Cursed

Chapter 14: Sky's worst day (yet)

Three days have passed since Ura sold me out. Three days have passed since I had been hunting on my own, living in the wild, never knowing if I was going to be killed during the night or not. Usually I preferred nature above anything else - a peaceful quiet that revived my energy. Now everything had changed; it felt like nature wasn't safe anymore. It definitely didn't revive my energy. Even worse, it only wore me out. Constantly, I had to make sure that travelers didn't see me, or that I hadn't become the prey instead of the hunter. The cold was another factor that had me on my toes, especially during the night when the temperature fell. The constant rain didn't help either.

Currently, my feet and trousers were wet and my hands were sticky from the fish I skinned. My stomach was growling loudly. It had been a day since I ate, and it had been rumbling for a while. My feet hurt and complained just as much; I had traveled since first light. During the day it was hard to navigate, the sun was hidden behind the clouds that disappeared only at night when the cold fell. So I had been traveling much further north than I had anticipated. If I had to guess, I was a day off the White River shore, and two days away from the first mountain peaks - the first line of vampire territory. When the forest thinned out, I could already see them towering in the distance, like the giants in the human children books. I smiled, a pleasant memory of Io reading me the tale of giants in the clouds. It didn't last, as sadness quickly followed. Perhaps my life would've been better if I grew up to be a human. All of the heartache would be in the past. I wouldn't be here alone in the woods, running for my life, with the heaviness and soreness left behind by betrayal. The safest option was to keep moving, and so I did, but my body was struggling.

For now, I had succeeded in staying off everyone's radar. I even succeeded at keeping others off my radar, which I was grateful for. It surprised me, but who was I to question the one thing that was going my way? My sole focus now was the daily struggle of surviving in the wild. Luckily hunting was one of the basic skills of a Vampire Hunter.

Again, my stomach growled.

"Yes, yes," I grumbled back. "It's almost finished."

The fire was blazing nicely. Heat radiated against my wet trousers, it was a nice change from the constant cold. The gray smoke of the fire made my eyes water. I leaned over the fire to attach the fish to the wooden stick leaning on a simple construction of twigs and rocks.

"There we go," I hummed and my stomach rumbled in response. "You know, Ura never liked fish. Another thing we disagreed upon. I should've known she wasn't to be trusted." My head turned and my eyes caught the salamander sneaking away, between the bushes and under the rock it had been waiting under for most of my time at the water side. "Who doesn't like fish?"

I pulled my shoes off, the water in it making a slurping noise once my feet came out.

"Nice," I sighed. "Another thing that goes my way." With too much force, I threw my shoes to the side and dropped to the ground, my arms outstretched next to me.

Waves lapped at the rocks scattered across the stream. The gentle sounds of the rippling water were soothing. My eyes closed involuntary, for a second I could imagine that I was back on my familiar stone at home. Ura would've sat somewhere on the ground, not too far away from me, keeping herself busy with cleaning weapons or something else useful. I could almost imagine her little frown, the one she always wore when she had difficulty scrubbing off a particularly hard piece of dirt. My eyes pressed together, tighter, just like my heart did.

"I'm tired," I turned my head, slowly opening my eyes, to the green-turning rock where the salamander had hidden itself under once again. "Can you believe that? I have no tasks to do except for finding food, a few hours of walking and setting up camp. Yet, I feel like I've aged ten years. And all because of that betraying-," a silence fell before I simply went on, "that I once called my friend. And now I'm alone and tired and-," my voice hitched. "I just don't know what to do." I closed my eyes again and let the sadness once again overtake my heart. It broke yet again, or it simply broke further now that I had stopped keeping my mind and body busy. "I have nowhere to go."