A dream that I had the other night and actually remembered, but rewritten in short story form. 
I found myself as a little girl, with matted and oily hair sticking to my face, stumbling fearfully into a luscious garden. It must have belonged to an affluent family, because it was attached to a wondrously large home with multiple stories reaching upwards towards the sky. I wasn’t quite sure what good it would do me, being in such a place, but I was desperate for refuge and for help. I took a moment to ponder about what I might say to the family of this household so that I could beg for their help, but I thought better of it and decided it would be more fruitful for me to just quietly hide in their garden for a while to rest before I moved on.
The idea didn’t last very long when I heard footsteps nearby and locked eyes with a young man coming towards me. “What are you two doing here?” he called out to me in an angry voice. I was confused by his question, since I was alone, but I glanced around me and found another little boy around the same age as me. I must have failed to take notice of him when I was preoccupied with thinking about my next move while resting in the garden. I thought to make a run for it, but I knew that might have called for more trouble than if I had just asked him for help.
The boy seemed to have the same idea as I did, because we both ended up relaying our stories to the young man. The young man warned us that he would only be able to take in one of us, and that left him the choice of only choosing one person between the two of us. I prayed that he would take pity upon me, and he did, but I was not the one he had chosen. Maybe he thought the boy would be more useful to him. The young man looked at me apologetically, and warned me that I had better run and run fast. He ran beside me, leading me out of the yard, and for some reason I had a hopeful notion that he would run with me, leading me to somewhere safe. But as soon as we left his property, I looked back and my heart sank as I saw him watching after me, standing still at the front of his house.
It was a silly thought that he would go through that much trouble for a scraggly and helpless little girl. I kept my speed up and continued running along the dirt path, but all hope was lost when I saw a group of slavers at an adjacent path. I did my best to run as fast as I could, but felt a whip go after my throat as I was dragged towards the group of slavers. The whip was replaced by a collar and leash. My weak fingers tried unsuccessfully to pry them off my neck as I struggled to get away and clumsily stumbled along. I was left no choice but to accept it and go along with the group, as another youth added to their collection.