p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"It's a late winter this year; just enough of a lag to create a safe opportunity for the birth of a boy who will walk the path his people have forgotten- but perhaps he's too early. These people do not need him./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He's a small child, with long black hair and sparkling black eyes. His mother is alone, left behind by a man too quick in rushing to his death. They live atop a small hill at the edge of the village farthest to the West Wood's newest line of trees. Sometimes the boy swears he can hear birdsong mixed with the whistles of elves, perhaps faeries, but he wouldn't emswear/em on it, even if you could get him to speak aloud./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He's a young age when the visions begin: images of himself, older, grown, clapping hands with tall, spindly figures with pointed ears and cat-slit eyes. His mother cries when he describes how he himself is different: white hair, blood-red eyes, a long, spiny scar-bruise looping around his entire body like binds and leaving its snake-head on his left cheek./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"They hide the visions from the villagers for another year before a neighboring girl finds the boy convulsing behind the goat-shed, covered in mud and drooling, eyes rolling and pained whimpers escaping clenched cheeks. She screams. The boy is found, his mother grabbed as well. She is accused of being a witch, a sorceress who has summoned a demon to reside within her child and curse them all. The boy cries, great dripping tears leaking from his eyes as he begs for them to understand, attempts to explain everything. No one listens. No one understands./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"His mother is hanged in the central square, her empty body hanging for days until the villagers are satisfied every bit of evil magic is gone and they take the husk down./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"The boy is silent, even as he is charged with death and sent to drown in a pot of cruddy water. The girl who found him is watching, eyes wide and trembling hands secured over her wilting mouth. He smiles for her, a gash across his face that should, for all purposes, be bleeding./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"It's not./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"Water flows down his dusty cheeks, into the muddy pot they're going to smother his breath into. He stares into it, wondering what it will look like when he's gone. Would the essence of his soul make it cloudy? Purify it? Or would it be just as dirty and choked with filth as it always was, as he soon will be?/span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He feels the village's strongest man grip the back of his head in a fist and closes his eyes, prepared for the empty pretense of struggle and a hollow justice. Victory and murder, in the name of a god who may not even exist./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"There's a thudding sound, and the grip loosens. His eyes fly open, right into the liquid silver of an elf. The sly smile etched across the creature's face is wide and exhilarated as it breathes, em"Ready to go yet, little one?"/em/span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"The village burns bright that night./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"(0)/span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He's a small child, with long black hair and sparkling black eyes. His mother is alone, left behind by a man too quick in rushing to his death. They live atop a small hill at the edge of the village farthest to the West Wood's newest line of trees. Sometimes the boy swears he can hear birdsong mixed with the whistles of elves, perhaps faeries, but he wouldn't emswear/em on it, even if you could get him to speak aloud./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He's a young age when the visions begin: images of himself, older, grown, clapping hands with tall, spindly figures with pointed ears and cat-slit eyes. His mother cries when he describes how he himself is different: white hair, blood-red eyes, a long, spiny scar-bruise looping around his entire body like binds and leaving its snake-head on his left cheek./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"They hide the visions from the villagers for another year before a neighboring girl finds the boy convulsing behind the goat-shed, covered in mud and drooling, eyes rolling and pained whimpers escaping clenched cheeks. She screams. The boy is found, his mother grabbed as well. She is accused of being a witch, a sorceress who has summoned a demon to reside within her child and curse them all. The boy cries, great dripping tears leaking from his eyes as he begs for them to understand, attempts to explain everything. No one listens. No one understands./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"His mother is hanged in the central square, her empty body hanging for days until the villagers are satisfied every bit of evil magic is gone and they take the husk down./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"The boy is silent, even as he is charged with death and sent to drown in a pot of cruddy water. The girl who found him is watching, eyes wide and trembling hands secured over her wilting mouth. He smiles for her, a gash across his face that should, for all purposes, be bleeding./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"It's not./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"Water flows down his dusty cheeks, into the muddy pot they're going to smother his breath into. He stares into it, wondering what it will look like when he's gone. Would the essence of his soul make it cloudy? Purify it? Or would it be just as dirty and choked with filth as it always was, as he soon will be?/span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"He feels the village's strongest man grip the back of his head in a fist and closes his eyes, prepared for the empty pretense of struggle and a hollow justice. Victory and murder, in the name of a god who may not even exist./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"There's a thudding sound, and the grip loosens. His eyes fly open, right into the liquid silver of an elf. The sly smile etched across the creature's face is wide and exhilarated as it breathes, em"Ready to go yet, little one?"/em/span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-indent: 0.5in;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"The village burns bright that night./span/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333347320557px; font-family: Constantia, serif;"(0)/span/p