Welcome to yet another one of my wonderful stories! :D
This is going up earlier than planned, as I had meant to put it up when my story for Titanic was finished, but I had a change of heart. Plus, I just really like this one. I have ten chapters written, twenty to go after that, and a sequel that already has bits and pieces written. This is pre-movie, only a few months before their discharge. :)
So for those of you who are not familiar with my writing, this is how it goes: I put the chapter up, I give you an amount of reviews at the end, and I will not post another chapter until that quota is met. I don't want to waste my time posting something that nobody really gives a crap about, and it gives me guidelines for when I should be updating. I'm never unfair with the amount I ask for. I'll never ask for twenty reviews for a chapter that's only a thousand words long. What can twenty people say about something so short?
Actually, that doesn't apply to me. I would never put up a chapter with less than a thousand words. xP I'm picky like that.
Each chapter title is a line in the song "Give Me A Sign" by Breaking Benjamin. I was listening to it one day, and I kind of dreamt up a relationship the song would go with. This is the end result of that. :P
So, read on, loves, and I really hope you like this as much as I like writing it!
"Slowing down, I look around, and I am so amazed. I think about the little things that make life great. I wouldn't change a thing about it. This is the best feeling. This innocence is brilliant. I hope that it will stay. This moment is perfect. Please don't go away. I need you now, and I'll hold onto it. Don't you let it pass you by."-Avril Lavigne
"Run, Addi!" my sister, Melita, giggled as we both went charging through the underbrush. I let out a squeal of delight as I listened to the sounds of feet pounding behind us, giving chase. I reached over without thinking, and clutched Melita's hand tightly in mine. She was four years younger than me, only six winters old, so it was instinctual for me to protect her.
"ADERYN!" the boy chasing us roared my name as he catapulted through the trees. Melita screeched, and we ran harder. I was out of breath, but I pushed through the burning in my chest.
The trees of our forest blurred past me and molded together like runny paint on a canvas. The leaves crunched beneath my feet, and the thick furs I wore to keep warm fanned behind me like a cape. I held my arms out at my sides and imagined they were wings. This was the closest I would ever get to flying.
I realized I could no longer hear footfalls behind me, and slowed, forcing Melita to do the same. We stood side by side, both panting as we scanned the forest for any sign of Ursus.
"I think we lost him," I decided quietly. Just as I got the words out, something slammed into my side with the force of a charging bear. I screamed, but it quickly turned to fits of laughter as my attacker started to tickle me.
"Stop, Ursus!" I shouted, trying to push my older brother off of me. He just continued his merciless assault on my sides. He had a large quantity of mud on the side of his face and caked in his dark brown hair, and it was dripping onto my front as he hovered over me.
"Don't…ever…throw dirt…at me…again!" he yelled, punctuating each word with a poke at my sides.
"You big brute, Ursus!" Melita cried, slamming a stick she'd found down on his back. He yelped, and rounded on her. I bucked and threw him off, sending him flat on his back. Melita leapt on him with a roar like a baby mountain lion, and started to tickle him just as he had me. Before he could throw the much smaller girl off of him, I jumped on top of him to aid her.
He yelled for us to get off, but we didn't relent. "T-T-TRUCE!" he finally gasped. I smirked as I let go of him, rolling so I laid on the ground on his left.
"Truce or not, we have won yet again," I told him as Melita landed on his other side. The three of us stared up at the tree tops. It was autumn now, so no leaves blocked our view of the wide open sky, bluer than any time I'd seen it before.
"There aren't even any clouds," Ursus observed. I nodded.
"It's pretty," Melita said in a finalistic way, like hers was the final verdict. I just smiled. My life was a good one. I had two loving parents, best friends in both of my siblings, and a home in the middle of this forest. Although we were miles away from any civilized village, it had never mattered to us. We had everything we needed on this land: animals to hunt for meat and fur, a stream to get water, wood for fire, and each other for company.
Ursus suddenly bolted upright and I flinched, thinking he would tickle me again. Instead he just stared straight ahead, through the trees we'd come from.
