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Althea was raised the daughter of a land-owning farmer. The family owned just enough land to take care of themselves, and also JUST enough to make a nuisance of themselves to the neighbors. Althea's folks refused repeated offers to buy the farmland, and unfortunately, good fences did not make for good neighbors. Often were the days growing up when Al and her brothers herded grazing livestock off their budding crops and mended fences that had been severed with wire-cutters. Farming was a family endeavor, and surplus coin was hoarded by Papa with great intensity: every day that the tax-man wasn't mentioned was a noteworthy day on Farm Sentos.
By 12, Althea had learned to bury her own meager coinage as far afield as she could muster, and by her wedding day midsummer of her sixteenth year, her pittances amounted to about as much as a week's tax dues on the farm. Her new husband, a local merchant of no renown, set her to work as a seamstress, much to Althea's chagrin. However, old habits die hard, and the young lady was adept at keeping a small portion of her earnings for herself rather than turning over the entire amount to her husband. Althea kept house, sewed repairs for other townsfolk, and occasionally created a design of her own to sell on the side to the more wealthy women of the area.
Not particularly happy with her lot in life, Althea sometimes discounted her handiwork in exchange for reading lessons. At 25, her ability to read had outstripped her husband's, and since she had proved barren (and thus, useless), in his jealousy he drugged her one night and wagoned her off about 4 hours away from Braye, their home village. He left her prostrate alongside the road, where she awoke with a splitting headache and the clothes on her back. Vowing vengeance, she wandered the road until she found a farmhouse, where she spent a week working for half a week's wages and getting her bearings. At the end of the week, she bid farewell to the farmer, his wife, and their rotten little brats, and headed back toward the village of Braye to recover her savings from under the floorboards.
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