A girl in disguise. An heir in hunt. A world divided.
Iris Lavera is born into the civilization of the least respected ones. The lineage where it's predicted to birth a curse. A low born who will be the downfall of an entire nation if left alive.
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It's strange, the illusion of time when you are surrounded by people and the essence of safety. A work that paid us with a meal that was melting heaven. The harvested potatoes and steamed meat, peppered eggs and biscuits made of carrots were an alien feast. Then again, we had been living in deprivation for so long that someone's worse tricked us to be our best.
The grandmother kept complaining of undercooked potatoes and chewy bread. Good for us as she resisted many of the dishes plated as the leftovers were passed to us. With a meal so warm and tarp so comfortable, we slept under a mount surrounded by fence on the side, a small stick of aroma candle kept the bugs and mosquitoes away.
"How close do you think they are? I keep peering into the mead suspecting them to have made it" Dorin says tucking his arm beneath his head.
"But it yet won't change that we deny to join" I cup my jaw with a hiss "Why is the accent so strong"
I hear him chuckle, it blends with mine.
"Of course, you find this hilarious, you have been a natural with it" I accuse.
He indeed was, with a once Armin for mother he developed it in his consciousness. When I had to not hassle my tone with further modifications.
"Mama used to mock them, would remind me how posh and polished the highborn's language and etiquette was. By how accurate she mimicked- this might be a much easier version for you"
He still carried that smile but rolls to the side to face me. His hair is shaggy from humidity by loading the coal into the barrow, while I could've helped- Mrs Willow had called me in for the kitchen. She was impressed by how good I was with the knife, only if she knew how great I was with the hunt. She might detest me - But in Ivyaki we needed the bones and skin of animals to survive. And I had an eye for it.
At times I was paid for it. And then there were also days when I was physically tormented by the ones who were desperate for it and had no coins or materials to pay with.
I remember the night spent in a rat-infested base when I denied Mr Birch to kill a young bear or the stab in the ankle when I tried to stop a boy from poisoning a pregnant fox. I killed the wild, the one with no mercy. But in my heart, I felt its wounds, almost as if I could feel their anger and pain. I would sit beside them for hours until their blood had changed colour. Till there weren't any cubs or kits that stumbled across in search of the one I drained.
I used to cry during my first kills, but with age and aggression, I morphed into a vessel of the hunter. It was them or me. And I had to choose myself because if I gave up, there would have been someone else in my place. Someone who may not know how to end them with fewer wounds, what it takes for numbing their pain. And how inhumane it is to do it.
Because a hunter is known to thrive in its victim's blood,
But I seem to scorch with guilt each time I do so. I had taken an oath, in the dead of a night as I sat there weeping by the lifeless form of a fauna that I didn't know of. His skin was a rich brown, with a crown-like that of a stag and a body as mighty as a grown elk. My fingers caressed the mane that cloaked its neck, he was still warm.
