03: The Hunger
A rogue weed perished as it left the only home it knew, joining its dead brethren in an old basket as a young widow wiped the last droplet on her forehead.
“Lea, let's go wash up” her friend and senior called out.
The old friends left the fields, taking their usual route to the lake, where they washed up and emptied their bowls in the privacy of the bushes, a lake that was the resting stop before the next round of fieldwork.
Leanora lost her husband to a monster attack a few years ago, not long after losing her unborn child to the cruelty of fate.
She worked in one of the fields of a local noble, barely able to put food on her table and cloth on her voluptuous body.
Many men approached her after the husband departed, drooling over the alluring beauty of their small village, but she turned every single one down, even her friend's husband, who wanted to warm both sides of his bed.
Polygamy was as common as dirt in this world. Men lost their lives every day, either from their forced conscription into a neverending war or the lack of medicine and healing in a life of severe poverty.
Lea and her friend Mona strolled the road made by their daily visits, and it wasn’t long until the lake filled their views, welcoming them like a royal inn.
The butler of a tree branch held their dirty gowns as the two naked women dipped into the refreshingly cool water
“Lea, look! Something’s floating over there!” The older woman called out to the beautiful green eyes to follow her thirty-six years old finger.
Under the playful sun beams, the woman swam to the middle of the lake, curious about the small figure floating on its back.
“Mona, it’s a boy!” clamored Lea in disbelief, gazing upon a small child not older than six gawking at the sky.
Blue eyes deeper than the oceans, hair darker than the night sky, skin fairer than a newborn. A beautiful boy floated gracefully above the crystal waters of the lake.
“Lea, something wrong with hi-, LEA RUN!, THAT’S NO BOY, IT’S A DEMON” the older woman backed off with a panic after studying the boy for a few seconds, but she stopped as she noticed her friend not moving, mesmerized by the boy, her eyes not leaving his small body.
But the green eyes left out the boy’s barely noticeable features, she missed the small bones popping out above his eyebrows, his small wiggling tail swaying slowly underwater, she missed the thin, jagged lines, the shape of a cross decorating his small belly.
“Lea? … LEA?” Mona cried at the hypnotized Lea, begging her to leave the water and run away as far as possible and never come back.
She carefully lifted the boy between her arms, indicating that the creature was as harmless as a, little boy.
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“Lea, what are you doing? Don’t tell me you’re going to…”
“Noa” she exhaled, granting him the name that belonged to the lifeless chunk of meat she once bore.
“Have you lost you mind Leanora, can't you see him? He looks like an imp” the shocked woman hissed, trying to bring her friend back to her senses.
The boy filtered the name out of the language he didn’t comprehend, his wondering blue eyes moved to meet the warm green ones.
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It was minutes past midnight, in a ruined shack of wood and straw, a woman sat with unparalleled joy as she watched a small boy devour her tasteless vegetable soup like it was his last meal.
She did not speak, she just kept smiling at him. Her throat was still sore from spending the last few hours snatching away a promise of secrecy from an old friend.
A large woolen hat covered the boy’s head, a loose old gown of hers hid his small tail and the outlandish lines on his abdomen.
The boy finished his long feast, she held him and tucked him into her warm chest, covered him with her long, blond hair. And hugged him tightly on a bed that barely could fit a goat. The woman finally closed her eyes finally calling it a night after planting a motherly kiss on his forehead.
“Good night, dear Noa” she murmured before delving into the vast lands of dreams.
The boy raised his head and looked at the sleeping face, the motherly smile, the unconditional love.
The boy fell in love for the third time, and the last time.
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Days passed, and Lea found herself some extra shifts to keep up with the unusual appetite of the boy, who’s strangely was getting thinner with every passing day.
The boy quickly picked up the language, able to understand even the most complex of sentences. Leanora was amazed at her son’s astonishing intelligence.
Not a word left the boy’s mouth for a year until the fateful day came, when Lea saved enough coppers to pay a passing caravan for something she didn’t imagine to change her own life.
She darted to her shack and approached her boy, hands behind her back.
“Noa, close your eyes” and the boy obeyed.
“Now, open them” and the boy's heart shone like the north star, he saw adventure, he saw knowledge, he saw happiness, he saw a book.
Like most peasants, Leanora could not read, but she had immense faith in her son, his understanding, his acumen, his intelligence.
She wanted him to read, she wanted him to learn and grow to be the best man he can, she wanted him out of this small village into the heart of the kingdom, and maybe, just maybe, drag her old body along with him.
What she didn’t know, that the boy, still frozen in place before her, cherished what she just gave him above everything in the world, with the exception of herself.
The boy finally put down his treasure, spread his arms and squeezed his mother, his lips parted into the first words he spoke in this world.
“Thanks Mama” the words quickly left his mouth, before he turned around and picked his book, leaving the woman with two lines of tears running down her red cheeks, salting out her red lips like seawater.
The boy ran to the small bed and opened the book, but all he saw was symbols he didn’t understand, written with fading ink on decayed paper, but the boy relented not, and over the span of a few weeks, he took notes, he separated, he compared, he learned the language. The boy could write. Too bad no one in this remote village could do the same.
The boy grew, so did the work shifts. Lea hardly could keep up with the boy's appetite, resulting in leaving the boy in the shack from dusk till dawn, but she left him with his friend, a friend he told her his name was “An intro to the inner flow of mana”.
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Three years went by like a breeze, the mother couldn’t keep up, and the child didn’t mind the slightest, despite his constant unquenched hunger.
The boy was now nothing but skin and bone despite eating as much as five grown men, the wool on his head pierced by two small horns, his ever growing tail slithering under his gown, but the boy hid well from eyes.
Lea was in the fields, and the boy woke up to a whimper coming out of him, at first he thought it was his usual grumbling belly, but the whimpering grew louder.
Noa lifted the gown, and the shock wasn’t little, the cross was open, revealing four sets of toothless baby gums. The boy panicked but steeled himself, trying to touch whatever was inside of him.
A small but long tongue shot forth at his hand, giving him a lick that was forgotten, the boy lifted his hand, the boy smelled the familiar saliva, the boy recognized the long lost love.