A soft breeze whisks through the house as the door is pushed open, inciting a chill on the arms of a child sitting at the table.
“… but dear, … wonderful … … honor … chosen!”
“… we have … … … really … so willingly?”
The child slips off the chair, and silently walks to the room adjacent. Two short figures come into view, the door still closing behind them. They don’t seem to notice the small figure walking closer.
“I know that, but Jae will be fine. The village can raise her, she doesn’t need us anymore. The shamans' words are proof! The Almighty Ones have chosen us to join them, it means we have a greater purpose now!” One figure gestures wildly in the air as she talks.
The other figure puts his hands on the first figure's shoulders, and her hands stop waving.
“Alright… you may have a point. There has to be a reason we were chosen now, and not any later. We must have faith in our deities to not lead us astray.”
A clatter sounds out as a chiseling tool is knocked from the workbench. The child stops moving, looking up at the two figures.
“Jaemera! How long have you been there, honey?” The first figure walks over to the child, the second following close behind.
“… not long, ma.” The child shuffles her feet, not making eye contact.
“Well, Jae, we have wonderful news!.” The second figure crouches down and puts his hand on the child’s shoulder. “In about a month, Ma and Pa are going to have to go away for a long time to do something magnificent.” Hearing this, the child finally looks into her fathers eyes. “It’s very important to us, and you’ll be very happy for us in the future, I’m sure. You’re going to be alone for a while, but you can go to our friends and neighbors if what we left in this house runs out, alright?”
The child’s brows draw together, and she clenches her fists. “But I don’t want you two to go away, can’t you stay?”
“Oh honey, I wish we could, but the Almighty Ones have called, and we must answer. You’ll understand when you’re a little older, okay?” The first figure brushes some hair out of the child’s eyes.
The child’s lip quivers. The couple's faces fall as she begins to sniffle, and they offer hushed reassurances as weeping echoes through the house.
“Oh dear, We haven’t even told her to not follow us yet! I knew we shouldn’t have told her until a little later. Get her in a good mood first, give her some sweet fruits.”
“You know as well as I do that she would’ve started crying anyway.”
“You don’t know that!”
Amidst a child’s crying, a couple’s bickers continue.
***
Brightly colored butterflies swoop around the spring flowers in the village of Everbloom. Squirrels dance in the trees as villagers gather in the town square.
“It’s today!” can be heard from just about everyone throughout the crowd, as people fill up the streets. Decorations are put up on the houses and preparations for a feast are underway as the annual ascension commences.
A small figure with a hood drawn makes their way through the crowd. They look around the proceedings with veiled curiosity, similar to a child's first time at a carnival. They settle near the edge of the square by one of the ever flowering trees. A memory from this morning flits through their mind.
“It’s today, it’s today! Can you believe it? The day has finally come!”
“I know, I’m just as excited as you are, dear. I can hardly wait.”
Behind ecstatic cheering, a child peeks around a doorframe.
“Let’s set off as soon as possible to help with the preparations. Can you believe this is all for us?”
Pulling a cloak from storage, the child puts on a well worn memory.
“I don’t think we’re forgetting anything, are we dear?”
“No, I think that’s everything. Let’s go, the people and our deities are waiting for us.”
The couple head out the door. There is no sign a child had ever been in the living room.
Broken out of their thoughts by the sound of applause, the figure looks up to see two familiar villagers in the middle of the square, being joined by one more. They look happy. The village shaman walks up and starts to speak.
“We offer our greetings to the Almighty Ones on the day of this fine festival! Shortly, I will commence the ascension ceremony for our three luckiest residents…”
The ceremony proceeds as it usually does, just like it had the year before, and the year before, and the year before. The villagers step up to the altar, like before, like before, like before. The figure watches as the villagers ascend upon the altar, the curtains are drawn, and they disappear in a flash of divine light.
That’s not right.
The brief shadow seen a split second before curtain fall will linger in their mind for a long time.
***
“Why would you do it in that manner?”
Jaemera looks up from the badly butchered rabbit corpse on the forest floor, and sees someone draped in the shadows of a large oak, a hood pulled over its face.
