Two months later, Alina is startled awake by the sound of her sister’s voice.
“Lina? Meditating again?”
“Ugh… No, I fell asleep thanks for waking me.”
“It’s no wonder. Cultivator Jokull has you working so hard everyday in your training, you really expect to not fall asleep while meditating before bed? At least you’re no longer coming home covered head to toe in bruises and welts.”
Isn’t that the truth. For the first month and a cycle, she got hit constantly day in and day out. A month is 32 days, and she was hit hundreds of times each day, for the full ten hours between daybreak and nightshroud. It comes out to thousands of hits, probably, since she started her training. A week is 8 days, and a cycle 16 days. The last cycle she hasn’t been hit very much in regards to answering questions or fixing posture for stuff she’s already been taught. It’s only whenever her teacher introduces something new that she’s hit a few times before she memorizes it.
Alina sighs, noticing her hair beginning to turn black thinking back on her training. “What are you up to, Ari?”
“Just bringing in the leathers. The fisherman came by earlier today and left a message while you were training. The Crone wants to see you tomorrow. Apparently he was supposed to go tell you and Cultivator Jokull during your training, but he was scared to approach so he left the message with me.”
The Crone? What could she want with her? ...In hindsight, it is surprising that she hasn’t met with Alina sooner. The Crone is basically the village elder, leader, wisewoman, and witch. She’s a 250-odd year old Ravenna, a raven-person, who some in the village suspect to be a cultivator herself. Alina asked Jaki once, and he refused to comment. He did say that she’s a genuine witch, though Alina doesn’t know what that exactly means. Maybe some kind of failed cultivator, like with Jaki being a mage? Mom had told her never to ask when she was a child, and the word is a taboo in the village.
She took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled. “Alright. Think it’s bad news? Maybe she wants Jaki out of the village and changed her mind about his four year stay?”
“If she does, go with him. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me or dad.”
Aline turned her head to look at the door to dad’s room. Alina and Ariana slept in the main room, each with their own sleeping mat, sharing the space with dad’s workbench and cobbler’s tools, as well as the stove and kitchen area. Dad has his own room that he shared with mom when she was still alive.
“We’ll talk about it if that’s what she actually wants. It might be nothing.”
Who was she kidding? The Crone doesn’t call on you for nothing.
—----------------—
The next day, Alina woke up at daybreak, the windows outside suddenly going dark to the full bright of day. It’s not an instant transition, it takes a few seconds for it to go from the darkness of night to the brightness of day, but it’s always easy to wake up to as long as you sleep near a window. It’s always worse on the sixteenth night of a cycle, as that night has no moon and is pure pitch black.
The two sisters get out of bed and get dressed, talking about nothing of import and avoiding the cultivator in the room. Alina sighs as she puts on the shoes that her dad made her, which are getting a little worn down now that it’s been almost two years since they were made.
Time to head to The Worried Seer. That was the name of the Crone’s home/shop. Luckily, it wasn’t a far walk. Not that the village is that big in the first place.The village only had just under 600 people in it total, something like 195 buildings, most of which were houses. Small houses. The village was split into two main sections, a bunch of smaller houses, usually having a single room or two, to the north, and something like 30 buildings in the south, the majority of which were larger houses, but a few of which were shops. The Worried Seer counted as being in the south of the village, but it was almost perfectly in the exact center of the village.
Alina’s house, technically also the cobbler’s shop called The Illuminated Cobbler, was almost the very northernmost building in the entire village, only a stone’s throw from the creek. Quite convenient for Alina doing her training, as she only had to walk for a few minutes, cross a bridge, and be on the forested side of the creek to meet with her teacher every morning.
As Alina walked down the main road heading towards the Crone’s, she was only half way there when she was stopped by a child. Well, he’s only a couple of years younger than her, twelve-year-old Kaobon, she thinks his name was, son of a shop assistant at the stone shop. They lived nearby.
“Dad says yer bad luck.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Alina scowled and instantly the boy pointed a finger at her.
“See! Your hair changes color, and your eyes too. It’s not normal. And you spend a lot of time with that cultivator. Dad says you’re probably the reason that the hunter and his wife died to that monster a while back.”
“Shut up.”
“You were even there when it happened.”
“No I wasn’t. I came running when I heard screams, it happened before I got there!”
“You’re a Demon anyways! Everyone knows they’re an evil race. That’s why your eyes turn red when you’re mad, and your hair turns black. Because you’re evil.”
“My hair turns white and my eyes turn blue when I’m happy. Isn’t that a sign of good?”
