Sword of the cursed water

Prologue.

     
'A girl of your age shouldn't wander in the woods alone'.

Her father had warned her like thousand other times and like thousand other times she had ignored him.
To be fair, it is her twelfth year then why should he worry? She tried to ask herself, why?

The forest around their village wasn't even dangerous at all; all the big and thick trees with all kinds of animals like deer, stag, squirrels and rabbits.

Once or twice she even saw a fox; that was when she feared remembering her father's warning but when she didn't move and didn't try anything smart the fox disappeared back in the bushes like it never was there.

And mama says being smart will help you but she doesn't know that sometimes acting dumb will help you more than actually being smart.
Like this afternoon when her little brother ran away from the chore of delivering their father's lunch but she acted like she was stuck with it instead she just wanted to wander in forest after delivering the lunch.
Mama just smiled like she knew something, of course she did...she is smart like that.

The old woman next door always said that if their mama hadn't been stuck with a dumb husband and two brats, she would have gone far ahead in life.
Mama always ignored the old woman but once the girl's little brother called her an 'old hag' that got both,her brother and the old women in trouble.

Mama is strict like that... like the hard ground below the girl's bare feet but at the same time so soft to let something beautiful like this forest to grow.

Then she stepped in the spring running through the forest, it's cold water calming her sore feet. This spring filled with the cold playful water made her think of her father, the way he always smiles at mama like she is worth more to him than all the harvest in whole world. 'Old hag knows nothing!' she whispered to herself because no matter how big the forest is, it will always need it's own spring without which  it would just be another dry ground and hard rocks.

She hummed to herself a lullaby her father used to sing to her as she moved forward in the forest alongside the spring.
Her feet started to race as a big oak tree came in sight. Green grass surrounding the tree tickled her feet and she laughed alone in the silence of the forest.

She laid down on the grass in the shadow of the tree greening up at slits of sunlight that managed to escape the grip of millions and millions of leaves.

She herself tried to catch one of those naughty sun rays but they escaped her grip just like the butterflies she tired to catch in the rear of the forest.

She was still trying to remember the colour of the butterfly; red with black spots or was it violet spots?
Her thoughts exhausted her to sleep and the naughty sun rays must have breathed a sigh of relief; this thought made her smile even in her sleep.

The nightmare started as the sun began to sink in south, she knew it because shadows started to move across her face.
She shifted on one side pressing one ear in the grass and placing a hand on other ear trying to block out the screams of people and shouts of soldiers.

It always came back, the disaster of their home and the dark alleys through where they ran; the dark alleys where he disappeared.
All of it started to come back so did her father's voice, telling her not to fear the nightmare but try to control it because no matter the size of monsters, she had survived them all even if Kana didn't.

She tried to remember her father's face leaning over her six year old self, shaking her out of the nightmares whispering such things to her.
Smartness of her mama didn't come to aid at times like that, she would stay in the doorway shaking while her father's words made her a brave girl or so he said!