Lights in the Darkness

Contest

Macka hadn’t moved she sat in the courtyard thinking, about those eyes, burrowing straight into her soul, she could feel them looping through her mind finding all her secrets. She wasn’t sure if it was all  her paranoid mind playing a trick on her, or if he actually had. She shook her head, he couldn’t have that would mean he would have been magic but magic was gone and he didn’t havethe marks of an essence user, she reached for her arms when she thought this. She moved her right sleeve up. There were small scars some long, some short all across her arm. She pulled it back down, shuddering, “I hate this”

            “Hate what?” Macka almost lept straight from her boots. Prowler was standing at the entrance to the courtyard.

            “Where are Haravan and Watcher?” Macka asked composing herself and pulling on her sleeve making sure her scars were covered.

            “Haravan’s probably still drinking and Watcher is getting me a good bow and some arrows. You didn’t answer my question” Prowler walked across the courtyard and sat down at the in the chair across from her

            “I hate” Macka paused looking up at the trees surrounding the stone courtyard.

            Prowler followed her gaze “you miss your homelands, don’t you” He looked back at her and took her hand, “it’s alright I miss my real home too.”

            “Your real home?” Macka had never heard Prowler mention where he was from so she had just assumed that he must have lived in Pravda his whole life. 

            “Yup, Why were you exiled?” Prowler asked shifting the subject rapidly.

            “Who said I was exiled?” Macka was taken aback suddenly

            “Well you always are wearing gloves and covering your arms, and you miss your home and I know that exiled elves are marked for their crimes on either the hand or the arms. It seemed a good enough guess”  Prowler said nonchalantly as he turned his gaze to a bird flying high in the sky above them.

            Macka looked at her brown leather gloved hands, a silence faded over the two, a silence that felt to Macka like it was drilling into her mind same as Watchers but much less pleasant. Prowler seemed not bothered by it in the slightest; he was focusing on the bird circling slowly.  “Yes I was exiled.” She said after a while. “I committed a crime that I should have been killed for.”

            “Elves only find death worth of one crime,” Prowler said looking back at her the bird flying away now.

            “Yes,” She paused, a tear rolling down her face “The Murder of a family member” The silence returned heavier than before.

            “Why weren’t you killed?” Prowler asked his eyes seemed to lock with hers, his eyes seemed to search her mind just as Watchers had only more forcefully.

            “My father got the Elvin council to just exile me” Macka’s face was covered in the trails of rolling tears. “I killed my brother,” Prowler pulled her close and hugged her “he was so young, and I killed him” Prowler wiped her tears away and kissed her on the forehead, “I’m sure it wasn’t how it happened.”

            “don’t worry accidents happen” Prowler said “you know what will cheer you up?”

            “What” Macka said wiping her tears again.

            “Watching me get my ego shoved into check by a blind man in an archery contest.” Prowler smiled and Macka laughed.

            “Ready?” Watcher asked standing in the doorway holding a large quiver of arrows and a great horned bow.