“What?”
The man steps out from under the tree, sunlight revealing a foreign black mask with exotic patterns. He eyes the corpse on the grass. Blood pools out from the rabbit, piles of fur with small chunks of meat attached were carved out and discarded. “You got blood and fur on everything.”
Jaemera stares at him, wiping a blood splatter from her cheek but only succeeding in making it worse. She looks back at the corpse, red streaking the surrounding grass and some of the organs hanging out of crudely cut incisions. She turns back to the man. “You know how to butcher animals, weird machine guy?”
“Cut the fur at the joints then separate the skin from the meat.”
Jaemera cuts at the tendon at elbows and awkwardly tears them off. She removes the rabbit's head and holds it up consideringly.
“That’s useless.”
Jaemera hesitantly drops it back on the forest floor.
The man stands over her, watching the rabbit expressionlessly as Jaemera struggles to cut the fur from the half-skinned rabbit. “Don’t get fur on the meat. That’s inconvenient to clean.”
Jaemera flicks a bit of fur at his cloak.
After a few more monotone directions, the rabbit is messily disemboweled.
The man inspects the pieces of rabbit. “Your attempt at degutting was as terrible as your skinning.”
Jaemera rolls her eyes. “You aren’t exactly teaching me much, strange robot man. You can always find me more rabbits to practice on, if you care so much.”
He looks at the girl. “I do not care that much. This is your rabbit. If you are butchering it wrong it is none of my concern.”
Jaemera huffs. “Okay, grump. You talk so old. Why did you come over and tell me I’m wrong, if it’s ‘none of your concern’? Next time I catch one of these, how about you teach me how to do it better. I don’t have money, though.”
He takes a moment in silence, seemingly in consideration. A fresh breeze blows by and ruffles Jaemera’s hair, and flakes off some dried blood on her cheek. She stares at the man’s windswept cloak, waiting for something to happen.
When the silence is broken by a robotic voice, a pair of squirrels startle and run up the nearby trees. “ Very well, small one. You have a deal.”
“Awesome.” Jaemera sticks out a blood covered hand for him to shake. The man stares at the hand. The sound of birds chirping can be heard softly. Jaemera lowers her hand. “Could’ve just said you didn’t like getting dirty.”
The sun drifts past the highest point in the sky as the shadows grow longer. Jaemera attempts a campfire in a patch of grass sprinkled with sunflecks.
“Do you want some rabbit, machine guy?”
The man does not move. “I do not need food, small one.”
Jaemera pokes at the rabbit meat roasting over the fire. “My name is Jaemera. You don't have to keep calling me small. My parents were short too, y'know. I think your name’s Cairn, from what the others say. I still might keep calling you machine guy tho, it’s funnier.”
“I do not care what I am called by you, Jaemera. I will meet you here tomorrow.” The man turns and quietly strides into the foliage, quickly disappearing from sight and senses.
Jaemera thinks about the weird machine as she munches on her meal. He was kind of critical and took everything too seriously, but honestly was pretty helpful. She will meet him here tomorrow.
Above her, the sun keeps moving forward.
***
The village activity is the same as always, none of the residents being any the wiser of a peculiar pair of beings chasing down a squirrel in the forest adjacent. The other day, it was a carp. Next week, it will be a dove.
Jaemera cleans the blood off her hands in a winding river, a neatly butchered squirrel cooking on the campfire. Cairn watches from the edge of the clearing. Jaemera is like no other child Cairn has ever encountered, and Cairn is the weirdest guy Jaemera has seen in her life. But, she could get used to this.
The villagers carry on, and the peculiar pair in the woods keep moving forward.
***
If you asked Jaemera, death is pretty similar to going away for a long time. The plants, the bugs, the animals in the forest never seem to come back. They just sit there, and become less, and become less. There are many ways something can die. Abruptly, like the snap of a stepped on branch. Haltingly, like molasses flowing down a pitcher. Softly, like the shed feather of a raven floating to the floor. Painfully.
Jaemera sifts through her collection. She hasn’t seen a deer die yet. It would be a good addition.