Short stories

Axe and Ice

She had been standing there for hours, surrounded by ice.

As the sun peeped its head over the distant mountains on the horizon, an orange and yellow hue filled the sky. The warmth of the sun was like a gesture of kindness to her frozen hands, which she clasped together in front of her frozen body. She had been struggling immensely to find any warmth whatsoever. It was the arctic.

That was when she heard it.... Crack! She watched the ice and world in front of her break in two.

***

'This is not good' she thought. Dashing in the opposite direction, she knew that she might die because of what is going on behind her. Then she stopped. 'What do I have to live for?' She thought and seconds later she was disgusted with herself. 'I will live for my parents' she decided.

Her parents were in the house and she went to go get water from outside. Carlos the Hunter wanted to hire them with no pay but they refused. They only caught fish for people who deserved it. She remembered the awful shrieks that seemed to make everything disappear. The blood-curling breath hitching screams of agony, she realised, belonged to her mother and father. She ran as quick as she could back to the small cabin she called home. But when she opened the doors she saw Carlos standing over her parents bodies, a bloody axe in his hand. Rage coursed through her but she left them. And now he wants her dead. Oh, how she wished she fought back.

***

Carlos say in his chair comfortably, relaxing next to the flickering flames. He laughed to himself, thinking about Sarina. Carlos wouldn't normally kill a 12 year old, but this was their daughter. If my plan works she'll be dead by the end of the day........

Sarina put the pieces together seconds later. 'Obviously if was Thinro, the Holder of Ice. Carlos could pay him a dollar and he would kill me. It would look like an accident' she thought. 'Stop. I won't die, I will live.' With that thought Sarina began dashing across the Arctic again. She would run forever if it meant living to murder Carlos the Hunter.

***

Thinro played with his dollar coin. It was all he needed to pay of his dept to the Council of Holders. All he needed was in his hands. Then the red-headed hurricane named Sarina stormed into the Hall of Ice, a foot in her hand that was certainly not hers. She didn't struggle to walk across the ice floors and that confused Thinro because she was human. "Here is the foot of Carlos the Hunter, and if you want the rest of the body to earn the Council's trust back, you won't kill me," Sarina said confidently.

He was now horrified. This was a twelve year old girl, right? She was confidently standing there with a dead infamous assassin's foot in her hand.

Sarina smirked at his stunned expression. Because that meant she had justice for her parents death.

The irony of this was she killed Carlos with the axe he killed her parents with. On the ice outside their house. Axe and ice.

***

Five hundred and thirty words my friends.