The kid scowled, having no comeback this time. Then, the kid spit at her.
So she punched him in his fucking face.
Kaobon fell back onto his ass, eyes wide and hands holding a bloodied nose. He began crying, and she turned around and marched off, now even in a worse mood than before.
She wasn’t evil. And even if she was, she hadn’t done a single thing to wrong anyone in this village. Not that she could think of. I mean, sure, she steals sometimes, but she gets in trouble for it like all kids do. She gets in fights when someone tries to bully her, but they always started it. She didn’t ask to be born a Demon. She can’t help that her hair and eyes change color. She didn’t choose it.
Almost every day, she really wished they didn’t.
—----------------—
Walking up to The Worried Seer always fills any villager of Cat’s Creek with a certain amount of dread. The shop itself is actually rather unassuming, no spooky talismans or skeletons on display out front, but something about it is unsettling. Maybe it’s the qi in the air, not that most people can sense that, but maybe there’s enough that they can? Or maybe it’s some kind of unknown dark magic. There are lots of rumors that go around about the Crone, after all.
And yet Alina is the one who gets called evil, it isn’t fair.
As she walks up to the store, about to climb the couple of steps onto the porch, she notices a raven on the roof of the building. It looks at her dead on, before turning its head to the side and blinking. Caww. It caws.
Yeah, that’s not a coincidence.
Entering the establishment, warm air flees around and to the sides of her, rushing out to mix into the cool autumn air. The smell of incense and candles assaults her nostrils, wisps of smoke that were sitting suspended and undisturbed in the air now mixing up in the turbulence caused by the door opening.
“Come hither, child, sit amongst mine company.”
Alina peered through the gloom at the Crone. The Crone is an old Ravenna, a humanoid raven-person race. From what she’s heard from Jaki, they’re technically a race of Harpy, or atleast very closely related. Harpies are to ravenna what goblins are to humans.
Well, she definitely looks freaky. She has the head of a raven, the chest, torso, stomach, upper thighs and upper arms of a human woman, but her arms turn into black raven wings halfway between the shoulder and the elbow, and from the knees down she has bird-like feet. Massively disproportionate hands, with almost nonexistent palms but incredibly long fingers, like that of a bat. Alina is not entirely sure how the Crone dresses herself, to be frank. Even if her clothes do seem to be easy to put on, a one piece robe with a hood, no center part, but cuts all the way down the sides for her arm-wings to reach out of.
She gives off the impression that she is very much a hag stereotype, even for her own race. Nevertheless, Alina complies with her and goes to sit down on a cushioned pillow infront of the low table that the ravenna is sitting at, across from her.
“Thine eyes and thine hair art a curse not, but a blessing, mine intuition telleth me. Seekest revenge not against this village when thy power grows.”
“Really? You called me here just to tell me not to be mad? Do you even know what happened on my way here?”
“Peace. Thou art but a child. A child bestowed great potential. Naughty needn’t suit thee. A warning. A chance. Be forewarned, violence upon denizens of Cat’s Creek shalt be met in kind. I mot allow it not. I informed thy instructor such. I extend this warning upon thee, lest past grudges be pursued when future power be gained. Thou wilt not. Heed the voice of mineself and cast aside thine ire. What sayest thee?”
“Yes, Elder. It won’t happen again.”
“Verily. Past transgressions aside. Thy woes be forgotten not, let it not be saist Cat’s Creek provided naught but base humour. A gift for thee, so thou shalt endure less time strugglinge.”
Then the Crone set a small coin purse onto the table, faint blue light radiating from within.
“Ask thy instructor if thou provest curious. I shall suffer conversation no more this day.”
Alina grabbed the coin purse curiously, then stood up and bowed towards the Crone before heading out.
That was… not what she expected, in the least. She guesses it makes sense, the Crone has lived for a very long time, and if Alina becomes a cultivator she probably will also. The Crone is also aware that she isn’t treated that well by some in the village, so having a talk with her about not coming back for revenge in the future when she’s stronger makes sense.
Alina doesn’t think she’d do that. Sure, she hates some people in the village. But if she had the power of a cultivator, would she come back for revenge? Take it out on the whole village just because of the handful of families that ostracized her? Besides, it isn’t the whole village. Plenty of people in the village have accepted her as one of their own, by now.
No, the Crone’s warning were probably unneeded. Though whatever is in the coin purse as a bribe will hopefully be good.
Now that she thinks about it, though… Revenge. As a cultivator, she’ll have plenty of power for revenge where it is warranted and due.
She’ll be able to avenge mom.