One Good Eye
By Agent Malkere
Disclaimer: I do not own Wakfu. (You can tell because I'm writing this story in English - it's a dead giveaway.)
The most important things to a Cra were her hands, her eyes, and her bow. Cleophee had her bow and two good hands. She wished she could say the same for her eyes.
It happened when Cleophee was young and small and still wore her bangs short and out of her face like her big sister, Evangelyne. She loved her big sister, and when she grew up, Cleophee wanted to be just like her. Eva was already the personal bodyguard of a princess even though she was only ten and a better shot than most adults! Her big sister was the best.
If Cleophee wanted to be the best, too, she needed to practice, and to practice, she needed arrows. Cleophee was still too young to learn how to make magic arrows and almost all of her practice arrows were damaged, but that was okay. She had seen how her father fixed arrows. It didn't look that hard. Eva was home visiting for the week. Wouldn't she be impressed when Cleophee showed her the arrows she had fixed all by herself?
She found one of her father's knives and went to work picking out the broken fletching. She didn't realize that her father had left the knife out so that he'd remember to sharpen it. Cleophee had to lean in close to see what she was doing. She wanted to get it just right.
Her bedroom door creaked open.
"Cleo, mother says that dinner is-"
Cleophee startled. The knife slipped.
She didn't actually remember the pain, but it must have been extreme because she passed out after a matter of seconds. All she remembered was Eva's scream of terror.
Cleophee stared at her reflection. She looked the same. Whole, unblemished. But the left half of her world had gone dark forever.
"I'm sorry," the Eniripsa told her parents. "I did everything I could, but I could only save her eye – not her sight."
Her mother nearly collapsed in tears. Her father nodded in understanding, his expression flat and stony. Cleophee simply stared at her reflection and felt numb. She didn't cry until a day later when her left shoulder hit a doorframe she couldn't see. Her knees gave way, and she fell to the floor and sobbed.
Before the accident, Cleophee had almost been as good a shot as Eva had been at her age. After the accident, her shots went wide, fell short, over shot. Every missed target made Cleophee's chest ache a little more.
She started wearing her bangs so that they hung in front of left eye not long after. Cleophee hated seeing that useless green orb staring back at her in the mirror.
Cleophee hated Amalia. Hated her perfect hair and her perfect life. Hated how easy her life seemed. Hated that she had taken Eva away from her. Hated that Amalia's regard had raised Eva to a height that Cleophee and her one good eye could never hope to reach.
So everytime Cleophee and Amalia met, Cleophee made certain to make her life hell.
Cleophee eyed Eva's recurve bow with longing and jealousy. She squashed the urge to hide her wrist bow in shame. At twelve, she should have received her adult bow, but Cleophee was now thirteen and still she was only allowed a wrist bow – a child's weapon.
"Without proper depth perception, you can't judge distance as well," her mother had told her. "You could put too much power behind a shot with a full sized bow and seriously injure your allies as well as your enemies. It's not safe."
Nobody ever said, 'It's because you only have one good eye.'
Nobody ever said, 'We don't trust you.'
Nobody ever said, 'We don't think you can take care of yourself.'
Nobody ever said, 'We're ashamed that our second daughter is half blind.'
No one in her family ever mentioned her damaged eye at all.
They didn't need to. Cleophee could hear what they weren't saying loud and clear. And she resented all of them for it.
Well, if she couldn't fight like a proper Cra, then by Cra she was going to learn to punch like a Sacrier. She was tired of feeling worthless and useless.
As it turned out, Cleophee was really good at hitting like a Sacrier. It was fun, too.
Cleophee stared at her reflection. She'd just turned fourteen and tomorrow she'd be moving into the barracks. She knew it was going to be ugly. Some people didn't consider a Cra without two good eyes and hands to be a real Cra. She'd show them though. Her wrist bow might not have the same brute force as a recurve bow, but she'd more than learned how to compensate for her lack of depth perception. Being in the barracks would still be better than being at home with her parents. They wouldn't even let her go to the market without an escort.
She'd been right – her first day was hell. As was her second, third, fourth, fifth…. People talked about her behind her back, ignored her, dismissed anything she had to say as unimportant.
On the eighth day, someone called her 'One Eye' sneeringly to her face. So Cleophee had punched him in the mouth, knocked out both his front teeth, and told him that one eye was still better than no teeth. Cleophee had gotten in so much trouble, but it had been worth it just to see the look on that bow-breaker's face. Nobody insulted her to her face again after that.
That didn't stop her from overhearing the whispered comparisons of herself to Evangelyne. Even if she didn't hear all of what was said, Cleophee always knew that in those comparisons she came up wanting. The shadow her older sister cast was long and dark.
Cleophee had not got within a hundred miles of Nox or the battle that had nearly wiped out the Sadida Kingdom, but she listened to the stories that the others brought back with rapt attention and fascination and wished that she could have been there – could have helped. She couldn't believe that Eva, Eva, had helped to save an entire kingdom and fought alongside a dragon. Then again, perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised. It was Eva after all. Her straight-laced sister had a way of attracting glory. Of course she would have ended up in the Brotherhood of the Tofu.
Cleophee's favorite stories from the battle, though, were those of the Ginger Warrior, Sir Tristepin, and his Shushu sword. He sounded like her kind of warrior. It was a shame that he had died and that she'd never get a chance to meet him, but he was a Iop. Dying in glorious battle that lifted him into legend was, no doubt, the way he would have wanted to go.
Actually, what truly surprised Cleophee was the letter that she received from Eva. It wasn't terse, per se, but it was certainly… detached. There was a water droplet stain on one corner that Eva normally never would have allowed. Strange. She must have been more upset by the death of one of her allies than Cleophee would have expected.
