Aamkane First Year

Chapter 1 Part 1 Mother

   It was quite a few years ago when I was only six years old. My mother grabbed me by my left horn and dragged me through our complex labyrinth, and then she threw me up against an old mahogany tree. The tree was large with branches that expanded several feet outwards. My mother then began to kick me up against that tree while screaming, "You're such a worthless daughter! You were supposed to be the greatest chief but you can't even show your true color!" True colors are special to only minotaurs, almost all minotaurs are born white they just get so much rage built up that they show their "true color" brown. When they weren't born white they were born black. That was a sign of true rage the noblest out of the three colors. Usually if you don't show your true colors after you are three years old, the chief them self takes you out into the woods and beats and kills you, but I was different I was the chief's daughter, the eldest out of all my eighteen siblings, I was supposed to take her place after she passed on, but I never did. Instead, I was thrown out like trash and left to die. All I wanted was to be filled with the rage that my brothers and sisters had, but I could never harm innocent people for fun as my clan did. I had a soft spot for life. 

 My mother continued to beat me and I yelled out in pain as her hoof went into my inner thigh, blood started to gush out of the fresh wound like a waterfall. After a few more moments of the beating, I must've passed out from the pain, because when I regained consciousness it was dark outside and the moon was full shining a beam of light over me as I rested against the tree, black-blue, and bleeding. My thigh hurt and I put my hand over the fresh wound and I felt the blood gush between my fingers. The fur around the wound was wet and warm. I put pressure on the wound and then I immediately started to cry out in pain. I pulled the tissue apart screaming the entire time, trying to see how deep it was. It looked to be about two inches deep. I looked around looking for a specific fern. A sanitatum fern, I had learned it when I was training for battles with my siblings, sometimes things got a little too rough and we ended up getting hurt, badly and we had to figure out how to survive without help from adults. 

My sister Kila was the first of my siblings to figure out the healing properties of the sanitatum fern. The sanitatum fern is a fern that has this gel-like substance on one side and a tough shell-like on the other side. The gel side has a medicinal quality to it that helps numb the wound. I remembered back to when I was four years old, "Once you get a fern big enough for your wound wrap it around your wound and cut two small incisions into the fern and place a stick into these incisions to keep the fern in place." Kila taught me a lot about how to survive and without her teachings, I would never have been able to live. 

 I scanned the area looking for the sanitatum fern until I spotted one about 20 feet away from me. It was covered by some other brush and it's gel side almost seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. I stood up trying not to put pressure on my right leg, I started to limp over to the fern, but I couldn't keep this up for long and I fell screaming in pain. The wound was worse than had I thought and the pain was too much for my six-year body to handle. I looked around for a small stick nearby. I found one within arms reach, and I grabbed it and put it into my mouth, but as I did this I noticed some strange leaves that I had seen before but I couldn't put a name on what it was. 

I stood back up doing exactly what I had done a few moments ago. I stood back up and I limped over to the fern, but this time I bit the stick as hard as I could to keep me from screaming and inevitably falling. With each step I took, it felt like someone stabbed me over and over again, but I never cried because I am a minotaur and we never show weakness. We never cry in front of others not even ourselves. I tried to pick up the pace, but that made it worse. I ended up falling halfway to the fern. I thought about giving up for just a split second, but then my mother would win. I couldn't let that happen, I couldn't let her win. I couldn't give up. I stood up once more, bit down of the stick, and limped my way over to the fern one more time. I kept a slow, steady pace and the pain in my leg seemed like nothing compared to the determination that I had of beating my mother.

I finally reached the fern and I spit the stick out of my mouth. I fell to the ground and just sat there for a few moments until I finally grabbed the biggest leaf of the fern and wrapped the gel side around my wound. As soon as the gel touched my wound I felt an instant numbing effect I could barely even feel it anymore. I took my fingernails and tried to cut two incisions into it but the backside of the fern was to tough, so I found a sharp rock that was sitting nearby and began to sharpen the stick that I had in my mouth. 

 *****

 About ten minutes later the stick came to a dull point, but it was sharp enough to be able to cut through the fern. I put two incisions into the fern and broke part of the stick apart, keeping the sharpened part. The stick was now about three inches long with a sharp end. I inserted the sharpened end of the stick into the newly formed slits of the sanitatum fern. I let out a sigh of relief as I laid down on the forest floor. I stretched out my limbs and began to drift off to sleep.

 ***** 

 When I woke up a few hours later, my mouth felt itchy and swollen. I scratched my tongue and it began to feel like it was on fire. I couldn't speak whenever I tried it just came out jumbled and lispy.

"Ith berths!" (It burns) I screamed, though no one would come to my rescue. I started to scratch my mouth even more furiously this time, only making it worse. I screamed out in pain and yelled, "Ith muth have been the sthick!" (It must have been the stick!) I looked more closely at the plant on the stick and they resembled an Ignis moss. Ignis moss is a type of moss that sometimes grows on dead plant matter, it causes swelling, itchiness, and redness to happen on the area that had been touched by the moss. And it was all over my mouth and hands. My hands were now starting to grow red and swollen and I grabbed the stick out of the fern and threw it as far as I could. I looked around for a small stick and found one about five feet away from me. I stood up a little bit of pain from my leg but I wasn't nearly as bad as before so I could handle it. I slowly walked over to stick, keeping my right hand on the fern the entire time. I slid the stick into the slits of the fern and laid back down scratching my hands and mouth vigorously. My tongue felt like it was on fire and I got up and ran through the forest looking for any sort of water source, a lake, stream, river, even a puddle could've satisfied me. 

 I ran through bramble bushes and tripped over tree roots screaming and snorting looking for a water source to soothe the pain in my mouth. I finally tripped over a large tree root and just stared at the sky and the towering tree that loomed over me as I lay there face and hands red, swollen I looked around, moss dancing on everything it touched, trees so tall that they were like clifftops. I looked at one tree in particular and noticed it had a bowl-like tree top."Maybe, there's water collected in its treetop." I had heard of trees like this though it is very uncommon for them to be in this forest, but as I said I would've drunk out of a puddle to cool down my mouth.I stood up and walked over to the tree and started to climb. Minotaurs are not built to climb our hooves don't work well for climbing, but I was able to get halfway up the sixty-foot tall tree before my right hoof slipped. I was able to catch myself but the fern's stick had come loose and by the time I lifted my right leg once more the stick entirely fell out leaving my fern just hanging there until it finally fell off. As soon as the fern fell off of my leg a sharp agonizing pain shot through my entire leg like a lightning bolt. I screaming as I let go of a branch that I was holding and toppled down to the ground hitting my head against a small rock. Blood started pouring out of my head as my vision went black.