Short, weird, fun!

scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.

I had spent half my life training to find and kill the people who murdered my parents. Now, at last, it was done. Their bodies lay, in various pieces, inside the lodge they had been using as a base to maraud from. I had set a fire, determined to finish the job by shaking their souls loose from their bodies to be eaten by the wind. Such evil people didn’t deserve to be reborn.

Did I?

Watching the flames lick up the sides of the building, I felt like I was watching my own illusions burn away, revealing what I had become. A monster like them. Should I open the burning door and join my victims in the fire, to rid the world of my own evil?

Maybe. The thought appealed to my religious self, the self that had been buried under a decade of obsession. On the other hand, I could take the road back to civilization, back to Madre and the job he kept offering me.

Instead, I turned away from fire and road both, and gave myself up to the deep forest.

scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.

“Greetings, my name is Lisse.”

“Oh. The warden told us about you. The Scragger who thinks she’s a native.”

“I don’t think I’m a native. I love and honor my family.”
“Oh? Then why are you here, scragger?” His voice practically dripped with contempt.

“The River sent me,” I said, looking away.

“Oh, and I’m sure the fire and the sky are your close confidants, too. Pffa!”

“No, just the River.”

I hadn’t thought it possible, but the Elder’s expression grew even angrier, and the apprentices attending him forgot they were ignoring my presence long enough to glare and mutter among themselves.

He stepped close, lowering his voice into a threatening hiss of a whisper. “And that is why you will never gain our favor, Tandishman. You people have no respect for balance. ‘The River,’ you say, as if you need pay no heed to the rest of the world. Like your foolish sky god who has no concern for any creature but humans. If I thought you were anything more than a child playing at faith, I would strike you down where you stand for this assault on our faith. We honor the River, and the Sky, and the Forest, and the Fire, and each of a hundred different spirits who hold the world in balance. You cannot just honor one.”

“Kish sa kashak!” I heard the words come out of my mouth, a register lower than my normal voice. I didn’t know the words, but I could feel their meaning. She is mine.

scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.

Without my permission, my legs stumbled to a halt, refusing to keep placing one foot after the other. I looked up, knowing roughly what I would see, but it still felt like a punch in the gut to see Absall standing at the lead witch’s elbow, looking down at her with blatant adoration.

As soon as I had felt the influence, and realized that somehow a witch had gotten hold of my hair, I knew it had to be him. I had a lock of his hair too, tucked carefully away in my heart-pouch. Not that it did me any good. My power lay in different areas, and if I wanted to use his hair, I would have to find a witch stronger than his current master to do the dirty work.

“So much for love,” I said, feeling bitter even though I knew it probably wasn’t his fault. He was probably under their influence from the very beginning. Why else court the ugly sister?

The witch in front of him laughed, a strangely lighthearted sound. At a wave of her hand, two men in the plain garb of initiates stepped forward, approaching me cautiously from both sides.

Witch in front of me, witch initiates to either side, the river behind me, and legs that refused to move. Fortunately, she hadn’t thought to immobilize my upper body.

I swung my arms up over my head and arched my back, unbalancing myself just enough to tip over. I felt the backs of my legs hit the edge of the high river bank, and then I was falling, curling my arms over my head and wondering how in all the hells I was going to survive falling into the river in full flood.