Cursed

Chapter 1: The Outsider

Three weeks later – Sky's POV

Sitting on the cold stone windowsill, I looked down onto the Green Lands stretched before me. A never ending forest with endless possibilities. Everything looked so small from up here, so far away. Curiosity made my fingers tingle. What would it be like down there? My fingers touched the cool glass window, the light cascaded around me in a multitude of colors. In the reflection of the glass, two brown eyes with the softest red rim stared back at me. They were strange and unnatural, yet somehow my attention was solely on them. With my hand still outstretched, I reached for it.

A ball of rope hit the side of my face, waking me up from my daydream. The startle caused my body to search a tad longer for its balance on the soft gray stone I was lounging on. My eyes blinked away the last remaining images of my dream.

"Hey!" I groaned, while my hand rubbed my left temple.

With a frown, I turned my attention to my best friend, Ura, who was sitting on a pile of leaves on the ground, surrounded by broken bows, arrows and armor. Her calloused fingers were fiddling with the string of a wooden bow that she was trying to repair.

"Are you going to help or what?" The dark-skinned girl with wild frizzly hair grunted annoyed. There was no remorse.

Her back was leaning against one of the many broad-leaved trees. Behind her, the houses of our village, Helfarch, were visible and little Hunter kids were training with their bow staff on one of the training fields.

"All of this," she pointed with the tip of the bow to all the damaged material that lay in a circle around her, "needs to be fixed by morning. The council gave us the job, so it would be nice if you gave me a helping hand."

With a sigh, I rolled my eyes at her typical responsibleness and sat up.

"The council of Helfarch," my hands waved dramatically in the air, like a prayer, before dropping them again and tuning my tone down, making it sound even more sarcastic. "They are indeed not to be disappointed, we must do anything they ask of us as their respect is everything."

With my body leaning forward, I started to laugh at my own ridicule. Ura frowned.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I waved my hands in the air to apologize. "I just find it funny that you show them so much respect, when all they do is give us garbage jobs every. Single. Time. They see us as tools. They don't respect us. So why do you keep trying so hard? Why is their respect more important than your own?"

Ura dropped the bow to the ground, a bit harder than she probably would've usually done with a weapon. She was after all still a Hunter and weapons were quite sacred to us.

"We are not tools!" She said while walking up to me.

Ura wasn't necessarily angry, she never was, but her tone had gotten louder and more serious. To be the perfect Hunter, you couldn't have emotions. They were for the weak-willed and considered a dangerous distraction that would get you killed sooner rather than later. Our community even went as far as forbidding most of them – emotions that contributed to survival were still allowed, but even they were taught in a very restricted and controlled manner.

"Fine, I'll bite. Again," the last word only to myself, "what are we then?"

"We are Hunters," Ura said with perfect pride, "we are the humans born with magic in their veins."

"Right, right," I jumped in, "the story that every Hunter knows by heart. The story of our creation."

Ura grunted in annoyance at me. She hated that I didn't take our way of living as seriously as I probably should. She was a true believer, whereas I was more of an independent thinker.