"Do you hear that?" he whispered.
"Hear w-"
I held out my hand, stopping Melita mid-question. It was faint, but I knew what it was the second I'd heard it. It was a sound many heard just before death, and their loved ones would hear it years after in their nightmares. The sound was drums…war drums.
"MOTHER!" Ursus roared, leaping up and charging through the forest.
"Stay here, Melita!" I commanded, taking off after my brother before she could protest.
We ran like people possessed. We had gone much further from home than I'd initially realized. Every step I took, the drums grew louder until they were nearly deafening. When they stopped, I was so shocked that I tripped and went sprawling across the ground. Ursus kept going, and I tried to stand. When I put my weight on my right arm to lift myself, an incomprehensible pain shot through it. I cried out and fell back down, tears stinging in my eyes.
Rolling onto my back, I lifted my hand into my view. It sat at an odd angle, and was already swelling impossibly fast. I knew it was broken, but there was nothing I could do about it right then. I stood, and continued my mad sprint back to the small house I'd lived in my whole life while clutching my wounded arm gingerly to my chest.
I could hear screaming, and the sounds of people throwing things around. I stopped just before the clearing my house sat in the middle of, and pressed my back to a tree. Masculine laughter reached my ears, but it sounded cruel and mocking, unlike my father's deep boom and my brother's mad cackle. I peered around the tree, and my breath caught. There were hundreds of huge men dressed in dirty furs and battle armor standing around my home. I didn't see my father or my mother, but I clearly saw Ursus: he was lying dead at the feet of a large man with a bald head and a brown beard that made him look like a half-shaved lion. The brutish man kicked his body to the side like it weighed nothing, and I had to stifle my cry of grief when his severed head completely separated from his body on impact.
"Look at this!" The voice scared me out of my wits. It came from just behind me, and when I went to turn, I was pulled up by my hair. I screamed, but he was already dragging me forward. The barbarian threw me at the feet of the lion-man who'd murdered my brother, and I twisted so that I wouldn't land on my bad wrist.
On my back, I gazed at the brute before me. His eyes were black and beady, and it worried me that there was nothing in them, no feeling at all. It was like looking into a dead man's eyes crammed into a living man's head.
"Another Briton," the man who'd dropped me said carelessly. I noticed the way the rest looked at the lion-man with reverence that bordered on fear, and I knew that he had to be their leader.
He grunted boredly, and turned to look at something. I followed his gaze, and gasped. My father's body was propped up against a tree, an arrow through his heart. I sobbed freely on the ground, unaware of the men's disgusted looks directed at me. My father and brother were dead. I didn't know where my mother was, and my sister was probably scared out of her mind in the forest we just came from. I prayed she had the sense to hide. Only minutes ago, I'd been plotting with her to throw a huge ball of mud at our older brother because of how he boasted of his nonexistent battle skills. How had this happened?
"Shut up!" the leader finally snapped, kicking me in the shoulder. I choked on my sobs and gasped in pain. My arm dangled uselessly now, seemingly detached from the socket. He grabbed a handful of my dark brown waves, and pulled me up to look at him. Blue eyes met black, and I stared him down. Tears still leaked out from the corners, and I knew he could see my fear. He reached up with the hand that wasn't entangled in my hair and clutched my chin.
"Pretty, for a poor little wench," he said casually. I struggled a little, and he clutched my chin tighter. "It's a good thing you showed up. There was no way the one we already have could sustain all of the men."
There were agreeing murmurs, and then a feminine scream from inside the house that emphasized his words.
"MOTHER!" I yelled. I got a harsh slap across my face, but I continued to struggle. I was thrown back onto the ground, but he held one foot down on my throat when I tried to stand.
"Put her with the other one, and do with them what you will," the leader said. The chuckles I heard now held even more evil than the laughter I heard earlier. A sense of foreboding washed over me like a harsh wind, and I was grabbed by my ankle and dragged into the small hut I lived in. My nails clutched the ground, trying to anchor myself. My hand scraped across a tree root, and I whimpered from pain when a couple of my nails were ripped clean from my fingers.
