The Days Family Split Apart

Guardian

The earth beneath me was moist and I had a major headache. That's the first things I felt as I woke up. 

   I slowly got myself up sitting but quickly regretted it. The world around me was blurry and moved around as if I'd been taking drugs. I held both hands on my head and tried to get a hold on myself, my body, my thoughts and the world around me. Pieces of memories began flooding in. Including the ones were I nearly killed a man.

   My heart stopped.

I came to remember Shokyo. I remembered how he stood above me and held me down, crying, it hurt more on him than on me as he threw me down the cliff with a scream that blended in with a deep sorrowful howl.

I began crying as his howl went as an echo in my head. Regretting what had happened. Hated myself from it. The night air was cold as it hit my fur and eventually my skin. Crying, I jumped from the wind that hit me and looked around. I was still in light forest and I luckily knew where I was. But I also knew that I could not return back to the Village.

   The old wooden house by the river. A picture of it popped up in my mind. The only place I could be. I stood up and began walking while holding around my shoulders in regret. The wind dried out my tears and was cold on my skin and fur as it did so.

The cold had turned to frost by the time I reached the river. I could see my shaking breath before me as a fog I walked through. I was freezing, hungry, thirsty and tired. I began to walk over some rocks to cross the river but due to the frozen water on them, they were slippery and I slipped into the freezing water. Hitting my back on one of the stones on the way down.

   I sat up in the icing water and began to doubt.
Doubt if I would survive, doubt if I would ever make to see my little sister again. Doubt if I ever found people who could live with me and love me by who I was and I had become. A monster. My tears dripped into the river water and I strengthened my grip on some stones in the water. I looked towards the sky and onto the stars. The water was, oddly enough, not as cold anymore and I had no problem in sitting in it.

    Will I be alone forever now? Will I die alone? Without a family and people who love me for what and who I am...? I thought as I looked back into the water that was calm enough to reflect the light of the half moon and the stars onto my face. The breeze was cold as it penetrated through my wet fur and hit my skin. I stood up and began to walk once again. Onto where, I did not know. I was at that time driven purely by my instincts. Like a zombie I walked. The old cabin was out of my thoughts.

Only when I nearly walked head into one wall of the wooden cabin, I realized where I had been going to. I walked inside.

Strangely enough, it had been slightly decorated with a pile of dragon skins with both fur and scales on the bed, that no longer just was a bedstead, supposedly to keep me warm in the winter months, a bucket in one corner and a big stack of books on the desk. I walked over and looked at them. One explained how to extract and plant various seeds from edible fruits and greens. Even some flowers. A small bag of seeds laid between the pages. Another explained how to make various weapons like a bow, axes and shovel and how to hunt down animals and use the meat to eat. Also what you could use all the rest of the animal for. 

   3 of the books where novels that I could read. All 3 hand written. The last book I had never seen before and had some sort of runes on the front. I opened it up and looked inside it. It explained the various species of dragons living all over Kaiton and what they could do, their height, weight, bio, diet and defenses. Everything I ever needed to know. I flipped one of the pages to the page where the same blue and yellow dragon appeared in my book from my mother, and a paper fell out and onto the ground.

I closed the book, laid it on the desk next to the other books that looked oddly small compared to that one, and took up the paper.

   A letter.

                         "Niku,

                                I'm sorry for what have happened to you, I really am. But know this;

                               I'll always be watching over you. No matter how stupid and stubborn you can be.

                              I will always be there for you. You just can't see me.

                             Now, I brought you these. I hope you will take your time to learn from them and                                   survive."

There was no sender on the letter, but neither did I need it. I knew who it were from and that was what mattered. Nothing else.

    "Thank you sis." I said as I sighed and laid the letter on the desk. I looked out the window over the bed. The moonlight filled the house and the stars flicked on the night sky.

    "I will survive. And I'll do it with my head standing tall. I will not break. I'll get through another day, every day. I promise." I smiled with a tear running down my right cheek. Knowing that I would never truly be alone. Never.

    A long deep howl could be heard through light forest as I stared to live Wild.