The Color Of Your Soul (Collection of short stories)

Allured Into A Curse

I stare back into my own eyes. A vicious smile twists my lips as I examine the photo of my face printed on a poster. Underneath it, my name is imprinted in bold letters.

"SYEDA MELISSA: WANTED".

Even though I walk with my face on full show, nobody points a finger at me. Partly because thick fog has cloaked the morning air, blocking out any rays of sun, but mostly because they know there is no use in trying to trip a mage.

The king wants us dead. Honestly, I am not surprised. Men of power are like snobby little children. They see someone urging them to share their favorite toy, and their first instinct is shrieking out a tantrum before swiping at the other kid's neck. The only difference between these misbehaved snots and kings is that the children only have tiny cars and ragged dolls in their hands, while the kings... The kings hold lives in their cruel palms, laughing as they churn people's existence into dust.

To them, mages are dangerous. And danger is to be destroyed.

Just that we cannot be destroyed by a weasel gang of humans recklessly swinging their swords.

I pluck out a needle from the cramped chamber of my ring, before grazing it across my own wrist. Puddles of crimson blood seep out, and I dip my fingers into the streaming liquid. I almost want to laugh as I slather text on my poster – using my own damned blood. "Catch me if you can," I write, before stepping behind to acknowledge my work. Excellent.

With a contented breath, I weave through the familiar streets of Cerefaza, head brushing against flowers ducking from trees. The aroma of freshly roasted olives fills my nostrils and I fight back the urge of picking one up from the vendors that have mushroomed the walking lanes. I know I wouldn't be welcomed. A few glare at me with nasty looks, as if I am a monster just because I have powers beyond their capability. Others keep their gazes glued to their tapping feet, anxiously waiting for my looming presence to pass aside.

They recognize me. Even whisper my name. But never once does any fool wobble into my path to charge on. 

That's the rule. 

These people don't want us mages here. And no matter how bitter it sounds, you can't carve a place for yourself in a society that is constantly conspiring to kick you out. So, for the peace of their pathetic cowering hearts, we mages have to live in the forests. Oh and have I told you that more than half of our already scarce population was wiped out in a famine, in which our government refused to help us, and even had the gall of capturing the few mages that had visited the castle in a hopeless plea for help?

Since I don't have the desire to be skinned alive like my predecessors, I rarely come to the town. Only once in a month do my feet tiptoe onto the pebbled roads, scanning for news and any other notable thing that might have happened. Mostly, there is nothing new, except for an even greater number of posters with my picture.

Before my wrath can make me do something reckless to the villagers, I saunter into the woods – first loose then dense. The callouses of my feet are weathered to this wet ground, these crisp leaves. As I head straight for our hut, my mother is staring into the distance, with her back towards me. "What took you so long? And why are you bleeding?"

It doesn't take her to see my wrist. She knows the stench of blood all too well.

"Nothing." I peek over her shoulder, frowning at the crosses that she has marked on our little map. "Just a little... umm, what can I say? Challenge," I laugh, "for those people."

My mother's gaze finally leaves the map, and when it rests on my face, it turns into a glare. "You got into a fight again?" She stresses on 'again'. Mother has always been very wary about this. While I avoid fights to evade unnecessary injuries, she avoids them because her moral compass happens to hurl her exactly opposite to violence.