HUNTING FATE

Silver eyes glared at us from the darkness. I pulled Addi to the forest floor just as he threw a dagger aimed at our hearts. The inner child in me wanted just to bring up the moments we laughed at or hid in a cupboard away from our parents some nights. Yet here we stood on opposite sides. He aimed for my heart, just as my father did. Just as my father had killed my mother. So here I was, strapped in my wolf’s cloak as if I were still there, walking on that side as a hunter. Raised by a hunter, I stood here, surrounded by my mother’s history, walking in her footsteps, fighting the side that raised me. Defying the family who had raised me, despite that I was, a halfling. But, deep inside, something stirred, waking something else that caused me to search for this and find the secrets of these worlds.

They teach you to throw daggers, that it’s us or them. When you kill your first wolf with your hands, you wear its skin with pride as a hunter. The hunters burnt my mother and tried to make me forget about her, only I couldn’t. Instead, I pretended the potion worked. Because, well...it would have been me next, and she told me I had to forget her...no matter how hard things got. My father didn’t get questions, he didn’t even get a single glare. He remained just peachy. He gripped my shoulders as we watched her burn, yet he said nothing. I could feel only waves of anger as if he had been betrayed as if he had been the one to be hurt.

My mother, she had done nothing. It was what she was, and we did not tolerate it here as sworn enemies, yet somehow falling for my father. She took on a mere human persona and five years after I was born... she crumbled… revealing what she was, and it was too late for her to escape. They burned her; they tested me. But unaware that at that young, nothing would be viable to tell from. So, when they deemed me safe, they released me to my father and gave him a potion. Which is ironic, given it takes one of us to make it. He swirled it in some milk before bed and handed it to me, hoping I would forget her in some dream. But I never did.