Guardian Witch
Rise of the Guardians
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, a widower lived alone with his only daughter, Natasha. Everything seemed fine until the man decided to marry again. With a new mother in the home, the daughter found little time with her father. He was merry and joyful around her stepmother that he often forgot that his daughter needed to be loved too.
One day, the stepmother found no reason to keep the daughter anymore. She decided to kick the girl out when her husband would be intoxicated that night. When the woman succeeded in getting him to drink to his heart's content, she chased the girl out with nothing more than a few mouthfuls of bread and a spare change of cloths.
With all her might, the poor girl ran through the forest in the dark. While running to her good grandmother's house for shelter, she found herself lost in the forest. The dark had made the path look so different, she had missed a turn to her destination. She collapsed in exhaustion under a willow tree and cried.
For days and nights, the girl wandered through the forest. She quickly ran out of bread and tried to fill her constantly empty stomach the berries that she had found on her way. But after choking on a few, she realized that some of the berries she was coming across could be poisonous. She didn't dare eat anymore of them. Her days were filled with effortless tears and empty stomachs. Coming across the same willow, she sat down and cried her last pitiful tear before falling into an eternal sleep.
Yet, her last breath she did not breathed it. A warm voice awoke her from her slumber. She sat up, stomach no longer empty and eyes no longer wet.
"How is this so?" She asked to no one in particular. "I was hungry just a second ago."
"Dear child, the reason you don't feel it so is because you have passed." The warm voice told her.
Natasha sat under the tree, confused of the statement and the origin of the voice. It seemed to ring in her head rather than enter her ears. Upon impulse, the girl found herself looking at the moon.
"I have passed?" She asked it.
"Yes, you have passed your mortal life." The moon spoke in her head. "But do not fear, from now on, you shall live as a spirit of the earth, you are now, Mother Nature."
"Mother Nature." The girl mouthed. An elated feeling filled the girl, but she shook her head, chasing the feeling out of her. The moon, confused at her actions, asked her what was wrong.
"No, I cannot be." Natasha told the moon. "What about my father? What will befall upon my stepmother?" She thought of her stepmother and her deed. She thought of the mistreatment her stepmother had acted upon her. She thought of the days and nights of endless hunger and painful sadness. "Will my stepmother be punished when I become Mother Nature?"
Silence.
"What is it that I have to do?" The girl asked the light in the sky desperately. "I don't want this name!" She shouted towards the night sky.
The moon did not answer.
As pitiful as she was, she continued to cry to the sky. With her life lingering permanently between life and death, the only thing she cared for in the world was revenge against her stepmother.
"As soon as I chose you to become an immortal spirit, everyone you knew had forgotten about you." The moon began to speak once again. "I see that you do not want to be named with the title I have given you, so I will not force it upon you. However, I cannot redo what I have already done. You are now an immortal spirit, your mortal life forgotten completely by the world."
"Why have you done this?" Natasha yelled at the moon. But before it could answer, a lone gray cloud hovered in front of it, blocking the warm light that the moon gave her. The girl got up and ran, to where, she didn't know. Unbeknownst to her, she was moving closer and closer to her home. When she reached the familiar door of her home, she wept. For behind the door, she could hear children's laughter among the voices of her father and stepmother. On instinct, she took a step through the door. In front of her eyes, she could see her father laughing at a small baby boy who had taken a taste of a slice of lemon. Her stepmother was reading a storybook at a young girl around the age of four, a smile adorned the woman's face, one of which the girl had never seen before on her face.
The weeping girl turned and fled the house. The moon was still covered.
No voice came from the sky, instead a voice from the ground in front of her began to speak.
"Little lady, what are you doing weeping here?" The girl looked up and saw a woman with long white hair that was tied up in a braid, her nose was long and pointed, her eyes were completely white, and her skin was pale and wrinkled. Natasha gaped as she saw that the old woman was sitting on a large mortar that seemed to float a few inches above the ground and in her hand she held a pestle of equally large proportions.
"Who are you?" Asked the girl.
"I am Baba Yaga, the witch." The woman answered calmly. "Now what is a spirit like you crying about?"
The girl, seeing no harm in telling her, told the witch of her story. Her stepmother, her empty stomach, the willow, her passing, and the moon. When the girl mentioned the moon, the old woman laughed at the sky. Then she turned to face the young girl once more.
"Let me tell you something, little girl, the moon is unfair. He had done the same to me too. Now, I am nothing but a witch among the living." The witch put her hand on the girl. "Come with me. You'll have your revenge at that ghastly woman. And if you don't you can live an immortal life away from mortal beings."
The girl took the woman's offer and followed the woman back into the forest and into the darkness. When the moon reappeared behind the clouds, he could not find the girl anymore.
The girl awoke to a cold breeze. She opened her eyes to find herself staring at a skyful of snowflakes falling in front of her. She let out an exasperated sigh, muttering about a winter spirit not being able to choose a better time to let it snow. She brushed herself off the snow that her clothes had caught while she was sleeping and got up. She grabbed the silver-birch broom that sat beside her and began walking towards a dying willow. A few children had crowded around it while she was asleep and were beginning to climb the tree. They continued to play as she sat against the trunk of the tree. One of the kids ran towards her, but past right through her as he began to scramble up the trunk.
"No manners." The girl muttered under her breath. "So noisy."
She heard a scuffle above her and a shriek followed. A soft thump was heard beside her and she turned to see that one of the children had fallen off the tree and seemed to have scraped his arm. She scoffed as the kid began to bawl for his parents. The rest of the children had descended down the tree to aid their hurt friend before they all rushed towards their 'all-knowing' parents to get his wound cleaned up.
The girl hummed in delight by the sudden silence the children had left behind. She leaned her head back and whispered to the tree as if it could hear her.
"Good morning."