Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Sacrifice

She stood at the precipice read to jump and yet, she hesitated.


The view up there was stunning. She took a breath of icy wind, tinged with eternal green and mystic blue. As a final look at life she couldn’t asked for anything more. She pulled her fur wrap closer around her shoulders as she dug her bare feet into the stone and peered down the thousand foot drop.


Her clan was suffering. Gefjun seemed to have abandoned them. For the past 5 seasons their crops had failed, their flocks had been killed by roaming dogs, and their cattle had mostly starved to death. Something had to be done.


So she did something about it. She volunteered to sacrifice herself to Gefjun.


After the initial shock, her clan had many suggestions on the best way to go about it. One of her uncles suggested being tied to a plough horse and being drug through the fields. Her favorite aunt suggested a traditional blood sacrifice. She had another idea.


She decided to climb to the highest place she could find. She wanted to be close to all of the elements: earth, wind, fire and water, by climbing up high she could be sure that the solitude would bring her close to all of them.


It took a heartbeat of time to turn her cloak into tinder and to light it with her flint. Her toes curled on the edge.

Then she jumped.


Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Battlefield

They always wore white into battle.

Kafira’s spear lashed out and exploded through the man’s neck, dropping him like a sack of meat. Dancing to the side she dodged the swing of a man twice her size, she spun and drove her spear deep into his chest. Planting the butt of the spear into the ground she let the man’s weight drive the spear haft through his body, with a small grunt she pulled the spear free and charged into the next cluster of men.

Kafira could only see glimpses of Anci, flashes of white and silver between the bodies of men separating them. As Kafira tried to determine the best path to reach her, a massive club came screaming towards her face. She ducked but the club grazed her head, sending a stream of blood down her face and her to the ground.

Immediately she rolled away from her assailant, into the legs of another man who toppled backwards onto Her. The spear was trapped and her knife hand was pinned under the struggling form on top of her. The man with the club stepped up to finish the job when a war axe blossomed from his chest. A blur of white ripped the man’s throat out and he fell, crushing the man atop Kafira.

A petite figure dressed in white and dripping with blood looked down at Kafira and grinned.

“Stop laying around, we have work to do.”