Roots | ONC 2024

XIII : Prey

Umirin sits quietly on a thick tree branch, obscured by the dense foliage of the boughs. He waits and watches the little bedded down crop of tall grass below him closely.

Finally, after two days of searching, he tracked down a white doe and her white fawn. They are quite rarely seen, but he found them.

He grips his makeshift bow in his hands tightly, a few arrows tied at his back. He had carved them himself, taken great care to wittle them as sharp as he possibly could have, so the kill would be clean.

Painless.

He shudders, his chest faintly aching at having to kill an innocent creature yet again. However, he's had time now to come to terms with it, with what he will become after this is done. He is calm, ready for it.

Spending some time with the Elders showed Umirin that there has always been little difference between him and the beasts. It had only ever been a matter of circumstances that would put him to follow in their wake.

What he is, they once were, and what they are, he will become. And such is the end to his means.

He's been waiting since last night, blended as one with the environment, for the mother to move aside, reveal her baby. Her form obstructs Umirin's aim as she is now, but this tree is the best vantage point he could get, so he compromised to waiting out the night.

Umirin hadn't slept much, and the little he did, had been restless. He dreamt of Shani, his beautiful smile, his soft touch. Their reunion. His soul feels hollow without his beloved by his side.

But it had turned nighmarish very quickly. Shani turning away in disgust hearing what a monster Umirin became to return to him. His family so sickly pleased about making the right choice to cast him away young given what he turned into.

Sleep tortured him so, so Umirin gave up on it after only a few hours.

The doe below him twitches and wakes, raises her head. Umirin tenses, holds his breath as he reaches behind himself and slides loose an arrow, adjusting it against the bow. He must be precise.

Slowly, the elegant white mass of the animal stretches and lifts to her hooves. Umirin sees the fawn then, mimicking its mother.

He grits his teeth as he draws the arrow back with the bow, arms raised and poised while he aims.

Through the eye. He cannot miss.

He waits, muscles stiff, for the doe to walk a ways ahead. The fawn makes to stumble after its mother, frail and unsure, its tiny legs still far too gangly to support it walking.

Umirin adjusts his aim a final time. The fawn turns its head just so, and he releases his arrow.

He doesn't let himself look away as it flies like a blur through the air. A quiet squelch rings out as it pierces the fawn's head, then the baby collapses onto its side, in a little cloud of dust.

It doesn't twitch anymore. Umirin's aim never fails him.

The alarmed doe jumps at the noise and approaches to sniff at her dead offspring. She nudges her fawn's blood splattered furry cheek, but the child is limp.

Umirin makes himself sit and watch, no matter how his heart petrifies into a lump of rock at the sight of his sin. The least he owes the Forest is not to turn away.

He has become as monstrous as he must.

The doe tries in vain to wake up her babe for a while more, eventually giving up and wandering out of this area, likely sensing danger lurking around.

Umirin climbs down the tree only after she is gone, and takes a deep breath, releases it slowly as he approaches the body and kneels by it. The fawn's fur is so brilliantly white, save for its head. From its burst eye sticks out his arrow, a splatter of starkly red, fresh blood staining its fur around the wound. It couldn't have been more than a few months old. It is so small.