The Winter Demon| Cursed Fanfic

Chapter 1

Unlike you, I don't take pity on my food, I have all ready eaten.

"If you keep talking like that maybe I'll consider making you my breakfast."

You would not dare.

"Would I?" She challenges, flashing a daring smile at the bird. "Maybe you can make up for your rudeness by searching the area for perhaps a creek that I can fish in?"

As you wish, my queen.

"I've told you time and time again not to call me that!" She hisses, but it is too late he has already flown off. Eleanor rolls her eyes, she knew he only did it to aggravate her, and knew he took pride in knowing he succeeded.

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The sound of rushing water fills her ears as she stands ankle deep in a ravine, smooth rocks pressing into the bottom of her bare feet. A newly sharpened, wooden spear is held in a vice like grip. Her eyes staking the flowing water like a hawk waiting to strike. Raphael sits perched on a stone beside her leather boots, cleaning his feathers. Though he would look her way just to amuse himself in seeing her struggle to even catch a small trout. Maxine has made herself comfortable in a patch of wildflowers and settles for a small morning nap.

An excited squeal could not stop itself from escaping her lips, when she spears a fish right in the head straight through its eye. Her raven lets out an angered squawk when he narrowly misses getting soaked by a wave of water. Eleanor does feel a tang of guilt and hopes that the poor thing's death was quick. Right now she needs to eat, she has caught a glance of her reflection in the water earlier. The sight was not pleasant to her.

Her red hair knotted and in need of a good brushing, and dirt has made her face its home. Eleanor lost weight in the past year since she started traveling. Unlike the wealthy families and kings and queens and their offspring, she did not get a hot plate of food served to her with a snap of fingers. She has to work for it, and some nights she'd go hungry, feeling awful when she could not feed her hard working horse. When passing by villages she'd would trade dead rabbits for apples or a bundle of hay. Raphael would look for his own food and sometimes bring her little presents. Like dead mice for example, though every bone in her body wants to decline it. It was food and her body needed it.

Her stomach growls loudly as she pokes at the slowly igniting firewood. Eleanor has stabbed a smaller stick through the fishes' mouth and sat holding it over the fire. It is a decent sized catch, a catch that she wishes will keep her belly full for the next few hours. Raphael appears by her side grazing his cheek affectionately against her arm. She gives him her undivided attention after rotating her breakfast onto the opposite side.

"May I help you, my friend?" She asks him. He wants something, she could see it just by looking at him.

Do I need to remind you, that I did help you find this glorious place?

"I thought you had all ready eaten?" She teases. "Why must I feel the need to give you even a morsel?"

He seems to try and coax her into sharing by casting a longing look at the skewered fish. That she has then started to tear bits of flesh from its bones with her teeth. She gives an over dramatic sigh after swallowing a bite, just to mess with him. But, could not go any further than that for she could not be that cruel. They share the half decent meal together and chat away about random things. Eventually landing on the topic of Red Paladins.