The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

4. Blood and mud

When I was younger I was very afraid of dying. By now I have learned that certain things in life are worse than death.

In that brief moment when I saw the blood, the sudden impact of the discovery startled me and made me feel a sharp jolt of panic.

I cried and hyperventilated under the somewhat curious, scrutinizing, amused or contemptuous gazes of the girls around me.

Then came the laughter and with it the humiliation, shame, and rage.

"Human, you are bleeding all over the bath chamber floor," said an unknown girl with long brown hair and small horns on her forehead. "Has nobody told you to use the chamber at the end of the hall when you have your moon bleeding?"

"Moon bleeding..." I mutter, even more frightened.

"Yes, you humans bleed and breed like all the low races. A lot and disgusting. Stand up!"

I tried to keep my body from shaking but couldn't. Afraid of her somehow, I made an effort to stand and leaned on the wet wall to sustain myself. It was so damn slippery and my shaky feet fled from under me. I would have hit my head were it not for Itotia that caught my arm.

"Mala, I will crack your head in half if you say another word, so you can see what else I can do except breed a lot," hissed Itotia. "Come on, girl, I will show you where you ought to go, so you don't get a beating from the sisters."

I leaned on her more than I should while we moved to a more secluded area of the bath.

"Am I going to die?" I whisper. "Is it the stone that does this? Is it killing me?"

"No. You just got your moon blood and judging by the way you act, I see it's the first time. Your mother must have died early on, right?"

"Yes, when I was born. How did you know?"

"Because mothers usually explain these things to their daughters. Well, congratulations, now you can bear children. And to spare you one other embarrassing question, no children do not come to be out of thin air you need the seed of a male for that. Don't make me explain how you get that though, you will find out soon enough."

That was a lot of information to digest for my very innocent brain. Hara never wanted to explain to me exactly how women get pregnant and apparently neither did that girl. It also seemed that the ability to get pregnant was marked by this strange bleeding.

"Will it stop? The bleeding I mean."

"Of course. Else you would die. But it comes again in the next blue moon cycle. Other races don't have it that often, maybe once every three or six moon cycles. That's why Mala said what she said, because if you bleed more often you are more likely to have a child. The gazal bleed only twice every star circle, which makes them a not-so-good match for childbearing, as beautiful as they might be. Sometimes one does not bleed at all even as a human. If that happens you are not allowed to stay in the priory because you cannot bear children. You can imagine, since everyone here is an orphan what a fate you have after you are kicked out of here, after having lived in the priory for some time and not having parents or knowing anything else."

I soaked in all the information and I had to admit it frightened me once again. I knew so little about the world. About the real world, not stories from books, and what unfolded in front of me was a glimpse of something more violent and frightening than I had ever imagined.

"Thank you for helping me."

"It's all right. I don't like Mala."

"Would you like to go tomorrow to fetch water with me? It's that I have to go with someone and..."