"We should make our own brotherhood!" Cleophee announced.
Garan and Iven blinked at her blearily. They certainly weren't the best and the brightest the barracks had to offer. Cleophee wouldn't even really call them friends (generally, she called them whimps), but they could generally be talked into going along with her on her latest crazy idea and they never mentioned her single working eye or her famous sister.
"But you're female," Iven pointed out in confusion. "How can we have a brotherhood when we're not even all male?"
Cleophee rolled her eyes. Definitely not the barrack's best and brightest. Hopefully, they'd still turn out to be handy in a fight. She had plans.
"Fine, call it a fellowship then."
"Why would we want to do that, though?" asked Garan.
"Haven't you ever wanted to see the world beyond the Matron's borders?" Cleophee had always dreamed of traveling the world. Her sister had done it with the Brotherhood of the Tofu. Now it was Cleophee's turn to put her own twist on things. She was sick of the sight of these walls.
The Fellowship of the Black Arrow wasn't exactly a success, but it did get Cleophee out of the barracks and all the way to the Trool Fair.
"You're pretty good at fighting!"
Cleophee had always assumed that she would have liked the Ginger Warrior if she had ever had the chance to meet him, but damn, she had not been expecting Tristepin. She hadn't expected such a head rush of someone looking at her and simply seeing a warrior instead of a broken little girl who couldn't even be trusted with a full sized bow.
Tristepin was sweet, funny, and undeniably attractive. Also, he was amazing to watch in a fight and fight alongside. Iops might not be great thinkers, but they fought like violent poetry in motion.
"And you're pretty clever for a Iop."
It had been… amazing – and a little alarming – to see the way Tristepin's entire face lit up at that single compliment. Cleophee wondered if that was how she had looked when he had seen her as a warrior instead of an imperfect Cra. Either way, there were definitely some deep-rooted self-esteem issues lurking behind those cheerful eyes, but that was okay. Cleophee thought that she might understand – at least a little – where he was coming from.
And then Eva of all people showed up.
Wait… He was dating Eva?! Go figure. That was too bad. And there definitely had to be an interesting story behind that because Eva had never been one to suffer fools and Iops were, as a rule, almost all fools. Cleophee would have thought that Tristepin would push pretty much every single button her sister owned.
Actually, if Cleophee were any judge, she'd say that Eva and Tristepin were already in the middle of some sort of fight. Cleophee wasn't particularly inclined to help her sister out, but she liked Tristepin. He saw her. (It felt so good to finally, finally be seen.) For his sake, maybe she could find a way to help. And if she ended up poking a bit at Eva along the way, then so much the better. Tristepin probably wouldn't notice.
There was a gun to Eva's head. Cleophee didn't think – she just reacted. If she'd stopped to think, her hands might have shaken – the panic might have spread to more than just her voice – because the target she was aiming at was tiny and far away, and if she got this wrong, her sister would be dead, dead, dead at Cleophee's own hands.
But Cleophee didn't think. She trusted her one good eye, aimed, and fired.
The Shushu gun went spinning out of the man's hands and clattered to the cave floor.
"Let go of my sister!" Her muscles were trembling now. The adrenaline overload and panic were kicking in. Cleophee didn't think she could make a second so accurate shot.
"Cleophee!" Eva's whole face lit up. For a fraction of a second, Cleophee thought her sister looked… proud? The man was suddenly pushing her to one side, bringing a second Shushu gun up to bare that Cleophee hadn't even noticed. "Cleophee, no!" And then Eva lunged.
Time seemed to slow down. There was a bang. A flash of red.
"EVA!" Her sister hit the floor and half-curled into a ball of agony. "Eva, no!" Cleophee was sprinting forward before her brain even had time to process that her feet had moved. She barely managed to stop herself from running full force into Tristepin's outstretched arm. All of the adrenaline seemed to drain out of her as Tristepin stalked forward and sent the bastard, who had hurt Eva, and his talking bow meow flying. She couldn't even move when Eva pulled herself to her knees. All she could do was stare at the ugly burn on Eva's left shoulder. Just a fraction lower and Eva would have lost use of her entire left arm. Her sister would have sacrificed her bow arm to save her.
Cleophee's feet finally got their act together, and she raced forward, dropping to her knees to embrace both Eva and Tristepin at once.
"Eva, I thought you were hurt."
Eva's smile was a little strained with pain, her face a little pale, but her eyes were bright.
"It takes more than that for me, you know."
Cleophee looked away. She could feel her sister's shadow stretching out even wider and more impressive than before. One more reminder of what she'd never live up to with her one good eye.
"Yeah, I know it takes more than that for you, the Great Cra…."
Why did the hurt never quite go away even after all these years? She ought to be used to it by now….
"Cleo?" Cleophee looked up, pulled from her gloomy feelings of inadequacy as her sister spoke. "Your shot was perfect. At that range, very few Cras would have hit their target."
Cleophee stared at her sister – her famous, prodigy sister – for a moment in disbelief. Her heart felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size, and tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes again.
"You're just saying that." Cleophee brushed her hair back out of her useless left eye and tried to brush off the compliment that had been too good to be true as well.
Eva stared at her for a long moment, the smile on her face so much softer than anything Cleophee usually saw her wear.
"No, I meant every word." Then she pulled Cleophee forward into a hug and whispered in her ear, "I'm so proud of you."
Cleophee couldn't keep the tears at bay any more. They streamed down her face in rivers as if released from a dam. Eva just held her tight.
After all these years, it seemed that one good eye was all she'd ever needed.