The Spirits of the Forest

Chapter 1

Harriot

I see red in front of my eyes. It's the anger that whips my face, but it might be as well the blood. The blood that covers everything, every window, every street. The blood that I carry on my hands.

Every step forward feels like two steps back. I'm never too far away from him. I feel like a broken machine that just now has realized it has its own wishes. With no batteries left, with only the anger that still feeds my body and with the heart in my stomach, I can't do anything but repeat the same thing over and over again: the right foot in front, then the other.

I used to know this road. Now I hardly notice where the bad people's part ends and where the other city half begins. The contrast between the two town sections was so prominent in the past, but now it's like everybody decided to put their differences aside and announce that chaos is the new fashion of these days.

It's hard to believe that everything that's around me was once the capital of the witchers empire. It's hard to believe that they gave us, humans, their most important town, while they chose to begin a new life far from this island. But it's not in my power to comment on history cause, right now, I can't even deal with my own problems.

However, when I look back into the past, I realize that my biggest problem begun exactly because of how this story continued, because of what we, humans, decided to do with the enormous gift that we received.

Some of us started building an even more glorious architecture than the city's old one. But for the others, there was a completely different option: to enjoy the 'souvenir' as long as possible. To enjoy it forever.

That's where the hate began. And it corrupted us, eating all the goodness we ever had in our bodies. We got split in two halves, and I think that's when humanity died. The two halves were from the same blood. They were practically sisters, but still so terribly different. Like the sun and the moon. But sunny days are, exactly like the good people, overrated. They warm your heart, blind your eyes with lightness, showing you always just what you want to see, leaving the monsters, the consequences for your wishes, for the night. Leaving the painful truth for the bad people.

There was a time when I thought that it was my duty to reunite the two parts. To fill the hole that fractured our hearts. I convinced myself to believe that if I tried hard enough, everything would return to its old brightness. So I tried. I tried to be nice with everyone, no matter from which city side they were. I tried to forgive mom every time she yelled at me. I tried to forgive dad for forgetting to send me letters. I tried, and I tried, and I tried.

I tried till all my friends vanished.

I tried till mom became aggressive.

I tried till I realized that I had waited nine years for a letter in vain.

And all this, all my unsuccessful tries to save humanity, should have been the ending of my story. But the world thought otherwise. It chose to send someone to trick me to enter another tale, one last tale. And this time, I am the villain.

Sirius. He's the only one to blame for what's happening to me right now.
He's the one that fooled me. He wanted me to work with him, but without telling me the truth about what exactly we were working on. So, I changed roles.

I became the villain in Sirius's heroic and mysterious story.

I freeze, my mind it's getting so many flashbacks, and I want to scream so that everyone in this godforsaken ruins could hear me: I also tried to be with you, Sirius! I tried to please you! And in exchange, you used me, you tricked me, you lied to me, you made me love you only to make me hate you.