Era of Greed [✔ COMPLETE] (Chrim Chronicles #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

           

Gaspar

The Fynce line loved their statues, I thought as I gazed up at another grey one upon another grey roof in Downtown. This one was my favorite, it always had been. It stood lower than the ones on the other roofs, right above the entrance. A woman, her long hair blowing wild in the wind, kneeled with her arms wrapped around the neck of a lion. Her body was covered by a mere draped sheet and every crease on her knees had been included. The lion was large and fierce, yet the woman felt the need to protect the lion. She did not sit back knowing that the lion would protect her, she stood there with her arms wrapped around his neck, ready to throw herself upon whatever enemy would come, ready to die for this lion as he would die for her.

It was the tale of the lion and the huntress, a tale Klara had once told me when I was little and innocent, not yet a demon. The huntress and the lion both lived in the same woods, one slept in a humble wooden cottage and the other in a cold dark cave, and both needed to hunt for their food. As the years passed, they grew conscious of each other's presence, noticing one left no food for the other as the animals in the woods grew scarce. One day the huntress and the lion decided to set traps for one another. Somewhere in the middle of the woods the lion dug a hole and used his teeth to cover it with twigs and leaves and dirt, and waited behind a bush. Soon after the huntress came to the very place, ignorant of the lion's trap, and put a juicy, skinned lamb in the middle of a net. The huntress, too, hid behind a bush, and waited. The lion had seen her setting the trap and was frustrated she had not stepped into his. As the hours passed, he could not ignore his hunger any longer and said to himself that her little net most definitely would not work. The lion ran as fast as he could to the net and took the lamb. He had been careful not to step inside the net, but had not seen the edge and tumbled into it anyway. Before he knew, he swung in the air, writhing wildly to free himself. The huntress laughed and appeared from behind the bush, and walked over to the lion. On her way, she fell inside the hole the lion dug.

"Not laughing anymore, are you?" said the lion.

"Neither are you," said the huntress, with a tone which held more courage than she possessed.

Night fell, and they were still in each other's traps. The huntress had tried to climb out of the hole at least a hundred times, to no avail, and the lion had tried to break the ropes of the net with his sharp claws, his attempts, too, in vain. But neither of them gave up. As they tried to free themselves, a group of four outsiders entered the woods, right to the spot where they were trapped. With spears they poked at the huntress inside the hole and at the lion in the net, laughing at their every wince. The huntress managed to get hold of one of the spears and pierced it through the eye of one of her tormentors, then through the throat of her last tormentor. Using the spear, digging it into the earth as she climbed, she managed to get out of the hole. The lion was bleeding from the many holes they had poked into him. At that moment she needed to make a choice, run away to secure her own safety or help the lion. Without much hesitation she plunged the spear into the hearts of the remaining two outsiders. Panting, she stared at the lion for a moment, noticing he did not look as strong anymore, that even the most fierce lions could look weak. From that day on the lion and the huntress hunted together, scaring off every outsider who crossed their path. More than often a situation arose where they, once again, had to save one another. They started as enemies, then turned allies, and – according to some myths – eventually became lovers. Needless to say, the lover bit disgusted me. Tale or not, there was no excuse for bestiality.

I had asked my sister what the moral of this story was and Klara had told me, the moral of this story is that you should never judge, never brand one as your enemy without knowing the truth, since all of us just want to survive in this big, cruel world. Even then, the six-year-old I was, I'd had the wits to dismiss those words. A lion is a lion, I had thought to myself, and I don't have to learn a lion's damn star sign to know I'll be ending up his snack.