Rags' life had become one of strangeness and learning, among the men who slaughtered her tribe. She had initially tried multiple times to enact revenge, before slowly coming to see this group as their new tribe. Though there were a lot of new rules to get her head around. For starters, she was the only woman in this group, which is the exact opposite of the Harem-like build of the tribes of the Valleys. They did seem to have something called 'marriage' to prevent mating from being a problem with this backwards, inefficient system. Rags didn't quite understand it yet. 

They explained other things as they traveled, such as heir weapons, which were sharp and made of metal, as opposed to Rags' crude stone knife and club. They claimed they were taking her to be trained in combat, as only then would she have any worth as a person. She'd either die in this school, or come out the other side an exotic, deadly warrior worth marrying, as a status symbol. All of the men laid claim to her, and who would take her was to be decided if and when she stayed alive. There was something about how they talked about this which rubbed Rags up the wrong way, as if she would be property to them. Maybe it was just their strange, dialect. They spoke more words in a sentence in the deserts and caves than in the valleys. They thought her simple because of her dialect, but in truth she was a very intelligent girl. She thought them needlessly complicated because of their dialect, but you could not find a group of simpler men.

After weeks of travel, they arrived at the gates. Rags was marveling at this sight. This was not a cave, nor a cave made of cloth, called a 'tent'. This was a small valley, in the middle of the desert, with smooth, tall walls, and an entrance barred by metal beams like the swords the men she traveled with used. They were let in, and Rags found herself looking up at more strangely dressed men like the ones she was travelling with, not adorned with pelts but with cloth and metal shaped to their body. And one woman. The first woman she had seen since the death of her tribe. Shed never seen a woman so muscular, and her fearsome confidence was nothing like the anxious fight-or-flight state of a Valley Person before combat. This was a woman who believed she could win any fight, and didn't view them as encounters were anyone's life may be lost. Rags marveled at this unusual (in her experience) female.