Before The Storm

Preface

     I loved my father. I hated what he and my mother had done to me behind my back. I hated that I now stood on the edge of my entire world, my entire life. And the sun sank in the distance on the what they had made the last day I would be a child, I would be forced to grow up. I would be forced to be so man's possession. We didn't come from much, so I wasn't expecting to be married off to the prince. I best I could hope for was a man that would beat me or have me die in child birth. At 16 my entire life was about to take a drastic change from what I had envisioned for myself. My father has told me at dinner and expected me to still be able to finish the bland porridge in my smoothly carved wooden bowl. I had thought tears would be my first response to the news that I was sold to a butcher two towns over, but they would not come. Instead, an unyielding rage formed in my stomach. My father had expected a fight, my mother stayed quiet at her end of the table, and I knew not to look to her for help. While she had been my protector while I was young, I know not to expect much from her now that my father had made his own decision about how my life would go.

       The rage inside of me grew as the hours passed; I lay in bed and looked out the poorly crafted window of my family's hut, the wind sent a breeze in through the house, it felt like it was curling around my body. Enticing me to get from my bed and dance under the stars, there was a warmth that lingered on the breeze, the promise of the summer to come. But there would be no summer for me this year, and the thought of that brought stinging tears to the backs of my eyes. I had to change this; there had to be a way.

This would not be my fate.