Stories of Nativus

Adamanten

You put up Ajax's book and picked another random book off of the shelf. The cover was dark blue, and with lighter blue lettering, reads one name:

Teresa

You flip to a random part of the page and scanned though the contents of what was chapter sixteen.The odd title caught your eye and you dove into the story.

--

They said she was broken.

As she crawled along the side of the road outside of the village, she certainly looked the part. Her caramel skin was bruised and bleeding; her blue dress was torn, clinging to her slim frame from the rain spilling around her. Water droplets ran through her newly shaved hair, stinging in the cuts where he had pressed the blade in too deeply.

She ducked her head when a horse and rider raced by her, splattering mud across her form. It was cold, and a stray rock struck her cheek, making her wince.

At least whoever it had been had not stopped to ask what she was doing here, collapsed on the side of the road and looking like she had just been in the worst fight of her life. Whoever it'd been probably hadn't seen her, anyway. It wasn't as though people looked out for people like her.

She raised her head, looking out at the world that lay in front of her. It was blurry, the tears in her eyes obstructing her view. She hadn't stopped crying, even though the shaking sobs had ceased when she'd watched the black waves of her hair go up in flames. Her father had sheared her like a man shearing a sheep for its wool, and the memory of it made her cold.

She had sobbed during that, and the beating that had preceded it. Though, it hadn't been the pain that had made her cry; pain had been something she had long since learned to handle, ever since she had lost her mother. No, it had had nothing to do with the pain.

She had cried because of the man who was doing this to her, the man who was supposed to love and care for her. And she had cried because of those that had watched her suffering. No one had done anything to help her. She cried for she had never been more alone in her sixteen years of life.

But why should they have helped her? They had been fed so many lies to think that she deserved everything she received, that she could hardly believe she'd expected anyone to step forward at all.

He had told them that she was a wantonness, a whore, unworthy of the profitable marriage he had planned for her. He told them that she was a thief and a liar, a breaker of every sacred vow.

It didn't matter how ridiculous those lies were, not when they were coming from a respectable man like her father. Everyone believed him beyond a shadow of a doubt, and there was nothing she could do in her defense except restrain from fighting back. Raising a hand against the man who had raised her would've only solidified in their minds that she was everything that he had said.

She sat up in the mud, pulling the ripped sleeves of the gown up on her arms. It was cold out here in the rain, but in a way, it was soothing. It numbed the pain in her body, though it could do nothing for the pain in her heart.

She tilted her head back, letting the rain drops fall across her cheeks, mingling with her tears. A wantonness, indeed! To anyone who really knew her, the very thought of that was ridiculous. She had never even kissed a single soul in her entire life. Yet somehow her father had managed to spin the story that she'd bedded every stranger that rode through town. As the riders never stayed, there was no one to back up her claims that she was still a virgin and had done nothing that he said she'd done. And to make matters worse, everyone who really knew her was dead.