Daughter of Death and Bloodshed

⚔︎ Chapter One ⚔︎

The forest floor was sleek from the fresh rainfall, my shoes sinking into the course mud and suctioning my heels down further into the ground. My mother yanked harder on my hand, pulling me along with her to stay apace. I could feel the palm of her hand slipping out of my grasp, her skin too wet to hold onto. My breaths welled up in my chest, not knowing how much longer my legs could keep going.

My eyes darted up to the back of her head, her mahogany brown curls swinging from side to side to see if they had caught up to us. No matter how thoroughly my legs burned I knew I couldn't stop, she wouldn't allow it. My hand slipped further from her fingertips. Blood coated her arm, rushing down into the palm of her hand and making it too slippery to grip.

"Thora, whatever you do, don't let go." My mother's voice was rushed, scared of letting whatever those things were, reach us again. And yet her tone was also soft and angelic as she pulled me along. "We're almost there, sweetheart."

My nails dug into her skin trying to hold on, hoping wherever it was that she was taking me wasn't much further. If my hand let go I wouldn't be able to keep going. Low-hanging branches from the trees materialized out of nowhere and sliced my cheeks. Dirty water droplets splattered across my face and burned my eyes as my feet caught on roots in the ground. My low pigtails fell from their elastics, bouncing down in front of my face and covering my vision. My hair had always been tied low on each side, the only rule I could ever remember. Always cover my ears.

I couldn't hold on. I couldn't keep running.

My hand broke away from my mother's, my knees buckling from underneath me. I was face-first in the mud, all the air knocked from my lungs when the wild screech echoed through the forest, rattling the very ground and making the trees tremble from their roots. No, not a screech, a roar.

They were closing in on us. My limbs went numb as my mother turned around for me. She never reached me. "Thora--"

I sprang up from my bed, my limbs tangled in a heap of sweat-drenched blankets. I wiped the droplets of sweat from my forehead, pushing my hair back as my breath remained staggered. My stomach twisted, threatening to retch up anything I had left in it from dinner. The nightmares hadn't been uncommon for me, but I had managed to get through the last few months without having one so vivid. My mother's bloodied hand flashed in my mind, that bellowing roar seeming to still bounce off my eardrums like I was hearing it now.

My eyes darted around my small bedroom, taking inventory of everything I could lay eyes on followed by every sound I could identify. A grounding technique my aunt had taught me from a young age when the nightmares had first begun. Although now, I was able to wake myself up from them. When I was eight I'd only be able to wake up to fits of violent screaming or in a pool of my own vomit.

I looked over to the tiny wooden dresser, only generous enough to hold three drawers. I had pressed it up against the far left wall of the room, beside my door. An even smaller chest lay beside it, harnessing my quiver and bows that had been stashed under a heap of old cloaks and boots. A few layers deeper lay my twin blades. I looked at the chips in the walls I had made over the years. If the grounding method hadn't worked when I was younger I opted to use a knife to chip out insignificant carvings in the cabin walls until the sun rose again.

The nightmares happened so often that I got decently good at them. It started with flowers that I used to see in my mother's gardens; sunflowers, hydrangeas, and lilies. Then I moved on to all sorts of animals and insects that I'd find scurrying around in the woods once I started venturing in there more and more often. Our cabin sat on the outskirts of our village, bordering the crest of the forest. It took me months before I even left the house after sundown, let alone step foot into the woods. If it weren't for the help from my uncle, I probably never would have stepped into the woods again. He insisted that if I were to try and ease the nightmares then it was up to only me to replace a bad memory with a good one. And from that day forward he began taking me out into the woods. Training me. He was a blacksmith by trade, but a hunter and a warrior by heart. He never told me where he had learned his skills. It was always the same answer. In a life long before this one. So, slowly but surely, he taught me how to hunt, and how to defend myself to ensure I would never feel that helpless again. Never again would I be hunted, I would be the huntress.