Dragonsoul

In the small cottage that wasn’t their own, the little girl named Leonie could hear the commotion of the adults that occupied the tiny space at that precise moment.

Their broken, hushed voices spoke of the truth she refused to accept. They spoke of the pain that her little heart was unable to comprehend.

The bearer of news had come.

It brought the news of death and pain.

She could hear her mother trying to suppress her sobs.

Her little brother kept asking what was wrong.

“Why are you crying, mommy?” His shrill voice of a child asked.

Nald was usually a brave little boy, but his mother’s sadness made his voice shaky and scared.

Never before had they heard their mother so broken, seen her cry with such passion, and it was unimaginable to a little child what could cause such distress to someone as strong as their mother was.

Still, little Leonie stayed in front of the cottage, not daring to enter the bleak atmosphere radiating from it, so much so that it was like a palpable presence drowning them in despair. She knew that once she was told, it would all become real, set in stone.

The undeniable truth will become a reality. The truth would crush Leonie. It would leave her with a broken heart and the soul of one who was unable to comprehend the way Fates worked and how they could be so cruel.

Before she had the chance to run away from the truth, the old, rickety door opened, and she could see her mother’s red face with rivers of tears quickly running down it.

“Leonie...your father...” Amitola started saying.

Knowing what her mother was about to say, Leonie started running as fast as a cheetah, trying to run away from the pain, from the realization, from the world.

While she ran, tears poured out of her eyes, clouding her vision, but that didn’t stop her.

She kept running even when she reached the edge of the forest.

Running deep into the familiar woods, she was finally able to stop and screamed her heart out.

She screamed at the gods, the Fates, and anyone who would listen.

Her sobbing and wailing were so loud and intense that a few rabbits scattered away from the nearby bushes.

Even some fluttering little pixies flew away, unable to bear the power of the little girl’s grief.

There was a huge scream building up in her chest, and she let it out only to realize that it didn’t make her feel any better. She could howl, she could rage, but nothing would delete the undeniable truth that her father was dead. The awful finality of it all tore at her heart the most.

Never again to hear his voice comforting her after a terrible nightmare, never again to feel his warm hug and listen to his soothing words, was worse than any nightmare her mind could conjure up.

All she wanted to do at that very moment was to stop existing because being alive hurt too much.

She wanted to embrace the Great Forest that all went to once their life cycle ended.

In her heart of hearts, she wished that the measly forest she was in that very moment was the Great Forest of the ones who passed on, who left the everyday world to roam freely as spirits in the Great Forest.

It was her greatest wish to join her father, to hear his laughter and feel happy and loved once again.

But even though she had only seen ten summers go by, she knew that her father would want her to finish the cycle of life before she could shed her fleshy existence and embrace her spirit form.

Going on with her life was not a choice. It was a necessity.

Failing her father by taking the easy way out, which led to perdition, wasn’t an option.

Her wails of grief subsided as she fell onto her knees and cried her heart out. It felt like she could cry for an eternity and still have enough tears to shed.

Her broken heart was being cried out in those warm little drops. Soon enough, she started breathing even faster, and her heart started beating like the one of a shrew.

As she kept slipping further and further into the fear, and after her breathing stopped working properly, she could hear in her mind the voice of her father.

“Just breathe in deeply, my little doe...” he would say.

She would follow his instructions, and then he would go on.

“Now breathe out,” he used to say in his calming voice.

After doing that several times, she would feel her breath evening out, and things would slow down to normal again.

Once more, she followed the advice of her dead father and was finally able to calm down enough to be able to breathe normally and gather herself a bit, just in time to face her mother, who followed her into the woods after taking care of her brother.

“Leonie, I need you to return to the house and be a brave little girl. Your brother needs you. Stay with him while I make all the necessary arrangements for your father’s body to be transferred here,” Amitola said.

Wiping away the tears, Leonie got up with determination in her eyes.

Her little brother needed her, and she was ready to do whatever it took to protect him, to help him face the pain of being a little fatherless boy.

The man of the house, people were bound to say, but Leonie had always wondered how someone so young could be the man of the house.

After all, he was only seven years old. He didn’t know anything about the world, how cruel it could sometimes be, or what a burden it was to be the man of the house, to be the one in charge of bringing food to the table.

Even their father, who was a tall, well-built man, had met his final hour during a hunt.

No matter how experienced one was, death could await any Hunter in the next trace they follow, in the next animal they face. However, the strong little girl wasn’t about to allow her little brother to be the next one to face the possibility of death, deciding to do everything in her power to protect him as much as she could from both the physical and the emotional pain.

There was nothing she could do to make their father’s death hurt less, but she could do everything in her power to be there for her brother, to help him get through all the pain and still have the good life that he deserved.

Having made that decision, she hurried back to their grandmother’s house, the house where the bad news had found them as they gathered to worry about her father’s fate surrounded by family, about the fate of the Great Hunter Rimodar’s fate, and that would in her mind forever stay tainted by death and despair.

Once she reached the house, Nald ran towards her and straight into her arms. Hugging him tightly, Leonie felt guilty for even considering leaving her loved ones behind when they needed her to help the most. Nald started sobbing the moment his small hands wound themselves tightly around his sister.

“Mummy says we shall never see Daddy again,” he said.

Nald seemed to have gone back to how he used to talk when he was much younger because of the shock of what he had heard, of what his poor little mind couldn’t comprehend.

“Is mummy wrong?” he asked.

There was hope in his eyes that she found heartbreaking, but she never lied to her brother, and she wasn’t planning on starting now that they needed each other the most.

“No, she isn’t. Daddy has joined the Final Hunt. He is now part of the Great Forest. Although he loves us very much, he can never return to us, but one day, when the gods so wish, we shall join him when our time has come. Until then, we have to make our father proud and take care of our mother,” Leonie said as soothingly as possible.

The little guy nodded so vigorously that a few strands of his coal-black hair fell into his eyes, causing Leonie to brush them away in a gesture so familiar that it sent sharp pains into her heart like sharp knives stabbing into it.

That was what Father used to do whenever Nald’s hair was especially unruly, which was most of the time.

“I think we need to go inside and help Grandma with the preparations,” Leonie said, looking for something to keep them busy, to stop them from focusing solely on the pain.

The little guy was all too eager to do something. It was obvious that only crying was exhausting, and being able to help was just what Leonie knew he needed.