Healer

Prologue

Human village - 10 years ago.

     Talia moved silently through the dark streets of her village, working her way home. At 16, she was slender and pale, but still stood a head shorter than her mother, a dark haired fae female in hiding on the small plot of land owned by Talia's adoptive grandparents. She had been on a late night midwife call with her adoptive grandmother, Marna, and had cautiously provided slow healing for the mother as she fought through tearing brought on by a breach birth. Talia had to be especially cautious tonight because the father of the child was a Hunter, and wouldn't look the other way from her strange gift as so many others in her village had. 

     As she neared her home, she immediately tensed, sensing a lingering fog of fear snaking along the ground at her feet. She stepped in to the shadows and gathered her bearings. It was silent here. Too silent. She stood behind a tree and begged her heart rate to slow for 60 seconds....120 seconds...until she had heard silence long enough to step back out on to the path. And then she was running, because in the darkness, she could see the door to her mother's shack cracked open, and she knew. She knew this was the moment her mother had been preparing her for for 16 years. When her pregnant mother had been tossed over the wall to die, she had vowed to do whatever it took to survive long enough for Talia to find her own path to survival. And she had. The apothecary owner and his wife had come across the starving fae in the forest and taken her in, caring for her and her baby and providing them a way to live normally amongst the humans for a decade and a half. They had always mourned their own inability to have children and they loved the two fae as family. When Talia was 10 years old, Marna had fallen and cut her leg while walking Talia home from the shops in town. Talia, in her panic over being discovered, and her concern over the woman's leg felt a power well deep in her chest and upon laying her hands on her grandmother, the cut healed. From then, she had healed in the town, healed in her family, and felt an intense sense of purpose in her world.

     As Talia came upon the door, she scented blood and had to force the door open against the items strewn about inside. This was it. Tears burned behind her green eyes and she hung her shoulders for a moment, knowing that from this moment on, she had no life, no identity, and no safe place.

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     Somewhere across the wall, across the courts of Prythian, across miles and miles of mountains and fields full of creatures and horrors Talia could not even imagine, a weary Illyrian warrior woke with a start, clutching at the ache in his chest. For these decades of Amarantha's reign, his uneasiness had woken him many times, but this time was different. It was like being cleaved in two. He lay back down and covered his eyes with his forearm, blocking the last of the half moon's light.

(Word Count: 543)