The Cursed Gift | B1 [EDITING]

02 | Forbidden Fruits & Curses

As the village was rebuilt over the span of a year, the witches had settled down about the werewolves and the threat they posed but not quite everyone had laid it to rest.

Often, the beasts plagued Alisa's mind and thoughts, making it impossible to think about much else. Even when the day ended and she had retired to her home tent with her mother.

When the moon rose, it signified time to rest.

A good half of their clan had been wiped out not even twelve months ago, leaving everyone just that little bit more hostile about werewolves than ever before.

Young had been taken – and the mother was forced to wait for the next Mating Month to fix the population issue and their secret broken heart of not reproducing.

Being a mother was a gift from the gods themselves, they would say.

Yet accidentally losing your baby is seen as an almost curse from unhappy gods instead.

Parents had been swiped from the kids before being able to learn how to function properly in their society.

The clan had been split in two, constantly repairing their spell on the village and the tents on the grass that had withered away, yet bit by bit it was growing back slowly.

Alisa often wondered if she was different from the others.

She knew her role like the back of her hand, but she didn't feel as if she fit it the same way it fit her.

She could heal any normal wounds, but very few magical for now. She was still learning, still trying to make a life work that didn't feel quite like hers.

On days off, which were most days after the battle, Alisa would sit by the river on the south side with Hestia.

She would talk about new strategies she had forming in her mind while Hestia ranted on about why being a fighter had its downsides too.

The redhead hated that her mother was in charge of their Warriors, for she never let Hestia forget it. She felt the pressures of that and how she never quite made her mother proud with her lack of ambition in that department.

"Don't you ever wonder who our dads are?" Alisa asked suddenly, as if dawning on her that this could be her missing piece.

"No," Hestia replied swiftly.

"Men aren't really needed here. You know that. Only the Clan Leader and the Aryan are anointed by the gods themselves. We cannot screw that up," she spoke with such confidence, as if she knew why their society was the way it was.

Like a robot that never skips a beat.

Content with what she was told to believe as truth.

Hestia loved to read the caves when the tide was out; the walls detailing the history of their people. It fascinated her in ways she had never known before.

She loved to educate the few young, hoping to branch out and do her own unique thing with it one day.

A dream she kept close to her heart.

Hestia was just shy of seventeen, nearing her eightieth birthday when her magic came in at its fullest.

The last year before becoming a full witch was when all the essential and special spells would be learned by heart, in preparation.

It was a special day for a witch – an unforgettable moment between them and the gods.

"But isn't that where half our personality comes from?" Alisa asked with curiosity, pressing the matter.