71

Chapter 5

"You can't fight the Beasts, hon. No, they will kill you dead. Your best chance is to hide." My mother said, as she taught me how to use certain plants and powder to drive away select Beasts. I knew I would be lucky to remember even half of the recipes.
"Why can't we fight them? They're mortal, like us." I said in my ten year old voice. I was stripping the leaves from a lumpy aromatic orange flower.
"Some things just are meant to be left alone. You leave them alone, they'll leave us be." She said, trying to get off the subject. I had dreamt of being a famous Beast Slayer someday, finding my way to fame and fortune.
"What happened to my father?" I frowned, staring up at her, before turning and examining my fingernails, which had been turned a vibrant orange from the flower.
"Oh, hon, you got the essence all over yourself. Here," My mother bent over, wiping my hands and shirt with the hem of her skirt. She looked almost nothing like me. Her blonde hair was curly, and hung loose around her shoulders, where mine was dark and straight. Her skin was tan and flawless, mine pale and freckled. Her body was small and thin, and I had worried that a good gust of wind might blow her away someday, while I had always been of a sturdy muscular build. Besides basic face shape, however, the only thing we had in common was our flickering silver eyes.
"Mother, you didn't answer my question." I said sternly. She turned back to me from her collection of animal bones and feathers that were supposed to ward off Beasts. Imagine her as a pretty shaman with an accent.
"Your father... Went off to fight the Beasts. And he didn't come back," She said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "And that's why you and I'll stay right here, nice and safe, and you won't need to go out and hunt down those creatures for pay from the City." She said, getting back to work. That had indicated my father might have been a Predator, but refused to live in the Shelter. My mother might have been a 100% human, but she refused to live in the City. I had often asked her why she didn't. She would always answer that if she did that, she would have had to leave my father, and now me.
Even then I had showed apparent signs of animal characteristics. I used to carve wood with my retractable claws, tie wild flowers around the tip of my cat tail. I often wondered what my father had been like, but I never met him. He vanished before I was born, and my mother would never tell me details. She kept his true identity a secret until the day she, too, disappeared.
It had been raining that day. Rain was a confusing thing. In certain areas, it was pure acid, and would disintegrate anything it touched. In other areas, it rained fire. And still, in some, it was just normal, well, rain. The radiation had made it that way, my mother had told me. Tales of the world before the apocalypse, that had been passed down from her great-great-great grandparents, that was what she had told me every night before bed.
I had left the cave to pick roseberries, for pink die. My mother's birthday was the next day, and I wanted to make her a scarf. Roseberries grew about a mile away, next to a creek.
Under the pretense of filling a water skin, I set off, bringing with me a bow and a small quiver of arrows. My bow was handmade, and I brought it everywhere, though I had rather bad aim. I only brought it in case of emergency.
So I left the cave, wandering down the path me and my mother had woven through the trees over the years, getting thoroughly soaked to the bone by the downpour, until I came across the game trail that crossed it. I followed that for a while, and soon the trickling brook could be heard.
I had to cross the creek to reach the roseberry bushes, which normally was harmless. But with the rain falling, there could have been acid washing through it.
Therefore I had to find a path over the water, which meant wandering up and down the shore trying to find a path of stones or fallen log that would get me safely over. When at last I found a decent log, and had just taken a step onto it, I was interrupted.
A bloodcurdling scream shattered the peaceful ambience of the Wold. Somehow, I knew exactly who it was.
"MOTHER!" I shrieked, turning and running straight into the brush, without bothering to find my path. I flailed through the thick thorn bushes, scraping my arms and face up something terrible, but I didn't even feel it. In fact, I was numb with horror.
I sprinted as fast as my ten-year-old legs would carry me, darting through trees. If a Beast had attacked me right then, I probably would have run it over. Every nerve and cell in my brain told me one thing- My mother was in trouble.
"Mother! I'm coming! Somebody, help!" I cried desperately, reaching a clearing I had never seen before. I was lost in the Wold, a dangerous position to be in. Another scream. I ran in that direction, thrashing through the vines and plants.
Another scream, very close now. "MOTHER!" My heart was pounding in my ears, and I was so, so scared that when I reached the cave, she would be... No, no, she would be fine. Yes.
Suddenly the screaming stopped, as abruptly as it had started. "MOTHER!" I smashed through another set of vines, and found myself in the clearing before our cave.
Running without hesitation into the cave, I spun in a full circle, examining every crook and cranny, every overhang, to find my mother. No sign of her. I dropped to the floor, using my tracking knowledge to locate any prints, scrapes, anything that might tell me what had happened to her.
All I found in the powdery dirt floor was a muddle of Beastlike pawprints, claw marks and scratches. Our supplies was raided and scattered across the floor, food half-eaten. Beasts took my mother and I tried not to think about what had happened afterwords.
Tears were welling up in my eyes. I wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but I knew something had taken my mother. And now I was all alone, entirely, alone.
I ran out of the cave, unable to bear it, and scream my mother's name into the trees, to all the Beasts and humans and animals alike. "Brook! Mother! Mother..." And collapsed in a heap on the ground, sobbing.