My mother was on the floor in the middle of the room. Her dress was hiked up to her hips, and there was a man on top of her. To my naïve mind, it looked like he was simply writhing on top of her. An accidentally overheard conversation between my father and brother swept through my head, and I realized what he was doing to her.
"ADERYN!" she screamed when she saw me. She fought as hard as possible, sobbing uncontrollably as she did so.
"Shut up, wench!" the man growled. She spit in the his face, and he backhanded her so hard that she was knocked out.
"Mother!" I cried again, scrabbling crazily against the ground in my attempts to free myself.
"Your mother can't save you now," the man who'd originally found me growled as he dragged me to my parents' bedroom, slamming the door behind us. He tossed me on the bed like I weighed as much as a feather, and I nearly bounced right back off.
I didn't understand why he brought me here until he was suddenly on top of me, kissing all over my face and neck. I screamed, crying with renewed fervor, and attempted to throw him off of me with every ounce of strength I had. My wrist and shoulder protested against my struggles, but it was in vain. The man was much too large for only a ten year old to fight off. I stopped struggling when it proved futile and just stared at the ceiling.
In that moment, I gave up.
/\/\/\/\/\
I lost count of the amount of men who came and went from the room. It seemed like hours that I laid there with my legs spread, praying for death. I said nothing, did nothing but try and imagine that I wasn't there. I was still on the ground in the woods with Melita and Ursus, and I had fallen asleep. When I woke up, I would run home and cry in my mother's arms about it while she told me that it was impossible because we lived so far away from anywhere that we couldn't be found. Then papa would promise to kill any man who ever thought of hurting me, and we would go back to our lives. This was a dream, a nightmare of the worst possible kind.
I noticed when the flow of men stopped, but I did not move. I stared at the ceiling, not wanting to look down and see the effects of so many men's assault all over me. I was no longer afraid. I was ready to die. I would join my family in the afterlife.
I heard voices, but ignored the words they spoke. I heard the door creak open, but I didn't look at who entered. I felt whoever it was crawl onto the bed, and their silence surprised me. They usually spoke to me, trying to entice movements or sounds from me. I would play dead, and they would seem to find it amusing or they'd hit me because of my insolence.
A hand flashed into my vision, and my chest seared with pain. I looked down, and saw the dagger sticking out of the right side of my chest. The bald leader was the man on the bed, and he just looked at me when I locked eyes with him. He said nothing, only got off the bed and left.
I heard horses neighing, and a man shouting orders. I stared at the blood welling up around the wound, and raised my hand to clutch the knife in it. I would surely die now. It was impossible for me to live with a wound like this. I heard a very loud scream, and only realized it was me when it ceased.
The sound of a stampede of hoof beats galloping away filtered past my haze of pain. The barbarians were leaving. They'd taken all that they wanted. I gasped, trying to block the pain out of my brain. I was starting to lose the ability to breathe. Consciousness started to slip, and I prepared to die.
I lived a short life. It wasn't very eventfully or meaningful, but it was not lacking in any sense. I'd been loved by my family, and loved them in return. We took care of each other, and we were as close knit as any group of people could be. We were poor financially but rich in things that many people couldn't understand. The fact that I had lived at all was a blessing.
I heard the creak of the door opening, and thought it was just my imagination until a face loomed into my increasingly blurred vision. A woman stood over me, pulling things out of a bag at her side. She said something, but her words were foreign to my ears. I wondered if she was making sense, but it was being muddled in my addled brain. Her skin even looked…blue.
The pain was overwhelming, and my eyes wouldn't stay open. I felt the knife being wrenched from my chest just before I fell into oblivion.
So...so? ;D What do you think?
It's a bit dark, which is very 'me'. Admittedly, I'm quite twisted.
So only two reviews until more? Please? Come on, it takes one click, a bit of typing, and another click! I promise it's worth it! :D
Hope you all have good weekends. (:
