my heels with my flight from the safety I’d known for so long. Slowly my fear and terror gave way to exhaustion.  I began to stumble as I ran, forcing myself to slow down.  Stumbling I found my self at the mouth of a cave where I sank to my knees and curled up, sleeping.  I woke, a few hours later, in a cold sweat, startled by the sounds of the night and worrying over the last words that I heard Alarra utter unto me before my sudden flight, not knowing what the night would bring, and what was yet to befall me.  I wondered what she had meant when she imparted her final words unto me.
‘One day you will come into your true powers, my daughter.  One day you will know your true potential.  Look to the skills I have taught you and those hidden powers of all around you.  You have strong hidden strengths that you have yet to discover, some of which you should keep hidden.  Look to all that are allies and keep your friends close, trusting in those kept closest.’ What had she meant?  Did she mean that I was to become some heroine of legends, my story to be told by firesides for years to come?  Or was I to become one of the helpers, that few people hear or know about, who helps a person become a hero and whose memory is lost to time?  To all this I wondered.
I was able to spend the next ten days in those woods, sleeping in the cave and eating what nuts and berries I found.  I only stayed ten days because the herd’s hunters had come too close to stumbling upon my make shift camp and sanctuary.  After that close call, and knowing what they had done to Alarra, I gathered my few belongings, which included a comb, a blanket, my bow and my quiver of arrows.  With these few possessions of mine, I traveled as far and as fast as I could before winter set in, and the weather took a turn for the worse.  I was successful in traveling far enough out of the herd’s grazing and pasture lands that I no longer had to worry what may befall me should I slow my pace.
Having slowed my pace, once certain that the herd no longer so vigerously pursued my trail, I was able to garnish a small collection of fruits and nuts to aid my survival in the coming winter.  I was successful enough in hunting to kill enough stay off an unruly hunger, drying or smoking the meat when the chance arose.  I was able to sell and trade some of the furs to purchase a bag large enough to hold those objects I had gathered in my flight, and now my journey towards a new home, and small enough to not be a hindrance.  
My first winter, in this new form of existence, was marked by the coming of a sudden blizzard, lasting four and a half  days.  For days the signs of the swift approaching winter had permeated the ever cooling air, foretelling of the harshness to come.  The suddenness of the blizzard trapped me in the cave that I had sought refuge in, the night before.   This sudden appearance of snow forced my journey to cease temporarily, knowing it would be foolish to travel through snow if I wished to avoid detection by any lingering trackers from the heard should they, in their desire to be rid of me, still be on my trail.
The angry howling of the wind, as it blew the torrent of snow past the cave’s yawning mouth, woke me from my slumber.  Groggy and rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I stumbled half awake, towards the mouth of the cave in search of the source of the sound that had woke me.  Half aware of my surroundings, I trod with my bare feet on the new fallen snow that had accumulated at the mouth of the cave, shocking me into wakefulness.  Now wide awake I took in the gloriously frightening sight of the curtain of white.  Knowing the dangers of venturing forth in such a storm I returned to the place of my slumber and began my patient wait for the storms end.
By the end of the third day I was beginning to worry, the snow had let up only in strength of wind, though the snow still fell as though dumped from a bucket.  On the eve of the fourth day I watched as the snow began to let up and finally cease its relentless falling around noon of the fifth day.  The snow lay thick on the ground, as I ventured forth from the cave I noticed the snowy outline of a frozen river.  Bushes lined the banks of the river and the trees surrounding the cave gave it a perfectly undisclosed location.  I decided to spend the rest of the winter there as the cave captured warmth and was so near a source of food and water.  Surviving on the fish I could catch or found frozen, along with the berries and nuts that had been missed or left over from the fall gatherings of the animals, I scrounged my way though the first winter of my new life.  It was during that first winter that I learned just how hard it was to live on one’s own.  I was lucky to make it through, though I came out rather lean, with what little food I had.