Cursed

Chapter 4: Stalker

"I'm telling you, he was lying," I said for the fifth time that evening.

The moment I returned from my trip with Marx, I had to see my best friend and empty my swirling thoughts. If I didn't, they would consume me and drive me to actions that I would later deeply regret. Mostly because it ended with me cleaning parts of the village that I'd rather not.

"It smelled like overdue meat or something else. It was super stinky," my feet were paving a path in the moisty forest ground. "There were a lot of things that were just not believable."

"Can you stop it already," she whisper-shouted. Her eyes darted around and I followed them, looking from one side of the empty forest to the other side.

"What?" I lowered my voice to a whisper as well.

Her jaw clenched and the warmth of her chocolate brown eyes had turned cold and serious. "You're questioning a higher ranked hunter." A crack in her voice slipped in between her hasty whisper. "What if someone questions your loyalty?"

"My loyalty?" My voice rose to a normal volume again. "I'm not the one clearly lying about certain aspects of a mission."

"If a higher ranked Hunter says there wasn't anything out there, then there wasn't anything out there. Stop involving me in this. Our devotion to the Hunter community could be questioned. I'm not dying like that," Ura's fear came out as burning anger, yet she couldn't hide the tremble in her voice when she spoke.

Before I had a chance to reply, Ura had already taken off towards the village again. As always, I sighed deeply before following her and pushing away that nagging feeling that kept me up at night. One day, my feelings and beliefs would become the death of me.

***

If Ura was too scared to even listen to me, well then there was only one other option that could clench my curiosity; figure it out myself. What did Marx hide from me?

To do so, I had to at least go back to the scene of the crime. It wouldn't be easy with all those eyes on me.

The perfect idea hit me the next morning, well, more like Ura got hit - unfortunately that was in the literal sense of the word. The dark skinned girl was sitting on her little crutch, doing her daily chores of cleaning and repairing in front of her house. Her father, an enormous beast of a man, with muscles bulking out of his dark skin, walked out the front door, throwing a holster of arrows at the girl. It hit her straight in the back, making her almost fall from her seat. He shouted something at her, his hands making aggressive gestures. They were out of earshot, but it was probably something in the lines of 'clean this, girl!' or 'they're not clean enough, have you never learned how to do a proper job?'.

My fists clenched at my side. From experience I knew I couldn't interfere, it didn't change anything, it only made things worse for my friend. Her father would hit her for sharing personal stuff, he would prevent her from being friends with me. It would only backfire.

With a shaking head and pressed together eyes, I looked away. How anyone could hurt their own family was a mystery to me. No one from the other Hunters seemed to give the scene a second look while they passed by. It wasn't their business.

A slap echoed between the houses. My eyes squinted. With tense legs, I walked away - a bit faster than before - to prevent myself from turning around and throwing a punch in Diodes, Ura's father, direction. With a mantra that my mother had made me repeat time and time again, I kept my eyes forward, locked onto the forest side. Stay out of their business. Stay out of someone's business.

Once I reached the forest side, I tried to focus on the idea that had formed itself inside my head. There was a tradition in our community - Jagtag. Once you learned how to shoot with a bow and arrow, everyone, no matter the age, had the right to a full day hunting. Alone!