Blood Never Lies

Blood Never Lies 1

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Kaine stood and wiped his brow with his furry hand.  It was night time but working in a field was still a lot of work.  A light breeze rustled the leaves of the forest behind him and passed through his fur cooling him off a little.  The plants from his vegetable swayed softly with the continued wind and Kaine got back to picking the ripe vegetables for the next day’s meals.

Kaine’s black ears perked up with the change in the direction of the wind.  The breeze now came from the ocean and Kaine could smell the salty and fishy flavor as the breeze continued.  Kaine worked quickly to asses and pick the correct vegetables.  He had been working in his field since his brothers and mother had been too busy to do it. 

The garden stretched from 20 feet before the shore to just before the beginning of the forest.  It was almost the same width making it almost a perfect square section of 50 feet by 50 feet.  There were ten rows, each with a different vegetable, with a space to walk between each for pruning and picking.  There was also a simple irrigation system of small streams behind each row to supply water to the plants. 

At the moment there was no water in the small ditches because Kaine’s three older brothers had made a system to block the flow of water so the plants would have controlled watering.  The three of them had also dug the ruts from the ocean and built a small filtration system to keep fish and other aquatic things from getting stuck and to also filter out some of the salt.

Kaine had twelve brothers and sister.  All this siblings came in litters of three, which wasn’t abnormal for Kats but two per litter was much more common.  Except for him, he was the only one of all this siblings to not have any litter mates.  He was also the smallest and leanest of all his family.

While none of this siblings from different litters looked extremely alike, because they all had different fathers, they were all on the taller side and were bigger built then him.  Even his youngest siblings, you could tell, were going to be larger than his 4” 11’ frame. 

Kaine had never really fit in with his family, or anyone else really, he could be very shy and without a littermate to talk with it was difficult to have conversations.  He could talk with his older brothers but they had moved out three years ago to serve the King as warriors.  His younger siblings were no better because the closest ones in age to him were five years younger.

Because he and his family lived on the outskirts of the poorest town on the island of Kismet, and the second poorest town in the world, he didn’t go to school and didn’t talk with the people in town because he was even poorer than them and they didn’t like him.  He didn’t fit in anywhere so started working around the house and then in the garden when his brothers started to work on their fighting skills instead of helping with the younger kids and around the house.

The breeze shifted again and Kaine lifted his nose to the breeze.  Something smelt different from the normal smells coming from the ocean but he couldn’t pin point it and he could still hear animals moving around in the forest behind him so he didn’t worry and got back to picking his vegetables. 

Because his family was so poor they mostly only ate the vegetables that he could grow and anything that anyone would hunt down and kill.  His older brothers came home around every six months and they gave them a small amount of money to buy some things in town that they may normally not get, they would also hunt more so there would be meat but most days they didn’t have fresh meat because the kids were too young to hunt and Kaine was busy in the garden, and he didn’t like to hunt.

They made it through on what they had and the small amount of money their mother earned from passing travelers looking for a place to stay, and father her children of course (though they didn’t necessarily know that).  They didn’t need much money for clothes because they only wore the bare minimum because their fur protected them from a lot of the cold and the area of Kismet they lived on was warmer.  They did have leather vests and leg and arm guards but that was for their own protection and was only worn when they were outside.