10-18-2010, 03:59 AM
65. A Moment in Time
"You must never wonder into the forests alone, lest some manner of beast eats you whole. And if you are unfortunate enough to find the Shieto, never return home, for if it finds us we will be nothing more."
Or so parents will tell their naughty children. But Maeryn had always felt that those around her were trying tell her something much different.
"Go on. Flee into the forests. May the Shieto eat you so that we may live in comfort once more."
Since birth she had felt it. She was separate from her fellows, an outcast, all because of a vision her mother had seen the moment she had given birth. Her daughter would be a sacrifice to the Shieto in the south, a fierce killer that fed on the flesh of man, and her people would go on living until the next woman would be offered years later.
Like a twisted symbiosis they went on living. They received a sort of protection by living so close to the beast, and if they had to give up a young every thirty years, well, what difference did it really make. What was one life for the protection of many?
How Maeryn came to despise them and the way they averted her eyes as she walked past.
"Go on. Isn't it time the Shieto had you?"
But they bore through their guilty consciences until the day finally arrived. She was sixteen that day. She was a woman by her people's standards. It should have been means for celebration. But they packed her away in a carriage and sent her south. South to the Shieto, her husband-of-sorts who would consume her alive.
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