Journal of the Eldest

Hello,

I hope that you could help out leave comments, this is a story I've heard on my mind and I wish to share it. I hope you like it and help this little story grow.

Samuel S B

I could hear voices in the background but I was not sure whose they were. My mind was blocked and confused, I could not understand a thing. I tried to raise my arms but as soon as I tried to move it, a pain speared through me. My eyes flashed open as a loud shriek escaped my mouth. I could feel the wetness all over me as I tried to calm myself.

"She's awake."

Who is that?

I heard a shuffle of feet as someone approached me where I lay. I tried to turn my head to look only for a pain great er than the one before to drench me. I couldn't help the scream.

"Hush child," the medicine woman whispered next to my ear. That is when everything came back to me. All the details of why i was lying on a mat unable to move. I remembered our small settlement along the Nile. My father was a Great War chief of the southern tribes, one of the most feared in the whole of the region. Our small settlement was near the sight of ancient Memphis. My father had always wanted a son with his official wife, but he got me instead and lost her in the process. He never showed it in public but I could tell he did not love me the way other fathers in the settlement loved their daughters.

To make matters worse, he had three sons from his second wife, who despised the spawn of her competition. I tried hard to win the affections of my father but it was all in vain and useless. I resorted to the one thing I knew would win his affection. I tried to be the son he wanted. I mastered everything that was expected of a leader.

None of my step siblings could master me in hand to hand combat or any weapon. I could take them all on at my tender age of fifteen summers. I was a deft hand when it came to playing politics and this angered my father even more, but confused me further. However hard I tried, nothing seemed to win his affection. He seemed to despise me. I hated myself for making him hate me and it would take me years to forgive myself of a crime I did not commit.

My brothers were soon granted freedoms I was not. I was his eldest child and this made me jealous of the way things turned out. They led warriors to war, coming back prouder and more glorious even when I was a summer older than they were. Father kept me and my skills to the sidelines until I could not take it anymore. I was the village joke to many and this never sat well with me.

I withdrew into myself, keeping away from people and practicing with myself. I swore to get better than any of my family and it nearly did happen. My younger brother challenged me in one of his drunken stupors. He was sixteen summers as I was seventeen summers. Many people laughed at me when I politely refused knowing he was my father’s heir. I did not want to ruin anything further with my father.

But foolish Karim did not relent. He followed me round the settlement, making more and more people laugh at me. I tried going to our father, hoping it would put some soberness into him, but alas, father laughed. He boosted of how he used to see me whip my brothers skillfully, but now I cower from them. I think that statement broke me and my pride. I turned on Karim accepting his challenge.

How I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. The memory of the conversation which had led me to the brink of death flashed in my mind as I closed my eyes trying to focus myself away from the pain. 

"Karim, you pig," I bellowed. "Pick your weapons, for tomorrow at sunrise I will give you your hardest lesson yet__ with my bare hands."

"Sister," Karim laughed. "Surely you cannot fight me with your hands. How will you get a husband without hands? Or maybe you will die childless. You should have been married by now, but you try so hard to upstart us here."