Hunter

thx for the picture Saku. it help me to write, finally, this little one

Once upon a time, there was a woman who lost fear and in doing so she decided to go back to where fear had stained her whole life, plunging her in an abyss of darkness until she painfully climbed up back to the cliff and back to the thick woods where she knew horrors awaited. Now she knew unlike the year before when she had been hunted. Now, she was the hunter.

As the wind rustled her long cloak and messed her hair; she remembered the night that marked her life forever. Like tonight it had been windy but unlike tonight she hadn’t been on her way to the deep woods but on her way to her old run-down house somewhere in the skirts of the forest. She had moved only a month before having nowhere to go but the old property that she hadn’t even known existed until her grandmother and guardian had passed away.   

That night, the moon had been full and bright making patterns on the poor lit street, it was such a quiet town, she had thought then half-shocked of how even hours to midnight everybody was inside, closed windows and locked doors. The hunter huffed mentally, maybe they all had known what creatures lurked at night like what she didn’t and it happened at the turn of a corner with a faltering lamplight. Back when she was not yet a hunter, she´d been swept up her feet by a man that took her to the middle of the woods to a cave lit by the moon where he showed the monster he was.

She hadn’t even had time to scream when the monster bit into the flesh of her neck, long canines sinking in, blood rushing out warm and sticky and he held her there lapping at the spilling blood coming fast as her heart beat increased.

“Olivia” he had whispered her name with his gravely monster voice not letting her go. She had begged for mercy, to let her go. He didn’t and she had to spend the night crutched against the cave wall as the werewolf covered the entrance but he fell asleep and at dawn, in his sleep she ran away  through the woods, she had fell, scrapped her  hands  and knees but had gotten up and had kept running out of the woods.

Olivia was not the same anymore, back then she wouldn’t have come back to these woods even if for some reason when the moon was full she had the urge in the back of her mind to go back and she worried thinking that she that the scar of the bite meant she´d turn into a monster too, but Amaris showed her it didn’t have to be that way.

Amaris; Olivia almost smiled thinking of her aunt, the one that supposedly was crazy, the one that had taken her in when she had ran away with nothing from her old house, afraid that the monster was behind her. Amaris had been the one that had noticed her agitation and when she had discovered her scar by accident had known exactly what it was and had untied the scarf she always wore to show a faded scar, almost identical to Olivia´s on her neck.

“Am I going to become a monster?” had been Olivia´s first question and then she had stuttered her next question “A-ar-are you like the?” Amaris had grinned what then had felt like a wolfish grin and the creaking of the rocking chair had made it scary but her voice had been soothing and she had have a solution. It was time to take that solution to completion

The moon looked like a wicked grin on the black sky, the clouds pushed by the wind left the woods in darkness at times like that time with the lamplight but unlike then, now Olivia didn’t need the light to see, the soft moon beams were enough and though she didn’t known the path she knew it, the monster had made sure of that.

“Be careful-Amaris had said when she left her large white house- he might be waiting for you”. Better, Olivia thought, let him known I´m looking for him and that I’ll find him with the ´gifts´ he gave me.

Amaris had explained that the bite was a bond that signaled she´d been chosen to be the wolf´s mate and that though she´d left it´d call to her so that she returned to him, he had marked her as his and in time even if she didn’t want to she´d go and fill her place. Olivia had been so scared to know this. How could he do that, she´d wondered in panic, it was a terrible fate. She´d started to cry but Amaris had only smiled that wolfish grin again

“You use it to your advantage” she´d said

“But how?” Oli had sobbed. Fear had plagued her heart. The urge to go back had been more and more with each full moon.

Amaris had taught her how and now as she swiftly walked guided by her enhanced sense of smell, she almost tasted his mind, the ghost of his thoughts; that had been one more of the gifts, she felt him, his joy and anger, his longings and happiness.

“Does he taste my emotions too… I mean can they…?” Oli had asked Amaris once when they were training, the old aunt was remarkably strong for a lady of her age, a gift from the wolf, she’d explained to her niece and pupil

“I don’t know –Amaris replied-never paused to ask him” she´d delivered a blow that Oli hadn’t been able to block but she had smiled, she´d understood, she wouldn’t be pausing to ask any questions either.

Oli felt the wolf before seeing it and he came her way, slow and making no sound, his amber eyes resembled fire. He was glad to see her coming, perhaps thinking his magic had finally bent her will. She grinned and vaguely wondered if like Amaris her grin looked wolfish now. The werewolf came closer and with the speed that he had given her she slashed out, he, of course, was fast and avoided her long silver sword, the hilt embedded in her palm, silver also had started to affect her after she had bitten her but she was used to the burning, she revealed in it as a sign of her vengeance and she furiously and expertly swung and tried again as she read surprise in him, he dodged, bared his teeth before howling low conjuring his magic. Oli felt a pull that almost made her drop her sword and she screamed out of fury and lunged at him again and when she was close enough to him she let her old self takeover, the frightened girl of the next morning after he bit her. It made the wolf pause and focus his amber eyes on her dark ones instead of her sword that came down on his neck. Her silver sword went through flesh and his howl was also torn as his head left his body: wolf head, man´s body, a revealed truth of the monster he was.

Once again at dawn Olivia walked through the thick woods, sword in its sheath, the beast head in her hand, the scar that had signaled her imposed bond already fainting. Olivia could hear in the distance the others in his pack stealthily backing away. She could not be controlled now yet she had all the advantages of the monster still, if they came, she´d be ready and their heads would accompany the golden wolf head and the black one in Amaris basement.