We were at the border between two elements and two ages: land and water, old and new. This was the century a new city would rise in the great lake’s shore - though just not quite yet. Given one or two decades, the wooden shacks and thatch-roofed cottages would give way to proper two-storey buildings, villas for the governors, the wealthy, and the foreign ambassadors, warehouses for stored goods, even a convent of perpetually silent nuns. The roads would be paved, and more than animal-led carts would drive through them on market days or otherwise. Steam-powered boats would take over the waters, workshops and factories would take over the fields, and, because of both, commerce would boom.
For now, however, most villagers were farmers, or, with a great stroke of luck, fishermen. Every day, these tireless combatants boarded their fragile rowboats, armed with nets and spears - wooden sticks, really. While no description will truly capture the essence of the beasts they hunted, let us just say that those weapons were more than utterly necessary. Either way, when the fishermen came back, they were hailed as heroes, or, at least, so was the case before.
The old world was dying, and so were the two rival fishing families. In fact, years of greed and dispute has left each with a single possible heir to their empires. Unfortunately, their patriarchs would rather wait patiently for their death than see their respective daughters endangered by such a man’s trade. A little less unfortunately, the daughters disagreed. In fact, they both ran away deep into the lake.
There was no pact between them, no plan, no communication. It was by pure coincidence that they chose the same night for their deed, a coincidence they both hunted for the lake’s mightiest fish - the only one that would truly testify their ability to their families’ eyes -, and a coincidence they both lost their battle, and both were taken by a trick of the currents to the same deserted island. The downside of this game of chance is that they had no truce either.
One of the women, Mia, was tall and strong - it ran in the family, after all - , and she took to gathering wood while the other shivered with the night’s cold. Meanwhile, the smaller woman, Eva, was lithe and cunning, and built traps and searched for all the right berries and roots, while the other slowly starved.
This lasted for the three days it took them to realize they missed the sound of another human’s voice. It was Mia who made the first move. The other had been struggling to pull a captured boar out of a hole she had dug, which was but a few seconds of effort for the stronger woman. As the two shared the resulting meal, Mia groaned about the chirping of the birds, the scuttling bugs and the thud of falling pinecones. Eva, on the other hand, found nature quite beautiful, even if even she now wished to be away from it.
Over the course of a few days, they exchanged nothing but commodities and small talk. Afterwards, they shared everything. From the punishments their mischief earned from their fathers to the lullabies their mothers would sing to them at night. Mia talked about her love for pottery, of all things, especially when it came to the finishing touches: the colourful patterns she painted onto her creations. Eva preferred literature, and had begged her way into possessing a library as sizeable as the ones in the much bigger cities that were to them the stuff of legend. At the end, they made plans, and some of them involved escaping.
Eventually, they built a boat. Still, they didn’t return to their village immediately. They had a debt to settle, after all. When a full day of fruitless searching had elapsed, the two retreated, tangled in their small vessel, to look at the stars.
It was at this moment that the greatest fish attacked. What ensued was a duel to the death. Human versus beast, intelligence versus savagery. The struggle lasted until sunrise, when Mia dug a stake into the thing’s heart. There are many things one would rather do, when one is streaked with blood and gore, and slimy with sweat, than kiss. The two women did so anyway.
Only then did they return to the village. What met them was a crowd of stunned peasants who had believed them dead. The onlookers' eyes widened even further as the women dragged the fish’s massive corpse into the main square, leaving a rust-red trail in their wake. Their fathers awaited them there - a messenger boy had alerted them to the commotion -, side by side, rivalry suddenly forgotten. They had an offer to make, and the women knew they would refuse even before they heard it.
No, they would not continue their families’ legacies. They would run away, again and again, and be together, happy all the while.
