A Human's Desire

Prologue

I was six. My mother had me propped up on her knee. I vaguely remember her squeezing my dad's hand. She was crying. Some other people from my village were there. They were crying, too. We were crowded around a bed. On the bed lay a woman around my mother's age. She was pale and every time she coughed, a spray of red sprinkled the white sheets. I knew she was dying, but I wasn't crying like my mother, or the young woman's family. That confused me. Should I be crying? I felt no urge to cry for the dying woman, even though she had been close to our family. Was that wrong?

Finally, after hours of sitting at her bedside, the woman's hand went limp in her husband's. I watched the light fade from her eyes, which stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Then, I looked to the daughter. She gazed at her dead mother, and I knew exactly when it happened. When the crushing reality hit her. When she realized she would never hear her mother's voice again. She had her mother's eyes, dull and lifeless. I suppose it's something similar to death.

...

The girl was eight. The village kids had built a tree house in the nearby forest. The tree house sat above a deep, coursing river. She was playing with her friend from down the road. They were picking up the biggest rocks they could find so that they could throw them in the river from the tree house. Then there was an accident. The boy slipped, and he fell into the river. The girl tried to pull him up, but the rocks weighed him down. He sunk deeper and never came back up. She ran back to the village to get help, but she was too late. She watched as the boy's mother and father held his freezing, blue body in their arms and wept. The girl's parents were secretly glad it hadn't been her but would never admit it. She never cried.

The girl was ten. She was wandering in the forest with her new friend. The blue-eyed girl had moved to the village one year after the drowning incident. The girl's parents told her not to tell the blue-eyed girl about it. They said she might be too scared to go into the forest, and that wouldn't be good. The girl found out that forests scared the new girl because of the birds. The blue-eyed girl's father died from an illness birds had given him, so she didn't like them very much. The girl learned that life can be ironic in the cruelest way possible. They were playing in a field together, when a murder of crows descended on them. The girl managed to scare them away with only a few deep scratches, but the blue-eyed girl wasn't so lucky. They clawed out both of her eyes. The girl heard the eyeless one's screams when she realized she'd never see again. The girl's parents gave their condolences to the family. She never cried.

The girl was thirteen. She went to a friend's house. His parents were leaving for the night and were worried about him being on his own. He had been having trouble coping with the tragic death of his sister. They didn't know what he would do if he was alone, so they asked the girl to keep him company for the night. She stayed with him and tried her best to make him happy. Apparently, she didn't try hard enough. While the girl was distracted, he took a knife and tried to end his life, but his parents came home early. They were just in time to intervene and save him. She never cried.

They called her an omen. Wherever she went, tragedy followed and caused those around her to suffer. The girl had seen so much death, but she showed no pity or sympathy. The families throughout the village kept their children away. Her parents denied their claims that she was a sign of disaster, but she made a mistake.