"Have you never heard the legends?" the old dame growled. "Mismatched eyes - this child is bad luck."
"Bad luck? Of course not!" the mother argued helplessly.
"And she was born in the first winter storm, in the middle of the biggest famine that has seized the kingdom in generations. A child born without a father, nonetheless. She won't last the week - and neither will you, unless you give her over."
The mother opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. Tears welled in her eyes. Silently, she handed the tiny bundle to the old woman.
The dame hobbled out into the woods, leaning heavily on her cane. The child in her arms giggled and reached out to the snowflakes swirling through the air, her blue and brown eyes wide with wonder. She seemed surprised when she was set down in a hollowed tree stump and heard the old woman retreating.
She was cold, hungry and barely a few months old. The child waited and waited for someone to come for her, but nobody came. The nameless baby screwed up her face and began to cry, but there was nobody to hear her.
Deeper inside the forest, a wood nymph stirred. He had been curled up, warm and cosy, in the branches of her willow tree, hoping to sleep through the winter. He was not very happy to have been woken, and by a screaming child no less. Muttering curses that would make oak roots shrivel up and die, the nymph bent over the baby, swathed in blankets. His face softened.
"A human," he said to himself. "Left to die, little sapling? Humans are so cruel."
Humming the song of the leaves rustling in a breeze, the wood nymph cradled the baby in his arms and began to climb back up his tree.
YOU ARE READING
~lost~
FantasyDon't panic. Or, actually, DO, because the fate of the world rests on an abandoned human raised by nymphs, a prince longing to become a bard, a dancing orc, a fairy that likes arson and a very confused half-elf. Definitely panic. Snatched from her h...
