Ten - Alden

My fingers wrapped tightly around the rusted scimitar as I lay on the wet soil and leaves. With Callow being in the middle of town, no one was there to watch his boxed up items, and for some reason we treat everyone, even traitors like me, with trust. So I had marched the walk of shame alone, and taken the scimitar on my way out. But now... Now there was nothing.

I looked up through the Viridi trees as I lay uselessly on the damp jungle floor. The trees began to drip, and a rolling thunder paraded overhead. Letting my head fall back to the ground I felt everything within me breaking. It's not like I particularly cared for my job or home life, but what am I supposed to do now? If my life had no purpose before it surely didn't now.

Each breath seemed to grow more painful, and I had a hard time telling the difference between the falling rain and my own tears. Silently I lay, stifling my thoughts and ignoring the stab of hunger that grew more powerful each moment. Eventually, I thought I might die from hunger, having no way of telling time in the condensed spot of trees I had collapsed under. My fingers grew white as I clenched the scimitar, wanting desperately to just be rid of this pain, when the hunger began to subside. I have no idea how long it took, but the hunger went away in time.

For a little while the rain seemed to stop. I looked up with a groggy view of sunlit leaves. Before I may have found it a beautiful sight, having seen nothing but a distant view of what trees might look like, but everything seemed so meaningless instead.

"Brother..." I whispered, in a hoarse voice, desperate to speak with the one person who ever listened. "What am I supposed to do now?"

Then I heard a sound, like a large feather falling from a flying berkalo and landing on top of a paper, like when it was cool enough to set tables up outside in the evenings just before the sun had fully hidden. Shifting my glance I saw a blurred vision of someone standing before me. It was a brief moment, and I'm not sure it was real, but by the time I had closed my eyes and opened them again I saw some kind of meat before me.

The thought of eating turned my stomach. I reached with the hand unattached to the scimitar and tried to push it away from me, when a loud voiced boomed.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

I flinched back from the meat, trying to raise my scimitar in a sad attempt at protection, my vision almost doubled as I glanced about.

"Oh man..." I felt a cold touch on my shoulder, and a pulsing sensation began to stir in the raised skin of my branding. My finger's lost grip of the scimitar and my head started swimming, thoughts of my brother being dead and the searing pain of being branded crowding my head. "You don't look very good." A distant voice murmured as I drowned in darkness.